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.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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!
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!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
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.
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.
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