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.
