Monday, February 27, 2006
Broke, Nerdy, Rejected, but Happy
This week—Mexico’s flag day, ugly school suits, and an action-packed weekend in Guadalajara and at Lake Chapala.
Día de la bandera:
The first day the primary school teachers are required to wear their new suits. Polyester maroon jacket and trouser affair with a sheer floral blouse. Pant legs almost tapered; high waist with pleats. Zipper kept falling down during the ceremony in el parque. Jacket with very large shoulder pads, sewed under the lining to prevent easy removal.
Thursday after evening classes, the night before Día de la bandera, I ran to a seamstress for alterations. The pants, hideous as they already were, were also too large. Had them hemmed and the baggy ’80s-style hips taken in.
The ceremony lasted an hour late Friday morning, with all the educational institutions represented by their flag crews. It was unbearably hot for everyone—the students in their uniforms and jackets, the primary school teachers in their awful maroon suits. Some of the students in the band nearby nearly collapsed from the sun and heat. I did learn a lot about the flags previously used in Mexico, because one school made a presentation and paraded all the flags.
Normally I don’t salute the Mexican flag during our school flag ceremony every Monday morning, because obviously I’m not Mexican, but this day it seemed inappropriate not to. So I recited along the flag creed what I could understand, and sang along to the national anthem some of the words at the end of each line that I knew, like “tierra” and “cañon.” There’s also the “ooo” near the end that I can do, too.
Perhaps it’s strange that I do these things, salute the Mexican flag, cross myself in church, but I see it as being polite and respectful.
Lago de Chapala:
Julia’s second cousins once-removed (or something like that) are in the lake town of Ajijic for vacation, staying at a friend’s beautiful house. We were invited for the weekend.
Ajijic is quite interesting—a small, cobble-stoned town populated heavily by American retirees. Getting there was rather more of an ordeal than we’d expected, what with our bus from the new bus station to the old bus station in Guadalajara breaking down, then missing our stop at Ajijic since we didn’t realize there wasn’t a bus station in the town. For dinner we were invited to the home of Julia’s cousins’ friends, Jack and Concha. At first, I felt awkward and found the couple strange—Jack was thirty years Concha’s senior, an American who bossed his younger Mexican wife around quite a bit. Later we realized Jack had a very dry sense of humor and was actually pretty hilarious. He entertained us with incredible stories about bizarre people in Ajijic. He has been living there for about thirty years, and he and his wife have known practically everyone who has ever lived in the town.
We learned about the American lesbian bikers, Donna and Lois. After their breakup, Donna went around with many wealthy women in Ajijic, often obtaining their money and property after their deaths. Some of these wealthy women were married, which proved to be a problem for Donna, when one night the husband of her then lover slit her throat.
The next day, Julia’s cousins, Corbett and Peggy, took us around the town and surrounding towns for a look. The lake is quite nice, but of course it must have been much nicer before it became polluted and then taken over by water hyacinths. Corbett and Peggy were lovely. I like that they travel a lot and socialize and spend all day drinking beers and talking to people.
We wanted to stay to attend carnival celebrations in the town of Chapala, which looked full of live bands and banda dancing and charreadas, but we had a party to attend in Guadalajara that evening.
Saturday out on the town:
Gizelle, a former ITTO classmate, had a party at her house for ITTO-related people. It was nice to see many of my former classmates again, but I think it might have been rather boring for Julia. When the karaoke started, we decided to leave. Though Julia and I have been known to enjoy karaoke very much (from our many adventures in Taipei), we are not really the type to enjoy others singing to the Beatles and Queen, so we left to go salsa dancing at a club Julia found.
Once there, we waited impatiently for this weird dance show to end so that the band could start playing and we could dance. We met two other women, who had been in line in front of us, and talked with them while we waited for the show to end. Maria Theresa is from Guadalajara but lives in San Diego and was on vacation. Her friend, also named Maria, wanted to practice English with us. Realizing that there weren’t many men in the crowd, and even fewer who knew how to dance salsa, the four of us women went out on the dance floor to dance ourselves. The band was pretty good, and it was fun, but there is only so much salsa-alone dancing we could do, so we decided to meet Julia’s Mexican homestay roommates at a bar across the street.
We didn’t make it to the bar because Ricardo and Carlos and their friends were already in their car ready to leave for a club called “Nuts.” They said they had passes, and that we should meet them there in twenty minutes. Maria had a car, so we went to find the club. It was difficult to find, with crazy construction on a main road putting us on detours. When we finally got there, Julia’s roommates still hadn’t arrived. We waited in the stupid crowd gathered by the entry to get in.
Some clubs in Guadalajara do this stupid selection process at the door, making people wait outside for a while, perhaps to make the place look more popular and crowded. One club I’d been to before in Guadalajara let cute girls in first, especially if the female-male ratio of their group was high. At that club, we had waited quite a while to get in, since our group consisted of mainly nerdy American guys, but we had gotten in eventually, with the help of the most pretty women in our group. This time, however, we stood there waiting for 40 minutes to an hour—we were the only ones the bouncers didn’t let in. It was very insulting. We ended up leaving, Maria Theresa telling them some very impolite things in Spanish, because we’d waited more than long enough and because Julia’s roommates were still lost and hadn’t arrived.
Julia and I have discussed at length the possible reasons for our not being let in, still with very little understanding of what we could possibly have done wrong or how we could have been wrong. Too old? The clientele at the place were of course all young. Too ugly? One only has to watch my favorite Mexican telenovela, “La fea más bella,” to see the consequences of being nerdy and unattractive—and though I don’t believe myself to be unattractive, I do understand that I am extremely nerdy-looking here, especially as I was the only person around (besides the stupid bouncer) wearing glasses. I do not mean to imply, of course, that Julia or the Marias were nerdy and unattractive, because they definitely were not, but as we all know, one bad apple can ruin a whole bushel….
Being too old and too nerdy (I won’t use the word ugly) may have contributed to our not being let in, but more likely they just didn’t like our attitude. Julia and I kept cracking jokes and laughing at the whole process, which I believe they took as a direct insult (and it was). All four of us refused to beg like some of the younger blond girls were doing (“Oh, let us in, por favor!”). The Marias kept talking to the bouncer and his boss and then complaining loudly about the power trip they were on. Julia and I continued to laugh and wouldn’t even deign to ask for their permission to enter.
And perhaps this attitude tied in with the fact that Julia and I were gringas made us even more unbearable—arrogant Americans who laughed derisively and simply expected to be let in without even asking.
On top of all this, I was the only Asian person around. Perhaps this had nothing to do with our not being let in, but it occurs to me that nerdy Chinese girls aren’t exactly staples in exclusive clubs here.
It sounds like we were upset by this rejection, but Julia and I were rather amused by the whole thing. The Marias were incensed, however, and I feel bad because we were the ones at fault.
We went out for tacos al pastor. They were incredibly delicious. Then Julia and I took a cab to her homestay and went to bed. It was about 4:30 by that time.
In the morning, we discovered that Julia’s roommates had arrived at Nuts right after we’d left, and that they had gotten in after five minutes, because one of their friends was Miss Vallarta and knew one of the bouncers.
Rebaño Sagrado:
Sunday, we sleep in as well as we can. Poor Julia feels stomach-sick, perhaps a culmination of something brewing all week. We go to the center of town to eat breakfast (though it’s around 2:30 by the time we get to the restaurant) at El Fenix, the outdoor place by the church Expiatorio. We stop by Vilasanta to check the monthly rates, because Julia is thinking about moving out of her lame homestay. The construction on the new second-floor rooms is almost done, and they look great. We spend a good deal of time chatting at El Fenix, until it’s time to go to a bar for the Chivas-America game.
This game is known as the clasico, I think because the America club (one of Mexico City’s teams?) is a big rival of Guadalajara’s official club (las Chivas). We went to a cool bar downtown called the Monastery or something like that, where we thoroughly enjoyed watching the Chivas beat America 1-0. Arriba las Chivas!
Maybe we are posers, as gringas cheering for las Chivas, but I don’t think we really care all that much.
Arandas:
Now I’m back home, happy to see the neon green crosses on the templo, happy to be in Arandas, happy to be in my own place again. I hear it’s rainy in Guadalajara. It’s windy and chilly here, like a storm is coming. Maybe tomorrow we will continue to have exciting and strange weather.
Día de la bandera:
The first day the primary school teachers are required to wear their new suits. Polyester maroon jacket and trouser affair with a sheer floral blouse. Pant legs almost tapered; high waist with pleats. Zipper kept falling down during the ceremony in el parque. Jacket with very large shoulder pads, sewed under the lining to prevent easy removal.
Thursday after evening classes, the night before Día de la bandera, I ran to a seamstress for alterations. The pants, hideous as they already were, were also too large. Had them hemmed and the baggy ’80s-style hips taken in.
The ceremony lasted an hour late Friday morning, with all the educational institutions represented by their flag crews. It was unbearably hot for everyone—the students in their uniforms and jackets, the primary school teachers in their awful maroon suits. Some of the students in the band nearby nearly collapsed from the sun and heat. I did learn a lot about the flags previously used in Mexico, because one school made a presentation and paraded all the flags.
Normally I don’t salute the Mexican flag during our school flag ceremony every Monday morning, because obviously I’m not Mexican, but this day it seemed inappropriate not to. So I recited along the flag creed what I could understand, and sang along to the national anthem some of the words at the end of each line that I knew, like “tierra” and “cañon.” There’s also the “ooo” near the end that I can do, too.
Perhaps it’s strange that I do these things, salute the Mexican flag, cross myself in church, but I see it as being polite and respectful.
Lago de Chapala:
Julia’s second cousins once-removed (or something like that) are in the lake town of Ajijic for vacation, staying at a friend’s beautiful house. We were invited for the weekend.
Ajijic is quite interesting—a small, cobble-stoned town populated heavily by American retirees. Getting there was rather more of an ordeal than we’d expected, what with our bus from the new bus station to the old bus station in Guadalajara breaking down, then missing our stop at Ajijic since we didn’t realize there wasn’t a bus station in the town. For dinner we were invited to the home of Julia’s cousins’ friends, Jack and Concha. At first, I felt awkward and found the couple strange—Jack was thirty years Concha’s senior, an American who bossed his younger Mexican wife around quite a bit. Later we realized Jack had a very dry sense of humor and was actually pretty hilarious. He entertained us with incredible stories about bizarre people in Ajijic. He has been living there for about thirty years, and he and his wife have known practically everyone who has ever lived in the town.
We learned about the American lesbian bikers, Donna and Lois. After their breakup, Donna went around with many wealthy women in Ajijic, often obtaining their money and property after their deaths. Some of these wealthy women were married, which proved to be a problem for Donna, when one night the husband of her then lover slit her throat.
The next day, Julia’s cousins, Corbett and Peggy, took us around the town and surrounding towns for a look. The lake is quite nice, but of course it must have been much nicer before it became polluted and then taken over by water hyacinths. Corbett and Peggy were lovely. I like that they travel a lot and socialize and spend all day drinking beers and talking to people.
We wanted to stay to attend carnival celebrations in the town of Chapala, which looked full of live bands and banda dancing and charreadas, but we had a party to attend in Guadalajara that evening.
Saturday out on the town:
Gizelle, a former ITTO classmate, had a party at her house for ITTO-related people. It was nice to see many of my former classmates again, but I think it might have been rather boring for Julia. When the karaoke started, we decided to leave. Though Julia and I have been known to enjoy karaoke very much (from our many adventures in Taipei), we are not really the type to enjoy others singing to the Beatles and Queen, so we left to go salsa dancing at a club Julia found.
Once there, we waited impatiently for this weird dance show to end so that the band could start playing and we could dance. We met two other women, who had been in line in front of us, and talked with them while we waited for the show to end. Maria Theresa is from Guadalajara but lives in San Diego and was on vacation. Her friend, also named Maria, wanted to practice English with us. Realizing that there weren’t many men in the crowd, and even fewer who knew how to dance salsa, the four of us women went out on the dance floor to dance ourselves. The band was pretty good, and it was fun, but there is only so much salsa-alone dancing we could do, so we decided to meet Julia’s Mexican homestay roommates at a bar across the street.
We didn’t make it to the bar because Ricardo and Carlos and their friends were already in their car ready to leave for a club called “Nuts.” They said they had passes, and that we should meet them there in twenty minutes. Maria had a car, so we went to find the club. It was difficult to find, with crazy construction on a main road putting us on detours. When we finally got there, Julia’s roommates still hadn’t arrived. We waited in the stupid crowd gathered by the entry to get in.
Some clubs in Guadalajara do this stupid selection process at the door, making people wait outside for a while, perhaps to make the place look more popular and crowded. One club I’d been to before in Guadalajara let cute girls in first, especially if the female-male ratio of their group was high. At that club, we had waited quite a while to get in, since our group consisted of mainly nerdy American guys, but we had gotten in eventually, with the help of the most pretty women in our group. This time, however, we stood there waiting for 40 minutes to an hour—we were the only ones the bouncers didn’t let in. It was very insulting. We ended up leaving, Maria Theresa telling them some very impolite things in Spanish, because we’d waited more than long enough and because Julia’s roommates were still lost and hadn’t arrived.
Julia and I have discussed at length the possible reasons for our not being let in, still with very little understanding of what we could possibly have done wrong or how we could have been wrong. Too old? The clientele at the place were of course all young. Too ugly? One only has to watch my favorite Mexican telenovela, “La fea más bella,” to see the consequences of being nerdy and unattractive—and though I don’t believe myself to be unattractive, I do understand that I am extremely nerdy-looking here, especially as I was the only person around (besides the stupid bouncer) wearing glasses. I do not mean to imply, of course, that Julia or the Marias were nerdy and unattractive, because they definitely were not, but as we all know, one bad apple can ruin a whole bushel….
Being too old and too nerdy (I won’t use the word ugly) may have contributed to our not being let in, but more likely they just didn’t like our attitude. Julia and I kept cracking jokes and laughing at the whole process, which I believe they took as a direct insult (and it was). All four of us refused to beg like some of the younger blond girls were doing (“Oh, let us in, por favor!”). The Marias kept talking to the bouncer and his boss and then complaining loudly about the power trip they were on. Julia and I continued to laugh and wouldn’t even deign to ask for their permission to enter.
And perhaps this attitude tied in with the fact that Julia and I were gringas made us even more unbearable—arrogant Americans who laughed derisively and simply expected to be let in without even asking.
On top of all this, I was the only Asian person around. Perhaps this had nothing to do with our not being let in, but it occurs to me that nerdy Chinese girls aren’t exactly staples in exclusive clubs here.
It sounds like we were upset by this rejection, but Julia and I were rather amused by the whole thing. The Marias were incensed, however, and I feel bad because we were the ones at fault.
We went out for tacos al pastor. They were incredibly delicious. Then Julia and I took a cab to her homestay and went to bed. It was about 4:30 by that time.
In the morning, we discovered that Julia’s roommates had arrived at Nuts right after we’d left, and that they had gotten in after five minutes, because one of their friends was Miss Vallarta and knew one of the bouncers.
Rebaño Sagrado:
Sunday, we sleep in as well as we can. Poor Julia feels stomach-sick, perhaps a culmination of something brewing all week. We go to the center of town to eat breakfast (though it’s around 2:30 by the time we get to the restaurant) at El Fenix, the outdoor place by the church Expiatorio. We stop by Vilasanta to check the monthly rates, because Julia is thinking about moving out of her lame homestay. The construction on the new second-floor rooms is almost done, and they look great. We spend a good deal of time chatting at El Fenix, until it’s time to go to a bar for the Chivas-America game.
This game is known as the clasico, I think because the America club (one of Mexico City’s teams?) is a big rival of Guadalajara’s official club (las Chivas). We went to a cool bar downtown called the Monastery or something like that, where we thoroughly enjoyed watching the Chivas beat America 1-0. Arriba las Chivas!
Maybe we are posers, as gringas cheering for las Chivas, but I don’t think we really care all that much.
Arandas:
Now I’m back home, happy to see the neon green crosses on the templo, happy to be in Arandas, happy to be in my own place again. I hear it’s rainy in Guadalajara. It’s windy and chilly here, like a storm is coming. Maybe tomorrow we will continue to have exciting and strange weather.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Out on the town in Guadalajara despite rhinitis
Back from Guadalajara once again. Laundry now done, fingers aching from the washing, the skin on them tight and dry. Waiting for my quesadillas to cook so I can eat and start my antibiotics.
Bad cough since last week—started last Sunday, but it is really just a continuation of the cold I have had for a long time. The cough was so bad that Friday morning I threw up twice. I went to school that day but only to give an exam to the 2nd graders and turn in the midterm grades. Then I went to Guadalajara, because I was going to hang out with Julia over the weekend, but also to finally see the doctor.
Luis’ sister’s fiancé, Santiago, is an ear-nose-throat specialist. The day that Lorena met him, two winter vacations ago, Luis and I were staying with her in Guadalajara. Santiago was a friend of Lorena’s roommate. I had a bad cold then, too, and Santiago told me I could go to his office the next day to check out the cough. He checked out my ears, nose, and throat with a freaky endoscope, cleaned out my ears, and gave me a prescription that eventually helped me get over whatever infection I had. He didn’t charge for the visit—I think because Lorena had brought me.
I’ve never liked going to the doctor. Since I knew Santiago and was going to Guadalajara anyway, I figured I’d see him again instead of trying to find someone in Arandas. With the help of the little video camera on a stick, we saw on the television screen that I had a sinus infection. He gave me a 50% discount, and he also gave me the antibiotics I needed, so I wouldn’t have to buy them. And I even got a ride back to the city center. I was very happy with this doctor’s visit.
Julia and I were going to hang out, though, which meant we would end up drinking at some point, so I haven’t started my antibiotics till now.
I spent the entire weekend as one of those annoying friends who always complains about being broke. I just paid my latest phone bill, which included half the line installation cost. Installing a phone line is incredibly expensive—about US$200, and I forgot I still had one payment left. Thus, half of my bi-weekly pay went to the phone company. Had to eat cheaply, had to avoid taking taxis. I had to pay for the medicine and also for the repairs to my camera, about which I had bragged in my last entry as being incredibly cheap. I ended up borrowing from Julia.
We stayed at a different posada from the one in which I had stayed during my month in Guadalajara. Casa Vilasanta had a great monthly rate, but its nightly rate is a bit steep; as much as I’d love to stay there again, I can’t bring myself to pay for it. Amanda, a former ITTO classmate, was back in town, and Julia was staying with her in Posada San Pablo. They’d met at the Spanish-language school. The rooms are nice and it’s very close to both ITTO and the language school IMAC, but the posada is notorious for the cranky abuelas (grandmothers) who run it. Several things were annoying, but the most ridiculous was that, in order to get in or out the front door, you have to get buzzed out by the abuelas. That means sometimes waiting around for a few minutes while the abuelas finish whatever they’re doing and come round the corner with the remote that opens the door. This is, of course, a security measure, but an extremely frustrating and inconvenient one.
Friday evening, Amanda, Julia, and I went out to meet a girl from Amanda’s Spanish class. Their teacher had invited the class out to a bar for two of the students’ last night in town. Once there, Julia and I were a bit too obviously hesitant to mix with the party. The bar was filled mainly with muchachos, and the table of Amanda’s classmates was filled mainly with gringos. Julia and I needed to eat dinner, so we basically ran out of there and ended up in Café Madrid, the little diner where we always end up eating. Back in the bar, we chatted with Gizelle and Kiet, two other former ITTO classmates. When a few of the others left, Julia and I ended up sitting next to this National Guard guy from Amanda’s class. Julia, having worked the last few years as a reporter in Fayetteville, North Carolina (home of Fort Bragg), was expert in extracting information from him. While I sat astonished, thinking I’d never have the faintest idea how to converse with this person, Julia made him feel comfortable talking and was very nice to him. I was amazed that I actually felt some compassion for him. But it turns out he is moving to Tucson and that he is working for the border patrol. How sad I felt, that someone would want to do that, and in my hometown. Later, I discovered Julia hadn’t in the last few years become suddenly enamored of all soldiers—she simply has learned how to talk to them.
Saturday morning was spent lazing around, reading our Spanish books in the posada garden. Julia and I are doing some independent reading to improve our Spanish, though I think Julia does much more of that than I do—she is reading a Hardy boys book in Spanish (“Hay una bomba de tiempo abordo!”) and I am reading some stories by Jorge Ibargüengoitia. Coincidentally, I read the story about his financial rough times, which I related to very easily this weekend. Amanda moved to an apartment, and two of Julia’s friends from Guanajuato arrived. We walked around the historic center and then went to the Chivas-Santos game.
We had originally wanted to see the Chivas-America game—a game that is bound to be incredible for the rivalry that exists between the two teams’ fans. I was misinformed by Rocio, however, that the game was this weekend (it’s next weekend). Julia still bought tickets to this weekend’s game, though, and I’m glad we went. Julia, her two friends, Amanda, Kiet, Gizelle, Gizelle’s roommate, and I sat in the cheap seats, where the surrounding fans aren’t as rowdy as those where we sat last time, but you can actually get a pretty good view of the game that high up. As usual, we ate kettle chips with lime and valentino chili sauce and drank beer, which tastes so good after the spicy chips. The Santos (still don’t know where they’re from) scored early, but the Chivas tied later in the second half. It was the first goal I had ever seen them score. We jumped up shouting so suddenly that I got the biggest head rush in history. I had to lean on Julia’s shoulder for several seconds until it passed. Julia and I have become such fans that we have also taken to cursing out the Chivas players who make mistakes. At one point Julia even used the mofo word, causing the guys in front of us to turn around in shock.
After the game we were hungry for dinner, so we just plopped ourselves down at a table in a tent outside the stadium to eat birria, which is a Guadalajara specialty. Julia described it as the Mexican version of North Carolina barbecue. It is essentially a stew of goat meat, eaten with raw onion, cilantro, radishes, and tortillas. Yum. Then we got on a bus back to the posada. Julia, her friends, and I then went out for a drink, with the help of Julia’s guidebook. The bar we went to was fun, decorated with bullfighting pictures and playing pretty good music. We decided to go dancing, so we went round the corner and up the stairs to a club.
The music was the regular punchis-punchis that the clubs tend to play here in Mexico, and it was hot inside, and we were not impressed. As we stood talking, this guy who was dancing creepily kept trying to get Julia to dance with him. We just laughed. Finally he danced with one of Julia’s friends. Then other guys started coming over to talk to us, trying to get us to dance. We had to go to the bathroom to finally get away from them. There we decided to leave, but just as we got to the door, the music improved. We stayed and danced for a while. They started playing merengue/fast-cumbia (?). These hip-hop-looking guys came over and one of them asked me to dance. I automatically said no, and he left us alone. Later I regretted it, because it looked like he could actually dance merengue. Then Julia and her friends wanted to go—it was too hot—I was definitely in the minority wanting to stay. It was 1:30, and they wanted to go to the cemetery for the 2 a.m. tour. When we got there, though, it didn’t look like there was any tour, so we went back to the posada to sleep. I’m glad we didn’t stay out too late, though. I am, after all, trying to get over a sinus infection.
I appreciate Guadalajara so much more now that I live in Arandas. I am excited to go back again soon, so Julia and I can go back to that club for better dancing and better music than we get here in Arandas.
Traveling by bus to and from Guadalajara isn’t bad at all—it can be long, like the three-hour second-class ride there on Friday, or it can be short and sweet, like the two-hour first-class trip I most fortunately got on this afternoon. On the first-class trips, I can always watch the movie. On the long, second-class bus trips, I usually just sit in the whipping wind and listen to music on my discman. I always listen to Gustavo Cerati on my bus trips—for some reason it’s perfect, maybe because the lyrics are so hard that I don’t get tired of trying to understand them, and because his voice is incredible and soothing, and because sometimes the chord changes are so deliciously satisfying.
It’s getting late, and I haven’t done any planning. I’m leaving it for the morning. I still have Friday’s leftover lesson plans, so I’m not too worried about getting everything done, even though I really should just get it out of the way. But I feel so tired. Partying all weekend and then coming home to do the wash by hand and finally writing a blog entry is simply too exhausting.
Bad cough since last week—started last Sunday, but it is really just a continuation of the cold I have had for a long time. The cough was so bad that Friday morning I threw up twice. I went to school that day but only to give an exam to the 2nd graders and turn in the midterm grades. Then I went to Guadalajara, because I was going to hang out with Julia over the weekend, but also to finally see the doctor.
Luis’ sister’s fiancé, Santiago, is an ear-nose-throat specialist. The day that Lorena met him, two winter vacations ago, Luis and I were staying with her in Guadalajara. Santiago was a friend of Lorena’s roommate. I had a bad cold then, too, and Santiago told me I could go to his office the next day to check out the cough. He checked out my ears, nose, and throat with a freaky endoscope, cleaned out my ears, and gave me a prescription that eventually helped me get over whatever infection I had. He didn’t charge for the visit—I think because Lorena had brought me.
I’ve never liked going to the doctor. Since I knew Santiago and was going to Guadalajara anyway, I figured I’d see him again instead of trying to find someone in Arandas. With the help of the little video camera on a stick, we saw on the television screen that I had a sinus infection. He gave me a 50% discount, and he also gave me the antibiotics I needed, so I wouldn’t have to buy them. And I even got a ride back to the city center. I was very happy with this doctor’s visit.
Julia and I were going to hang out, though, which meant we would end up drinking at some point, so I haven’t started my antibiotics till now.
I spent the entire weekend as one of those annoying friends who always complains about being broke. I just paid my latest phone bill, which included half the line installation cost. Installing a phone line is incredibly expensive—about US$200, and I forgot I still had one payment left. Thus, half of my bi-weekly pay went to the phone company. Had to eat cheaply, had to avoid taking taxis. I had to pay for the medicine and also for the repairs to my camera, about which I had bragged in my last entry as being incredibly cheap. I ended up borrowing from Julia.
We stayed at a different posada from the one in which I had stayed during my month in Guadalajara. Casa Vilasanta had a great monthly rate, but its nightly rate is a bit steep; as much as I’d love to stay there again, I can’t bring myself to pay for it. Amanda, a former ITTO classmate, was back in town, and Julia was staying with her in Posada San Pablo. They’d met at the Spanish-language school. The rooms are nice and it’s very close to both ITTO and the language school IMAC, but the posada is notorious for the cranky abuelas (grandmothers) who run it. Several things were annoying, but the most ridiculous was that, in order to get in or out the front door, you have to get buzzed out by the abuelas. That means sometimes waiting around for a few minutes while the abuelas finish whatever they’re doing and come round the corner with the remote that opens the door. This is, of course, a security measure, but an extremely frustrating and inconvenient one.
Friday evening, Amanda, Julia, and I went out to meet a girl from Amanda’s Spanish class. Their teacher had invited the class out to a bar for two of the students’ last night in town. Once there, Julia and I were a bit too obviously hesitant to mix with the party. The bar was filled mainly with muchachos, and the table of Amanda’s classmates was filled mainly with gringos. Julia and I needed to eat dinner, so we basically ran out of there and ended up in Café Madrid, the little diner where we always end up eating. Back in the bar, we chatted with Gizelle and Kiet, two other former ITTO classmates. When a few of the others left, Julia and I ended up sitting next to this National Guard guy from Amanda’s class. Julia, having worked the last few years as a reporter in Fayetteville, North Carolina (home of Fort Bragg), was expert in extracting information from him. While I sat astonished, thinking I’d never have the faintest idea how to converse with this person, Julia made him feel comfortable talking and was very nice to him. I was amazed that I actually felt some compassion for him. But it turns out he is moving to Tucson and that he is working for the border patrol. How sad I felt, that someone would want to do that, and in my hometown. Later, I discovered Julia hadn’t in the last few years become suddenly enamored of all soldiers—she simply has learned how to talk to them.
Saturday morning was spent lazing around, reading our Spanish books in the posada garden. Julia and I are doing some independent reading to improve our Spanish, though I think Julia does much more of that than I do—she is reading a Hardy boys book in Spanish (“Hay una bomba de tiempo abordo!”) and I am reading some stories by Jorge Ibargüengoitia. Coincidentally, I read the story about his financial rough times, which I related to very easily this weekend. Amanda moved to an apartment, and two of Julia’s friends from Guanajuato arrived. We walked around the historic center and then went to the Chivas-Santos game.
We had originally wanted to see the Chivas-America game—a game that is bound to be incredible for the rivalry that exists between the two teams’ fans. I was misinformed by Rocio, however, that the game was this weekend (it’s next weekend). Julia still bought tickets to this weekend’s game, though, and I’m glad we went. Julia, her two friends, Amanda, Kiet, Gizelle, Gizelle’s roommate, and I sat in the cheap seats, where the surrounding fans aren’t as rowdy as those where we sat last time, but you can actually get a pretty good view of the game that high up. As usual, we ate kettle chips with lime and valentino chili sauce and drank beer, which tastes so good after the spicy chips. The Santos (still don’t know where they’re from) scored early, but the Chivas tied later in the second half. It was the first goal I had ever seen them score. We jumped up shouting so suddenly that I got the biggest head rush in history. I had to lean on Julia’s shoulder for several seconds until it passed. Julia and I have become such fans that we have also taken to cursing out the Chivas players who make mistakes. At one point Julia even used the mofo word, causing the guys in front of us to turn around in shock.
After the game we were hungry for dinner, so we just plopped ourselves down at a table in a tent outside the stadium to eat birria, which is a Guadalajara specialty. Julia described it as the Mexican version of North Carolina barbecue. It is essentially a stew of goat meat, eaten with raw onion, cilantro, radishes, and tortillas. Yum. Then we got on a bus back to the posada. Julia, her friends, and I then went out for a drink, with the help of Julia’s guidebook. The bar we went to was fun, decorated with bullfighting pictures and playing pretty good music. We decided to go dancing, so we went round the corner and up the stairs to a club.
The music was the regular punchis-punchis that the clubs tend to play here in Mexico, and it was hot inside, and we were not impressed. As we stood talking, this guy who was dancing creepily kept trying to get Julia to dance with him. We just laughed. Finally he danced with one of Julia’s friends. Then other guys started coming over to talk to us, trying to get us to dance. We had to go to the bathroom to finally get away from them. There we decided to leave, but just as we got to the door, the music improved. We stayed and danced for a while. They started playing merengue/fast-cumbia (?). These hip-hop-looking guys came over and one of them asked me to dance. I automatically said no, and he left us alone. Later I regretted it, because it looked like he could actually dance merengue. Then Julia and her friends wanted to go—it was too hot—I was definitely in the minority wanting to stay. It was 1:30, and they wanted to go to the cemetery for the 2 a.m. tour. When we got there, though, it didn’t look like there was any tour, so we went back to the posada to sleep. I’m glad we didn’t stay out too late, though. I am, after all, trying to get over a sinus infection.
I appreciate Guadalajara so much more now that I live in Arandas. I am excited to go back again soon, so Julia and I can go back to that club for better dancing and better music than we get here in Arandas.
Traveling by bus to and from Guadalajara isn’t bad at all—it can be long, like the three-hour second-class ride there on Friday, or it can be short and sweet, like the two-hour first-class trip I most fortunately got on this afternoon. On the first-class trips, I can always watch the movie. On the long, second-class bus trips, I usually just sit in the whipping wind and listen to music on my discman. I always listen to Gustavo Cerati on my bus trips—for some reason it’s perfect, maybe because the lyrics are so hard that I don’t get tired of trying to understand them, and because his voice is incredible and soothing, and because sometimes the chord changes are so deliciously satisfying.
It’s getting late, and I haven’t done any planning. I’m leaving it for the morning. I still have Friday’s leftover lesson plans, so I’m not too worried about getting everything done, even though I really should just get it out of the way. But I feel so tired. Partying all weekend and then coming home to do the wash by hand and finally writing a blog entry is simply too exhausting.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Ball gowns to the wedding
Sunday again, Julia has just left for Guadalajara, and I’m supposed to be doing this week’s lesson plans…. But as usual I’m putting off work with another blog entry.
Last week I started an evening class, the first on Thursday. There were only two students—my friend Rocio and the mother of one of my students. I think it went well. I’m hoping to talk to the principal this week to ask that she not charge those who work in the school for the classes, since the school is supposed to be bilingual, and the teachers who want to take English classes from me really shouldn’t be charged for them. If she insists on charging them, I will provide my own private classes.
We had social Friday again, at last, the four of us working at the school who call ourselves “el club de las locas.” Rocio, kindergarten teacher Cristina, and I went to kindergarten teacher Aracely’s house, where we ate snacks, drank tequila, made fun of each other, and chatted. Actually, I didn’t do much chatting, since I can hardly carry on a conversation in Spanish, but I listened to them talk and had fun. We hadn’t gotten together the four of us in a long time. Rocio had been absent because her boyfriend was here from Chicago for about four weeks in December and January, and then I have been gone a lot on the weekends hanging out with Julia. It was nice to finally get together again with the girls. I wonder why they even bother inviting me, because it’s not like I contribute much. I do think, however, that without me trying to get everyone together, they wouldn’t do it as much.
Saturday, the brother of the principal got married. Everyone at the school was invited, but only a few of the teachers went. I invited Julia, who arrived at noon. We hurried to dress and get ready, ironing our wrinkly clothes and trying to match our few nice items of clothing into outfits we thought would be appropriate for a ranch reception in Arandas. (In the end we discovered you can wear whatever you want—the men were mostly in suits and some in cowboy hats, while the women were mostly dressed down in suits, some younger women dressed up in little sparkly party dresses, and some very young girls practically wearing ball gowns.) We were twenty minutes late to mass in the church at the city center, but it didn’t matter because it was quite long. We couldn’t see anything because the flower arrangements in the aisle were in the way. Julia and I were hungry by the end of the ceremony, and we probably wouldn’t be eating anytime soon, so we contrived to get a snack to eat before heading to the ranch. We ran into Aracely, who took us to a juice place that was still open, and then we hung out at her house until her husband came home from work to go the reception.
We arrived at the reception just as people were beginning to eat. We had tacos, a big plate of meat (carnitas), beans, rice, and tortillas. They served tequila with dinner as well. There was a band playing on synthesizers and drum machines, everything from banda to cheesy Richard Clayderman. After eating, they cleared a space for dancing—a lot of cumbia and banda. Then the cheesy music started, and people were pinning money onto the bride and groom, for their honeymoon. I was going to pin some money on them too, because we hadn’t brought a gift, until I realized that I would have had to dance with the groom, and I didn’t feel like doing that.
Then all the single women were supposed to hold hands and dance around, at the end trying to catch the bouquet. Julia and I remained seated while the other girls really wanted to catch the bouquet. It was the guys’ turn after that, and they danced around and looked like they really wanted to catch the flower he threw, too. It was the only wedding I’ve been to recently where people really wanted to catch the bouquet or the garter; the last one I was at, all the women were backing up and getting pushed forward by others, and usually the men don’t want to catch the garter either. Julia and I then danced with the kids for a while, wearing ourselves out with banda and cumbia.
We left when the band stopped, with Aracely and her family. Afterwards, we went out to play pool at the cinema with Aracely’s husband’s cousin, Alvaro, and Alvaro’s girlfriend. Alvaro is a communications student at the University of Guadalajara, who comes home to Arandas on the weekends. He might be looking for a roommate for his apartment in central Guadalajara, which would be ideal for Julia, but it’s still unclear whether they will have a room available. Hopefully our Arandas connections will help her find a safe, cheap place to live close to the school. It would be more convenient than living in a homestay with a family in the suburbs, she’d meet more younger people, and she’d be close to all the cool stuff in town.
Sunday we just had breakfast at home, and then we went out to the cinema to see if there’d be a movie to see, but there wasn’t anything we wanted to see at the time. We thought we could go to the market in the center and buy a cheap DVD to watch on Julia’s computer. Julia bought a couple, but one didn’t work, and the other didn’t have the movies it advertised. We made milanesas de pollo at home, and then Julia had to leave.
Last night I dreamed we were at Brown again. Julia Sapir had a piece on show someplace on campus. I had to go the airport or something and was crossing the street when a hoard of women in colorful ball gowns with puffy skirts came running down trying to get to a dance first to snatch up the good guys.
Last week I started an evening class, the first on Thursday. There were only two students—my friend Rocio and the mother of one of my students. I think it went well. I’m hoping to talk to the principal this week to ask that she not charge those who work in the school for the classes, since the school is supposed to be bilingual, and the teachers who want to take English classes from me really shouldn’t be charged for them. If she insists on charging them, I will provide my own private classes.
We had social Friday again, at last, the four of us working at the school who call ourselves “el club de las locas.” Rocio, kindergarten teacher Cristina, and I went to kindergarten teacher Aracely’s house, where we ate snacks, drank tequila, made fun of each other, and chatted. Actually, I didn’t do much chatting, since I can hardly carry on a conversation in Spanish, but I listened to them talk and had fun. We hadn’t gotten together the four of us in a long time. Rocio had been absent because her boyfriend was here from Chicago for about four weeks in December and January, and then I have been gone a lot on the weekends hanging out with Julia. It was nice to finally get together again with the girls. I wonder why they even bother inviting me, because it’s not like I contribute much. I do think, however, that without me trying to get everyone together, they wouldn’t do it as much.
Saturday, the brother of the principal got married. Everyone at the school was invited, but only a few of the teachers went. I invited Julia, who arrived at noon. We hurried to dress and get ready, ironing our wrinkly clothes and trying to match our few nice items of clothing into outfits we thought would be appropriate for a ranch reception in Arandas. (In the end we discovered you can wear whatever you want—the men were mostly in suits and some in cowboy hats, while the women were mostly dressed down in suits, some younger women dressed up in little sparkly party dresses, and some very young girls practically wearing ball gowns.) We were twenty minutes late to mass in the church at the city center, but it didn’t matter because it was quite long. We couldn’t see anything because the flower arrangements in the aisle were in the way. Julia and I were hungry by the end of the ceremony, and we probably wouldn’t be eating anytime soon, so we contrived to get a snack to eat before heading to the ranch. We ran into Aracely, who took us to a juice place that was still open, and then we hung out at her house until her husband came home from work to go the reception.
We arrived at the reception just as people were beginning to eat. We had tacos, a big plate of meat (carnitas), beans, rice, and tortillas. They served tequila with dinner as well. There was a band playing on synthesizers and drum machines, everything from banda to cheesy Richard Clayderman. After eating, they cleared a space for dancing—a lot of cumbia and banda. Then the cheesy music started, and people were pinning money onto the bride and groom, for their honeymoon. I was going to pin some money on them too, because we hadn’t brought a gift, until I realized that I would have had to dance with the groom, and I didn’t feel like doing that.
Then all the single women were supposed to hold hands and dance around, at the end trying to catch the bouquet. Julia and I remained seated while the other girls really wanted to catch the bouquet. It was the guys’ turn after that, and they danced around and looked like they really wanted to catch the flower he threw, too. It was the only wedding I’ve been to recently where people really wanted to catch the bouquet or the garter; the last one I was at, all the women were backing up and getting pushed forward by others, and usually the men don’t want to catch the garter either. Julia and I then danced with the kids for a while, wearing ourselves out with banda and cumbia.
We left when the band stopped, with Aracely and her family. Afterwards, we went out to play pool at the cinema with Aracely’s husband’s cousin, Alvaro, and Alvaro’s girlfriend. Alvaro is a communications student at the University of Guadalajara, who comes home to Arandas on the weekends. He might be looking for a roommate for his apartment in central Guadalajara, which would be ideal for Julia, but it’s still unclear whether they will have a room available. Hopefully our Arandas connections will help her find a safe, cheap place to live close to the school. It would be more convenient than living in a homestay with a family in the suburbs, she’d meet more younger people, and she’d be close to all the cool stuff in town.
Sunday we just had breakfast at home, and then we went out to the cinema to see if there’d be a movie to see, but there wasn’t anything we wanted to see at the time. We thought we could go to the market in the center and buy a cheap DVD to watch on Julia’s computer. Julia bought a couple, but one didn’t work, and the other didn’t have the movies it advertised. We made milanesas de pollo at home, and then Julia had to leave.
Last night I dreamed we were at Brown again. Julia Sapir had a piece on show someplace on campus. I had to go the airport or something and was crossing the street when a hoard of women in colorful ball gowns with puffy skirts came running down trying to get to a dance first to snatch up the good guys.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Unknown holiday
Just got back from Guadalajara, to the sounds of a charreada in the nearby lienzo charro and a baby crying outside my building.
Julia and I had a successful visit to Guadalajara. (By the way, there’s a link to Julia’s blog in the right column of this page. Her blog has pictures, unlike mine!) Her aim: to see whether the city would be a desirable place to relocate for Spanish studies. My aim: to tag along, and also finally to get my camera fixed. Julia will probably be moving there after her third week in Guanajuato runs out, so she could possibly start classes in Guadalajara next Monday. I found a little camera repair shop, where the man told me I could fix my camera’s light meter for only about 250 pesos—a far cry from the $150 repair fee quoted to me in the States. As soon as I get back to Guadalajara to visit Julia, I will pick it up and hopefully be able to take photos once again!
We arrived Friday evening and met up in the bus station. Our first task was to find a bus into the city center; our second to find a room in a hostel or cheap hotel. This took quite a while, so we didn’t sit down to lunch/dinner till much later. By the time we were done eating, we were still too tired to do much, so we decided to go back to our hotel near the Plaza Tapatía to sleep. It was not the greatest hotel, but it was actually the same price or cheaper than the posada’s nightly rate where I had stayed during the TEFL course. Unfortunately, it was very noisy, right by a busy street, with lots of guests giggling and chatting in the hallways. We managed, however.
Many things occurred to me as we walked around the city. One, that Guadalajara is HUGE. Though I had stayed there a month for the month-long course and had visited on occasion, I had arrived this time with different eyes. Having been in Arandas for a while, Guadalajara seemed an overwhelming haven where so much was possible. One could find so many things there, get a camera fixed, go to a bar where a Cuban band played salsa and son, meet so many different people. It had also been a long time since I had stayed so close to the center, which is a completely different feeling from staying in friends’ apartments in the outskirts.
Number two, I remembered how much the guys there engage in cat-calling and other forms of verbal harassment. It doesn’t happen quite as much in Guanajuato or Arandas, though it still happens often enough to irritate. But Guadalajara is a whole other story. The cat calls seem even to be more disgusting there. We hate the kissing noises the most, but the ch-ch psst-noise comes a close second. Julia and I have become rather desensitized by now, though, from experience ignoring or simply laughing at these stupid noises and ridiculous comments. The funny thing is that when you ask these guys a question in passing, like where’s the entrance to the restaurant upstairs or something like that, they become polite and answer the question and don’t say anything more. Like we surprise them by treating them with the respect that they lacked in their treatment of us.
Saturday morning and early afternoon was spent searching for Spanish language schools and camera repair shops. The camera repair shop was easy. I showed Julia the language school where we had practiced teaching during our TEFL course at ITTO. They have a rather developed Spanish-language program. We visited another school after a rather long and difficult search for it, only to find that they require you to register for a whole year and spend half the time at school using their computer programs—very strange. We lunched at El Fenix, the old haunt of the ITTO crew who lived in the nearby “haunted” posada, Vilasanta. Then we walked around downtown before heading to the Chivas game.
The Chivas are the soccer club of Guadalajara. They were playing the Tigres of we’re not sure where—Nuevo Leon? The first Chivas game I’d gone to, back in October, was also against a team from there—Monterrey. The stadium had been rather empty, and the Chivas lost that game, 2-3, if I remember correctly. This time all the cheap seats were sold out by the time we got in line, and Julia and I ended up buying more expensive tickets in the fan zone, which turned out to be very exciting. We sat behind a sea of crazy fans in red and white shirts, singing and jumping up and down. There were three guys in front of us, one of whom was a rather inebriated metal-head who kept talking to us. It didn’t bother us much, because the conversation was extremely educational. He kept encouraging us to shout the usual obscenities that one shouts at games. He would tell us where such and such player was from. If a player messed up, he would shout “pendejo” (asshole) and then tell us, “Oh he’s from Sinaloa,” and show a thumbs-down. Then another “pendejo” would mess up and he would say, “Chilango!” (someone from Mexico City) and show an even more adamant thumbs-down. The portero, Oswaldo Sanchez, who ended up saving the game, is of course from Guadalajara. (He is also, as I found out from Luis, the goalie of the national team.) Anyway, you see the pattern here—Guadalajara good, other places bad. The guy talking to us was sort of a clown. He pointed out one of his friends as a mojado, “wetback,” who was much nicer and quieter and who played jokes on his drunken friend. Anyway, the Chivas won 1-0, and we were happy even though we were waiting in line for tickets during the only goal of the game and had missed it.
After the game we went back into town to eat. We ended up at this restaurant that was recommended by Julia’s guidebook and where I had eaten with my friend Marissa from the ITTO course a couple of times back in the fall. Marissa would be cracking up because it was a Saturday night and Juan Pablo was singing at the restaurant. She and I used to make jokes about coming to see this Juan Pablo, who appeared on the restaurants posters and looked like a real cheeseball, which he really turned out to be. It was kind of a downer going there after the great game. They made us sit upstairs with the cheesy music, and everyone in the restaurant was old. Immediately, these two old guys started hitting on us. Julia was having none of it, answering questions curtly and looking very annoyed, while I tried to deter them more politely. They didn’t seem to get the picture. We told them all sorts of lies, like we couldn’t speak Spanish well and that we were on vacation, and luckily they left us alone. We also ordered a jar of agua fresca, which we assumed would be like any regular fruit drink like jamaica or horchata, but it turned out to be like a gallon of pureed fruit with little actual water. And the food wasn’t that good. So we got out of there as quickly as possible.
Then we went to the salsa place to dance salsa, but it was also a bit disappointing, once again, because there weren’t many good dancers. We were tired, though, so after a beer we just went back to the hotel to sleep.
Sunday morning we hoped to participate in the city’s recreation—they close off the main street of Juarez for only bicycle traffic on Sundays from 10-2. I had always wanted to ride bikes up and down Juarez on Sundays in Guadalajara, but we never seemed to be able to do it. This time, however, we asked about renting bikes, and it turned out that the city doesn’t seem to rent any for this recreation, so we just walked around instead. I wanted to go Parque Agua Azul, which I hadn’t been to yet, and we walked along some strange neighborhoods to get there, only to be disappointed by it. We took a bus back and had a quick lunch, then went to the bus station to leave for our respective “homes.”
Getting home was much easier for me than for Julia, who missed her direct bus and would’ve had to wait two hours for the next one, except we had the brilliant idea to get her on the earlier bus to Leon and change to Guanajuato from there. It was a good idea until she remembered the fair in Leon and couldn’t get a seat on the next bus to Guanajuato. Yuck. Anyway, this is another reason to relocate Julia in Guadalajara—we can visit each other much more easily!
Tomorrow I get the day off. Today was a holiday that neither Julia or I could figure out. I had asked Rocio earlier last week, but she thought it was to commemorate the battle of Puebla, which I’m pretty sure is Cinco de Mayo (5 of May, not 5 of February). Anyway, Rocio will be coming over at some point tomorrow to dye my hair, the roots of which are beginning to look more and more atrocious with the light brown we had dyed it back in November. I was going to get a dark brown to match my natural color, so that I stop dying it and damaging it further, but I saw a dark plum that was cute. Maybe it will be dark enough not to be ugly when my hair grows out? I’m sure this is riveting information for all you faithful readers, so I shall keep you updated on the hair-color saga.
Julia and I had a successful visit to Guadalajara. (By the way, there’s a link to Julia’s blog in the right column of this page. Her blog has pictures, unlike mine!) Her aim: to see whether the city would be a desirable place to relocate for Spanish studies. My aim: to tag along, and also finally to get my camera fixed. Julia will probably be moving there after her third week in Guanajuato runs out, so she could possibly start classes in Guadalajara next Monday. I found a little camera repair shop, where the man told me I could fix my camera’s light meter for only about 250 pesos—a far cry from the $150 repair fee quoted to me in the States. As soon as I get back to Guadalajara to visit Julia, I will pick it up and hopefully be able to take photos once again!
We arrived Friday evening and met up in the bus station. Our first task was to find a bus into the city center; our second to find a room in a hostel or cheap hotel. This took quite a while, so we didn’t sit down to lunch/dinner till much later. By the time we were done eating, we were still too tired to do much, so we decided to go back to our hotel near the Plaza Tapatía to sleep. It was not the greatest hotel, but it was actually the same price or cheaper than the posada’s nightly rate where I had stayed during the TEFL course. Unfortunately, it was very noisy, right by a busy street, with lots of guests giggling and chatting in the hallways. We managed, however.
Many things occurred to me as we walked around the city. One, that Guadalajara is HUGE. Though I had stayed there a month for the month-long course and had visited on occasion, I had arrived this time with different eyes. Having been in Arandas for a while, Guadalajara seemed an overwhelming haven where so much was possible. One could find so many things there, get a camera fixed, go to a bar where a Cuban band played salsa and son, meet so many different people. It had also been a long time since I had stayed so close to the center, which is a completely different feeling from staying in friends’ apartments in the outskirts.
Number two, I remembered how much the guys there engage in cat-calling and other forms of verbal harassment. It doesn’t happen quite as much in Guanajuato or Arandas, though it still happens often enough to irritate. But Guadalajara is a whole other story. The cat calls seem even to be more disgusting there. We hate the kissing noises the most, but the ch-ch psst-noise comes a close second. Julia and I have become rather desensitized by now, though, from experience ignoring or simply laughing at these stupid noises and ridiculous comments. The funny thing is that when you ask these guys a question in passing, like where’s the entrance to the restaurant upstairs or something like that, they become polite and answer the question and don’t say anything more. Like we surprise them by treating them with the respect that they lacked in their treatment of us.
Saturday morning and early afternoon was spent searching for Spanish language schools and camera repair shops. The camera repair shop was easy. I showed Julia the language school where we had practiced teaching during our TEFL course at ITTO. They have a rather developed Spanish-language program. We visited another school after a rather long and difficult search for it, only to find that they require you to register for a whole year and spend half the time at school using their computer programs—very strange. We lunched at El Fenix, the old haunt of the ITTO crew who lived in the nearby “haunted” posada, Vilasanta. Then we walked around downtown before heading to the Chivas game.
The Chivas are the soccer club of Guadalajara. They were playing the Tigres of we’re not sure where—Nuevo Leon? The first Chivas game I’d gone to, back in October, was also against a team from there—Monterrey. The stadium had been rather empty, and the Chivas lost that game, 2-3, if I remember correctly. This time all the cheap seats were sold out by the time we got in line, and Julia and I ended up buying more expensive tickets in the fan zone, which turned out to be very exciting. We sat behind a sea of crazy fans in red and white shirts, singing and jumping up and down. There were three guys in front of us, one of whom was a rather inebriated metal-head who kept talking to us. It didn’t bother us much, because the conversation was extremely educational. He kept encouraging us to shout the usual obscenities that one shouts at games. He would tell us where such and such player was from. If a player messed up, he would shout “pendejo” (asshole) and then tell us, “Oh he’s from Sinaloa,” and show a thumbs-down. Then another “pendejo” would mess up and he would say, “Chilango!” (someone from Mexico City) and show an even more adamant thumbs-down. The portero, Oswaldo Sanchez, who ended up saving the game, is of course from Guadalajara. (He is also, as I found out from Luis, the goalie of the national team.) Anyway, you see the pattern here—Guadalajara good, other places bad. The guy talking to us was sort of a clown. He pointed out one of his friends as a mojado, “wetback,” who was much nicer and quieter and who played jokes on his drunken friend. Anyway, the Chivas won 1-0, and we were happy even though we were waiting in line for tickets during the only goal of the game and had missed it.
After the game we went back into town to eat. We ended up at this restaurant that was recommended by Julia’s guidebook and where I had eaten with my friend Marissa from the ITTO course a couple of times back in the fall. Marissa would be cracking up because it was a Saturday night and Juan Pablo was singing at the restaurant. She and I used to make jokes about coming to see this Juan Pablo, who appeared on the restaurants posters and looked like a real cheeseball, which he really turned out to be. It was kind of a downer going there after the great game. They made us sit upstairs with the cheesy music, and everyone in the restaurant was old. Immediately, these two old guys started hitting on us. Julia was having none of it, answering questions curtly and looking very annoyed, while I tried to deter them more politely. They didn’t seem to get the picture. We told them all sorts of lies, like we couldn’t speak Spanish well and that we were on vacation, and luckily they left us alone. We also ordered a jar of agua fresca, which we assumed would be like any regular fruit drink like jamaica or horchata, but it turned out to be like a gallon of pureed fruit with little actual water. And the food wasn’t that good. So we got out of there as quickly as possible.
Then we went to the salsa place to dance salsa, but it was also a bit disappointing, once again, because there weren’t many good dancers. We were tired, though, so after a beer we just went back to the hotel to sleep.
Sunday morning we hoped to participate in the city’s recreation—they close off the main street of Juarez for only bicycle traffic on Sundays from 10-2. I had always wanted to ride bikes up and down Juarez on Sundays in Guadalajara, but we never seemed to be able to do it. This time, however, we asked about renting bikes, and it turned out that the city doesn’t seem to rent any for this recreation, so we just walked around instead. I wanted to go Parque Agua Azul, which I hadn’t been to yet, and we walked along some strange neighborhoods to get there, only to be disappointed by it. We took a bus back and had a quick lunch, then went to the bus station to leave for our respective “homes.”
Getting home was much easier for me than for Julia, who missed her direct bus and would’ve had to wait two hours for the next one, except we had the brilliant idea to get her on the earlier bus to Leon and change to Guanajuato from there. It was a good idea until she remembered the fair in Leon and couldn’t get a seat on the next bus to Guanajuato. Yuck. Anyway, this is another reason to relocate Julia in Guadalajara—we can visit each other much more easily!
Tomorrow I get the day off. Today was a holiday that neither Julia or I could figure out. I had asked Rocio earlier last week, but she thought it was to commemorate the battle of Puebla, which I’m pretty sure is Cinco de Mayo (5 of May, not 5 of February). Anyway, Rocio will be coming over at some point tomorrow to dye my hair, the roots of which are beginning to look more and more atrocious with the light brown we had dyed it back in November. I was going to get a dark brown to match my natural color, so that I stop dying it and damaging it further, but I saw a dark plum that was cute. Maybe it will be dark enough not to be ugly when my hair grows out? I’m sure this is riveting information for all you faithful readers, so I shall keep you updated on the hair-color saga.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Another weekend trip—Guanajuato to visit Julia
Had to get out of these insane courses this weekend in order to go. On Wednesday last week, my boss tells me that there are courses all weekend that I have to attend. I say, “What?” She says, “Un curso diplomado.” I say, “What’s that?” She says, “Leading to licensure. They’re mandatory.” I say, “What? I already have plans. I was going to go to Guanajuato because my friend Julia needs help finding an apartment there, and her Spanish isn’t good.” (This isn’t true, of course. Julia already has a place to live, and her Spanish is fine.) My boss says, “Every teacher has to attend. I have a friend in Guanajuato who can help her find an apartment.”
I bite my lip and look unhappy. “It’s just that, I didn’t know we had to be here this weekend, and I don’t need this license, and am I even going to understand what’s going on?” She says, “Whether or not you understand, you have to be there.” I say, “And are they going to charge me, too?” because I knew that the other teachers were being charged a small fortune for these mandatory classes. “No,” she says. Sensing my irritation, she says, “I’ll call this afternoon and ask whether or not you have to go, and I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
The next day, Thursday, she tells me that I have to attend the courses. I am very unhappy, but by now a bit more resigned and less indignant. As a concession, however, she tells me that I don’t have to go Sunday and can have Monday off, since I didn’t know I’d have to be at school on the weekend. That would give me two days in Guanajuato. It was not what I was hoping for, but a better deal in any case.
She forgot, however, that we had an appointment on Monday morning with the publishers of the English books used at the school. This I remembered the next day and reminded her of it. She was glad I remembered and on the spot gave me Saturday off so I could be here Monday. I didn’t understand why I still had to go to the courses that afternoon if I was going to miss the other two days, but I didn’t try to get out of them completely, so as not to upset her more.
I was at school that day an hour earlier than usual, at her request, but in order to do absolutely nothing all morning long. The kids were taking an achievement test or something, and I didn’t have to give classes. I hung around doing nothing, wanting to go back to bed, wanting to just go to Guanajuato already. Finally around noon we were dismissed.
The courses began that afternoon at 4 and went until 9. They were about learning styles. I understood a bit of it, but every so often I would end up in the wrong group because I didn’t exactly understand the instructions. In one group, someone finally said to me, “Jeanne, you’re supposed to return to your original group now.” Oops. And in the first group we were supposed to come up with a definition of “learning.” In Spanish. I tried to get out of it, pleading handicap. But they still made me do it. So I wrote it in English and left them to try to translate it. And even though I wasn’t going to be in the classes the next day, I still had to do the homework, which was to write a letter to a partner telling him or her politely what they should change about him or herself. Worse, my partner ended up being the least likeable person in the entire school….
I couldn’t leave Friday night like I had wanted to, because there weren’t any buses for Leon after 7. So I sat around chatting online with Tricia, who is newly addicted to IM. That meant staying up late to finish packing and to write that stupid letter.
Saturday morning I got up early to turn in the letter and get on the bus. The classes were starting and the teachers were just arriving. My partner gave me my letter, too, standing at the file cabinet writing it quickly on hot pink paper while I waited. I stuck it in my purse and practically ran out of the school.
Getting to Guanajuato took longer than I expected, which always seems to be the case with the buses. We met and had lunch. Then we walked around, visited the market, which I had never been to, and eventually went to a “French” crepe café where we played loteria—like Mexican bingo—to practice our Spanish vocabulary. We drank bizarre beverages for a “French” café. Julia had asked for café con leche, which turned out to be hot milk with Nescafe (not that surprising), and I had asked for English breakfast tea with a little milk, which turned out to be a cup of hot milk in which I tried to steep my tea. We also had a crepe that was drowning in maple syrup, also rather strange. Well, what were we expecting? Real French coffee and crepes? There we met with one of Julia’s Spanish teachers, a woman finishing her studies at the university who was a little bit hyper. Then we went to Julia’s room, did our nails while chatting, and went out for dinner and salsa dancing.
The salsa dancing turned out to be a little disappointing, even though we should’ve known not to expect so much from salsa in Mexico. After all, salsa is from New York, and the salsa hot spots further south are Miami and Cuba. Hardly anyone knows how to salsa here, much to the surprise of foreign tourists and students who are lured by the offer of free salsa classes to go along with their TEFL or Spanish courses, leading them to believe that salsa is actually part of Mexican culture. Why don’t they give free banda or cumbia lessons? Or at least folk dances? But since there were at least two salsa places in Guanajuato, I thought that perhaps there would actually be a salsa scene there. In Arandas, for example, you only hear salsa in the Cuban bar, where nobody dances. And in Guadalajara, I only knew of one salsa place.
We got to the first salsa place and had lovely micheladas. We danced a little, but our partners were either jerking us around a lot or dancing cumbia or some terrible dance they invented. Julia and I tried to dance together, but neither of us knows how to lead, so we just ended up looking a bit silly. A couple of our partners wanted to sit down and talk to us. No, Julia said, we are talking girl stuff. (We came out to dance, not to talk to some boring guys who don’t know how to dance!)
The DJ started playing cha-cha. I had learned the basic cha-cha step in ballroom, so we tried it. As soon as we were on the dancefloor a couple of other jokers asked us to dance, but they didn’t know how to dance either. So we just kind of swayed back and forth while having boring conversations. We sat down first chance we could. The DJ kept playing cha-cha, and there were only two couples dancing, clearly from some advanced ballroom class, doing some fancy-assed routine that made me want to puke. So we chugged the last of our micheladas and went to the other salsa place.
There, the atmosphere was better. An older couple was dancing, and it is always nice to watch an older couple dancing salsa. Their movements are small and subtle, and they are usually cute and often very good dancers. But at this place a drunk guy sat himself down at our table and started talking to us. If there is a guy sitting at your table, good luck trying to get a dance partner. Julia was polite and talked to him. I ignored him rudely. At least the other guys asked if it would be OK to sit with us. I refuse to speak with someone who imposes himself so rudely upon us. And then his friend, more sober, came over and started talking to me. He wasn’t as annoying because he wasn’t drunk, but I was still irritated. It is good to practice Spanish, but it’s usually the same exact conversation over and over again. Where are you from? Oh, Arizona? I have a cousin in Phoenix! What are you doing here? How long have you been here? How long will you be here? It gets old after a while.
In order to get away, Julia and I danced together to some salsa, leaving these two guys at our table with our stuff, hoping they’d get the picture that we wanted to dance, not talk. We felt silly dancing together, but we hoped people who could actually dance would ask us to dance. We went to the bathroom together complaining about these guys who took over our table. When we came back, we didn’t want to return to our table, so we just sat down somewhere else. Another guy came over to talk to us. The DJ was playing son, which hardly any young person knows how to dance, and I am no exception. The new guy asked if we wanted to dance. I said, I don’t know how to dance son. He said, you can learn! I declined, but I assumed he knew how to dance it. The guys at our table finally left. Then a great cumbia song I love came on, and I decided to dance with this new guy. It turned out he didn’t know how to dance, either. It was awful. In the meantime, Julia got the only real dancer of our entire night, an older guy who knew what he was doing. After that we decided to give up and go home.
On the way home, a pack of three, then four, stray dogs walked ahead of us. They were oblivious to my talking to them, except that they kind of followed us (if you can be followed by someone or something ahead of you, that is). They seemed quite nice, actually, not mean at all. Hoping politely for something to eat, I’m sure. They kept walking ahead and looking back at us to make sure we were still behind them.
This reminds me of a dog I saw these past couple of days in my neighborhood, sitting on the street. It had a coat like chocolate-vanilla marble cake, and very piercing, sad eyes that were a little bit creepy. She looked like she may just have had puppies, because she may have been lactating. After school yesterday I gave her some food. I had some rice porridge leftover, and I mixed in some ham. When I watched her finish and walk away, I saw that she was limping, not using one of her rear legs. I thought to myself, if she is around my building a lot, I won’t be able to stand it. I’ll take her to the vet and keep her, even though I haven’t really got much space or money to do so. I imagined myself with a dog here, rather happy about it despite the inconvenience it would cause. But I haven’t seen her since. I still think about her occasionally.
Anyway, on Sunday, Julia’s homestay mother made us breakfast, even though Julia expressly told her not to. It was lovely, though, and she is such a nice little old lady. We had a great conversation with her. Then we left to go to Leon. I had to travel out of there anyway, so we decided to go there to go shoe-shopping, as Leon is purportedly the cheapest place for shoes and leather goods, and for the fair. We ended up in the shoe mall looking at a million shoes and getting hungry and tired. Finally we got the same pair of boots. We headed to the fair, which was packed with stalls selling all sorts of things, and LOTS of food. It was fun to see, but I felt like all we did most of the time was navigate around a lot of slow-moving people eating huge popsicles with chili sauce or something. The best was seeing the animals, but there aren’t as many animals on display in the fairs here as there are in the county and state fairs in the States. We walked back to the bus station, eating lovely gorditas de nata on the street.
My bus back to Arandas was packed full of fair-goers returning to their small towns, so much so that the aisle was smushed full and the bus driver couldn’t take on any more people. It only takes two and a half hours to get from Leon to Arandas by car, but it takes a lot longer on the bus because it stops at every freakin’ bus stop on the way. It stopped about five times through Leon and then at practically every corner through the smaller cities on the way—San Pancho, Purisima, Manuel Doblado—and at the highway stops outside the small towns as well.
Bus travel makes me not want to take so many weekend trips anymore, but Julia and I are planning to go to Guadalajara this coming weekend, so she can check it out….
Back at school yesterday, it was awkward seeing my letter-writing partner from the course. She is the director of the kindergarten classes, and she is disliked by most of the people who have worked with her closely. We hugged and kissed on the cheek, as is the usual greeting in Mexico, but then she said, “I got your letter, and I thought, what’s going on? I think we need to have a talk.” I had read her letter, which consisted of about three sentences saying how sweet I am.
For a while I thought I had misunderstood the instructions again. I had written to her, in as diplomatic a way as possible, that I thought she needed to consider other people’s feelings more in times of stress. What I meant was that she shouldn’t order people around like I’ve seen her do when she’s in a hurry. Of course she doesn’t order me around much, but she does order around the kindergarten teachers and the cook and cleaners and Rocio the secretary, and rather impatiently, too. But I was always on her good side. I taught her some yoga one time. I hardly ever have to deal with her. But now I am a little worried, perhaps I’ve gotten myself on her bad side. Oh well.
We had the meeting with the publishers, one of them their academic consultant. Finally an expert who could corroborate my opinion that the books are much too difficult! So she helped me with the materials, suggesting a plan of action for getting the kids caught up and promising to send the missing levels of books, and she helped the principal with a plan for future years. My boss said, “Now you have to stay for next year!” And I just smiled.
The academic consultant told me I should keep the kids in their grades, rather than giving classes by level, because I will always have new kids coming in who don’t know anything, and it causes a lot more trouble for the teachers. Now that we are going to get some different books, however, that is more of an option than before.
To tell the truth, I have been feeling so lazy that I hardly care as much as I used to what happens at the school. It isn’t that I don’t care anymore—I still do—but I realize that all my previous fervor just exhausts and frustrates me, and teaching at less than 100% passion can still get the job done. Also, I guess I am a little more peeved at the administration for doing silly things like requiring us to attend weekend classes, and I am beginning to feel like the school is not really worth all the trouble that I was putting myself through before.
But this is a bit of a rationalization. I still feel bad for not being as passionate as I was before. For example, instead of doing my lesson plans for today, last night I was sitting here composing most of this long and rambling blog entry, leaving the planning for the morning, before classes. And I feel guilty for that.
Plus I have been shouting at the students a lot. I don’t know if I have always shouted at them this much, but I get so tired of them not following basic instructions like “sit down.” If they want to ask me something they just get out of their seats and come right up to me to ask, instead of raising their hands in their seats like I always remind them to do. If they want to talk to someone they just get up and go over there to talk to them. If they are bored, which is mostly my fault, they play with things in or on their desks. I can’t seem to get them to all be seated at the same time, even less possible to have them all paying attention. I tell them over and over again, in both languages, to stay seated. And they don’t, so I get angry and shout. This seems to result in the desired effect, so I begin to feel less and less upset at myself for doing it. I think this must be very bad.
And maybe it’s because I haven’t been following through on my meditation and yoga practice much. Part of it is traveling, and I don’t have as much time to do it, or, more accurately, I don’t make the time to do it. Idleness seems to breed idleness, and I do less and less as time goes on. I find myself watching TV more, playing solitaire and minesweeper on my computer rather obsessively, chatting online all evening (although I don’t really see anything wrong with that last pastime). I did my laundry this afternoon despite being tired from school, so I allowed myself to do nothing constructive the rest of the day. I think it’s time I got back into a tighter routine; maybe I even have to make a schedule for myself and force myself to follow it, whether I want to or not. I think I am faltering a little, and I should catch myself before it gets any worse.
I bite my lip and look unhappy. “It’s just that, I didn’t know we had to be here this weekend, and I don’t need this license, and am I even going to understand what’s going on?” She says, “Whether or not you understand, you have to be there.” I say, “And are they going to charge me, too?” because I knew that the other teachers were being charged a small fortune for these mandatory classes. “No,” she says. Sensing my irritation, she says, “I’ll call this afternoon and ask whether or not you have to go, and I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
The next day, Thursday, she tells me that I have to attend the courses. I am very unhappy, but by now a bit more resigned and less indignant. As a concession, however, she tells me that I don’t have to go Sunday and can have Monday off, since I didn’t know I’d have to be at school on the weekend. That would give me two days in Guanajuato. It was not what I was hoping for, but a better deal in any case.
She forgot, however, that we had an appointment on Monday morning with the publishers of the English books used at the school. This I remembered the next day and reminded her of it. She was glad I remembered and on the spot gave me Saturday off so I could be here Monday. I didn’t understand why I still had to go to the courses that afternoon if I was going to miss the other two days, but I didn’t try to get out of them completely, so as not to upset her more.
I was at school that day an hour earlier than usual, at her request, but in order to do absolutely nothing all morning long. The kids were taking an achievement test or something, and I didn’t have to give classes. I hung around doing nothing, wanting to go back to bed, wanting to just go to Guanajuato already. Finally around noon we were dismissed.
The courses began that afternoon at 4 and went until 9. They were about learning styles. I understood a bit of it, but every so often I would end up in the wrong group because I didn’t exactly understand the instructions. In one group, someone finally said to me, “Jeanne, you’re supposed to return to your original group now.” Oops. And in the first group we were supposed to come up with a definition of “learning.” In Spanish. I tried to get out of it, pleading handicap. But they still made me do it. So I wrote it in English and left them to try to translate it. And even though I wasn’t going to be in the classes the next day, I still had to do the homework, which was to write a letter to a partner telling him or her politely what they should change about him or herself. Worse, my partner ended up being the least likeable person in the entire school….
I couldn’t leave Friday night like I had wanted to, because there weren’t any buses for Leon after 7. So I sat around chatting online with Tricia, who is newly addicted to IM. That meant staying up late to finish packing and to write that stupid letter.
Saturday morning I got up early to turn in the letter and get on the bus. The classes were starting and the teachers were just arriving. My partner gave me my letter, too, standing at the file cabinet writing it quickly on hot pink paper while I waited. I stuck it in my purse and practically ran out of the school.
Getting to Guanajuato took longer than I expected, which always seems to be the case with the buses. We met and had lunch. Then we walked around, visited the market, which I had never been to, and eventually went to a “French” crepe café where we played loteria—like Mexican bingo—to practice our Spanish vocabulary. We drank bizarre beverages for a “French” café. Julia had asked for café con leche, which turned out to be hot milk with Nescafe (not that surprising), and I had asked for English breakfast tea with a little milk, which turned out to be a cup of hot milk in which I tried to steep my tea. We also had a crepe that was drowning in maple syrup, also rather strange. Well, what were we expecting? Real French coffee and crepes? There we met with one of Julia’s Spanish teachers, a woman finishing her studies at the university who was a little bit hyper. Then we went to Julia’s room, did our nails while chatting, and went out for dinner and salsa dancing.
The salsa dancing turned out to be a little disappointing, even though we should’ve known not to expect so much from salsa in Mexico. After all, salsa is from New York, and the salsa hot spots further south are Miami and Cuba. Hardly anyone knows how to salsa here, much to the surprise of foreign tourists and students who are lured by the offer of free salsa classes to go along with their TEFL or Spanish courses, leading them to believe that salsa is actually part of Mexican culture. Why don’t they give free banda or cumbia lessons? Or at least folk dances? But since there were at least two salsa places in Guanajuato, I thought that perhaps there would actually be a salsa scene there. In Arandas, for example, you only hear salsa in the Cuban bar, where nobody dances. And in Guadalajara, I only knew of one salsa place.
We got to the first salsa place and had lovely micheladas. We danced a little, but our partners were either jerking us around a lot or dancing cumbia or some terrible dance they invented. Julia and I tried to dance together, but neither of us knows how to lead, so we just ended up looking a bit silly. A couple of our partners wanted to sit down and talk to us. No, Julia said, we are talking girl stuff. (We came out to dance, not to talk to some boring guys who don’t know how to dance!)
The DJ started playing cha-cha. I had learned the basic cha-cha step in ballroom, so we tried it. As soon as we were on the dancefloor a couple of other jokers asked us to dance, but they didn’t know how to dance either. So we just kind of swayed back and forth while having boring conversations. We sat down first chance we could. The DJ kept playing cha-cha, and there were only two couples dancing, clearly from some advanced ballroom class, doing some fancy-assed routine that made me want to puke. So we chugged the last of our micheladas and went to the other salsa place.
There, the atmosphere was better. An older couple was dancing, and it is always nice to watch an older couple dancing salsa. Their movements are small and subtle, and they are usually cute and often very good dancers. But at this place a drunk guy sat himself down at our table and started talking to us. If there is a guy sitting at your table, good luck trying to get a dance partner. Julia was polite and talked to him. I ignored him rudely. At least the other guys asked if it would be OK to sit with us. I refuse to speak with someone who imposes himself so rudely upon us. And then his friend, more sober, came over and started talking to me. He wasn’t as annoying because he wasn’t drunk, but I was still irritated. It is good to practice Spanish, but it’s usually the same exact conversation over and over again. Where are you from? Oh, Arizona? I have a cousin in Phoenix! What are you doing here? How long have you been here? How long will you be here? It gets old after a while.
In order to get away, Julia and I danced together to some salsa, leaving these two guys at our table with our stuff, hoping they’d get the picture that we wanted to dance, not talk. We felt silly dancing together, but we hoped people who could actually dance would ask us to dance. We went to the bathroom together complaining about these guys who took over our table. When we came back, we didn’t want to return to our table, so we just sat down somewhere else. Another guy came over to talk to us. The DJ was playing son, which hardly any young person knows how to dance, and I am no exception. The new guy asked if we wanted to dance. I said, I don’t know how to dance son. He said, you can learn! I declined, but I assumed he knew how to dance it. The guys at our table finally left. Then a great cumbia song I love came on, and I decided to dance with this new guy. It turned out he didn’t know how to dance, either. It was awful. In the meantime, Julia got the only real dancer of our entire night, an older guy who knew what he was doing. After that we decided to give up and go home.
On the way home, a pack of three, then four, stray dogs walked ahead of us. They were oblivious to my talking to them, except that they kind of followed us (if you can be followed by someone or something ahead of you, that is). They seemed quite nice, actually, not mean at all. Hoping politely for something to eat, I’m sure. They kept walking ahead and looking back at us to make sure we were still behind them.
This reminds me of a dog I saw these past couple of days in my neighborhood, sitting on the street. It had a coat like chocolate-vanilla marble cake, and very piercing, sad eyes that were a little bit creepy. She looked like she may just have had puppies, because she may have been lactating. After school yesterday I gave her some food. I had some rice porridge leftover, and I mixed in some ham. When I watched her finish and walk away, I saw that she was limping, not using one of her rear legs. I thought to myself, if she is around my building a lot, I won’t be able to stand it. I’ll take her to the vet and keep her, even though I haven’t really got much space or money to do so. I imagined myself with a dog here, rather happy about it despite the inconvenience it would cause. But I haven’t seen her since. I still think about her occasionally.
Anyway, on Sunday, Julia’s homestay mother made us breakfast, even though Julia expressly told her not to. It was lovely, though, and she is such a nice little old lady. We had a great conversation with her. Then we left to go to Leon. I had to travel out of there anyway, so we decided to go there to go shoe-shopping, as Leon is purportedly the cheapest place for shoes and leather goods, and for the fair. We ended up in the shoe mall looking at a million shoes and getting hungry and tired. Finally we got the same pair of boots. We headed to the fair, which was packed with stalls selling all sorts of things, and LOTS of food. It was fun to see, but I felt like all we did most of the time was navigate around a lot of slow-moving people eating huge popsicles with chili sauce or something. The best was seeing the animals, but there aren’t as many animals on display in the fairs here as there are in the county and state fairs in the States. We walked back to the bus station, eating lovely gorditas de nata on the street.
My bus back to Arandas was packed full of fair-goers returning to their small towns, so much so that the aisle was smushed full and the bus driver couldn’t take on any more people. It only takes two and a half hours to get from Leon to Arandas by car, but it takes a lot longer on the bus because it stops at every freakin’ bus stop on the way. It stopped about five times through Leon and then at practically every corner through the smaller cities on the way—San Pancho, Purisima, Manuel Doblado—and at the highway stops outside the small towns as well.
Bus travel makes me not want to take so many weekend trips anymore, but Julia and I are planning to go to Guadalajara this coming weekend, so she can check it out….
Back at school yesterday, it was awkward seeing my letter-writing partner from the course. She is the director of the kindergarten classes, and she is disliked by most of the people who have worked with her closely. We hugged and kissed on the cheek, as is the usual greeting in Mexico, but then she said, “I got your letter, and I thought, what’s going on? I think we need to have a talk.” I had read her letter, which consisted of about three sentences saying how sweet I am.
For a while I thought I had misunderstood the instructions again. I had written to her, in as diplomatic a way as possible, that I thought she needed to consider other people’s feelings more in times of stress. What I meant was that she shouldn’t order people around like I’ve seen her do when she’s in a hurry. Of course she doesn’t order me around much, but she does order around the kindergarten teachers and the cook and cleaners and Rocio the secretary, and rather impatiently, too. But I was always on her good side. I taught her some yoga one time. I hardly ever have to deal with her. But now I am a little worried, perhaps I’ve gotten myself on her bad side. Oh well.
We had the meeting with the publishers, one of them their academic consultant. Finally an expert who could corroborate my opinion that the books are much too difficult! So she helped me with the materials, suggesting a plan of action for getting the kids caught up and promising to send the missing levels of books, and she helped the principal with a plan for future years. My boss said, “Now you have to stay for next year!” And I just smiled.
The academic consultant told me I should keep the kids in their grades, rather than giving classes by level, because I will always have new kids coming in who don’t know anything, and it causes a lot more trouble for the teachers. Now that we are going to get some different books, however, that is more of an option than before.
To tell the truth, I have been feeling so lazy that I hardly care as much as I used to what happens at the school. It isn’t that I don’t care anymore—I still do—but I realize that all my previous fervor just exhausts and frustrates me, and teaching at less than 100% passion can still get the job done. Also, I guess I am a little more peeved at the administration for doing silly things like requiring us to attend weekend classes, and I am beginning to feel like the school is not really worth all the trouble that I was putting myself through before.
But this is a bit of a rationalization. I still feel bad for not being as passionate as I was before. For example, instead of doing my lesson plans for today, last night I was sitting here composing most of this long and rambling blog entry, leaving the planning for the morning, before classes. And I feel guilty for that.
Plus I have been shouting at the students a lot. I don’t know if I have always shouted at them this much, but I get so tired of them not following basic instructions like “sit down.” If they want to ask me something they just get out of their seats and come right up to me to ask, instead of raising their hands in their seats like I always remind them to do. If they want to talk to someone they just get up and go over there to talk to them. If they are bored, which is mostly my fault, they play with things in or on their desks. I can’t seem to get them to all be seated at the same time, even less possible to have them all paying attention. I tell them over and over again, in both languages, to stay seated. And they don’t, so I get angry and shout. This seems to result in the desired effect, so I begin to feel less and less upset at myself for doing it. I think this must be very bad.
And maybe it’s because I haven’t been following through on my meditation and yoga practice much. Part of it is traveling, and I don’t have as much time to do it, or, more accurately, I don’t make the time to do it. Idleness seems to breed idleness, and I do less and less as time goes on. I find myself watching TV more, playing solitaire and minesweeper on my computer rather obsessively, chatting online all evening (although I don’t really see anything wrong with that last pastime). I did my laundry this afternoon despite being tired from school, so I allowed myself to do nothing constructive the rest of the day. I think it’s time I got back into a tighter routine; maybe I even have to make a schedule for myself and force myself to follow it, whether I want to or not. I think I am faltering a little, and I should catch myself before it gets any worse.
