My second to the last day in Guanajuato

Because the car buying trip took so long, we have put off our departure one day, that still only gives me two days back instead of three, to get everything packed up and do some reflective wandering, preparing to say goodbye. Yesterday turned out to be a lovely day of doing both of those things.

It was Mikko’s last day of school and his class has been rehearsing for a play that the class will perform on Saturday. Matthew and I came up to see a rehearsal, so that Mikko could have the experience of performing it. He was the rain and he did an excellent job, which I wasn’t able to capture here.

After the play I needed to go get my blood drawn for the last time here, so I walked down our callejon into town.

I had a gordita and fresh squeezed orange juice from the first gordita ladies we ever went to - oh so long ago. Delish.

I bought some flowers around the corner at the Baratillo, for the lady who draws my blood.

After my blood draw and saying goodbye to the señora, I headed down to the market to buy some blankets to protect the car seats. There was a march/demonstration going on which always warms my heart. I believe the issue was living wages. There was sign that said something about $50 is not enough. I asked the women $50 for what, and she said monthly.

Then I bought a mix of fruit with chili and lime - and ate it.

I took the funicular home, because I had forgotten my camera earlier and had already gone up the stairs once, plus I wanted to buy some things at the tourist stands at the top, but they were all closed.

I came home and packed a bunch and puttered and at 2:00 Matthew and I went back up to Mikko’s school for a celebration of San Juan. There was a story and a circle dance…

and jumping over the fire. leaping into the future and leaving the bad stuff behind.

We came home and chilled and packed some more - I found another dog on a rooftop.

There was an excellent rain storm - that let up, just when we were getting hungry and deciding to go eat.

It rains so hard and so fast that all the garbage gets washed to the bottom of the callejon.

We had dinner in a fancyish restaurant on the Jardin - I swear this is candid.

Matthew took off for a pulque date and Mikko and I wandered around town doing some errands. The light was beautiful. Here are some of the things that we saw.

All in all a pretty nice second to that last day. Today is packing and cleaning and hopefully having some wine with a friend. Some kids in the neighborhood have signed on to help us carry stuff up the hill to the car early early in the morning.

This has been an amazing, life changing experience. I have met wonderful people and gotten to experience a wonderful way of life. I met my goal of being comfortable talking on the phone in Spanish- or at least not absolutely terrified of it. I believe too that I will be able to work with students and parents coming from Mexico with a much fuller understanding of where they are coming from - and that can only make things better. It is hard saying goodbye to everyone - and everyone asks immediately, “So when will you return?” All we can say is some day.

We are unhooking the internet in a few hours to return the equipment. Thanks to all of you have left comments and to everyone who looks at my blog and makes those blogstats rise. It is nice to know that I am sharing this experience with so many people.

I’m hoping to post some from the road - but who knows if I actually will get it together.

On to Patz

Our plan was to take a bus from Barra de Navidad, Jalisco to Patzcuaro, Michoacan. We found there wasn’t one so we were just going to go to Manzanilla and hop on a bus to Patz. Then just to Colima, the just to Zomora, 11 hours later we spent the night in Uruapan, and got a bus to Patz. the next day. It was actually really fun, we had a lovely day of changing landscapes and different flavored cities.

Here is a video of our day in a nutshell, there were actually a few city buses and cabs too. Hopefully you can get a sense of the change in climate and landscape.

Before heading to Patz, we spent the morning wandering around Uruapan’s beautiful Parque Nacional. Our hotel was very near the entrance. The Park was a public works type project in the 1920s and is a maze of paths through a semi tropical forests and waterfalls, rivers and fountains. It was glorious to be immersed in the green greeness of it all and the sound of rushing water.

We went straight from there to the bus station, so we saw very little of the city. It had a very good feel though, and I am looking forward to going back. I will be spending some days there soon, talking to teachers and observing in schools.

The trip to Patz took about 2 hours because we took a local. A direct would have only been 1 hour. We road through many small towns, picking up people anywhere along the way.

Michoacan has very strong, visible indigenous roots. It is also one of the more progressive states in Mexico, so you see more people reading the La Jornada the lefty newspaper, more posters about current issues, there are generally more strikes and protests going on than in Guanajuato, the most conservative state in Mexico. People seem to have more hope and assurance that their actions make a difference.

We met up with some old friends of D and L’s at the library. (They lived here for about a year, 14 years ago.) Everyone was so happy to see eachother and meet Mikko, Matthew and me.

The library from outside.

This is the inside of the library - I thought I had pictures of the friends, but that must have been someone else.

This is the Plaza Chica, from the library - our hotel was over on the right.
One fellow was a teacher, so I interviewed him and the next day went to his class to speak English to his students. He teaches English in a public secondary school (like middle school.) The kids wee very sweet and asked me lots of cute questions: Do you like meat? How do you spell your mother’s name? What is your email?

I had to pretend I didn’t speak any Spanish, which was hard because I like to speak Spanish, and feel kind of proud that I can. In fact the interview was great and meeting all of D and L’s friends. We had spoken so little Spanish for the past few days that I had that fear of losing it - but then I found that I could just slip right into it again, which is so reassuring and makes me feel that I have achieved a certain level. Still so far to go though - poco a poco.

Being in the school was a wonderful experience and got me excited about the observations I will be doing after spring break.

I went to the hospital that day too. My stupid ol’ tendonitis came back, (I got it for the first time about three weeks ago.) I had to go to a doctor, because there is only one kind of antiinflamitory I can take because of being on the blood thinner - such a hassle. But the doctor was very thorough and not only gave me the prescription but gave me exercises to do, unlike the doctor in Guanajuato. I thought it was cheep going to him - 200 pesos ($20) but the doctor in Patz was only 80 pesos ($8)!!

The hospital is the door on the right.

We took some lovely walks, did some shopping, some visiting and just lollygagging and then were off to Morelia for our last two days.

Mikko with the mom of a friend that we visited.

In the combi on our way to the bus to Morelia.

19 hours in Salamanca

Some of you may know that part of my goal of being in Mexico is to learn about the school systems here and the lives of teachers and students involved in those systems. Making contacts has proved to be a bit of a challenge but things are finally taking off and I have done a number of interviews with parents, teachers and students.

A fellow I worked with in Portland got me in touch with his cousin who is a first year English teacher at the University of Guanajuato. She has been a wonderful help, introducing me to professors, taking me to libraries, and this weekend she took me home to Salamanca to meet her parents who are both public school teachers in rural schools around Salamanca. Not only was it great to make the contacts for my project, it was wonderful to get to spend some time with a truly lovely family.

This picture is taken from the bus. You can’t see it well from the haze, but in the distance there are a mix of refinery and church towers, mostly refinery.

Salamanca is a smallish, very industrial city in the valley just south of Guanajuato City in the state of Guanajuato. Salamanca started as a small agricultural community in the 1600s and stayed small until a refinery, now PEMEX, moved there in the 1950s. Since then the city grew rapidly without a plan and with very little focus on quality of life. PEMEX and a thermal electric plant are the main industries and employers there now. Jessica told me that respiratory problems are very common and also asked me to let her know if I got dizzy or nauseated as many first time visitors do. I didn’t, but my eyes did sting. I heard that birds have been known to fall dead from the sky - the pollution gets so bad.

On the outskirts of town there are acres and acres of these huge complexes of tiny apartment houses.

Jessica’s family lives in one of the older neighborhoods, which she says is also known as a poor and dangerous neighborhood. She has lived there her whole life and has never had a problem with crime. This is right outside her door.

And a main street, a few blocks away.

Inside their garden - it is so sweet and cozy.

We went to the market, early Sunday morning. So early that it was just opening up.

When we got home everyone gathered in the kitchen for their traditional Sunday of cooking a big breakfast, and then cooking for the week. (Two sisters aren’t shown.) I got to slice nopales just like the ladies in the market do - and learned the word for slimy, boboso. I also learned that for better flavor you should make salsa with a mortar and pestal - with the tomatoes on the stovetop there are chilies roasting. They are all for the salsa.

After breakfast I finished my interviews. They are both very enthusiastic, creative teachers who have huge hearts and love for their student and both have been teaching for over 25 years! I am planning to go back soon and spend a day with one of them in school.

It was also excellent to get to speak so much Spanish, with a mix of English and support from Jessica.

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 -

Lucha lucha and more lucha

Our friend Sandro just sent us some pictures that he took with some friends. I find them particularly beautiful.

Tonight is the night 12 of us will be going to see our second lucha match in GTO! At this point I am just counting down the minutes.

A number of people have commented or emailed me with their puzzlement at my enchantment and enthusiasm for this sport/art/spectacle. Particularly when looking at these pictures, I am equally puzzled at anyone’s lack of enchantment.

It might be a little like now, at times when someone is speaking Spanish to us and what they are saying seems so clear to me, I am surprised when whoever I am with doesn’t understand. (I hope that doesn’t sound like boasting - there are many times that I don’t understand either.)

10/24

Today was a good day for La Ultima Wipe in beautiful ‘ol Guanajuato. It has gotten quite cold and blustery all of a sudden, so that is nice.

As I was walking to pick up Mikko, up the long long hill (as seen in the following pictures,) I started chatting with a woman who I see each morning. She invited me into her house and I met her husband and son, who was reading La Jornada (the progressive, lefty paper.) She was actually advertising her weekend amusement park type business and encouraging me to come with my family. (At first I thought she was just inviting us to all go out there together, then I realized is was her business.) It looks like fun, there is a trampoline and scooters to ride and other diversions. She was so sweet and after a nice little visit she said I should stop by her house anytime.

It was perfect timing because I was feeling so disappointed yesterday after my acupuncture appointment that was with a woman from Orcas Island. She was very nice, and is involved in some cool things, but she filled me in on some gringo gossip and we spoke English the whole time (obviously.) I keep getting worried that I will just fall into these gringo circles and not get to meet or get to know any real Mexican people, or speak Spanish.

So today was good. I started out at the lab getting my blood drawn and chatting with the lady there in Spanish. Had a whole day of Spanish at school, met the lovely woman on the stairs, then chatted with Victor outside of school, half in English half in Spanish (he is totally bilingual and is very gracious and patient with me.)

Picking up Mikko was a joy. He continues to be very happy and perky. (It turns out there was a boy in his class who was a bit volatile and unpredictable, who has now been expelled, and Mikko has been much happier about school since then.) As Mikko and I were coming down our callejon steps, I told a man coming up carrying a crate on his head that I liked his hat. He didn’t smile BUT Mikko understood what I had said. Then some teenagers were coming up the steps. We live about 2/3 of the way up to the Pipila. The boys were on their way there. When they came around the bend and saw that they still had a ways to go they wailed, and I yelled to them that they could do it!! They smiled and laughed, and trudged on up. That made me feel good. We came home and I had my little lie down and then made delicious enchiladas with the leftover mole.

I went into town to get my blood results, (which were too high, so I am a little worried, but not too worried, mostly just annoyed, ) and went to an internet spot after faxing my results to Kaiser. When I came out it was just after dusk. The air was chilly, there were open shops and beautiful buildings with people shopping and visiting and living their lives and I really felt like I was in Mexico again, not the amusement park that the Cervantino festival turned this town into. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to experience it, but I’m happy to get to experience life after Cervantino now. Then as the total clincher to a good day – I walked all the way up our callejon without needing to stop and rest.

The wind is blowing really hard right now. It is cold enough that I am actually wearing a few shirts and socks for the first time since we got here. I might even put an extra blanket on my bed.