Lucha belated (thank the lords for TV)

Those of you who follow the Lucha schedule must have been shocked to learn that we were out of town on January 19.

It was a difficult decision, particularly after a guy that works in the parking lot on the way to Mikko’s school - yelled after us one day, “Are you going to Lucha on Saturday?” He must have recognized us from a past match. (This is also an indicator of my Spanish - I am so used to tuning voices on the street out - but the words drifted into my head and I turned around and saw he was talking to us.)

I think I offended him when I said there were no stars fighting - he let me know it was all stars - but also that it was a particularly big one that would be televised soon after.

Last week he let me know the time and station and we went over to some friends’ house to watch it yesterday.

Saw some cute dog action on the way.

And I have to say… Lucha just doesn’t translate on TV. Maybe it was the venue and being for TV but it was just brutal and violent. There was a lot less comedy, and less acrobatics and less love. Maybe it was this particular match, but Mikko and I agreed that if this match had been our first experience with Lucha, we wouldn’t have tried again.

The highlights were the minis - we liked Octagoncito. (Not pictured)

And a new element: Lucha drag queens - of sorts.

This is Yuriko, she was quite a brutal rudo who ended up using a big metal pan on her opponents.

Pimpanela and Casandro were quite the acrobats, they were also the victims of the afore mentioned metal pans, later on. So uncool.
I’m glad we saw it. And I’m really glad we didn’t stay in town for the match. And I still look forward to the next more low key match that comes to town.

Some more cute dog action on the way home.

Spanish

Some have asked and I imagine others have wondered - how my Spanish is these days. Etsá bien, gracias.

Actually I’m feeling pretty good about it. I can figure out how to say pretty much anything I need to. Not always correctly but I can get my point across. I still have a hard time understanding a lot. If I have the context I do OK, but there are just so many ding-danged words out there that I still don’t know. Also, I am so used to tuning everything out - lately I have been trying to work harder at eavesdropping every chance I get.

While on our trip to Morelia I got into three in-depth conversations - one with a college student on the bus, one with the woman at the hostel about public schools, and one with a retired doctor who I said “Buenos Dias” to as we passed eachother in the street and then found he was walking with me and we chatted about a lot of different things for the next half hour. Each of them told me I speak Spanish well - which always makes me think it is more of a commentary on how badly most Estadounidenses (people from the US,) speak. But I took the compliments to heart and it makes me want to get that much better.

Academia Falcon was great. They are a week by week language school. I took a lot of grammar, conversation, culture and literature. In the ten weeks I was there I went from the end of the beginners book to the middle of the advanced book. What that means though, is that I was exposed to and was taught a lot of grammar. I didn’t really have a chance to practice and internalize a new form, before another one was taught to me. But I got a lot out of it and for those ten weeks, I was basically only speaking Spanish from 9-2 each day.

In some ways Spanish seems so easy, because there are so many cognates and the basic structure is fairly easy to catch on to. But then when you get to a certain point you find out how stinken’ hard it actually is. Where we basically just have past, present and future with some compound structures to make conditional or continuous etc. - Spanish has two pasts, present, two futures, conditional, two subjunctives and a bunch of compound structures. (This is all off the top of my head so some grammar geeks, may feel compelled to correct me - but my point is, Spanish is way more complicated that it looks at first sight.)

When my time at Falcon ended I was really worried I would lose a lot of what I had gained because I don’t really have a network of Spanish speaking friends here, at this point. And we have had family visiting for 6 weeks straight who I, obviously, speak only English to.

My saving grace has been (and I highly recommend this to anyone who is trying to learn a language, but can’t get themselves immersed,) that I have a pen-pal with whom I have an email exchange in Spanish almost every day.

He is a fellow who I had some classes with (so we are at the same level,) and who had the same concerns about losing the Spanish he had worked so hard to learn when he returned to the US. So we exchanged email addresses and began our “penpalismo”.

Sometimes it is just rambling. sometimes it is exchanging real information and actually getting to know eachother - but it is generally lot of great practice with all this crazy grammar that we got shoved down our throats at Falcon. I have actually been impressed with us - that we have kept it up and not switched to English when we get to a particularly interesting topic - (that is always what I do when trying to speak Spanish to other English speakers.) OK - a couple of times we have had to use English, just to clarify things - but rarely, and we always go right back to Spanish.

I find that writing in Spanish helps me think in Spanish - plus I have the time to look up words or grammar structures I don’t know or have forgotten and become more familiar with them. When I am speaking, I worry so much about taking up too much of people’s time trying to speak correctly, that I get a little panicky and just try any words that I think might work- kind of like charades.

I also hang out with Maria, who cleans our house on Tuesdays, and chat with her for as long as she can stand me. I am enjoying getting to know her.

Soon I will be going into schools for my study leave project and conducting interviews with teachers, kids and parents. A lot of that will be happening in Spanish - so that will be excellent for me - on many levels - (I really miss being in schools, not having a job, just being in schools.)

I’m also planning to call Patricia, (the lady from the callejon) this week and invite her out for coffee.

That’s my story -

Patzcuaro is nice too

On Sunday morning we took off for a day in Patzcuaro, a smaller town about an hour away from Morelia by bus. To get to the bus station we took a combi. They are VW buses that have particular routes and are a mainstay of public transportation in many Mexican cities.

Patzcuaro is a beautiful little town, on a huge lake.

There was huge market to wander through.

Beautiful winding streets.

and big green trees

We ate some corundas, which are little triangular tamale-like things, with no filling but delicious sauce, outside of a church that had a market set up outside. There were a number of stands selling saints and this particular virgin who, they discovered had healing powers. Other stands sold herbs and roots and such for their healing powers. I’m not sure where the lewd coffee cups fit into the whole thing. (But Shawn, we thought of you.)

We are planning to go back and spend more time there with Dad and Laurie, who lived there for about a year, a number of years back.

I Heart Morelia

We just took a quick 3 day trip to Michoacan. 3 nights in Morelia, with one day wandering the streets of Patzcuaro.

Michoacan is the state just to the south of Guanajuato state. The countryside is much greener than Guanajuato, which has its own high, dry beauty. Michoacan is as high as Guanajuato, I believe, but instead of being dry and craggy Michoacan is green and rolling. It feels lush and volcanic.

Morelia is the capital of Michoacan and the city we came very close to moving to, before we decided on Guanajuato.

It is quite big, with a population of over 600,000. I just love it there and cannot put my finger on exactly why. It feels quite urban, which I like, but it also has too much traffic and terrible fumes. Not everyone says buenos dias on the street like they do here in Guanajuato, but every interaction I had there felt really genuine. And the city just feels good to me.

This is a gazpacho. It is one of the most delicious things in the world. It is chopped up fruit - pineapple, papaya, mango, jicama, cucumber with orange juice, lime juice, chili and cheese! Oh my god it’s good. It is a specialty of Michaocan.

There is also a fair amount of green. The city sits in a bowl surrounded by green rolling mountains. (Where Guanjauto sits in a deep basin, Morelia sits in something more like a pasta bowl. ) So at the end of every vista you see green. There are also quite afew parks and tree lined boulevards with huge old trees growing.

We arrived Friday night and wandered the streets.

It was a beautiful night.

The next morning we found a market to have breakfast in.

The whole upstairs was lined with little one room restaurants. I love the way they look like dollhouse kitchens.

We found the one that had the most breakfasty menu - despite that, I had meatballs.

We spent the day roaming the streets and markets. Some of Mikko’s photography:

We loved those walk signals! The running figure is actually quite accurate because the traffic could be a little crazy and unpredictable.

They have cute dogs on roofs there too.

That night we went out for Matthew’s birthday dinner. There is a place that we love called Augustine’s that is a block-long arcade, with arches and columns and lined with separate little restaurants. (Much like the upstairs of the market.) Each one serves almost the exact same thing and has a TV going, often on the same channel. I find the whole choosing process extremely difficult. I’m so stinken’ codependent, I don’t want to hurt anyones feelings… I think I will do a separate post about difficult choices later.

This is Augustines from across the street:

Anyhoo - as we walked up, a number of different women form different restaurants started telling us to come in. We chose the first one we came to. We had brought our own wine and champaign, and had really good, chicken, sopes, pozole - yum.

These are the ladies that served and cooked our food.

Mikko always has a book with him to protect him from boring grownup conversations.

After dinner we wandered into el Centro, where there is a beautiful cathedral that gets lit up every Saturday with fireworks:

It turns out it was a fine year for me to be stuck in the cardiac recovery unit on the 4th of July. We have seen so many fireworks since we have been here.

We saw some pretty balloons too:

There is a street where all the Mariachi guys hang out, hoping to get hired. It is a few blocks off the zocolo. In Guanajuato and San Miguel they all hang out in the zocolo. We were wondering if there is an ordinance in Morelia or something.

They need their bad coffee from the Oxxo too.

Más perros y otra fauna

We have a new neighbor.

The Rags.

The whole gang from the balcony.

Praying mantis and the boy, just up the callejon.

Down the callejon from our house.

cuteness

Mummy museum and other touristy stuff

When Shane and Denise were here, we finally did some of the touristy things one is supposed to do while in Guanajuato - not the least of which is THE MUMMY MUSEUM.

I went fully expecting to be entranced and fascinated on some level. I thought maybe I would find some insight into the Mexican perspective on death, see some mystical beauty with deep indigenous roots, that would inspire me to delve deeper and possibly connect to my enchantment with Lucha Libre. But no - it was just a strangely sterile crypt with a bunch of dried up dead bodies lining the walls in glass cases, some with clothes, some without.

Many of them had little stories, on plaques written in first person, of how or when they were exhumed.

It definitely built a good case for cremation.

And is a perfect place to set up tourist stands.

There was also the Salon de Muerto. It was a long, narrow, stone room with glassed in cases built into the walls, containing death stuff - bones, shackles, torture devices… The best part was that they played a version of REM’s “Losing My Religion” sung by Monks. And there was a cool hologram.

A few days later we went to Valenciana, which is a little town just next to Guanajuato, with a lovely church and an ex Hacienda with a basement full of torture devices that you can take a tour of.

Our guide was a girl of about 13, with braces, tennis shoes and a monks robe. She took the group through stopping at each torture device and reciting how it was used.

It was surprisingly similar to the mummy museum, but they had a far superior hologram collection.

We walked up the road to the church after that and looked around. Crazy ornate gold stuff, everywhere. There was also a little room dedicated to Jesus.

Poor Jesus.

Right before Shane and Denise left we went to the Diego Rivera Museum (he was born here.) There were some beautiful paintings and interesting information about his life. No holograms though - we considered asking for our money back.

Guest Post: Cabalgata Cubilete 2008

Our landlady, Anna Troutner, is from the US and is a horse lady. She has a partnership with a family here who have a ranch. She has her horse out there with theirs and gives riding lessons and is very close with everyone in the family.

She had been telling me about this amazing event coming up - and afterwards sent me pictures and the story she wrote about it. It is all so amazing, I wish I could have gone. Maybe some day.

Here’s a picture she just sent of me on Dulcenea, on Xmas day. This way it looks like I was there - but I wasn’t.

These are Anna’s pictures and Anna’s story.

CABALGATA CUBILETE 2008
We have returned from our big ride. WOW! January 5th, we drove to Rodeo, about 15 miles from Guanajuato (Mexico), and saddled ElPinto and Atajo, our horses, before dawn. Then as the sun rose, we heard thousands of horse hooves clopping on the pavement. We could see the highway at a great distance, with the police escort coming from Sauceda,, followed by all those riders. We mounted and our horses were excited. We joined in at the end of the group. I rode quietly and was quite content thinking about what we were about to achieve.

We rode to a designated meeting point off the highway in the campo, where more horses were waiting to join the cabalgata. Women had trays of hot coffee in styrofoam cups and two steaming tamales in plastic bags handed up for our breakfast. All these riders stayed on their horses and ate, drank and listened to the bullhorn. Someone explained how we would ride through the communities, until we met with a police escort on the highway, again. And how we really needed to stay together in twos, and be considerate of each other and the other horses to stay safe. Then all these riders threw down their plastic bags and cups and walked their horses on out, pairing up with their friends and family groups. We rode with Bernardo and a dozen others.

I saw all men, mostly campo types, whose horses were for working, not leisure. The purpose of the tack was understood, although the martingale could be made of a fairly strong plastic string, tied to the halter that could be made of hand woven agave fiber, tied to the breast collar or cinch that could be made from a woven plastic bag.
We rode and rode and rode. We followed in the rear of thousands of horses, mostly lined up in pairs. Annie, my friend visiting for the holidays, and I threw wrapped candies from our saddlebags, to the myriads of children waiting with their mothers along the trails and rural roads. We signified the three King’s traveling to the savior, Christ the King (Cristo Rey), bringing gifts for tomorrow’s Epiphany. Mass was held in a couple of specific chapels along the way, which rested the horses. The final mass was at Cristo Rey, on the mountaintop. It is also called Cubilete, and is considered the geographic center of Mexico and a popular pilgrimage destination.

We came to the first watering trough at the base of the mountain, with all the horses pushing and crowding, to suck up the water. There was a line of thousands of horses leaving and arriving. We began the accent, on the treacherous cobble stone road. These horses have come a long way. Some were from Salamanca, Joventino Rosas, Dolores Hidalgo and San Miguel de Allende.

They camped last night in Sauceda, and began riding this morning, to camp on the mountaintop for the Epiphany. A few riders were from the United States, and Annie was from Croatia.
We continued up the long cobble stone road of seemingly endless switchbacks to the top. As the horses neared, the chapel bells gonged, announcing our arrival. It was now late in the afternoon. We turned away from those riding to mass, and set up our camp, while listening to mass projected from the distance. We got the horses unsaddled, situated and fed alfalfa. Then we made a fire and heated the pozole, tamales and ponche that the women, Lidia and Chuya, brought in the truck, along with the camping gear. We set up our bedding on level ground, near our horses tied to the few opportune places. We ate by the fire and sat under the stars and looked at the 75 foot Jesus statue, right in front of us, lit against the night sky. The King’s had arrived.

Ann Troutner

National Geographic article about last year’s ride:

Our Epic Walk

The other day Denise and Shane and I decided to walk up to the top of the Bufa. So, if you look to the right of this picture, there is a big “gloppy rock” (as we call it,) on the skyline. That is La Bufa. I just looked that word up in the dictionary and it means, comical or farce, but bufar, means to puff or snort so… you figure it out.

Anyway we just thought we would wander up there and see how far we could go. As it turned out we walked all the way to the lighthouse, which if you follow the skyline to the left and then follow that last clear hill down below the skyline, you can see a little bit of white, that is the lighthouse. So basically, we walked the majority of the skyline that we see looking straight out from our balcony.

This is down the road from Mikko’s school and a part of the Bufa that we can’t see from our house.

We found a road that kind of hems the mid section of the Bufa. And the cows like it there.

Of course there is a shrine up there.

As you can see the cows do their fair share of worshipping.

This is out on a point looking back.

I was too busy climbing up, to take pictures, but this is from the top of where we scrambled up. There was only one short spot where my fear of heights combined with the knowledge that I could quickly bleed to death, (with my new thin blood,) if I did fall, made me pretty queezy. The rest of the way was cake. Can you tell that there is a little stairway at the bottom? There is. And I believe the farthest spot of the trail that you can see in the shadow is where the last picture is taken from.

This is from the top of the Bufa that we can see from our house.

This is looking the opposite direction.

After walking and walking, we came upon this little oasis. Shane is patiently waiting for the frogs that we surprised to reemerge. Denise is excited about some cool bacteria she found.

For those of you that know Guanajuato, we are now above the Presa de Olla. That is the Panoramica on its left.

And we made it to the lighthouse,

once we made it past the huge crack.

Some of you may wonder, why is there a light house on the side of a hill in the center of Mexico? So do I. Shane conjectured that it might have been built as a surveyor’s point because of all the mining around. If anyone knows, leave a comment and enlighten us all.

We could actually see our house. I called Matthew with my cell and he waved a bright blanket from the balcony and we could see it. He couldn’t see us though - we forgot to bring a bright blanket.

And that was Our Epic Walk. We came down from the lighthouse (which was a little iffy at points,) and basically walked straight into a restaurant, 6 hours after we started our journey with a couple of bottles of water and a pack of peanuts. ¡Que bueno!

shortcut

I don’t even have to post about my walk yesterday because Lise already has. And a lovely job of it too.

Mikko with the camera on a lazy Saturday morning

Mikko likes to call this short film: Out and In

(This picture makes me wonder if there is a homosexual subtext that makes me love lucha so very much. [Linea's comment, not Mikko's.])