For the Record

We went to another non-existent salsa class today. I'm beginning to think they are all a myth.

Yesterday I bought tomatoes, lemons, a head of broccoli, a bag of rice, an onion, a packet of drink mix, almost 2 liters of milk, mixed vegetables, beans, cheese, and ground meat at the local grocery store for ten dollars. I was so impressed I almost picked up some peanuts, too.

Time flies when you’re almost tipping over in four-wheeled bicycles, trying new foods that sometimes make your stomach angry, and going to free orchestra concerts complete with star wars characters (we came close to converting to the dark side. Oh wait, we’re already on the dark side). Yay for free concerts! Although I do support supporting musicians, I must say. Anyway, three tests (including one oral test, in front of the entire class), five essays (one of which I was kindly told by my professor didn’t make sense), and six presentations (not including the one on marijuana, my expertise, that I made but didn’t end up presenting) and one coloring activity later, the semester is almost over!

Learning-to-salsa-dance update: Two further attempts attempted, said attempts failed. We had seen a sign that said “Dance classes here!” so we returned on the correct day and time, but it turned out to be an aerobics class in a gym. Good thing I hadn’t worn my high heels. We looked ridiculous enough already, not knowing what we were doing, next to the other experienced people in their exercise gear. The next day, we tried to go to a different class, and when we found it and asked a guy if he was giving the salsa class, we received the response, “yes but it’s too late to sign up.” I will keep looking.

This past month has been a time of travel—as mentioned in a previous post (wow! I finally have previous posts to refer to! That means I'm making progress), for the day of the dead I went with the group to the city of Oaxaca, capital of the state of Oaxaca. We also visited an amazing place there called Hierve el Agua (hierve = boil), which is called that because on top of the spectacular “petrified” waterfalls that are there, water bubbles up from the ground and it appears to be boiling. But it’s not hot, so you can swim in it. Why do I keep typing bowling instead of boiling?

The water fall from above, with Sara unknowingly posing perfectly:

From the side (ch ch ch):

And from down below:
The next weekend I went with Eduardo to Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, and from there we went to a small pueblo about half an hour to an hour and a half away (depending on who’s driving) to go zip-lining, rappelling, and (checking off something on my life goals list) white water rafting (add it back to my life goals list, so I can do it again)! I had my heroic moment when Eduardo fell out of the boat on a particularly white and choppy rapid, and I bravely threw myself into the river to save him from certain risk of getting wet…oh no I didn’t, I just watched and laughed while the guides hauled him back into the boat. It would have been a futile rescue, because we were already soaked to the bone and life jacket and helmet and clothes.

And then another weekend, my friend Asaki, also from the program, and I ventured to Morelia, Michoacan, a beautiful city with museums, el Mercado de Dulces y Artesanía (Artisan and Candy Market), a fountain of half-naked women, and a Gum Tree.

They didn’t have water shooting out of their mouths though, like I expect of all fountains of posing naked people.

Gum tree. Call me when I get back with your top three choices of color, for samples.

We also took a day trip, 3 hours in a van each way, to see a bunch of little flying creatures with 6 legs. It was well worth it:

All the little black spots, except the ones that make up the trees, are Monarch butterflies that fly down from the US and Canada this time of year to mate. There were so many you could actually hear the wings flapping, it sounded like wind going through the trees.

It’s been get a little bit colder, but still hasn’t snowed yet. I think I’ll be waiting for a long time, since it’s almost December and two days ago I was still able to go swimming in the outdoor pool at the university, the most important part of which is pictured below:

On the bottom right you can almost see someone who stood on the lowest diving platform for 30 minutes and took the exit of shame back down the stairs. Whited out for protection of identity. Will give out a name if tempted with wheat thins and nutella, turkey pot pie with three slits or other creative design cut in the top, or another white water rafting trip.

And how could I forget our Halloween party!? I was a chile en nogada, which is a typical Mexican dish because it’s red, white, and green, the colors of the flag. It’s seasonal, only available around July and August. Luckily I was here then so I got to try them, and even (attempt to) help make them!

Above, my friend Enriqueta and I (with my super-sized fork and knife), and a real chile en nogada for comparison (photo “borrowed” from the internet). The white is the nogada sauce, made from a special type of nut that I don’t remember the name of (this is not the end of a sentence so I can put a preposition here right?), the green is cilantro, and the reds are pomegranate seeds.

I have officially lived more than half of my Mexican life (unless I decide to move here...).

And I only have 4 blog posts to show for it.

Oh dear.

I'm not dead yet!

Two weeks ago found us heading south to the state of Oaxaca to celebrate el Día de los Muertos. Literally translated to “Day of the Dead,” it’s a celebration, rather than mourning, of deceased (obviously) friends and family members. Someone was explaining this tradition to me, and he mentioned the following observation: “foreigners have a hard time understanding it…you probably think we’re really crazy, celebrating death like this.” Meanwhile I had actually been thinking, “this is the awesomist holiday I’ve ever heard of.” Does that put me into the category of crazy once again?

Sidenote: I know awesomist is not a word, but that’s the word I was thinking. I am trying to maintain the authenticity of the story. Sank yo doctor.

And it was indeed the most amazing celebration I’ve experienced. Before the actual day (well, several days—when you can’t fit it all into 24 hours, just add more hours) there is the usual commercialization that comes before every holiday: there are sugar- and chocolate-skulls sold in the shops, the kids dress up in costumes and go around asking for money, the Catrinas (skeleton figurines) appear in windows…

Calaveras de azúcar (sugar skulls)

But in reality it is still taken seriously, and in each house the family puts up an ofrenda, or offering, for the family member being remembered. A table of three layers is elaborately decorated with food, drinks, incense, a photo of the person, hojaldra (a special type of bread), flowers, candles, and the person’s favorite items, so that they feel welcomed when their spirits come back. And when they've had their fill, if you get hungry, you can steal food from the table. So that it doesn’t go to waste.

Una ofrenda en un restaurante

By far the part that made the biggest impression on me was the nighttime visit to the cemetery. I had never before seen more alive people than dead people in a graveyard, but there it was, packed to the brim with people, flowers, and the occasional mariachi band, all ready to spend the night there. It simply amazed me…all these people sitting by the tombstones of family members, but no one crying. They were there just to be with them, because the spirits supposedly come back on this night. We couldn’t have been more out of place, a group of United Statesians weaving through the Mexican families, tripping over mounds of dirt and speaking spanglish, and we could feel each other’s discomfort, but we brought flowers to put on the abandoned graves, and I’m glad I got to go as I have never seen anything remotely like this before.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see what your own ofrenda would be like?

A new food and a new friend

According to an Italian professor at the university, these are the Three Lies that Mexicans tell:

1. We’ll meet here at 5 o’clock on the dot.
2. Can I borrow some money? I’ll pay you back tomorrow.
3. Just one more drink and then we’ll go.

Italicized is the part that doesn’t actually ever happen.

Thanks to a wonderful family who I met through my brother’s ex-classmate’s parents, I got to eat grasshoppers. They were small. They were red. They were salty. They were NOT SPICY! Luckily my stomach hasn’t killed me yet, it’s actually holding up pretty well.

Speaking of food, here is a common question that people ask me: “What is a traditional dish of the united states, besides hamburgers?” The next time someone asks me that, I’m going to tell them, “human flesh.” Just to see what they say.

We decided to take advantage of the 4 pools that the university has, so this morning we went swimming to “get exercise.” We “swam” chatting at the edge of the pool for one hour, dried off in the sun, and then went to make pancakes. I feel really in shape. Also, who knew that the kiddy pool could be more dangerous than the deep olympic sized one, or the one with the 10 meter diving platform? We stuck our feet in the pool that only comes up to my knees and discovered that it was sizzling with electricity. There were wires coming out of the wall and they were touching the water…it made my legs feel really tingly. Luckily it was weak enough that we were able to avoid electrocution. That reminds me of the Mr. Bean episode where he gets filled with electricity. Also the one where he goes swimming. I highly recommend them.

Ok back to the purpose of this blog. Here’s a noteworthy interaction I had with a fellow pedestrian the other day:

Strange Man Who I Had Never Met Before: Do you know where xyz store is? (except not in English)
Me: No, sorry.
SMWIHNMB: Do you want to go get coffee with me?

Needless to say, I accepted the offer and SMWIHNMB and I travelled the country for a week, promoting blind dates and the use of lame pick-up lines.

Word of the….month (oops):
Esposa = wife
Esposas = handcuffs

??

I hope that’s just a coincidence. But it’s probably not.

Eyeballs, extraterrestrials, and economics

I have successfully demonstrated my lack of blogging skills, and am trying to remedy this by writing a second (!) post. I thought that I had selected the option for “automatic update on my life” but I guess it doesn’t work that way.

I have worn high heels two (2) times in the three point five (3.5) months that I’ve been here. This is a personal record for me. I think in my whole life besides this year, I’ve worn high heels twice. I also bought a bag (not quite a purse, but with pretty colors and two little poofy things)! I might be a whole different person when I get back.

Novel things I have ingested:
~Eyeballs
…although I can’t actually say what they taste like, because we ordered a bunch of different types of tacos (some of them of unknown meats) and they all came wrapped up in little bags looking identical, so I don’t know which ones were the eyes. I opened each one up waiting for one to be looking back at me, but I guess it was ground-up eyeballs, so I couldn’t tell. Anyway, they all tasted good. And then they made me sick. Well worth it though.

This past week I have started to experience a strange phenomenon called homesickness, for the second time in my life. I think it means I have been thinking about my family too much (that’s a compliment!). I do love it here but sometimes I find myself counting down. I leave 8 months from today, and I’ve already been making a list (I don’t know why I love lists so much) of what I am going to do next summer.

Last week we attempted to go to the welcome party for the philosophy department. It took us three buses, 6 stops for directions, and an hour and a half wandering around in the rain to get there. When we finally arrived, we found hordes of students standing around smoking and drinking. So we stayed for 40 minutes listening to the music (less than half the time it took us to get there) and then left to go make pancakes.

I noticed that I have started to think a bit in Spanish. But I haven’t had a dream in Spanish yet, and I still can’t pronounce “extraterrestre” (my favorite Spanish word) even though I have been practicing for two years. I can’t figure out if something makes me stand out or not, because some people seem to know without even talking to me that I’m a foreigner, like the guy on the street the other day who asked me if I was not from here. But then I was talking to some people in my class, and One said to the Other “she’s american” and the Other seemed surprised and said he didn’t realize. But that was after I had demonstrated my not-up-to-par-with-native-speakers accent. To improve my knowledge of the Mexican culture, I went to a presentation on swears. And took lots of notes.

After three weeks of not understanding lectures, wondering when the professor was going to show up (sometimes they don’t—the other day, the professor came 15 minutes late, listened to a concert that was playing in the department for 45 minutes, and then left. We didn’t have class), and getting up at 6:00am, I finally decided on 4 classes: Mexican anthropology, cognitive psychology, history of economic thought, and philosophy of science. Sometimes I find it difficult to stay awake for the 2-hour classes, but luckily there is considerably less homework then at Wellesley, and for one class I even got to color! Among the classes that I ended up rejecting was a philosophy class called “problems of aesthetics,” and after one reading and two 4 hour long lectures, none of which I understood, I decided it would be better to wait. I mean, sometimes you just have to make sacrifices!

The First Soaking

After an intense session (15 seconds long) with my gorra de pensamiento (thinking cap), I decided to start a blog (n, a subjective documentary of my time in Mexico which no one will read except myself when I am 96 years old and want to remember the good old days; to be updated weekly or when I get around to it, whichever comes second. Will include visuals).

A catch-up of the past 2.5 months (holy crap!) (special message to Mother (“not mother?” –Ruprekt): of the time that I am going to be here, more than 20% has already passed!):

I landed in Puebla (safely inside a Continental Aircraft) in the evening on May 30, in the middle of a thunderstorm. The first lightening lit up the whole cloud that we were flying through. That’s how I knew that I was about to arrive in the perfect city for me (the weather has not failed me: the first week I was here, I managed to get soaked by the rain at least every other day; a few weeks ago I almost got buried in hail). Once at the airport, after surviving customs, everyone has to press a button, and it randomly lights up red or green. Most of the time it turns green. But of course, with my luck (note to readers: you will never hear me say the two preceding phrases in a non-sarcastic situation), I got red, and so I had to have my bag searched. They were slightly suspicious of my box of 360 contact lenses, but not of the most important item, my collection of nose glasses. Hmmm.

The purpose of my first outing was to purchase my faithful inflatable mattress, which has served me well. We blew it up at a gas station and carried it to the apartment on top of the car by sticking our arms out the windows and holding it to the roof. In the rain. I miss it now that I’m in a real live bed.

My work in the lab started off with my very own lab-coat and a lecture from my supervisor summarizing the projects they are working on, which I understood when I heard it but remembered nothing afterwards because I was so busy trying to understand what he was saying at the time that I forgot to remember to try to remember what he was saying. I learned very quickly several different words to ask people to repeat themselves so that when I have to ask someone to repeat something five times, then at least I’m not repeating myself too—I can make the request a different way each time. In the first few weeks I learned how to slice a rat brain, stain the tissue, turn it into a slide, draw and analyze brain cells under the microscope, and, after several unsuccessful tries, unlock the door to the lab. I’ve started seeing neurons everywhere: in the sidewalk, on my wall, behind my eyelids. Maybe it will make me smarter? No, I think it just makes me crazy. Well, more crazy than I already was.

A recent fortunate discovery: a nearby grocery store carries nutella. But alas, (special note to father…) not in Costco-size quantities.

Things I had not eaten before (to my knowledge) but have now eaten:
Nopál (a type of cactus)
Pata (cow feet, slightly rubbery)
Mole de panza (stomach soup, complete with villi)
Tacos de lengua (tongue tacos)
Tacos de cesos (brain tacos)

Things that regularly appear on menus/in conversations about food, but I have not *yet* eaten:
Insects
Tacos de machito (bull testicles)

Word of the week:
Modismos = words that they do not teach in high school or college spanish classes because the words are used only in Mexico, or only in Puebla. aka, every other word.

Also, I decided to learn how to dance while I’m here, although I will have to put up with much taunting in the process because my hips refuse to move the way I tell them to.

Fin.

They actually sent me here to be tortured on a bed of nails.

There's nothing more refreshing than a nice dip in some bat-dropping-filled water.

It is taking quite a long time to upload these photos, and I keep accidentally deleting them, so I will add more later and bid goodnight for now.