Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Qué le pasa a Lupita?
For the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was Monday, there were fiestas in all the pueblos named after the virgin.
On Saturday night, a few of the teachers and I went to the tiny town of Santa Maria, the home of kindergarten teacher Cristina. The daughters of the teachers went on the expensive but crappy kiddie rides, and we drank beer and micheladas (beer with salsa and lime) and danced banda. (Only us girls danced together. It seems sketchy to dance banda with guys you don’t know, and anyway we had to entertain the toddlers.) Banda is pretty boring if you just watch it, but if you dance it you really tire yourself out having a grand old time. I’m out of shape, so after one song I was having trouble catching my breath.
When my friends kept trying to get me to dance, I said I didn’t know how to dance banda. Rocio said to me, “Es fácil; brinca como una loca y ya!” (“It’s easy; jump around like a madwoman and that’s it!”) And she was right.
Cristina’s family was lovely, and we had fresh cow’s milk at her house. Santa Maria, all four or five blocks of it (haha), was also lovely. Even the tiny towns have a huge, elaborate church in the center of town, usually with neon crosses on its multiple steeples. People in the towns are usually very religious as well, especially the women. (But absolutely everyone in Arandas, when passing any church, makes the sign of the cross. I found this odd at first because we would be in the middle of a conversation and people would just all of a sudden be making the sign of the cross. None of the Mexicans I knew in the States ever did this, even when they were in Mexico. Now it’s just normal to me—so normal, in fact, that I have to make an effort to stop from doing it myself. Maybe in a few months I’ll be doing it involuntarily. How odd, because, as my family will remember, I used to want to be Catholic when I was a kid. They laugh and say it’s because I ate a few pages of the bible when I was a baby….) When we entered the cathedral in Santa Maria, all the women immediately knelt and prayed at the pews, while the men stayed standing at the door waiting. I also knelt because otherwise I’d feel left out.
Aracely then said to me that whenever I enter a church for the first time, I can make a wish in my prayer, so I made a wish in my own non-Catholic way.
A friend of mine in Taiwan once told me a funny story. She knew someone who had gone to a fortune teller because a family member was very sick and going for an operation in the States. The fortune teller told her to pray, obviously, to the Bodhisattva Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, but while she was in the States to pray to Jesus, because that’s in his, hmm, how should we say it, jurisdiction. He’s closer there and more available to help. We found it very amusing to think that all the gods and goddesses around the world coexist and have their own precincts. Not that they can’t do anything in other precincts, but it’s just that they can’t be as available. This got me thinking about the similarities between Guanyin and the Virgin Mary. I have a beautiful picture of Guanyin back in the States, which I had on my wall in Columbus, and it occurred to me that both she and Virgin Mary cover their heads with long, flowing material, and though their hands are always in different mudras, they kind of stand in the same way. I don’t know, just having a random, digressing thought.
On Monday I got myself up early and went to mass with the students. They sang songs and brought roses to the virgin. That night I went to Capilla de Guadalupe, another pueblo, with kindergarten teacher Aracely and her husband and two daughters. There was a huge parade with lots of fancy floats and school marching bands and charros on horses and dancers doing Indian dances. I loved the horses—there are so many around here I’ll probably be able to get myself on one of them, one of these days. The floats had religious themes and very detailed replicas of the basilicas in Mexico City and the Vatican, complete with people posing frozen for a very long time. The marching bands were interesting to me because almost all the drummers were girls and all the trumpeters were boys. We ate garbanzos and nuts and I drank another michelada and got sleepy. There were no fiestas in Capilla, because the city government wouldn’t allow drinking in the streets or bands playing music. The reasoning was that the holiday is religious and should be observed religiously.
The cathedral in Capilla was decorated marvelously, with huge butterflies hanging from the ceiling and drapes all over, but there were too many people going to mass so we couldn’t even get in. We sat around in the crowds eating snacks and buying trinkets but got pretty bored so we left.
Because it’s the last week of classes, there’s a ton of stuff to do. We had the pastorela (Christmas pageant) this evening. It kind of sucked. The kids were really unprepared, and hardly anyone sang. I had to sing “Silent Night” while the kids played it on their recorders. It was mortifying but also over quickly. The kids sang the first two verses of “Jingle Bell Rock” because they couldn’t do the whole song, and they were as stiff as rods up there in their costumes, which were exquisite. The only cool thing about the pastorela was their costumes, in fact. You can count on the parents of these rich kids dressing them well for an event like this.
The students’ posadas, or Christmas parties, are tomorrow. The teachers have a lot of work to do. They have to prepare little Christmas brooches (like the ones I helped make this afternoon for all the parents attending the pastorela) and Christmas cards for all their students, and they weren’t told to do so until this afternoon. The school is also giving the students presents for Christmas—little angels made of plastic containers filled with candy and peanuts—which means the teachers are making them. We were supposed to make one for each student—about 130—but we couldn’t do it all in just a few days, so they’ve decided to give the primary grades store-bought ones while the kindergarten teachers have to finish making theirs tonight. The teachers aren’t very happy, of course. Although Monday was a holiday, we had to go to school after mass to make these angels. Yesterday afternoon we had to go back to school after classes to continue the work, and we still weren’t making much headway, so several of the teachers had to take piecework home to finish that night. I volunteered to sew more arms, so I spent about five hours sewing about sixty-five of the stupid little things. It was a pain but at the same time I really enjoyed it. The other teachers would think I’m crazy for saying so, but I like that kind of mindless manual work on occasion; it’s a good break from what we usually have to do, and I’ve always liked to make crafts. The other teachers would think I’m crazy, but I haven’t got much other stuff to do anyway, and I don’t have a family to look after like they all do, and most of them aren’t paid as much as I am either.
But one thing that takes a bit of the joy out of making these things is knowing that once all the candy is gone, these silly-looking products of our hard labor are probably just going to go right in the trash. As one of the teachers said today, "These kids, they have everything already."
It’s a real shame that the school works the teachers so hard at this time. The boss is sort of my friend, but I was very irritated with her this week when she complained to me that the teachers are all very lazy. I said, but it’s a lot of work. And she said, yes, but they have to do it. I didn’t think it was fair; I was with her in Guadalajara a couple weeks ago when she was looking for things to buy for the students, and upon realizing that the things she wanted to buy them would cost the school a lot, she decided to have the teachers make the presents for cheaper, or rather, for free. And it also really bothered me that she didn’t tell the teachers earlier what they had to prepare. Only today she’s telling them they have to make cards and brooches for all their students, and they have to go to the pastorela and also finish making the stupid angels all in the same night. No, I gladly take on more work to help the teachers finish what they have to do, especially because it appears that I get special treatment for being the native-English-speaking English teacher and am not required to help make any of this stuff. (Maybe it’s because, from my experience teaching in Taiwan, I expect to have more annoying responsibilities as an EFL teacher during holiday and performance times, having to write plays for each class and to make all the costumes and props myself.) So tonight I went to Aracely’s house with Rocio and we finished making the angels while drinking micheladas and joking around.
This is the way things happen at the school. Another reason why I was really irritated with my boss is because she also waited till the last minute to apply for my work visa. My tourist visa expires this week, and she just got the paperwork in on Monday. Sunday night she calls to tell me the photos I took (on my own initiative) were the wrong size and had to be black and white. I was to go Monday morning and get the photos taken. She got upset at Rocio and me when we didn’t have them by the afternoon, because she had expected us to have them taken during our breakfast break after mass. I was pretty peeved at her acting like it was our fault that the paperwork was delayed, because she had an entire two months to do this beforehand.
I hate to turn this blog into a complaint depository, but this is the way things are with the roommate situation as well. Whenever I report her untoward behavior to my boss, she tells me to talk to her. But I am not her mother or her babysitter or guardian in any way, and now my roommate despises me and doesn’t speak to me, so I am not going to even try to tell her what to do. She got home last night at 3:30 a.m. (I usually know what time she gets home because she makes so much noise coming home.) I keep telling my boss that I am not going to take responsibility for her behavior, so it’s best that she move out as soon as possible, especially if her family doesn’t want her to get home late and associate with muchos muchachos. But she’s still living here, and might be living here a bit longer than I expected.
Fortunately for me, she is probably going home to her town for Christmas break tomorrow, and very, very soon I will also be on break.
Luis arrives in Arandas tomorrow for a few days’ visit before going home to Zamora for Christmas. I find it difficult to contain my excitement over his visit and, afterwards, my trip to the beach with my girlfriends. Meabh and Mika are going to Zihuatanejo, which I hear is a beautiful beach in the state of Guerrero, and I will meet them and Veronica there next week. I cannot wait for warm weather and the sun and the sea…. Meabh and I will then travel elsewhere, perhaps Oaxaca, for the holidays, because neither of us are going home for Christmas. Belfast is too far and the trip too expensive for her, and though Arizona is closer, it’s still pretty far and expensive as well for me. So we’ll be two very conspicuous foreign tourists wandering around random parts of Mexico over the holidays. It could be difficult to travel and find places to stay during this time, but we’ll definitely have fun.
Then we will return to our schools to teach, but during the first two weeks of January, Arandas will have its own fiestas. None of that barring of music and drinking like in Capilla, because Arandas is a tequila-producing town and it is determined to have its usual fun. I hear there will be bands and people dancing and drinking in the streets, and probably more than the usual share of muchachos on their horses hanging around town. A good time for all guaranteed.
Might not get to post entries over the vacation, so I’ll wish everyone very happy holidays right now. Make sure to make time for yourself to relax and be full of peace and joy (I know that sounds cheesy, but I think it’s important), because unfortunately at this time of year that is not always easy…. Love to all!
On Saturday night, a few of the teachers and I went to the tiny town of Santa Maria, the home of kindergarten teacher Cristina. The daughters of the teachers went on the expensive but crappy kiddie rides, and we drank beer and micheladas (beer with salsa and lime) and danced banda. (Only us girls danced together. It seems sketchy to dance banda with guys you don’t know, and anyway we had to entertain the toddlers.) Banda is pretty boring if you just watch it, but if you dance it you really tire yourself out having a grand old time. I’m out of shape, so after one song I was having trouble catching my breath.
When my friends kept trying to get me to dance, I said I didn’t know how to dance banda. Rocio said to me, “Es fácil; brinca como una loca y ya!” (“It’s easy; jump around like a madwoman and that’s it!”) And she was right.
Cristina’s family was lovely, and we had fresh cow’s milk at her house. Santa Maria, all four or five blocks of it (haha), was also lovely. Even the tiny towns have a huge, elaborate church in the center of town, usually with neon crosses on its multiple steeples. People in the towns are usually very religious as well, especially the women. (But absolutely everyone in Arandas, when passing any church, makes the sign of the cross. I found this odd at first because we would be in the middle of a conversation and people would just all of a sudden be making the sign of the cross. None of the Mexicans I knew in the States ever did this, even when they were in Mexico. Now it’s just normal to me—so normal, in fact, that I have to make an effort to stop from doing it myself. Maybe in a few months I’ll be doing it involuntarily. How odd, because, as my family will remember, I used to want to be Catholic when I was a kid. They laugh and say it’s because I ate a few pages of the bible when I was a baby….) When we entered the cathedral in Santa Maria, all the women immediately knelt and prayed at the pews, while the men stayed standing at the door waiting. I also knelt because otherwise I’d feel left out.
Aracely then said to me that whenever I enter a church for the first time, I can make a wish in my prayer, so I made a wish in my own non-Catholic way.
A friend of mine in Taiwan once told me a funny story. She knew someone who had gone to a fortune teller because a family member was very sick and going for an operation in the States. The fortune teller told her to pray, obviously, to the Bodhisattva Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, but while she was in the States to pray to Jesus, because that’s in his, hmm, how should we say it, jurisdiction. He’s closer there and more available to help. We found it very amusing to think that all the gods and goddesses around the world coexist and have their own precincts. Not that they can’t do anything in other precincts, but it’s just that they can’t be as available. This got me thinking about the similarities between Guanyin and the Virgin Mary. I have a beautiful picture of Guanyin back in the States, which I had on my wall in Columbus, and it occurred to me that both she and Virgin Mary cover their heads with long, flowing material, and though their hands are always in different mudras, they kind of stand in the same way. I don’t know, just having a random, digressing thought.
On Monday I got myself up early and went to mass with the students. They sang songs and brought roses to the virgin. That night I went to Capilla de Guadalupe, another pueblo, with kindergarten teacher Aracely and her husband and two daughters. There was a huge parade with lots of fancy floats and school marching bands and charros on horses and dancers doing Indian dances. I loved the horses—there are so many around here I’ll probably be able to get myself on one of them, one of these days. The floats had religious themes and very detailed replicas of the basilicas in Mexico City and the Vatican, complete with people posing frozen for a very long time. The marching bands were interesting to me because almost all the drummers were girls and all the trumpeters were boys. We ate garbanzos and nuts and I drank another michelada and got sleepy. There were no fiestas in Capilla, because the city government wouldn’t allow drinking in the streets or bands playing music. The reasoning was that the holiday is religious and should be observed religiously.
The cathedral in Capilla was decorated marvelously, with huge butterflies hanging from the ceiling and drapes all over, but there were too many people going to mass so we couldn’t even get in. We sat around in the crowds eating snacks and buying trinkets but got pretty bored so we left.
Because it’s the last week of classes, there’s a ton of stuff to do. We had the pastorela (Christmas pageant) this evening. It kind of sucked. The kids were really unprepared, and hardly anyone sang. I had to sing “Silent Night” while the kids played it on their recorders. It was mortifying but also over quickly. The kids sang the first two verses of “Jingle Bell Rock” because they couldn’t do the whole song, and they were as stiff as rods up there in their costumes, which were exquisite. The only cool thing about the pastorela was their costumes, in fact. You can count on the parents of these rich kids dressing them well for an event like this.
The students’ posadas, or Christmas parties, are tomorrow. The teachers have a lot of work to do. They have to prepare little Christmas brooches (like the ones I helped make this afternoon for all the parents attending the pastorela) and Christmas cards for all their students, and they weren’t told to do so until this afternoon. The school is also giving the students presents for Christmas—little angels made of plastic containers filled with candy and peanuts—which means the teachers are making them. We were supposed to make one for each student—about 130—but we couldn’t do it all in just a few days, so they’ve decided to give the primary grades store-bought ones while the kindergarten teachers have to finish making theirs tonight. The teachers aren’t very happy, of course. Although Monday was a holiday, we had to go to school after mass to make these angels. Yesterday afternoon we had to go back to school after classes to continue the work, and we still weren’t making much headway, so several of the teachers had to take piecework home to finish that night. I volunteered to sew more arms, so I spent about five hours sewing about sixty-five of the stupid little things. It was a pain but at the same time I really enjoyed it. The other teachers would think I’m crazy for saying so, but I like that kind of mindless manual work on occasion; it’s a good break from what we usually have to do, and I’ve always liked to make crafts. The other teachers would think I’m crazy, but I haven’t got much other stuff to do anyway, and I don’t have a family to look after like they all do, and most of them aren’t paid as much as I am either.
But one thing that takes a bit of the joy out of making these things is knowing that once all the candy is gone, these silly-looking products of our hard labor are probably just going to go right in the trash. As one of the teachers said today, "These kids, they have everything already."
It’s a real shame that the school works the teachers so hard at this time. The boss is sort of my friend, but I was very irritated with her this week when she complained to me that the teachers are all very lazy. I said, but it’s a lot of work. And she said, yes, but they have to do it. I didn’t think it was fair; I was with her in Guadalajara a couple weeks ago when she was looking for things to buy for the students, and upon realizing that the things she wanted to buy them would cost the school a lot, she decided to have the teachers make the presents for cheaper, or rather, for free. And it also really bothered me that she didn’t tell the teachers earlier what they had to prepare. Only today she’s telling them they have to make cards and brooches for all their students, and they have to go to the pastorela and also finish making the stupid angels all in the same night. No, I gladly take on more work to help the teachers finish what they have to do, especially because it appears that I get special treatment for being the native-English-speaking English teacher and am not required to help make any of this stuff. (Maybe it’s because, from my experience teaching in Taiwan, I expect to have more annoying responsibilities as an EFL teacher during holiday and performance times, having to write plays for each class and to make all the costumes and props myself.) So tonight I went to Aracely’s house with Rocio and we finished making the angels while drinking micheladas and joking around.
This is the way things happen at the school. Another reason why I was really irritated with my boss is because she also waited till the last minute to apply for my work visa. My tourist visa expires this week, and she just got the paperwork in on Monday. Sunday night she calls to tell me the photos I took (on my own initiative) were the wrong size and had to be black and white. I was to go Monday morning and get the photos taken. She got upset at Rocio and me when we didn’t have them by the afternoon, because she had expected us to have them taken during our breakfast break after mass. I was pretty peeved at her acting like it was our fault that the paperwork was delayed, because she had an entire two months to do this beforehand.
I hate to turn this blog into a complaint depository, but this is the way things are with the roommate situation as well. Whenever I report her untoward behavior to my boss, she tells me to talk to her. But I am not her mother or her babysitter or guardian in any way, and now my roommate despises me and doesn’t speak to me, so I am not going to even try to tell her what to do. She got home last night at 3:30 a.m. (I usually know what time she gets home because she makes so much noise coming home.) I keep telling my boss that I am not going to take responsibility for her behavior, so it’s best that she move out as soon as possible, especially if her family doesn’t want her to get home late and associate with muchos muchachos. But she’s still living here, and might be living here a bit longer than I expected.
Fortunately for me, she is probably going home to her town for Christmas break tomorrow, and very, very soon I will also be on break.
Luis arrives in Arandas tomorrow for a few days’ visit before going home to Zamora for Christmas. I find it difficult to contain my excitement over his visit and, afterwards, my trip to the beach with my girlfriends. Meabh and Mika are going to Zihuatanejo, which I hear is a beautiful beach in the state of Guerrero, and I will meet them and Veronica there next week. I cannot wait for warm weather and the sun and the sea…. Meabh and I will then travel elsewhere, perhaps Oaxaca, for the holidays, because neither of us are going home for Christmas. Belfast is too far and the trip too expensive for her, and though Arizona is closer, it’s still pretty far and expensive as well for me. So we’ll be two very conspicuous foreign tourists wandering around random parts of Mexico over the holidays. It could be difficult to travel and find places to stay during this time, but we’ll definitely have fun.
Then we will return to our schools to teach, but during the first two weeks of January, Arandas will have its own fiestas. None of that barring of music and drinking like in Capilla, because Arandas is a tequila-producing town and it is determined to have its usual fun. I hear there will be bands and people dancing and drinking in the streets, and probably more than the usual share of muchachos on their horses hanging around town. A good time for all guaranteed.
Might not get to post entries over the vacation, so I’ll wish everyone very happy holidays right now. Make sure to make time for yourself to relax and be full of peace and joy (I know that sounds cheesy, but I think it’s important), because unfortunately at this time of year that is not always easy…. Love to all!
Friday, December 09, 2005
Grippe and gripe
Normally when I have a cold, I like to make a big pot of chicken soup with lots of ginger, which is good for colds and stomach problems and for strengthening the immune system in general. The soup is excellent with some Chinese noodles and maybe some bok choy or pea sprouts from the Chinese market. I also like to just boil the hell out of ginger in some water and then drink the dark, spicy water with honey. It’s the closest to Taiwanese ginger tea that I’ve gotten so far.
Unfortunately, I can’t find any ginger root here in Arandas. When I made the soup in Guadalajara I bought tiny pieces of molding ginger at the supermarket nearby and cut off the nasty parts, but I haven’t seen any here. I also used cabbage, which made the soup kind of funny, and fideos, the little noodles they use for tomato-based soups here. It was a totally different thing. Here in Arandas I made a chicken soup, but it was pretty boring, just with some chicken and carrots and onion and fideos. Bland. Guacala.
People in different locales have different habits to deal with ailments. When I was in Taiwan, people thought I was insane to eat oranges and other citrus fruits when I had a cold. This was a habit I had developed at college, to get lots of vitamin C. But Chinese people have this whole system of foods being hot or cold, and when you have a cold or are otherwise weak in any way, you shouldn’t eat cold fruits like oranges or watermelon. Oranges are OK if you steam them and they become hot. I was also supposed to stay away from foods that were more obviously cold in temperature. Couldn’t have a soda with ice or ice cream. I thought they were the crazy ones. Steamed oranges? Hot water all the time?
My English friend Paul, who was studying Chinese medicine in Taiwan, pointed out the logic for me, however. If you’re body is weak and it has to expend a lot of energy warming up the things you put into your body, of course it’s not very good for you. This completed my conversion. I couldn’t really help it, anyway. Living for so long in a place, things just seep in as if through osmosis. And there’s a reason why they say, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” I think it’s because it’s such a hassle to do things differently. People give you a hard time, and it’s just easier to do it their way. Also, it becomes a matter of respect. If you don’t follow their advice, it’s like you don’t believe them, and that’s pretty rude.
So now I hesitate to drink cold water when I have a cold. But I haven’t got one of those lovely little Asian electric water things that keep water hot, and I’m so lazy to boil my water all the time. Well, all the locals drink their water at room temperature, and I did it all those years before I lived in Taiwan, so it can’t be too bad.
Here everyone told me to take some Tabcin, which appears to be like Nyquil and Dayquil. I took these for a day, even though I hate to take medicine for colds. Since so many people told me to take it, and because they were so concerned that I wasn’t taking anything for the cold, I tried it. But then I was checking on Yoga Journal online for poses that would be good for colds, and there were all these articles saying you should stay away from medication that suppresses cold symptoms, because they’re just the natural defenses of the body, and suppressing these may actually prolong or complicate the illness. Secretly I said goodbye to the Tabcin, while reassuring others that I was indeed still taking them. (This minor type of deception, I understand from my copy of The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz, is also in the Mexican spirit. My copy is in Spanish, though, so I may not have understood correctly.)
I have, however, taken up another Mexican custom to combat the cold—the siesta. Ah, wondrous naps. They are ever so enjoyable after a hard day at school shouting at the kids (to keep them in line and/or just to be heard).
Sleep is especially nice when there’s not a whole lot of other stuff to do. The charm of the plaza and the sparrows flying around overhead and the horses clopping down the street has pretty much worn off by now. It’s just business as usual now. It’s also starting to get colder here. Two days this week were overcast and chilly—very unusual because so far it’s normally been sunny and warm during the day. Of course it’s not as chilly as in crazy northern U.S. states, but when you don’t have central heat (or space heating for that matter) it’s pretty damned cold through the night. This all means I really can’t be bothered to get out of my apartment much. I don’t feel like going to the stores, especially when I know I won’t be able to find most of what I’m looking for.
This isn’t a complaint about Arandas, though. It’s just that I haven’t gotten into the swing of things here yet. I need to learn to cook some real Mexican dishes, use the ingredients that are here. My first year in Taiwan I was always disappointed with my attempts to make pasta (which was the only thing I ever made at college), because I couldn’t find the right ingredients. When I did find the stuff I wanted, it was really expensive because imported. Nothing left to do but learn how to cook some Chinese food or simple things that don’t require hard-to-find ingredients. Not that I ever learned to make any Chinese food there, really, but somehow I got myself through. In any case, what I need to do here is learn to cook the meats that they cook and make the starchy things they eat here. The first pasta I made here in Arandas was absolutely disgusting.
The other day at a friend’s house I helped make sopes for lunch. They are thick little cakes like saucers that you put stuff on. We had them with refried beans, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and salsa. I was so proud of my sopes. I thought they’d be easy to make but they weren’t that easy; there’s a whole method to get them the right size and roundness and thickness, a specific way of patting them. So of course I was happy when I started to get it right. Now I just have to figure out how the hell to make or get the dough for them….
We joke about my becoming more and more Mexican. This week I was chatting online to a Sonoran friend living in Columbus who is now dating a gringa. Without thinking, I assumed she was a redhead or blonde, because that’s what people here think of when they think “gringa.” I don’t think of myself as a gringa anymore either, but as a chinita. And I take siestas, and I know how to make sopes (sort of), and I eat lunch at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and dinner at about 9 or 10. I’m also going to mass at 8 a.m. Monday with the students for the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and they’re going to bring roses and sing mañanitas to her. I understand that it takes more to be Mexican, but we’re just joking anyway.
Identity is a funny thing, though. While I was living in England for a year, I realized what it meant to be American. It means growing up watching the cartoons and shows and commercials we watched as kids, eating food like Kraft macaroni and cheese and fudgesicles, having studied the capitals of the fifty states, and stuff like that.
But I’m not writing a treatise about identity, nor do I want to.
I’d like to give an update on the whole roommate situation, but I have to say I’m paranoid somehow someone who knows my roommate is going to find my blog and alert her to my dubious behavior—the fact that I never wanted her here in the first place, and that I am still trying to find a way to get her out. How likely is that, though?
Well, there’s also just not a whole lot to report. When she got home to her town last week, she found out that my boss had told her aunt about her bringing muchachos over to the apartment, and her aunt had told her parents, who then scolded her and said she’d have to move back into my boss’ house. My roommate frantically sent me text messages asking whether I had told my boss about her. I lied, of course, and said that the neighbors had noticed and told my landlady and my boss. She then pleaded with me not to tell my boss that she gets home late at night, because if her parents know, then she won’t be able to study in Arandas anymore. I warned her that I wouldn’t be able to lie to my boss if she asks me, because now I have more responsibility for her. She wasn’t happy to hear this but couldn’t do anything about it.
I thought that was the end of things, that she’d move back into my boss’ house after the weekend in her town. When Monday rolled around, though, nothing was really different. She came in during the afternoon while I was napping and woke me up because she was blasting her radio. That evening she came home with another guy friend, and they were chatting until late. I got really irritated because I could hear them talking, and I needed to sleep. Finally at about midnight I told her that I couldn’t sleep and that I’d prefer that she didn’t bring her friends over after 11 at night. She agreed, and they went out to the stairwell to talk, and of course I could still hear them so I knew that he didn’t leave until 1:15. This was not very smart on her part.
The rest of the week I didn’t see her, until last night. We were obviously avoiding each other, but with our different schedules it was nearly impossible to run into each other. She came home very late practically every night. When I’d get up to go to the bathroom at around 1 a.m. or something she still wasn’t ever home. Also not very smart, but better for me so I wouldn’t have to talk to her, being the wimp that I am.
I told my boss about this, and she said she’d talk to my roommate’s aunt, but also that my roommate probably wouldn’t move out till after winter vacation. I don’t really understand, if it’s so shocking and scandalous and incorrect that she’s out late every night and brings guys over the apartment, why they’re not in a hurry to get her back under the supervision of my boss. I warned my boss that I’m nobody’s guardian and that my roommate’s not going to listen to me anyway, so it’s not my fault if she’s out late every night or gets into any kind of trouble. Really, I’m in a hurry to get her out, because it’s increasingly more and more uncomfortable living with her as time goes on. Yuck. Oh well, it’s just one more week, I guess, before she goes home for the holidays.
Too much griping makes me feel awful. I’d better stop before ruining my karma any further.
Unfortunately, I can’t find any ginger root here in Arandas. When I made the soup in Guadalajara I bought tiny pieces of molding ginger at the supermarket nearby and cut off the nasty parts, but I haven’t seen any here. I also used cabbage, which made the soup kind of funny, and fideos, the little noodles they use for tomato-based soups here. It was a totally different thing. Here in Arandas I made a chicken soup, but it was pretty boring, just with some chicken and carrots and onion and fideos. Bland. Guacala.
People in different locales have different habits to deal with ailments. When I was in Taiwan, people thought I was insane to eat oranges and other citrus fruits when I had a cold. This was a habit I had developed at college, to get lots of vitamin C. But Chinese people have this whole system of foods being hot or cold, and when you have a cold or are otherwise weak in any way, you shouldn’t eat cold fruits like oranges or watermelon. Oranges are OK if you steam them and they become hot. I was also supposed to stay away from foods that were more obviously cold in temperature. Couldn’t have a soda with ice or ice cream. I thought they were the crazy ones. Steamed oranges? Hot water all the time?
My English friend Paul, who was studying Chinese medicine in Taiwan, pointed out the logic for me, however. If you’re body is weak and it has to expend a lot of energy warming up the things you put into your body, of course it’s not very good for you. This completed my conversion. I couldn’t really help it, anyway. Living for so long in a place, things just seep in as if through osmosis. And there’s a reason why they say, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” I think it’s because it’s such a hassle to do things differently. People give you a hard time, and it’s just easier to do it their way. Also, it becomes a matter of respect. If you don’t follow their advice, it’s like you don’t believe them, and that’s pretty rude.
So now I hesitate to drink cold water when I have a cold. But I haven’t got one of those lovely little Asian electric water things that keep water hot, and I’m so lazy to boil my water all the time. Well, all the locals drink their water at room temperature, and I did it all those years before I lived in Taiwan, so it can’t be too bad.
Here everyone told me to take some Tabcin, which appears to be like Nyquil and Dayquil. I took these for a day, even though I hate to take medicine for colds. Since so many people told me to take it, and because they were so concerned that I wasn’t taking anything for the cold, I tried it. But then I was checking on Yoga Journal online for poses that would be good for colds, and there were all these articles saying you should stay away from medication that suppresses cold symptoms, because they’re just the natural defenses of the body, and suppressing these may actually prolong or complicate the illness. Secretly I said goodbye to the Tabcin, while reassuring others that I was indeed still taking them. (This minor type of deception, I understand from my copy of The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz, is also in the Mexican spirit. My copy is in Spanish, though, so I may not have understood correctly.)
I have, however, taken up another Mexican custom to combat the cold—the siesta. Ah, wondrous naps. They are ever so enjoyable after a hard day at school shouting at the kids (to keep them in line and/or just to be heard).
Sleep is especially nice when there’s not a whole lot of other stuff to do. The charm of the plaza and the sparrows flying around overhead and the horses clopping down the street has pretty much worn off by now. It’s just business as usual now. It’s also starting to get colder here. Two days this week were overcast and chilly—very unusual because so far it’s normally been sunny and warm during the day. Of course it’s not as chilly as in crazy northern U.S. states, but when you don’t have central heat (or space heating for that matter) it’s pretty damned cold through the night. This all means I really can’t be bothered to get out of my apartment much. I don’t feel like going to the stores, especially when I know I won’t be able to find most of what I’m looking for.
This isn’t a complaint about Arandas, though. It’s just that I haven’t gotten into the swing of things here yet. I need to learn to cook some real Mexican dishes, use the ingredients that are here. My first year in Taiwan I was always disappointed with my attempts to make pasta (which was the only thing I ever made at college), because I couldn’t find the right ingredients. When I did find the stuff I wanted, it was really expensive because imported. Nothing left to do but learn how to cook some Chinese food or simple things that don’t require hard-to-find ingredients. Not that I ever learned to make any Chinese food there, really, but somehow I got myself through. In any case, what I need to do here is learn to cook the meats that they cook and make the starchy things they eat here. The first pasta I made here in Arandas was absolutely disgusting.
The other day at a friend’s house I helped make sopes for lunch. They are thick little cakes like saucers that you put stuff on. We had them with refried beans, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and salsa. I was so proud of my sopes. I thought they’d be easy to make but they weren’t that easy; there’s a whole method to get them the right size and roundness and thickness, a specific way of patting them. So of course I was happy when I started to get it right. Now I just have to figure out how the hell to make or get the dough for them….
We joke about my becoming more and more Mexican. This week I was chatting online to a Sonoran friend living in Columbus who is now dating a gringa. Without thinking, I assumed she was a redhead or blonde, because that’s what people here think of when they think “gringa.” I don’t think of myself as a gringa anymore either, but as a chinita. And I take siestas, and I know how to make sopes (sort of), and I eat lunch at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and dinner at about 9 or 10. I’m also going to mass at 8 a.m. Monday with the students for the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and they’re going to bring roses and sing mañanitas to her. I understand that it takes more to be Mexican, but we’re just joking anyway.
Identity is a funny thing, though. While I was living in England for a year, I realized what it meant to be American. It means growing up watching the cartoons and shows and commercials we watched as kids, eating food like Kraft macaroni and cheese and fudgesicles, having studied the capitals of the fifty states, and stuff like that.
But I’m not writing a treatise about identity, nor do I want to.
I’d like to give an update on the whole roommate situation, but I have to say I’m paranoid somehow someone who knows my roommate is going to find my blog and alert her to my dubious behavior—the fact that I never wanted her here in the first place, and that I am still trying to find a way to get her out. How likely is that, though?
Well, there’s also just not a whole lot to report. When she got home to her town last week, she found out that my boss had told her aunt about her bringing muchachos over to the apartment, and her aunt had told her parents, who then scolded her and said she’d have to move back into my boss’ house. My roommate frantically sent me text messages asking whether I had told my boss about her. I lied, of course, and said that the neighbors had noticed and told my landlady and my boss. She then pleaded with me not to tell my boss that she gets home late at night, because if her parents know, then she won’t be able to study in Arandas anymore. I warned her that I wouldn’t be able to lie to my boss if she asks me, because now I have more responsibility for her. She wasn’t happy to hear this but couldn’t do anything about it.
I thought that was the end of things, that she’d move back into my boss’ house after the weekend in her town. When Monday rolled around, though, nothing was really different. She came in during the afternoon while I was napping and woke me up because she was blasting her radio. That evening she came home with another guy friend, and they were chatting until late. I got really irritated because I could hear them talking, and I needed to sleep. Finally at about midnight I told her that I couldn’t sleep and that I’d prefer that she didn’t bring her friends over after 11 at night. She agreed, and they went out to the stairwell to talk, and of course I could still hear them so I knew that he didn’t leave until 1:15. This was not very smart on her part.
The rest of the week I didn’t see her, until last night. We were obviously avoiding each other, but with our different schedules it was nearly impossible to run into each other. She came home very late practically every night. When I’d get up to go to the bathroom at around 1 a.m. or something she still wasn’t ever home. Also not very smart, but better for me so I wouldn’t have to talk to her, being the wimp that I am.
I told my boss about this, and she said she’d talk to my roommate’s aunt, but also that my roommate probably wouldn’t move out till after winter vacation. I don’t really understand, if it’s so shocking and scandalous and incorrect that she’s out late every night and brings guys over the apartment, why they’re not in a hurry to get her back under the supervision of my boss. I warned my boss that I’m nobody’s guardian and that my roommate’s not going to listen to me anyway, so it’s not my fault if she’s out late every night or gets into any kind of trouble. Really, I’m in a hurry to get her out, because it’s increasingly more and more uncomfortable living with her as time goes on. Yuck. Oh well, it’s just one more week, I guess, before she goes home for the holidays.
Too much griping makes me feel awful. I’d better stop before ruining my karma any further.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Christmas carols and roommate troubles
It’s Thursday afternoon, and I have just finished eating lunch and dessert—spaghetti and Principe cookies with hot chocolate. (Marissa, I am addicted to those cookies now, too.)
I was working on my lesson plans for tomorrow, but I think I am done now. I always prepare too much stuff, thinking the students will be able to do a lot more than they really end up doing. It’s better to be over-prepared than under-prepared, but it also shows that I have too high expectations for them, as always…. This week is going better, though. For the next few days we are just going to review some things I have taught so far in preparation for their English exams next week (which I just found out I have to write and administer). That means we are playing games to practice, and everyone always enjoys that (unless their team loses, of course). Luckily, I am quite practiced in playing various English games with children; teaching in Taiwan was fabulous for that.
Today was the first Thursday of the month—the day everyone in the school goes to mass together. We pile up into vans and cars and go to a church that’s under construction. The principal wanted me to sing “Silent Night” today at the end of the service, but I was totally unprepared for this request—what if I don’t really know the words and get stuck halfway? So I said no, that I don’t know all the lyrics. It’s not really true—I know the words to the first verse, but that’s typical of me to be under-confident in myself. Probably singing all by myself into a microphone in front of the entire school and some parents and the priest would’ve made me forget them. I have terrible stage-fright. At my senior recital at college I completely forgot how to play the easiest piece I had, and I sat there at the piano playing the first few measures and then totally blanking. Finally I just played the next song, because I couldn’t remember that one.
I do love to sing the songs with the kids, though. If the kids knew the song already, and if I’d had more warning, I’d have sung it in church today, but I haven’t taught the song yet. I actually really like to sing, even though I don’t sing all that well. (Many of you may know this already.) I am teaching the kids to sing “Jingle Bell Rock” right now. I wanted to get them to do some swing dancing to it, but it might be too much to ask at such a late stage. They are having their posada on Dec. 15 and will be performing various songs then. I am very ambitious and planning to teach them “White Christmas” and “Silent Night” as well. I wish we could do “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (with interjections such as “like a light bulb!”), “Over the River and Through the Woods,” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” too, but that is just insane.
I can’t believe this is me writing so enthusiastically about Christmas songs. I thought I hated Christmas songs. I guess it’s because back home, once Thanksgiving is over, all you hear on the radio and in stores are Christmas songs, and by the time it’s Christmas I just want to scream if I have to hear “Jingle Bell Rock” one more time. But here in Arandas, I am the only one subjecting people to “Jingle Bell Rock” (at least in English) or “Come All Ye Faithful,” so it’s totally acceptable!
Christmas carols also remind me of the time I went caroling with friends from middle school, and we carried lit candles, and my hair caught on fire while we were singing a song to some old neighbors. They also remind me of high school orchestra gigs playing songs to some old men in a trailer or humiliating ourselves in the center of Park Mall.
But anyway, the kids love singing, and it helps their English. I am having all kinds of crazy ideas for songs to teach them once Christmas is over. For the brief group exercises, I want to teach the Hokey-Pokey, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” “The Wheels on the Bus,” and “London Bridge is Falling Down.” They can also learn songs with finger play, like “The Itsy-bitsy Spider,” “Little Cabin in the Woods,” and “Where is Thumbkin.” One of my students brought in a CD of mostly Beatles songs and I am supposing she wants to learn some of them in class. I was listening to them and imagining them performing “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da”—isn’t that strange? All of a sudden these songs take on a whole new meaning if you to teach them to kids. A song I never really liked before turns into something extremely fun.
I find myself dreaming of teaching, or lying in bed after waking up and coming up with some idea for teaching. Today after my nap I was huddled in my blankets (because it’s damned cold in my apartment—northern exposure and absolutely no direct sunlight), and I found myself obsessing about something or other I have to do tomorrow at school. I think after I finish writing this, I’ll draw some pictures for the song posters I have to make, or else I’ll worry so much about them that I won’t be able to sleep well.
Lucky for me this week, I haven’t had to deal with my roommate bringing her friends over in the evenings while I’m trying to work or sleep. Last week I told her that I sometimes need to go to bed at 11, so I’d prefer to have it quiet around here. She had a friend over again one night this week, and they ended up whispering in the living room and then chatting in the stairwell outside the apartment for a long time. I feel kind of bad about it, but the situation is not ideal for either of us….
Some of you may not know that I even had a roommate. The story is that I was too much of a wimp to say no to my boss when she asked if I’d mind if the niece of her associate moved in with me. She was afraid I’d be too lonely living here all by myself. I didn’t feel I could say no because my boss pays for my apartment, and it’s got two bedrooms, and obviously I don’t use one of the bedrooms. I had this feeling like I should forget being nice or feeling bad—it’s in my contract that I get paid housing, so I shouldn’t feel like they’re doing me any huge favors or anything—but I just could not do it. (The term to use in Chinese is precisely buhao yisi, and I’m sorry I can’t translate this, but it’s like I wouldn’t be giving my boss “face.”) I thought, maybe it’ll be good to have someone else here, and maybe she’ll be able to contribute to furnishing the apartment, and maybe I’ll also meet more people through her. It didn’t seem to weigh too heavily that I have had a lot of trouble living with other people in the past, because I’m not an easy person to live with. (As Luis said, knowing how much people can annoy me, I would be better off without a roommate.) I just thought I should be more positive and everything would turn out fine.
When I finally met her and she came to look at the apartment a few weeks ago, I was having a really bad day at school, and she and her friend really got on my nerves. They were running about the apartment and, without even asking if they could enter my bedroom, walked right in and stood out on the balcony and raved about it. It’s not like I wouldn’t have let them into my bedroom, but I found it annoying that they didn’t even think to ask. They also didn’t try to slow down their speech or adjust their language in any way when they realized I couldn’t understand them very well. It did not bode well for me, but I found it even more difficult to say no now that she had seen the apartment and said she liked it a lot and wanted to move in the next day. What do you say? “No, I’ve changed my mind, sorry.” I just couldn’t do it.
I made my bed and now I have to lie in it.
The first week I really thought everything would be fine. She took me to her friends’ apartment nearby, and we hung out. I had lunch with them there a couple times, and we ate out for dinner a couple times. Her friends were a bit crazy, but I had fun talking with them. Her best friend, the girl who came with my roommate the first day, turned out to be very cool about talking with me, and I still enjoy chatting with her when I see her. They are, however, all around 21 years old, students at the teacher-training school, and they seem less mature than my now 20-year-old friend Rocio. This is explained by the fact that this is the first time they’ve lived away from their families, and they are going kind of wild. They play their music loudly at all hours of the night, sing along loudly and shout obscenities without caring whether their door is open or whether they might be disturbing their neighbors. This inconsideration seems to be a theme with them. The lot of them come over to my apartment shouting in the stairwell, and they leave the door open while talking loudly, even if it’s 11 or 12. Never mind that my neighbors all have kids or babies and go to bed early. It really grated on me especially if I was trying to work. They’d come over and chat with me and I’d get nervous about finishing my work and getting enough sleep. So finally I had the talk with my roommate.
I was not honest from the outset, though, and the situation is very strange. She lives here as if subject to my whims, because it’s technically my apartment and she doesn’t pay rent. I have acquired all the furniture that did not come with the apartment, and I bought all the cleaning supplies and dishes, and she has not contributed anything except to her own bedroom, so it feels even less like we really share the apartment. I also admit to lording over the living room. I bought the desk so I use it, and I also do other work at the dining table (a horrendous plastic thing that looks like it came from a cervezeria). Of course, it’s not like she does any work anyway. But she and her friends even had the nerve to make jokes about how rich I am because I bought a fridge and living room furniture and have a laptop. “You’re really rich, aren’t you?” they asked. Um, no, really, I’m not, I protest, but I doubt they believe me. Of course I make more money than they or most of the teachers at my school do, and she’s living with me because she can’t afford to pay rent anywhere, so yeah, I guess I am rich.
The truth is, though, that I have been less than welcoming to her, and this makes living together feel even stranger. But I often feel like she is just using me. For the past three years she has been living with my boss, where she had a 10 p.m. curfew and never got to hang out with her friends at night. Now she gets to come home whenever she wants, bring home whomever she wants, and she’ll put up with me lording over the apartment, because the fact is I’m doing her a huge favor. However, I should have told the truth from the start—that I prefer to live on my own, or with someone I know I get along with, like Julia O., who’ll be coming to Mexico in January for a few months, and who might end up staying with me sometimes.
At the suggestion of friends from my school who know this girl from her time as a helper in the kindergarten class there, I have now told on my roommate. I told my boss Monday while we were driving back from the book fair in Guadalajara, that my roommate receives gentlemen visitors, who sometimes stay very late. Only one of these guys is suspect, of course, but the news did not go over well with my boss, who feels responsible for her, especially because—news to me—my roommate’s father doesn’t even know that she is living with me instead of my boss (presumably because he’d never allow it, for obvious reasons). My boss was shocked. This is a very, very conservative town. Young people live with their families till they marry, much as they do in Taiwan. My roommate is supposed by all her family to be a chaste and well-behaved young woman. I am not saying that she is not, but right now I do not want to be responsible for her. Now that I know my boss feels she would be blamed should anything socially unacceptable happen to my roommate (unplanned pregnancy, for instance), I feel less inclined to take any responsibility for her (and I never planned on taking any responsibility for her whatsoever anyway). Being extremely conspicuous as the only Chinese-American English teacher in town—and as Julia O. pointed out, the representative of three foreign nations (the U.S., China, and Japan—because everyone here thinks I’m Japanese)—I don’t want to develop a bad reputation in town or in my building, disturbing my neighbors with noise and various late-night gentlemen callers. My boss said she would recommend to her associate that my roommate move back in with my boss.
Now I am waiting for the fallout. The only signs so far that anyone in my roommate’s family knows the shocking news are that my roommate and I have been avoiding each other, and that she sends me text messages to let me know whether she’ll be home late, which is always. I am, of course, prepared to receive dirty looks and cold shoulders from her and her friends. I feel pretty bad because I allowed her to do whatever the hell she wanted granted it didn’t disturb my sleep, even assured her at the beginning, when she asked me, that I wouldn’t tell my boss anything that would get her in trouble, and now I’ve gone and told on her. But I’m not going to lie to my boss or the person who pays me (my roommate’s aunt) if they ask me if my roommate is “behaving,” and I already hid a lot from them already. My boss is even upset with me a little that I didn’t tell her about this earlier and allowed it to go on for a while. My excuse is that I didn’t realize how serious it was, how implicated both my roommate and I would be if we often had male visitors, how culpable I would be if anything happened to my roommate. I said that it’s none of my business what she does, that she’s the only one responsible for what she does.
Now I feel annoyed that in fact, yes, it’s my business, and yes, I’m responsible. Actually, I rather resent having had this person foisted upon me and finding out that I am something of a chaperone or babysitter. How was I supposed to know that I should report any untoward behavior to my boss? I’m not used to living in such a small, conservative society.
But yeah, it was my fault for saying yes to something I didn’t even want in the first place.
I did a tarot card reading on this a while ago, and it was pretty accurate. (I know some of you groan to hear this.) It said I would face an ethical dilemma. I had no idea how difficult a problem it would become, and just how much ethics would be involved. There’s the loyalty issue—to whom am I loyal, my boss or my roommate? I have betrayed both of them in some way, because they both trusted me to act in a particular way. And there’s the issue of being true to myself, as well. Shouldn’t I have listened to my misgivings and taken a stand for myself from the beginning? Then none of this extremely messy stuff would have happened; I wouldn’t have upset both my roommate and my boss. That’s the lesson I learned the hard way.
Maybe it’s better in the future if I just live on my own….
I was working on my lesson plans for tomorrow, but I think I am done now. I always prepare too much stuff, thinking the students will be able to do a lot more than they really end up doing. It’s better to be over-prepared than under-prepared, but it also shows that I have too high expectations for them, as always…. This week is going better, though. For the next few days we are just going to review some things I have taught so far in preparation for their English exams next week (which I just found out I have to write and administer). That means we are playing games to practice, and everyone always enjoys that (unless their team loses, of course). Luckily, I am quite practiced in playing various English games with children; teaching in Taiwan was fabulous for that.
Today was the first Thursday of the month—the day everyone in the school goes to mass together. We pile up into vans and cars and go to a church that’s under construction. The principal wanted me to sing “Silent Night” today at the end of the service, but I was totally unprepared for this request—what if I don’t really know the words and get stuck halfway? So I said no, that I don’t know all the lyrics. It’s not really true—I know the words to the first verse, but that’s typical of me to be under-confident in myself. Probably singing all by myself into a microphone in front of the entire school and some parents and the priest would’ve made me forget them. I have terrible stage-fright. At my senior recital at college I completely forgot how to play the easiest piece I had, and I sat there at the piano playing the first few measures and then totally blanking. Finally I just played the next song, because I couldn’t remember that one.
I do love to sing the songs with the kids, though. If the kids knew the song already, and if I’d had more warning, I’d have sung it in church today, but I haven’t taught the song yet. I actually really like to sing, even though I don’t sing all that well. (Many of you may know this already.) I am teaching the kids to sing “Jingle Bell Rock” right now. I wanted to get them to do some swing dancing to it, but it might be too much to ask at such a late stage. They are having their posada on Dec. 15 and will be performing various songs then. I am very ambitious and planning to teach them “White Christmas” and “Silent Night” as well. I wish we could do “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (with interjections such as “like a light bulb!”), “Over the River and Through the Woods,” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” too, but that is just insane.
I can’t believe this is me writing so enthusiastically about Christmas songs. I thought I hated Christmas songs. I guess it’s because back home, once Thanksgiving is over, all you hear on the radio and in stores are Christmas songs, and by the time it’s Christmas I just want to scream if I have to hear “Jingle Bell Rock” one more time. But here in Arandas, I am the only one subjecting people to “Jingle Bell Rock” (at least in English) or “Come All Ye Faithful,” so it’s totally acceptable!
Christmas carols also remind me of the time I went caroling with friends from middle school, and we carried lit candles, and my hair caught on fire while we were singing a song to some old neighbors. They also remind me of high school orchestra gigs playing songs to some old men in a trailer or humiliating ourselves in the center of Park Mall.
But anyway, the kids love singing, and it helps their English. I am having all kinds of crazy ideas for songs to teach them once Christmas is over. For the brief group exercises, I want to teach the Hokey-Pokey, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” “The Wheels on the Bus,” and “London Bridge is Falling Down.” They can also learn songs with finger play, like “The Itsy-bitsy Spider,” “Little Cabin in the Woods,” and “Where is Thumbkin.” One of my students brought in a CD of mostly Beatles songs and I am supposing she wants to learn some of them in class. I was listening to them and imagining them performing “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da”—isn’t that strange? All of a sudden these songs take on a whole new meaning if you to teach them to kids. A song I never really liked before turns into something extremely fun.
I find myself dreaming of teaching, or lying in bed after waking up and coming up with some idea for teaching. Today after my nap I was huddled in my blankets (because it’s damned cold in my apartment—northern exposure and absolutely no direct sunlight), and I found myself obsessing about something or other I have to do tomorrow at school. I think after I finish writing this, I’ll draw some pictures for the song posters I have to make, or else I’ll worry so much about them that I won’t be able to sleep well.
Lucky for me this week, I haven’t had to deal with my roommate bringing her friends over in the evenings while I’m trying to work or sleep. Last week I told her that I sometimes need to go to bed at 11, so I’d prefer to have it quiet around here. She had a friend over again one night this week, and they ended up whispering in the living room and then chatting in the stairwell outside the apartment for a long time. I feel kind of bad about it, but the situation is not ideal for either of us….
Some of you may not know that I even had a roommate. The story is that I was too much of a wimp to say no to my boss when she asked if I’d mind if the niece of her associate moved in with me. She was afraid I’d be too lonely living here all by myself. I didn’t feel I could say no because my boss pays for my apartment, and it’s got two bedrooms, and obviously I don’t use one of the bedrooms. I had this feeling like I should forget being nice or feeling bad—it’s in my contract that I get paid housing, so I shouldn’t feel like they’re doing me any huge favors or anything—but I just could not do it. (The term to use in Chinese is precisely buhao yisi, and I’m sorry I can’t translate this, but it’s like I wouldn’t be giving my boss “face.”) I thought, maybe it’ll be good to have someone else here, and maybe she’ll be able to contribute to furnishing the apartment, and maybe I’ll also meet more people through her. It didn’t seem to weigh too heavily that I have had a lot of trouble living with other people in the past, because I’m not an easy person to live with. (As Luis said, knowing how much people can annoy me, I would be better off without a roommate.) I just thought I should be more positive and everything would turn out fine.
When I finally met her and she came to look at the apartment a few weeks ago, I was having a really bad day at school, and she and her friend really got on my nerves. They were running about the apartment and, without even asking if they could enter my bedroom, walked right in and stood out on the balcony and raved about it. It’s not like I wouldn’t have let them into my bedroom, but I found it annoying that they didn’t even think to ask. They also didn’t try to slow down their speech or adjust their language in any way when they realized I couldn’t understand them very well. It did not bode well for me, but I found it even more difficult to say no now that she had seen the apartment and said she liked it a lot and wanted to move in the next day. What do you say? “No, I’ve changed my mind, sorry.” I just couldn’t do it.
I made my bed and now I have to lie in it.
The first week I really thought everything would be fine. She took me to her friends’ apartment nearby, and we hung out. I had lunch with them there a couple times, and we ate out for dinner a couple times. Her friends were a bit crazy, but I had fun talking with them. Her best friend, the girl who came with my roommate the first day, turned out to be very cool about talking with me, and I still enjoy chatting with her when I see her. They are, however, all around 21 years old, students at the teacher-training school, and they seem less mature than my now 20-year-old friend Rocio. This is explained by the fact that this is the first time they’ve lived away from their families, and they are going kind of wild. They play their music loudly at all hours of the night, sing along loudly and shout obscenities without caring whether their door is open or whether they might be disturbing their neighbors. This inconsideration seems to be a theme with them. The lot of them come over to my apartment shouting in the stairwell, and they leave the door open while talking loudly, even if it’s 11 or 12. Never mind that my neighbors all have kids or babies and go to bed early. It really grated on me especially if I was trying to work. They’d come over and chat with me and I’d get nervous about finishing my work and getting enough sleep. So finally I had the talk with my roommate.
I was not honest from the outset, though, and the situation is very strange. She lives here as if subject to my whims, because it’s technically my apartment and she doesn’t pay rent. I have acquired all the furniture that did not come with the apartment, and I bought all the cleaning supplies and dishes, and she has not contributed anything except to her own bedroom, so it feels even less like we really share the apartment. I also admit to lording over the living room. I bought the desk so I use it, and I also do other work at the dining table (a horrendous plastic thing that looks like it came from a cervezeria). Of course, it’s not like she does any work anyway. But she and her friends even had the nerve to make jokes about how rich I am because I bought a fridge and living room furniture and have a laptop. “You’re really rich, aren’t you?” they asked. Um, no, really, I’m not, I protest, but I doubt they believe me. Of course I make more money than they or most of the teachers at my school do, and she’s living with me because she can’t afford to pay rent anywhere, so yeah, I guess I am rich.
The truth is, though, that I have been less than welcoming to her, and this makes living together feel even stranger. But I often feel like she is just using me. For the past three years she has been living with my boss, where she had a 10 p.m. curfew and never got to hang out with her friends at night. Now she gets to come home whenever she wants, bring home whomever she wants, and she’ll put up with me lording over the apartment, because the fact is I’m doing her a huge favor. However, I should have told the truth from the start—that I prefer to live on my own, or with someone I know I get along with, like Julia O., who’ll be coming to Mexico in January for a few months, and who might end up staying with me sometimes.
At the suggestion of friends from my school who know this girl from her time as a helper in the kindergarten class there, I have now told on my roommate. I told my boss Monday while we were driving back from the book fair in Guadalajara, that my roommate receives gentlemen visitors, who sometimes stay very late. Only one of these guys is suspect, of course, but the news did not go over well with my boss, who feels responsible for her, especially because—news to me—my roommate’s father doesn’t even know that she is living with me instead of my boss (presumably because he’d never allow it, for obvious reasons). My boss was shocked. This is a very, very conservative town. Young people live with their families till they marry, much as they do in Taiwan. My roommate is supposed by all her family to be a chaste and well-behaved young woman. I am not saying that she is not, but right now I do not want to be responsible for her. Now that I know my boss feels she would be blamed should anything socially unacceptable happen to my roommate (unplanned pregnancy, for instance), I feel less inclined to take any responsibility for her (and I never planned on taking any responsibility for her whatsoever anyway). Being extremely conspicuous as the only Chinese-American English teacher in town—and as Julia O. pointed out, the representative of three foreign nations (the U.S., China, and Japan—because everyone here thinks I’m Japanese)—I don’t want to develop a bad reputation in town or in my building, disturbing my neighbors with noise and various late-night gentlemen callers. My boss said she would recommend to her associate that my roommate move back in with my boss.
Now I am waiting for the fallout. The only signs so far that anyone in my roommate’s family knows the shocking news are that my roommate and I have been avoiding each other, and that she sends me text messages to let me know whether she’ll be home late, which is always. I am, of course, prepared to receive dirty looks and cold shoulders from her and her friends. I feel pretty bad because I allowed her to do whatever the hell she wanted granted it didn’t disturb my sleep, even assured her at the beginning, when she asked me, that I wouldn’t tell my boss anything that would get her in trouble, and now I’ve gone and told on her. But I’m not going to lie to my boss or the person who pays me (my roommate’s aunt) if they ask me if my roommate is “behaving,” and I already hid a lot from them already. My boss is even upset with me a little that I didn’t tell her about this earlier and allowed it to go on for a while. My excuse is that I didn’t realize how serious it was, how implicated both my roommate and I would be if we often had male visitors, how culpable I would be if anything happened to my roommate. I said that it’s none of my business what she does, that she’s the only one responsible for what she does.
Now I feel annoyed that in fact, yes, it’s my business, and yes, I’m responsible. Actually, I rather resent having had this person foisted upon me and finding out that I am something of a chaperone or babysitter. How was I supposed to know that I should report any untoward behavior to my boss? I’m not used to living in such a small, conservative society.
But yeah, it was my fault for saying yes to something I didn’t even want in the first place.
I did a tarot card reading on this a while ago, and it was pretty accurate. (I know some of you groan to hear this.) It said I would face an ethical dilemma. I had no idea how difficult a problem it would become, and just how much ethics would be involved. There’s the loyalty issue—to whom am I loyal, my boss or my roommate? I have betrayed both of them in some way, because they both trusted me to act in a particular way. And there’s the issue of being true to myself, as well. Shouldn’t I have listened to my misgivings and taken a stand for myself from the beginning? Then none of this extremely messy stuff would have happened; I wouldn’t have upset both my roommate and my boss. That’s the lesson I learned the hard way.
Maybe it’s better in the future if I just live on my own….
