Update (again)

Our classes just ended last week and a I went to Cancun for a few days with some friends. It was a great time and I have plenty to say about it just not right now, check back a little later. Right now I am at the computer lab in Queretaro about to board a bus to Tijuana where I will then cross the border and meet my sister somewhere down there and stay with her and her family for a while. It is a 38 hour bus ride so hopefully I will come out of this alive and sane, although I wouldn´t count on it. I wrote that bit below about Lolita about a week ago and am just now getting around to putting it up. Hope all is well with everyone and I will check back once I am back in the U.S. of A.

A Farewell to Lolita

As the end of the program gets nearer and my departure from Queretaro becomes imminent and inevitable, there are a lot of mixed emotions going around from everyone, including Lolita. She tells me everyday—sometimes a couple times a day—that I don’t have to leave and that I am welcome to stay with her as long as I want. The crazy thing is, I know she is absolutely telling the truth; I could stay with her for the next 10 years and she would never ask why I was still there or when I would be leaving. I’m serious. Today, in attempt to talking me out of leaving, she claimed that Oregon and everywhere else are colder than Queretaro and only partially joking asked I why would I want to go back to that. She followed that up with a story about some animals that change colors in the winter but if it isn’t cold enough they can’t change colors and get eaten. I’m not exactly sure what she was getting at, we’ve had our share of equivocal conversations since I’ve been here, but I hope I don’t get eaten.

The whole señora-student relationship has fascinated me since before I even got here. The two of us are two completely different people, in two completely different places in our lives, heading in two completely different directions. She is a 50-something Mexican divorcee who lives alone and likes soap operas and I am an American college student who turned 22 under her roof and is just out for a good time in Mexico. She has kids and grandkids. I have guy friends and girlfriends. I take classes weekdays for university credit in hopes of someday getting a job. She takes painting classes twice a week just because she enjoys them so much. For the last two years I lived in a house with four other buddies, a beer pong table and enough garbage and clutter that Pixar used it as the basis for “Wall-E.” And, I had grown quite accustomed to that lifestyle. I did what I wanted when I wanted, I never worried about what time I got home or woke up, and I could park myself on the couch, drink beer and watch sports without anyone raising an eyebrow. I probably made my bed about as often as I watched “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” (never) and usually only cleaned my room only at the end of each term. So, you can imagine that someone moving into a house with only one other lady in a foreign country who literally doesn’t speak the same language as you has to be somewhat of a learning experience. There were certainly times when things were wearing on me and I was not in the mood to go home and have to speak and listen in another language to a women who was sometimes lonely from living alone when all I really wanted to do was park myself on the couch with a game on and a beer without anyone raising an eyebrow. She also has an uncanny knack for carrying on long conversations on mornings when I have a test or am already late or both. For whatever reason or reasons, however, the two of us have gotten along great over the past four months and I could not be more thankful. She has done so much more than just welcome me into her home and give me a room to sleep in. It’s really not like that at all. I wake her up with a knock on her door every weekday to the response, “Ya voy,” followed by her making me breakfast and telling me all about whatever the hell she wants to talk about. She shows me her drawings from class and asks what I think of them. She makes me a massive lunch everyday and we do more talking about what ever a 22-year-old male college student with less than two years of college Spanish and a Mexican grandma could possible talk about. It certainly hasn’t always been easy, but putting forth the effort has paid dividends.

I do not mean for this to be in any way taken as concieted, but I do wonder how she is going to do with out me around. I know that I mean a lot to her and she has been clearly emotional the past couple days. I know it will be hard for her to not have anyone come home for comida everyday, tell her about their weekend trip, or wake her up in the mornings. She has her kids and grandkids that I know she loves very much, but the two of us have a different relationship. She tells me about almost everything: her divorce and her ex-husband, her children and their spouses, her friends and their drama, her father who died a few years ago, and much more. I even came home one night to her going through a box of pictures followed by her making me sit with her while pointing out every person in every picture and where and why they were there. I can now tell you more than you would ever need to know about Lolita’s family. It’s this kind of stuff that I was in a unique position to be a part of—these aren’t things she talks of or can talk of with her kids or grandkids. She knew all along that due to the language barrier and the fact that we are two completely different people, that I couldn’t offer her much feedback when she would delve into these issues, but that there was someone there at all was what mattered. I don’t mean to make her out to be a depressed lonely hermit, because that would be very far from the truth. She has lived in Queretaro her whole life and has plenty of friends and family here and is usually always very outgoing and quite sanguine, but like I said, partially due to timing (I am the first student she has had in a while because of her divorce) and partially due to god knows what, the two of us became very close and we will both have a void to fill in the absence of each others company.

Now that I am heading back I am starting to reflect more on my time here. For reasons I can’t exactly remember I named this blog after a line in the Bob Dylan song “Visions of Johanna.” The last line is, “and these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.” I wonder what halcyon memories of Mexico will remain when I get back and am telling people about my experience. What about five years from now? Ten? Twenty? etc. I know I am going to walk away from this with some great stories that I will probably tell a million times, friends I plan on knowing for many years to come, and memories that aren’t likely to fade anytime soon. I also know that living with a wonderfully crazy Mexican lady named Lolita in Queretaro, Mexico for four months will not be something I will soon forget.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

GO DUCKS!

Update

Hey everyone, I’m back. Sorry it has been so long, I didn’t die or get kidnapped by pirates or get beheaded or anything, I’m sure you were worried. With so much drama in the LBC…er, rather the QRO, classes coming to an end, lots of homework, my parents visiting, and my recent and unhealthy obsession with the David Foster Wallace, I haven’t written anything in a while. I apologize to all four of you for my absence. That being said, I still don’t have much to write or much time to write it. So, a few things on my parents being in town. First, in the seven days that they were here, my dad pronounced the word “Querétaro” a total of 4,732 different ways, many of which sounded more like some sort of Asian dialect (Japanese maybe?) than anything resembling Spanish. You probably think I’m making fun of him, but really, it was quite impressive. I don’t know how he did it; it was different every time. Kudos. To my surprise, my mom knew more Spanish than I expected although conjugated less verbs than Emmitt Smith. (Really, I’m in no position to criticize anyone’s Spanish, and like I said, she actually spoke quite well, but I thought of that joke and how no one reading this would get it and how happy that would make me being the only one to understand my jokes. I’m sorry, I had to.) It was a good time, they got to see Querétaro and meet Lolita, we went to Guanajuato for the weekend, and they spent a night on their own in Bernal. Good times were had by all and I’m glad they came.

Because of a couple of scheduling issues, we are going to be having Thanksgiving (or “Dia de Gracias”) dinner on Friday instead of Thursday. None of us are too happy about that, but there isn’t anything we can do and better late than never, right? We are still going to eat turkey and stuffing and pie and hang out and be thankful for stuff. So it should be fun. (Please God, I know it’s going to be Friday, but grant me the miracle of football on TV. Seriously, I don’t ask for much. Just this one thing and I won’t ask for anything for a long time and I’ll go to confession for all the bad words I used to describe John McCain and Sarah Palin in the last two months. Ok, thanks. Amen.) Well, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and go Ducks!

Dia de los Muertos

I like to think that I am a pretty observant guy. I usually notice little things about people and places that others miss and generally I am fairly aware of my surroundings. At least I used to think that. I’ll explain. Here in Mexico November 1st and 2nd are big holidays that happened to land on Saturday and Sunday this year. The first is All Saints day and the second is Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. If you throw in Halloween which is apparently becoming more and more popular here, that’s three solid days of fiestas. Hell yeah. Anyways, a while back I asked Lolita what she did for the holiday and she said something about a street festival thing and that she opens up her carport area and has a little fiesta type thing. The days leading up to the party she cooked and cleaned up the carport and I was excited to see what kind of thing she was throwing. On Saturday I inexplicably woke up around seven o’clock (my sleep pattern, or lack of, sucks horribly) and decided to go for a run. As I was leaving my house I saw my street blocked off a block up (my house is on the corner so basically the block just across the side street) and people setting up tents and getting ready for what looked like the aforementioned street festival. I had no idea it was going to be so close to my house, and I wondered why they would pick this random street to block off and have a party in. Whatever, I thought, very little makes sense in Mexico. That’s about as far as I took it and then went for my run. I got back ate breakfast and listened to Lolita, her sister, and their friend loudly have a conversation in which they all talked at the same time never pausing for a response from another person. I’m not sure if or how any information was exchanged; it was unbelievable. Later when I went out to check what was going on in the carport I realized that it wasn’t as much of a party she was having but rather a garage sale/ taco stand for people walking past going to the festival. (I had to have eaten a dangerously unhealthy amount of tacos this weekend; I am starting to think that Mexicans genuinely don’t understand the concept of fullness. Not that I’m complaining, they were delicious.) Still a bit perplexed as to why our random street would be a center of celebration for Dia de Los Muertos, I wandered over to the street fair where on one side people were selling food and on the other flowers. After walking about 100 feet I saw people walking towards and entrance in the walls that went along the street and are kiddy-corner to my house. I decided to check it out and when I got about closer I realized the whole thing was a cemetery. Actually, it’s a massive cemetery, the only one in the city, and it’s 30 feet from my house. This whole time I have been living a stones throw from a giant graveyard for the past three months and had no idea it was there. Really Stephen, you didn’t notice the giant cemetery 30 feet from where you sleep every night. I’m an idiot. Granted, you can’t see inside from my house because of the walls and I don’t really have a reason to walk that way, but still, how did I not know this? What am I going to find out next, that there’s an airplane hangar around the corner? I told Lolita I didn’t know about it and she thought it was funny and jokingly announced it to everyone within earshot. Things started to add up pretty quickly: the now logical location of the street festival, the fact that there are four flower shops within a block of me, why a ghost named Chucho has been visiting me in the night every other Tuesday. It also hit me that the name of the neighborhood I live in is called “Cimatario.” I had to ask to make sure that didn’t translate to “cemetery” in English or else I would be really pissed at myself for not piecing this all together. It doesn’t. (I don’t have any hard data to support this, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that my finger and toe nails grow faster here than in the States. I’m serious, it’s weird. I wonder if this is because I live kiddy-corner to a graveyard and I’m picking up some weird supernatural finger and toenail growing vibe. I’ll have to ask Chuco.) Anyways, I wandered around the cemetery for a while until I didn’t want to think about death any more so I left, later called some friends to come over and we wandered around and talked about death for too long and decided we needed to leave. The whole festival is really cool and interesting. On Saturday it was a bit more somber than I expected since I heard it was more of a celebration than a memorial day type thing; I even walked past an actual burial with a woman, the widow or mother I presumed, crying uncontrollably to the point that she couldn’t stand and needed to be sat down on another gravestone. Later on and on Sunday however, it was much more laid back. The cemetery itself was infinitely cooler than any of our cemeteries. (I suppose the argument could be made that cemeteries aren’t supposed to be “cool,” but whatever, I think they should be.) The grave stones aren’t just plaques in the ground, oh no, they are huge and many of them have marble statues of Jesus or the Virgin of Guadalupe (she’s big here) or a glass case with a picture and objects of the person. I have a feeling that if a Mexican went to one of our cemeteries they would find the monotony of it horribly depressing. On Sunday it was so crowded at times you almost had to push to get in and out of the one entrance. A lot of people worked in the morning cleaning the grave sites, repainting the lettering, trimming the plants, and decorating the graves with marigolds—the traditional flower of the holiday dating back to its indigenous origins before it was converted into a Christian holiday by the Spanish—and then they later kicked back with their families around the grave, ate, drank, and hung out. It really wasn’t depressing or anything, it actually seemed quite laid back and relaxing. They were also a bunch or guys playing music that people paid to play at the graves of their loved ones. Some were mariachis but others were more indigenous sounding and one was a big brass band with trumpets, a tuba, and a dude playing a snare drum among others that reminded me of the funeral music for Vito’s brother in “Godfather II” or a more somber sounding version of the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme song. I spent most of my weekend either wandering around the cemetery or the festival outside turning down people trying to sell me flowers and eating tacos in the carport. When it was all over I asked Lolita if she made much money from her garage sale/ taco business and without even a hint of disappointment at all she said that she didn’t make all that much. She said she didn’t care, that her goal was never really to make money; it’s just something she has been doing for years. All three of her kids and all seven of her grandkids were there, I think that was enough for her. The whole weekend was very Mexican: family, eating, relaxing (all in a public place of course), not caring how much money you spend/make, flowers, and religion mixed with tradition. I think this is the most Mexican thing I have done here since (I had a good joke to throw in here except I can’t write it because my parents make up roughly half of my readership, sorry everyone else) ummm… since…getting diarrhea from street food in Mexico city… since almost dying every time I cross the street…since getting my full back tattoo of the Virgin of Guadalupe…ummm… since…

Fun in the Sun

Last week our Friday classes got switched to Thursday for uninteresting reasons. This meant two things: international bar and three-day weekend! The international bar is a bar we found out about here in town that on Thursdays has free drinks for foreigners with ID. I’m not sure how this is legal, but it is, and it’s awesome. (If I had a nickel for every time I’ve thought that exact sentence in the last two months…) For the three-day weekend there were a couple different groups splitting up. Some were going to spend a day in Guanajuato, others back to the Sierra Gorda at a house of one of our Mexican friends, some staying in town and one girl in our group meeting up with a friend in Morelia and then going to the coast. Still undecided on Thursday night after international bar (I neither know nor care what it’s really called) the few of us on the fence, in true procrastinators style, decided we’d talk the next day and figure it out. The next day we figured we were too late to catch a ride to Sierra Gorda, didn’t want to go to Guanajuato for only a day, and didn’t want to stick around town all weekend. Through a series of convoluted and later blatantly erroneous text messages from our friends Jessica and Emily (the beach going duo who had already left), my buddies Chris and Eric and I decided that the coast it is and we boarded the 3:30 bus to Morelia hoping to catch a connection to the coast at seven in attempt to save both time and money on the direct bus which didn’t leave until midnight. Both the text I got that said the bus from Queretaro to Morelia only took “two hours-ish” and that there was a connection at seven turned out to what later in the trip were referred to as “Emily facts.” Neither were even close to being true; the bus took four hours, (although we did get stuck behind a train that I am pretty sure had a drunk conductor, ask about that story sometime) and there was not a bus at seven (we wouldn’t have made it anyways as a result of the first lie) but rather one at midnight. (The first bus wouldn’t have been as bad if we hadn’t been forced to watch two of the worst attempts at movies in the history of cinema: the second half of “High School Musical II” and a phenomenally bad movie about a Mormon who goes on his mission in the South Pacific. Thank god it ended before I pulled off the rarely seen Oedipus-van Gogh combo of gouging out both of my eyes and cutting off my ears. That still would have been less painful. I’m sure of it.) All of this left us with a wonderful four hour layover in Morelia where we went to a shopping mall area, ate, sat around and then I went into my first ever Wall Mart—didn’t really leave much of an impression on me. We did a lot more sitting and then wandering to a new spot to sit and decide where we wanted to wander to next. Eric and Chris had about a half hour conversation about dragons from some book I had never heard of, we wandered around Home Depot in search of ratchets for a gizmo we wanted to build, and then took off. It wasn’t so bad, we all agreed, small price to pay for how much fun we were planning on having at the beach. We had no idea. Possibly through divine intervention (or the fact that it was the cheapest bus we could get) there was no movie on the five-plus hour ride to Zihuatanejo and a short taxi ride to the hotel in Ixtapa got us to our destination a little after five in the morning. (Zihuatanejo is where Andy Dufresne escapes to meet up with Red in “Shawshank Redemption.” We saw neither Tim Robbins nor Morgan Freeman; that’s not to say we weren’t looking.) We met up with the girls and walked to the beach to watch the sunrise. None of us were tired, it was way too cool. This started off our weekend of awesomeness and confusing questions about astronomy—both remained motifs throughout. Over the next two days these are a select few of the most uttered phrases or questions: “Wait, we’ve been in Mexico for how long and why haven’t we done this already?” “Everyone who didn’t come is going to have to hear about how awesome this was for a week.” “Do you think there is a study abroad program in Cabo?” “How sunburned is my back?” “Who got to decide the constellations? Best job ever.” “Is that true or is that an Emily Fact?” “Uno mas cerveza por favor.” The sand was perfect, the water was perfect, the weather was perfect, the mood was perfect; I guess you could say Saturday and Sunday were pretty much perfect. I can’t describe everything we did because neither you nor I have time, however, one anecdote that I’m sure will really deliver the punch happened on Saturday. Eric and Chris took off in search of Gatorades (preferably pink) to keep hydrated and wash the salt water out of our mouths. After well over an hour without coming back, we started wondering and getting a little worried about where they were. Finally they showed up with two bags of water (yeah, bags, as in plastic) and they could hardly speak to get the words out of where they had been. Eventually we deciphered what they trying to say: they found some tents down the beach a ways where for 50 pesos you can get a half hour massage. I don’t think they stopped smiling for the rest of the trip. Later that night, we went back and I got a massage on a beautiful Mexican beach at dawn that I am convinced took me to another dimension of both time and space. I don’t think I stopped smiling the rest of the trip. We got back into the Queretaro bus station this morning a little after 6AM, just enough time to make 9AM classes and to explain to everyone our tans (or burns), uncontrollable grins, and our plans for the next three-day weekend.

Mexico City

I guess you could say this weekend didn’t quite go as planned. Actually, even before it started it wasn’t going as planned. Gabi, our fearless leader, had been telling us for a while that her mother had been sick but in the past week it got worse and she passed away here in Queretaro midweek. A couple of us went the funeral and we later got an email stating the obvious which was that Gabi would not be going with us to Mexico City over the weekend. So we went on with just Alejandro, one of our Spanish professors. I asked him when he got there if Gabi had told him anything about my bag that was stolen in the Sierra Gorda, since the original plan was to try and get it when we were there. He said he hadn’t heard anything but said he would call Gabi. Because of the whole situation, I figured it was probably a lost cause but he said he’d do it anyways. The first day we stopped at some old Aztec ruins outside of Mexico City where we got to climb ancient pyramids, take pictures, and be harassed by countless people trying to sell trinkets. It was really cool and I liked it a lot, but would have enjoyed much more if I hadn’t woken up that day with a headache, stomachache and the accompanying bowel movements. Nonetheless, I was able to make the most of it and slept on the bus as much as I could. The next day we went sightseeing around Mexico City. We started off by going to the Zócalo, the main plaza in Mexico City with the National Palace, which was just a few blocks from where we were staying at the Hotel Canada. When I went to Mexico a couple winters ago, we ate at the Hotel California in the town of Todos Santos where Don Henley supposedly wrote the song “Hotel California.” I liked the Hotel California better, I’ll explain later. In the National Palace there is perhaps Diego Rivera’s most famous mural depicting the history of Mexico. It is a spectacular work of art and one of the most impressive things I have seen in person. There were also a bunch of other murals of his there that we looked at before leaving for the Anthropology Museum, which is a huge museum of artifacts from the ancient civilizations of Mexico. Thanks to liberal usage of Pepto Bismol, I felt a little better and was able to spend more time in the museum than the bathroom, but once again, I could have enjoyed it a little more. I’m kind of a nerd about some of that stuff so I still really enjoyed it. Afterward we went up to a huge castle that overlooks the city and that some day when I am a gazillionare I am going to buy and my friends and I will have a “Real World: Queretaro” there. Except there won’t be any cameras and it won’t be on TV. Other than that, pretty much the same. Once we made it back to the hotel we were all ready to crash for a bit and then head out for food and a night on the town. But, like I said, things didn’t exactly go as planned. When we got back to our room I was missing all of the money (about $250) I left in my backpack and my friend Chris was missing some from his backpack and my friend Jessica in a different room on a different floor. Our rooms had been cleaned and it was clear since our rooms were locked that the maid did a little extra cleaning. I told you, I liked the Hotel California better. We got Alejandro and went to complain to the front desk, they seemed surprised and said that they haven’t had any complaints like this before. They looked to see who had cleaned the rooms and of course it was someone who usually doesn’t work for them that was just filling in. Also of course, when called, the maid didn’t answer, and also of course, the hotel said they have a contract of sorts that says they can’t be held responsible, and also of course the next day when talked to by the hotel manager the maid claimed no responsibly. There’s a possibility that we could get it back, Alejandro has the phone number of the place and although she wasn’t answering her phone over the weekend, when Gabi is back I’m sure she will at least try to help us out. In all, it’s quite depressing and I don’t even like rehashing it. When my bag was stolen it was annoying and frustrating but at least the whole thing had a “live and learn” motif to it since it was my fault I left it sitting there. This is different, this is just annoying, it’s not even a good story, at least the bag story had the silver lining of being interesting, this story sucks; you should know, you’re reading about it. We ended up not going out after all, however, those of us that weren’t tired had a great night hanging out in our room into the wee hours of the morning making sure to leave plenty of work for the maid in the morning. The next morning we had the option of going to a ballet but I passed since I wasn’t in the mood and barely had any money left. (I had some money on me that wasn’t in my backpack. I figured money was safer locked in my hotel room than in my pocket as I walked the streets of Mexico City. Clearly, I was wrong.) I got up somewhat early and since everyone that didn’t go was still asleep I lugubriously (I just learned that word today, I was excited to use it) walked around the centro. I basically just wandered around, went into gigantic churches, bought some cookies for breakfast at a Seven-Eleven, and then when others woke up, I finished up breakfast with some French fries and strawberry water. (There was an awesome juice shop next the hotel that had delicious and really cheap juice, or “water with flavor” as it is sometimes called here.) I even thought about having my spirit cleansed by a dude dressed up as an Aztec priest with a bowl of incense that he used to dance circles around paying customers. I decided I’d save my money but I’m still regretting it, it probably only cost like $0.04. Later on in the day we went to more museums and more ruins and then headed back to Queretaro. Although it didn’t go quite as some of us would have hoped, I really did enjoy Mexico City. I’m actually over the money at this point because Mexico City was so awesome; it’s not an easy city to mope around in. It’s is by far the hugest place I have ever been (it’s one of the hugest places in the world, it might even be number one in hugeness) and pretty much everything about it fascinated me. Well that’s about it from my end, sorry this was so long, slightly depressing and not all that interesting, but hey, now that you’re done you can get back to yearbookyourself.com (see below).