Subidas y Bajadas (Ups and Downs)

Last semester, I was so excited to arrive and see free salsa dancing lessons offered twice a week at my university in Guanajuato.  Unfortunately, they taught all the steps on Tuesdays, and reviewed the material on Wednesdays.  I had a class on Tuesday, and only made it through a few weeks of classes before I was caught too far behind and couldn’t continue.

At one point last semester, I went out with some other American girlies and hit up a famous salsa club in the center of Guanajuato.  I’d never tried salsa before, but I thought it’d be fun nonetheless.  Within a few minutes of arrival, while still taking in the modern decor and fancy lighting system, a young man asked me to dance.  “Well, okay,” I told him.  “Just beware that I’ve never danced salsa before, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

He shook his head, laughing.  “Don’t worry about it!  It’s easy!  Just feel the music!”  As if “feeling” the music would make up for the fact that I had no idea what a basic salsa step even was.  I tried to trust him, but I ended up making a complete fool of myself, and with an expression of extreme confusion on my face all the while.  It was a terrible experience, and I vowed I would never go dancing in public again (putting on music in my bedroom and dancing by myself is another story) without proper lessons first.

This semester is different-I’m actually available to make the classes, and I love them!  I have a little bit of a natural knack for salsa dancing, and I pick it up quickly.  After about eight classes, I felt confident enough to go out.  On the request of a few amigos, I got all my amigas together and we went to La Boga, another popular salsa club.  Boga is a very chic club with smooth-lined black and white leather chairs, glass tables, and red and white fleur-de-lis and vines painted on black walls.  The sounds system is fantastic (you get the feeling a live band is playing) and the lighting is intriguing.  Upstairs from the dance floor is a sky lounge with wide bamboo couches with white cushions, pergolas, and a fantastic view of the city from the roof.  This is something I love about Mexico: In the Seattle area, we don’t have good weather consistently enough to have really cool lounges on roofs.

I was excited to go out this particular night; I’ve been a bit of a book worm and study-aholic this semester and haven’t gone out as much as I’d like.  When we walked in we were immediately seated and welcomed by the bartenders and hosts, and invited to dance.  After feeling a little comfortable with the music and the surroundings, I accepted a dance from one of the hosts.  It’s a given that if you work in a salsa bar, you dance salsa like it’s your religion.  I quickly explained that I’d only had a modest few classes, and didn’t know how to do a lot of the steps.  “Don’t worry about it,” my new friend Antonio assured me.  “Just follow me.”

Well, the whole “following thing” only lasted so long.  I did, within the first two minutes of the song, learn loads of new steps and passes that I’d never done before.  Then, at a climax in the song, he tried to throw in something interesting, and dipped me-to the point where my back was about a foot off the floor.

Like I’d tried to tell him before, I didn’t know what I was doing, and had no idea how to support my weight for a dip so slow.  After a half second (which seemed like eternity) I couldn’t take it anymore and he dropped me.  Flat on my back.  In the middle of the dance floor.

Just as quickly as I’d fallen, he’d immediately grabbed me and pulled me off the floor and kept dancing, as if nothing had happened.  But it couldn’t change the fact that I was mortified with embarrassment, and angry that he’d pushed me beyond my limits to try something I clearly wasn’t ready to try, especially in public.

As embarrassed as I was, my resolution to not dance for the rest of the night only lasted about eight minutes before the music carried me away and I was back on my feet.  For the rest of the night, I watched other couples dancing, and (although no one actually fell on the floor as I had) there were plenty of people who were obviously just starting to learn how to dance.  I realized that if I succumbed to feeling uncomfortable dancing in public that I’m never going to learn how to dance.  After making a new determination, I threw myself into my classes and into really improving my dance.  Last night, I went out again, and I can already feel the difference and I know I’m doing better.

Yesterday, I had a one-day excursion to the state of Michoacan with some fellow students.  Planned for the day were a trip the city Morelia (name for Jose Maria Morelos, a military insurgent who played a critical role in the independence of Mexico) and a trip to the Island of Janitzio.

The Island of Janitzio lies in the middle of Lake Patzcuaro.  The indigenous people of this area, the Purépecha, named the island after janitsïo, or wheat/corn flower.  To get to the island, we took a bus through some cobblestone streets that led to a wide dock.  There we found long, slim passenger boats painted in bright colors waiting to take us across the waters.  Though the sun was out yesterday, I was freezing cold from the wind and warmed my hands and stomach up with a cup of hot atole-a thick drink made from tortilla masa (tortilla dough), milk, sugar and other flavors. It’s fantastic; if you ever come to Mexico, be sure to try atole while here.

While slowly moving towards the island through the murky, brown waters of the lake, I was overcome with how beautiful the island is.  From a distance it almost appears like a dome, rising out of the water.  The houses are painted a beautiful mix of crisp white and tropical oranges, turquoises, greens and yellows.  I had a happy thought feeling like the island had been decorated for a fiesta, with colorful flags hanging between the alleyways and the bright boats docked all around.  What a happy place to live, I thought.

In the water were fishermen with big nets that looked almost like wings that they dipped back and forth into the water.  In their traditional dress, they wore white linen pants, and white linen tunics heavily embroidered.  To keep the sun off their necks, all wore straw hats.

Our main point of visiting the island was to see a monument dedicated to Jose Maria Morelos.  At the highest point of the island was an enormous statue of Morelos, his right fist held high in the air.  After climbing literally hundreds of stairs to reach the top (most streets are too steep for a smooth pathway, so there are stairs on all the inclines) we arrived at a beautifully maintained park, with Morelos standing in the middle.  Originally, I was impressed enough by the statue.  Imagine my happiness when I found we could go inside!

Inside of the monument, a pathway curved around the walls, spiraling up to Morelos looming head above.  Along the walls were painted murals and written the history of Mexico’s independence, specifically highlighting the role the Morelos played.  At the top, some very narrow and very steep stairs lead through Morelo’s arm and held a viewing room in the center of his fist that could only hold about three people at a time.  Looking out, we could see the town below, the wide waters of the lake, and the extensive crops in the distance, divided as if they were a patchwork quilt.

Janitzio is truly a jewel of Mexico, a wonder that not many have discovered.  Patzcuaro, the large town just a few kilometers away, holds one of the most traditional representations in all of Mexico for Día de los Muertos, on November 1^st of every year.  Janitzio (for Mexicans) is famous for a Day of the Dead ceremony that’s also held that same day.  The people are friendly, it’s small and tranquil-la isla de Janitzio is a treasure to Mexican culture.

I remember once, last semester, meeting up with some friends and going to someone’s house to share half of a bottle of tequila and tell jokes.  I was so excited about it because it was the first time I’d been invited to a little party with Mexicans, and I finally started to feel like I’d been making friends with the locals (versus the other international students).

At this party, one guy in particular, Rene, told joke after joke.  He knew a joke about every religion, every race, every political party, every body feature, and every animal: you name it and he had a joke.  Unfortunately, I’d only been in Mexico for a couple months at the time, and I still had great difficulties understanding what people were saying to me-especially the younger generation.  As a result, for the whole night, I only understood one joke.

In school, we are taught correct grammar and polite conversation.  Occasionally, you’ll come across a great professor who teaches the class a couple of cuss words or some slang, but it’s pretty rare.  Thus, when you’re actually thrown into the world where people speak that language, it’s difficult to know how to respond in situations.  If we are never taught how to be rude, how do you know what to say when someone tells you in a store to “f*ck off” because they don’t sell to foreigners?  According to my grammar books, I should say, “thank you very much, have a nice day!”

I believe a big part of fluency not only is learning how to speak grammatically correctly and how to hold a polite conversation, but to understand cultural conversations as well.  Typical phrases in that culture, common words that don’t actually translate to what they’re being used to say; those are important things to know.

I’ve also decided that humor is an extremely important thing to understand about one’s own culture, and how it compares with the culture of the rest of the world.  Just like the French are famous for their sarcasm, the Mexicans are famous for word play and double meanings.  As an outsider, this makes it very, very difficult to follow jokes, because I’ve only learned to take everything exactly as it is said to me-the cultural references of jokes are beyond me.  Of course, someone can always explain a joke to me after it’s been said, but everyone knows that’s the number one step to killing the humor.

All these different aspects of a language are the building blocks of fluency.  It’s difficult to know exactly when you reach a point beyond being “conversational”, and when you near “fluency”.  I found this chart on www.french.about.com, and I more or less agree with it.  The difficult thing about fluency is that there’s no specific definition that’s accepted worldwide.  I personally like this one:

Novice (Beginning)

A novice has extremely limited vocabulary and grammar, understands very little of the language when spoken normally, has difficulty making self understood by native speakers, and thus has serious problems in an immersion situation. A novice may be able to order food in a restaurant, buy a train ticket, and find lodging for the night, but only with great difficulty.

Survivor (Intermediate)

A survivor converses using basic vocabulary (time, date, weather, family, clothes); uses the present, past, and future tenses more or less correctly; and is aware of difficult grammar topics (e.g., subjunctive, relative pronouns), but either uses them incorrectly or awkwardly rearranges sentences in order to avoid them. Still needs to tote a dictionary and/or phrase book around, but can survive in an immersion situation: order food, give and receive directions, take a taxi, etc.

Conversationalist (Advanced)

A conversationalist has the ability to converse about fairly abstract ideas, state opinions, read newspapers, understand the language when spoken normally (on TV, radio, film, etc.) with slight-to-moderate difficulty. Still has some trouble with specialized vocabulary and complicated grammar, but can reorganize sentences in order to communicate and figure out the majority of new vocabulary within the context.

Debater (Fluent)

A fluent speaker can participate in extended conversations, understand the language when spoken normally (on TV, radio, film, etc.), figure out meaning of words within context, debate, and use/understand complicated grammatical structures with little or no difficulty. Has good accent and understands dialects with slight-to-moderate difficulty.

Native speaker (Mother tongue)

Someone who has spoken the language from at least the age of 5 (this age limit is subject to some debate: I’ve heard theories that a native speaker can have started learning the language as late as any time up to puberty). In theory, understands essentially everything in the language: all vocabulary, complicated grammatical structures, cultural references, and dialects. Has a native (i.e., invisible, “normal” in his/her region) accent.

http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa072701b.htm

(This was written by Laura K. Lawless (http://french.about.com/bio/Laura-K-Lawless-3906.htm) who is an awesome French instructor and writes for www.about.com)

After reading these definitions, I felt pretty good about myself because it put me in the “Fluent” category.  However, even after being here for so many months, and after studying Spanish for so many years, I do not feel fluent.  I always feel like there is more to learn.  I think it’s a given that most people who decide to learn another language, no matter how long they practice it, will still feel like they lack something important in the language.  I really have no idea when I’ll feel like I truly understand Spanish.

Last week though, I went to a party with the same Mexican friends I hung out with in my first semester.  It was good to see them all, we hadn’t been in touch for a few months while I was traveling between the semesters and they all went home to work.  Rene was there, and as expected and anticipated, he engaged everyone in jokes for the entire night.  At one point, I realized that I understood every joke he told us.  I understood the cultural references they made, I understood the slang and cuss words he threw in, and I could follow the changes in the tone of his voice.  Upon this realization, I felt proud: even if I couldn’t identify exactly what had changed in my own ability to speak and understand Spanish, I knew that last semester I didn’t understand him, and this semester I do.  It was concrete evidence.

Feeling confident, I piped up that I had a joke to tell.  I was terrified.  As I’m sure you all know, if you don’t have the correct intonation, or timing, or perfect word choice for a joke, it doesn’t matter how funny it is: no one is going to laugh.  The joke made fun of the IRS (who doesn’t like to crack a joke about someone who takes everyone’s money?).  In the joke, the IRS man comes to a synagogue to follow up and make sure the Rabi is paying his taxes.  I won’t repeat the joke here, because I’m sure if my mother read such a dirty joke that I’d told she’d be horrified.

It was difficult-the joke involved matzah ball soup, official terms of our government, and the word foreskin.  I can assure you that I’ve never studied this vocabulary, and was positive from the start of my joke that I was doomed.  Not to mention there are essentially no Jewish people in all of Mexico (my Mexican boyfriend didn’t meet a Jewish person until he was 27 years old and in the United States) so I was sure no one would understand what I was trying to describe of a synagogue or a Rabi.  No one was going to understand it, no one was going to laugh, and I was going to feel like and idiot.

Luckily, with a little creativity in describing things, I had people hanging on the edge of my joke, and when I finally got to the punch-line, everyone exploded in laughter.  I felt like a rock star-I’d never had such a fantastic response to a joke in my entire life.  It was probably the most well delivered joke I’ve ever told, and I was flabbergasted when I realized I had that sort of power in another language.

So am I fluent?  I don’t know.  I think I’m getting close.  But at least I know I can tell one good joke. J

What’s the difference, exactly, between a good experience and a bad one?  Sometimes, I look back on my moments in Mexico, and laugh when I realize that I put something that’s typically harbored as horrible in the “good experience” category.  Why?  Usually because I shared the experience with someone else.  There’s nothing like getting lost in a city when you’re with a best friend, or enjoying the most fantastic tacos (even if you suffer greatly later in the bathroom) with a new amigo.

Right now, I’m caught in the middle of a bad experience.  I know that it should fall into the good experiences slot, that really it’s the making of a good story, but I just can’t see it in that light right now.  You see, I am writing this blog from a Primera Plus waiting room at the bus station in Leon, Guanajuato, the leather capital of Mexico.  Unfortunately, instead of coming here to buy boots and purses like most tourists, I’m stuck here at 2:00 in the morning, waiting for my 4:15am bus to Guanajuato.

I started my bus route at 2:00pm in the afternoon, yesterday.  I decided to forgo the direct bus from Colima to Leon, and instead take two buses first to Guadalajara, then to Guanajuato, to be able to buy another precious two hours with my boyfriend.  I hustled to the bus station for my 2:30pm bus from Colima to Guadalajara, sad to say goodbye to my boyfriend but not really feeling it from the stress of being late.  After settling into my seat, we didn’t leave till 2:50pm.  That’s okay, I thought.  No big deal being twenty minutes late.  As it was, I was scheduled to arrive in Guadalajara at 5:40pm originally, and my next bus from Guadalajara to Guanajuato wasn’t going to leave until 6:30pm.  I had no reason to be stressed: there was plenty of time for my layover, and I didn’t have to worry about buying my second ticket, as I’d already purchased it in Colima.

That was my big mistake.  I’m not quite sure when I lost my mind, but it must have been somewhere between planning my return trip and buying my tickets, because I’d completely forgotten how much traffic there is trying to come into Guadalajara at that hour.  Instead of arriving at 5:40pm, we arrived at 7:00pm.  My connecting bus was long and gone, and I was desperate to get home.  I knew that from Guadalajara, there was only one more bus headed directly to Guanajuato that night, at 8:00pm.

After a good begging session with a couple whimpers, I found a young supervisor who quickly changed my ticket (free of charge! That’s a rarity in Mexico!) for the 8:00pm bus, and left me feeling satisfied and unworried.

When 8:00pm rolled around, I walked out to the bus line to look for my bus.  Most buses that go to Guanajuato are labeled with “Leon”, indicating the bigger city that they pass through on the way to Guanajuato.  I walked to the bus labeled Leon, and saw an official-looking man talking to a crowd waiting outside the bus.  I asked him to repeat his information.  “You’re headed to Leon, right?”  He asked.  “Well, actually I’m headed to Guanajuato.  What’s going on with the bus?”

He explained (after looking at my ticket) that this bus was a direct bus to Leon, and that the bus that was going to pass through Leon and head on to Guanajuato was going to arrive in about 15 or 20 minutes.  “If you’d like to arrive in Leon faster, and then transfer to a bus headed to Guanajuato, I can change your ticket.”  I looked at the bus.  It looked like a revamped 70’s bus: the seats were narrow, there was no leg room, and I could only imagine what it smelled like.  It’s only another 20 minutes I thought to myself.  “No thanks,” I told the man.  “I’ll wait for my own bus.”

By the time my bus finally arrived, the other bus had filled up and headed out.  I went to put my hefty backpack in under-the-bus storage, and handed the man my ticket.  “Sorry Miss, this isn’t the right bus,” he explained.  “Your bus already left.”

“WHAT?!”  I immediately became angry.  I’d already had enough problems by skipping the direct route and arriving in the city late, and having to change my ticket and wait an extra hour.  Now that the last bus to Guanajuato had left, what was I supposed to do?  I went to find a new supervisor to help me, too embarrassed to ask for help from the same one who’d helped me before-I didn’t want to admit I’d missed my bus.

A different man (after I helplessly explained how I’d been misinformed which bus was mine) helped me to get another ticket (half-price) to Leon.  The next bus at 8:45pm was completely booked, but they had one space left on the 9:45pm bus.  Leon wasn’t Guanajuato, but at least it was one leg of the trip.

On the bus headed to Leon, we were stopped on a routine check by the police to have the bus searched for illegal goods.  I’ve been stopped on the road before, but I was really surprised when the police climbed into the bus and randomly picked people to search their bags and purses, pat them down and question them in front of all the other passengers.  I wasn’t selected, but I think it’s because I looked upset enough from my days mishaps that nobody wanted to mess with me.

So here I am in Leon, where I arrived at 12:30am.  I’d missed the last bus to Guanajuato of the night by just a few minutes, so I opted for the 4:15am bus.  After all, I do have class tomorrow at 8:00am.

Through all of this, I just keep thinking about how this really wouldn’t be so bad if I had someone with me whose shoulder I could sleep on in the waiting rooms, or someone to give me conversation, or someone to watch my things while I go to the bathroom or to browse magazines.  Really, I could start to see this as a good adventure-if only I had someone to share it with.

Guanajuato is famous for many things: it is the hometown of Diego Rivera, the silver mining capital of Mexico, and the home of “las momias” (the mummies).  The mummies of Guanajuato are not really mummies, at least not in the sense of being prepared bodies like those of Egypt.  Really, they’re just a little thirsty.

Centuries ago, it was required to buy a grave plot to have a proper burial.  All the paupers who couldn’t afford it were thrown into a huge underground chamber and left to disintegrate over the years.  However, nature had other plans in mind.  You see, many centuries ago a river ran through the city of Guanajuato.  As the population began to grow, it was decided that the river should be rerouted.  However, during those years, everyone in the city drank out of the river.  A natural preservative ran through the waters, and over time the people were literally filled with it.  When they died, if they were thrown into this air sealed, underground chamber, they stayed preserved while their bodies slowly dehydrated.  Years later, the chamber (and all the dried bodies inside) were discovered.

This incredible natural occurrence is celebrated in Guanajuato, and the museum is highly publicized.  I visited once last semester, but was so embarrassed by my fellow American student’s inappropriate comments and jokes towards the mummies that I couldn’t enjoy the experience.  This last weekend, I returned with my study abroad program and the new students for this semester.  This time, I enjoyed, no, appreciated it, much more.

When you enter the museum, there’s a mini theater at the front of the building.  We sat ourselves in a row, and began to watch a movie.  It was a combination of images of death, and its associations in Mexico, with a woman’s voice reciting a poem in the background.  Rhetorical questions were posed, such as “What is the death?  And if we understand death, what is the life?”  Over the last few months I’ve been learning about death’s relation with the people of Mexico; my boyfriend’s grandfather and great uncle both passed away within these last months, and between masses, funerals, family prayer sessions and conversations, I’ve learned a lot about the presence of death in a Mexican family.

Originally, upon entering the museum they would have a narrow walkway between to rows of mummies, raised up and above you.  It was gruesome and scary, not to mention that many people wanted a genuine souvenir and would pick things like fingernails or toes off the mummies.  Now, the mummies are carefully protected behind glass, in controlled conditions to conserve them better.

A first impression of the mummies is startling: they are so well preserved.  Instead of seeing piles of bones, before you stand humans, with their eyelids shut tight, their leather shoes with laces untied, their crooked teeth poking out of their mouths.  Some are fully dressed; others have only half of their clothes.  Some are well shaven; others have long scraggly beards to their chests.  When humans die, their jaws fall off their skulls, no longer having the flesh to hold them together.  The mummies, with their skin dried tight around their faces, hold on to their dropping jaws, giving all the mummies the appearance of an eerie smile or a horrible scream.  I stopped before one man, elegantly dressed in painted pinstripe pants, a velveteen vest and a heavy canvas blazer tying it all together.  His face was so well preserved, except for a gaping hole in his cheek where his skin had disappeared.  From one side of his face, he could have been someone’s grandpa, all ready to go to church.  Next to him stands a woman, long hair hanging to the middle of her back, and wearing a yellowing white eyelet trimmed dress.

In the next room, there is a case filled with babies.  They look like china dolls, their round heads sitting neck-less over their round swollen chests.  One looks like he could be sleeping, with a baby blue cable sweater with little white buttons wrapped around him.

The museum is not decorated.  Moving from room to room, the colors of the walls change slightly, but still stay in their monochromatic, grey shades.  Soft music plays overhead, but not enough to distract.  One student made a comment to me that he thought they should have designed the museum to be more focused on the idea of death, with maybe other pictures on the walls or darker music.  I disagree: I think that the simplicity of the museum allows us to make our own impressions, our own interpretations of “la muerte” (death), without external influences.  We are left to decide if it makes us happy, sad, angry, relieved, or shocked: the choice is ours.

I found myself distraught when I was looking at a row of three portraits hanging on a wall.  The first was what I presumed to be an older brother holding his baby sister.  The second and third that followed were mothers, surrounded by their other children, holding their babies.  Admiring the faces, and thinking about how they must have lived when these sepia and black and white photos were taken, I was interrupted in my thoughts when a friend asked if I’d read the description yet.

These babies are called “angelitos” (little angels); they have died within their first few days of life.  For a while, it was a tradition to take a portrait with your deceased baby, before burying it.  Typically, if a family knew a newborn wasn’t going to survive, a priest would be rushed to the house to baptize the baby, ensuring its arrival to heaven.  After all, how could a baby possibly commit a sin within its first week of life?  However, though most families would have their newborns baptized within the first eight days of life, sometimes a baby wouldn’t survive long enough.  In this horrible situation, it was assumed that the baby had died so quickly because God had planned for its immediate arrival in paradise, and to not suffer even a moment on earth.

The funeral planned for the baby was a happy occasion, typically with a mariachi or other local band and all the family with smiles on their faces.  The parents offer apples, oranges and bananas to the grave, and the baby is buried in a white casket.  The family would sing this song:

“Adiós Madre, ya no llores, (Goodbye Mother, don’t cry anymore)

Pídele a Dios el consuelo (Ask God for comfort)

Me voy cubierto de flores (I go covered with flowers)

Me voy derechito al cielo” (I go straight to heaven)

Leaving the museum, I started thinking about what death means in my own culture.  For us, we don’t like to discuss death, especially if it’s someone we knew personally.  It’s a taboo subject, and details are left to a minimum when informing of someone’s death.  However, as humans, we are grossly interested in it: we watch shows like Law and Order, CSI and Crime Scene Investigators, hypnotized by the images we see.

I think there is a lot more acceptance of this subject in Mexico.  Let’s face it; we’re not making it out of this life alive: it’s a fate we all face someday.  In Mexico, where they celebrate Day of the Dead and openly talk about loved ones that have passed away, it’s not such an uncomfortable theme.  For me, death fascinates me in a manner that really, we have no idea what it is or what happens once we leave this world.  Where do we go exactly?  What should we expect?  Is it painful?  Is it beautiful?

I think of death as the ocean.  The ocean covers so much of our world, and we interact with it every day.  We take food from the ocean, use it to move from one place to another, use it as an energy source.  While we marvel at its beauty and its strength, we bathe our children in it and taste its salt.  Yet as much as we know about the ocean, we really know very little.  The life that is in the ocean is something that we can see, we can touch, and we can greatly interfere with, yet we can never be a part of it.  We can swim with the fish, but we cannot be fish.  In this way, the ocean amazes me, and in the same way, death.  We will never know anything about death until we face it ourselves, and unfortunately can never share how that experience feels with anyone else.  It is one of the only experiences that is truly ours, and ours alone.

Leaving the museum of mummies, I started thinking about the bodies I was walking away from.  They were really only a few shells, completely hollow of what makes a human a human.  Millions of people have died, why should these few dozen particulars captivate us so?  I can’t speak for others, but for myself, they remind me that while I have the honor of living in this body, I need to enjoy my life for everything inside that makes me human being, beyond the physical.

A while back, I was sitting in the kitchen of an elderly friend’s house, and I met her sister-in-law.  In her mid-80’s, she was well dressed and smelled of heavy perfume.  On the fist that clutched her walking cane, she wore multiple rings.  Now, looking back on this intriguing conversation, I’m saddened that I can’t remember her name.  We began talking, and she was very interested to know why exactly I was in Mexico.  When I explained that I had a strong desire to teach Spanish and English, she smiled.  “I remember when I wanted to learn English,” she told me.  She started her story from her preteen years.

“When I blew out the candles on my birthday cake when I turned twelve,” she began, “I wished to find a husband who was good for me.”  I smiled in surprise; I was just discovering boys when I was twelve, and was very, very far from thinking about a husband.  “You see,” she continued, “my father was very strict.  He wanted his daughters to be very disciplined, and raised traditionally.”  Laughing, she explained that he was the only father who wouldn’t let his daughters leave the house in a knee-length skirt.  She reminisced to me about begging her father to let her go to school, trying to negotiate for just two years of education.  He responded by telling her it would be much better if she took care of the donkeys and hens instead.  Her family was from a very small town; as a young girl, she was jealous of her older “primas” (female cousins) who lived on a bigger ranch and were allowed to go to school.  Her father was set on his decision, and she never received a formal education.

When she was fifteen years old, her wish came true.  She married a young man and began a family.  Through various circumstances, their children gained U.S. citizenship and she and her husband were able to visit occasionally and stay for various months.  We discussed our favorite parts of Los Angeles, and I swooned with envy when she told me how much she loved Catalina Island.  Catalina Island is across the water from Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County, where both my parents were raised.  I’ve visited the peninsula and the bay to the north, but I’ve always seen Catalina from a distance and have never had the pleasure of visiting it myself.  “That’s where I wanted to learn English,” she told me.

She continued storytelling with a wistful look in her eyes about her desire to learn the language.  At seventy years old, she asked her husband permission to enroll in English classes.  “He laughed,” she sighed.  “Not because I wanted to take the class, but because I’d waited so long to ask, and really because I didn’t need to ask at all if I wanted to.  “Sure,” he told me.  “No need to ask me for permission if it’s something you wanted to do.””

After a long life without a single minute spent in a classroom, she was excited and afraid.  “I paid for three months of classes, and bought all my materials,” she claimed proudly.  Her face suddenly saddened.  “However, I only attended nineteen days of class.”  Apparently, every day that she entered the classroom, the teacher would directly ask her (as well as the other students, I presumed) “How are you today?”  She’d felt confronted and pushed into an uncomfortable situation.  Embarrassed from the attention, she dropped out.

The conversation continued in another direction, but my mind couldn’t move from the idea of this woman who wanted an education so badly that she finally pursued it at seventy years old.  I thought about my own situation, that I was fortunate enough to study abroad to learn about a new culture and attempt to master a language.  I thought about how I was so influenced by my own education, that I was working towards my teaching credentials: I want to be an educator too.  How fantastic my education has been!  From elementary school, to middle school, to high school, to community college, and now at my university: I absolutely love to learn.  Most of the time, I forget how fortunate I am to have been born in a country where public education is accessible to all (even if the quality greatly differs depending on your location) and that I, a young woman, was born in a time when the world is offering me so many opportunities I can barely begin to pick something to follow.  My conversation with this woman put my position into perspective, and made me grateful for something that I’ve had since I was five years old and was enrolled in kindergarten at Challenger Elementary: a window to seek more, a way to see what the world holds beyond what we are presented in our individual lives.  How fortunate we are, and what a shame it is that most of the time we don’t realize it.

Mexico is full of sayings and theories, and the methods for fixing everyday problems are endless.  With a rich history and extensive knowledge of multiple indigenous groups, it’s impossible to present a problem to your family here and leave the room with less than three solutions.  Most would think, that’s great!  All the help I could ever need!  But what if you thought the recommendations were groundless and ridiculous?  Things that I’ve heard since arriving in Mexico:

Mexicanism: My boyfriend developed a small tumor, the size of a large pea, under the skin on his wrist over the course of two days.  I was extremely worried about it, but it was difficult to find a doctor that could take care of him.  Traveling between three different cities looking for a doctor, all his relatives told him not to worry.  “Just put a slice of aloe vera on it and it will go away on its own.”

What I think:  That’s ridiculous.  Aloe is great for sunburns or rashes, but it’s not nearly powerful enough to make a tumor go away.  I thought it was obvious he needed to go to the emergency room, but I was the only one.

Mexicanism:  “Microwaves are pure cancer.”

What I think:  Well, maybe if you bake your head in one for over an hour you could have a problem.  But I’ve grown up using a microwave every single day, and I think I turned out okay.  Again, this is ridiculous.

Mexicanism:  To get rid of itchiness (like after a mosquito attack) just heat a lime over an open flame and put the burning hot juice on your skin.

What I think:  I’ll admit, I tried this because I was so desperate for alleviation from my itchy skin.  It kind of work, in the manner that I was so distracted by my burning skin that I momentarily forgot about my itchiness.  It came back after about two minutes though, and all I was left with was burned, sticky skin that smelled like limes.

Mexicanism:  If you have a headache, get the help of someone else to get rid of it.  While you stand perfectly straight, the other person puts the palms of their hands (one on your forehead, the other directly behind your head) and pushes.  Just like a vice.

What I think:  After mentioning to a friend once that I had a headache, he immediately grabbed my head and squeezed.  I SCREAMED.  This was absolutely the last thing I wanted.  To me, this is like telling someone who has a migraine to go to a heavy metal concert with strobe lights.  No, it did not help.

Mexicanism:  If you’ve been doing any form of movement (playing an instrument, painting walls, taking a walk) and you want to take a shower, you have to wait double the time you were “warmed up” doing “exercise” before getting into the shower.  Otherwise, the colder water of the shower will make your entire body cramp up in an instant.

What I think:  I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard this.  I thought of all the times that I came home sweaty from soccer games or practices or home from the gym and just jumped into the shower.  I could see how extremes could be bad from you (maybe going from hot yoga to an ice bath…) but this just seemed (you guessed it) ridiculous.  Likewise, if your hands are warmed up (maybe if you’ve been knitting for an hour or so) you can’t wash your hands in cold water either.  Hmm….

Mexicanism:  Here in Mexico, it’s common at most meals to serve an “agua fresco”.  It’s kind of like juice, but watered down.  You start with a bit of fruit (maybe pineapple, for example) and you blend it with three or four times as much water.  Usually it’s not very sweet, so up to a cup of sugar is added to the water to give it flavor.  Think of it like Gatorade: it’d be really good for you if it didn’t have so much sugar.  As a diabetic on a diet, I usually turn it down and say I can’t handle so much sugar, and I always get the same response:  “But this is natural sugar, it’s not as refined as the white stuff you use in the United States, so it’s healthier for you.” (as if this type of sugar wouldn’t raise my blood sugar, or that this sugar had significantly less calories)

What I think:  Sugar is sugar.  A cup of natural sugar is still going to raise my blood sugar as much as a cup of super refined sugar, especially if it’s mixed with water and in a liquid form.  Many Mexicans claim that some sugars are better than others, likewise that some carbohydrates are better than others.  Carbohydrates in bread are bad, but carbs in tortillas, rice and beans are perfectly fine.  Sugar in candy is bad, but sugar mixed with water and a bit of fruit juice is perfectly fine as well.  I’ve had a personal dietician since I was diagnosed with type-one diabetes when I was eight.  I completely disagree with this, and it drives me crazy when people give me lectures on what is good or okay for me, when really they have no idea.

Mexicanism:  Babies are super sensitive to temperatures.  That’s why babies are not aloud to be near refrigerators: if the door opens and the cool air touches a baby’s face, it will become very sick.  It’s very important to keep babies warm; that’s why when you go outside in the typical 75-80 degree weather hear, mothers wrap their babies in fleece blankets.

What I think:  Babies (although very little and unable to speak up) are humans that have the same needs as adults, they’re just a little more helpless.  But if a baby couldn’t survive the cool air of a refrigerator opening and closing, how the hell have we managed to populate our earth so much in the last few centuries?!  Likewise, if you’re hot outside, it’s a pretty solid assumption that your baby will be hot as well.  I’m constantly worried that babies are going to drown in their own sweat the way mothers wrap them up here, and that no one will even know because the blankets are wrapped around their faces too.

Where am I going with all this?  When I first arrived in Mexico, I was in a whimsical daze for my first month, thinking that everything was just so fantastic.  Everything about the Mexican way of life fascinated me (it still does, but in a different way) and I was so eager to do everything the same as the Mexicans.  Then the glory of the first month wore off.  The majority of my five and a half months here, I’ve moved between an impartial state of mind about the culture here and a negative one.  I’ve become critical and condescending while observing this lifestyle.

It’s really difficult to move from a country where my hot water in my shower is automatic, I don’t have to see the bones in my meat and therefore don’t have to feel the guilt of eating an animal, and where any type of medication I could possibly dream up is readily available at the Rite Aid in the Pine Lake Shopping Center.  Here, I have to turn on my boiler and wait for the water to heat up, which means I have to plan ahead when I want to take a shower.  Almost all cuts of meat have bones in them, because the labor costs of cutting every bit of fat and bones off the meat would make it too expensive for the average Mexican family to afford.  Most families also cannot afford to buy a specific medication or painkiller every time it is needed, and therefore resort to more traditional methods.  Seeing this for so many months, I started to develop resentment, feeling more highly educated and like I had more common sense than everyone in Mexico put together.  If that’s not arrogance, I don’t know what is.

Now, I’m starting to see the error of my ways.  Instead of thinking that everyone here is lame and that they’re taking the more difficult route to accomplish simple tasks, I’m beginning to see again how creative the people are here.  How cool is it that although this country lacks so many resources for its people, they’re still surviving comfortably with what little they have?

Instead of thinking that I’m the superior, more educated or civilized person, I’ve started asking myself if I’m the crazy one, because I’m so closed-minded that I can’t even begin to relate to the people here.  What type of inhuman, exclusive type of person have I become in my own pomposity?  After all, we do some pretty bizarre things in the United States as well.  We don’t greet people on the street, even though when someone greets us we feel happy and great.  You think we’d return the favor, right?  We put bumper stickers all over our family cars to show off that our kids are honor roll students, or part of some elite or exclusive club.  What’s the point?  I’ve never seen anything like that here-a lot of people will put stickers of their company, or a band they like, but nothing that screams “I’m better than you!”  In the United States, we are famous for abusing the law just to be right-how many times do we read about lawsuits against McDonald’s for making us fat, or not having sufficient instructions to use a hair dryer correctly and hurting ourselves?  We say it’s ridiculous, but, well, it’s part of our culture.

I’m trying to start seeing things “like a Mexican”, and accepting that these ways of life are my new culture.  It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just different, and I need to be flexible enough to accept it and go with the flow.  I saw many students come to study in Mexico and they just couldn’t open up to the culture.  They left the country after the semester only having enjoyed a long vacation here and not really understanding Mexico to the extent they could have.  I’m starting to realize that I’m beginning to do the same thing, and I refuse to let this mindset overtake me.  My next semester starts in twelve days, and I look forward to taking on my city, Guanajuato, with a whole new attitude and outlook.  Happy blogging!

For the entire month of December, I’ve been spending time with my boyfriend’s family in Colima and Jalisco, two different states in Mexico.  I appreciate the experience for multiple reasons, but mainly because it’s given me the chance to truly see what a Mexican household is like.  While living with my host family in Guanajuato, it’s more of a dormitory experience.  After having host students for twenty years, my señora and señor know how to run a household in a more neutral manner, to make sure every student feels comfortable and acceptable.  It’s Mexican culture, but a very tame, calmed-down version of the real thing.

Bouncing between the houses of my boyfriend’s sister, mother and grandmother, I’ve seen multiple ways to live in Mexico, and differences in lifestyles that come with age differences.  In Sofia’s house (my boyfriend’s sister) things are a little more modern.  In the household of the mother and grandmother, it’s more and more traditional.  Food is cooked differently, the house is cleaned and maintained with different methods, and different forms of respect are showed to the heads of the household.

All this time, I’ve been admiring the interactions between parents and children, siblings and grandparents, and thinking about how it all relates back to my own home in Issaquah. After the week of Christmas and New Years, I started becoming really melancholy thinking about my own family.  My family is nowhere near as big as the typical Mexican family, but we’re pretty extensive.  However, although I have pretty good relationships with my cousins, I don’t know month by month (much less day by day) what they’re doing in their lives.  Here, all the aunts and uncles live in the same city as their mom, and they make a point of passing no more than 48 hours without visiting her.  In the United States, we’re perfectly content to put our parents (when they come of age) in retirement or nursing homes, and then promptly forget about them.  More-so, we’re much more independent family-wise in the United States.  Once we reach our early twenties, we move out of our parent’s house and are determined to make it on our own.  It’s shameful to continue living with your parents, especially after you’ve finally found a “professional” job or begun your career.  Once we’ve established our own lives and our own independence, we want our space to remain ours.

In Mexico, it’s impossible to save money if you are living on your own: wages here are way too low to put anything aside.  Most stay living with their parents until they’ve married; if they never marry, they never move out.  Sharing payments is one of the only ways to keep your head above water here.  I think that beyond the traditional, more family-oriented lifestyle here, sharing the costs of life is one of the main reasons families are so close.

This makes me think a lot about my own family: I’m extremely close with my family, and trust my parents, my brothers and my sisters-in-law more than anyone else in the world.  In a way it makes me sad: this is one of the best years of my life.  How lucky I am to have a family that supports my grand adventure to Mexico, but how unfortunate it is that I’m unable to share it and spend time with them.  I think we should all live a little more “Mexican”, visit more often with our family and take opportunities to find out how

They’re doing.  After all, we only have so many years with them, right?

A few days back, my friend Señora Angeles told me that we had a day of work coming up.  “My friend has a bakery,” she told me.  “She needs some help for Dia de los Reyes.”  I had no idea what Dia de los Reyes was, but was excited about seeing a bakery from the inside.  After finding out that Dia de los Reyes is the Spanish name for what we call “Little Christmas” or BLANK, I realized why it’s so important in super-catholic Mexico.  In Mexico, it’s tradition to gather the whole family for a big dinner to celebrate the coming of the three wise men to see the baby Jesus.  After dinner, a cake is shared.  Baked inside the cake are two or three tiny toys.  If you get a toy in your slice, it’s your job to throw a party for the family on February 2^nd.  I’m not sure if the party part is related to religion, but it’s a long held Mexican tradition.

Señora Angeles went to the bakery at 8:00 AM, but I didn’t arrive till 3:00 PM.  I was nervous; it was my first (and last) day of work.  The only experience I had working in a bakery was for five whole shifts when I worked for a Parisian bakery (I hated my boss, decided I can’t work for idiots, and quit before receiving my second week’s schedule).  I was assured by Señora Angeles that I’d be doing easy jobs like cutting tissue paper doilies for the cakes, and explaining prices to the customers.  No stress!  Still, any new task in a country where I’m not 100% fluent in the language or manner of work stresses me.

I arrived in the bakery, and was walked behind the counter to the back room to meet my coworkers and boss for the day.  It smelled like heaven; baking sugar and butter and fruit has never smelled so fabulous.  I thought I would faint inhaling the delicious air.  I realized that as a diabetic, I was instantly in my own personal hell.  I’d have to learn how to deal with it really quickly to handle my work.

In the back were four women who I didn’t know.  Adriana was my boss.  A tall, statuesque women wearing bedazzled jeans, hoops so big they grazed her shoulders and bold caramel highlights in her wild and curly hair, she looked like a hipster teenager.  I was impressed to see someone so young who was in charge of the bakery.  Señora Angeles later told me that she at one point was the owner of five different bakeries and was the master cake maker in town at only 30 years old.  She was a successful woman who did what she wanted and what she loved, and brought happiness into the homes of multiple families every day: she was instantly my idol.

Her workers were three women.  Mari was a round bowl of laughs with extremely defined eyebrows and heavily shadowed eyelids.  Ceci was young and petite (she obviously didn’t eat what she was making) and had three silver teeth in the middle of her smile.  Lupe was the biggest woman I have ever seen; I’m a big girl myself, and she was easily three times my size, and about six feet tall.  Lupe had the whitest and brightest smile I’ve ever seen, and was really friendly with me.  All three of them welcomed me in and quickly made me feel like a part of the team.

I started out cutting doilies when Adriana called us all back into the kitchen: it was time to eat.  She’d ordered us two roasted chickens and a couple bottles of soda.  We laughed and told jokes, and I admired how well she took care of her employees.  Adriana wasn’t a demanding person.  She expected us to work hard, but knew that sometimes the best way to manage a group of people was to leave them alone and let them do their jobs.

The pasteleria (bakery) began to fill with customers, and the cakes began to sell like hotdogs at a baseball game.  My job quickly shifted from cutting doilies to helping decorate cakes.  With every batch of batter, they filled eight cake pans.  Sixteen cakes were baked at a time, and the instant the cakes were in the oven, the girls on batter duty (Ceci and Lupe) went to work separating egg whites and mixing flour and sugar, preparing for the pans when the cakes came out.  When they finished cooking, the cakes were placed on big bread boards to cool (a fan was involved to speed the process) and they were transferred to disposable cake plates with my doilies on top.  Mari and I then took over to decorate them.  First came a fat layer of strawberry jam, and a layer of jellied and dried fruits followed, with a handful of finely chopped walnuts garnishing the top.

Though I initially started slowly, admiring each and every cake and their beautiful honey brown color, I quickly began to panic as the customers came in and I began to work like a decorating machine.  At one point, I looked at over twenty cakes cooling on their bread boards, and asked Mari what they do with the cakes if they don’t sell all of them.  Although we had a few customers in the store, I couldn’t imagine selling all the cakes we were making, and was worried we’d have to throw them out.  Mari looked at my like I’d missed something really obvious.  “They will sell,” she told me.  “But…” I tried to protest.  “No honey, they will sell,” she interrupted.  “They always sell.”

I soon got the answer I was looking for.  While we listened to music in the back and went about our work, customers began to flood the bakery.  Señora Angeles was quickly taking orders and shouting back to the kitchen to find out when the next batches would come out.  We had the following two batches (thirty-two cakes in total) presold before they were even cooked.  We worked like crazy, sweating in the hot kitchen, trying to will the cakes to cook faster so we could put more batches in.  With the demand of the customers, we were forced to decorate the cakes before they were finished cooling, even with the concern that they’d break while being flipped onto the decorating plates.

During all the stress, everyone kept a happy face and good cheer.  After the rush of the customers had died down (and after we’d sold over a hundred of the same type of cake) Adriana called us into the kitchen for grilled onions and steak tacos.  We toasted to the success of the day with cups of coke.  Later, cleaning up, I asked Mari how many ingredients we’d used.  Only by putting a layer of jam on top of every cake, I’d used well over two gallons of jam.  I couldn’t imagine how much milk, eggs, flour and sugar they’d used.  “Well,” Mari said pointing to a wall, stacked to the ceiling with crates.  “Those are the eggs.  There are twenty eggs in the big cakes, and about 15 in every medium.”  I was amazed, thinking of the thousands of eggs they’d used, and trying to imagine the weight of the flour.  Really, this was an incredible business.

That night, after eight hours of intense work, Señora Angeles and I returned home to eat our own cake with some others.  I was lucky enough to receive a toy in my slice.  I guess I’ll be throwing a party on February 2^nd for everyone.  After seeing how much work goes into making anything in a bakery, I’d like to encourage you to find a local bakery there in Issaquah or the greater Seattle area, and support them by buying a cake.  Even if there’s no holiday, there’s always a good reason to celebrate with the family.  Buen provecho!

Just like cereal just doesn’t taste right without milk, there’s no such thing as a Mexican meal without tortillas.  They are eaten with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and most snacks.  Made from a corn paste (the foundation of the Mexican diet) tortillas are a tasty addition to almost every food.

I was surprised when I realized I’ve been in Mexico for five months, and I still have never had homemade tortillas.  When in Guanajuato, they just “appear” at the table (I’m not 100% sure where all my food comes from with my host family).  In Guadalajara, I walk down the street and pay ten pesos for a kilo of cooked tortillas, which I take home and we eat immediately.

Tonight we were making a big pot of atole, a corn based cream drink that is to die for.  Part of the drink is made with a mix of milk and “masa”, the dough used to make tortillas.  My friend Señora Angeles came home with a kilo of masa, and we had a lot left over.  I casually asked her to show me how to make tortillas.  Though it was a simple process, I still had no idea how to do it, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself with my lack of knowledge.  With years of skill, she showed me how to wet my hands a bit, roll it in a ball and pat out a disk.  Simple, right?

Though I’ve believed for years that I must have been Latina in my last lifetime, that I was Mexican somewhere in my blood or genetics, tonight I was proven wrong by my utter failure to make the simplest food in the Mexican diet.  My first fistful of masa felt like play-dough.  Perfect, I thought.  I’ve had years of experience with play-dough. Unfortunately, it was a lot stickier than play-dough, and my hands were filthy within seconds.

Round two: I grabbed a handful, and made my second ball.  I started patting it back and forth, and my disk grew larger and larger.  Proud of my success, I turned to smile at Señora Angeles and suddenly heard myself clapping.  My dough disk had disappeared.  Where did it go?  Suddenly, bubbles in the pot of atole caught my eye.  Oh no!!  I’d thrown my ball of masa into the atole while patting it back and forth between my hands!  I tried to quickly fish it out with a spoon, but not before Angeles saw me and started roaring with laughter.  I couldn’t help but join in, and she handed me a new handful muttering, “Ely, Ely, I can’t believe it, it was a tortilla volador” (flying tortilla).

My second tortilla went better.  I relaxed and focused.  Trying not to tense my hands up too much, I threw it easily between my two hands.  Just as easily as it went back and forth, it dropped to the floor with a loud “splat”.  Horrified, I stared at it while Angeles began to laugh again.  I scooped it off the floor, washed my hands, and grabbed my fourth ball.  I finally was able to make what is referred to as a “huarache”, or a sandal.  My tortilla was a fat slab of masa, in the strangle square-oval shape that resembled a foot.

I didn’t care about the shape.  Sure, it looked like a five-year-old did it, but I was proud.  I enjoyed it with a slab of Oaxaca cheese and a slightly spicy tomato sauce.  Look up a recipe and give it a try!  It’s a lot more difficult than it sounds.