0
It Makes A Nice Sandwich
Posted by Miz B
on
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Sorry it's been so long folks. Stuff has been going down, the most recent of which was that the power in my house has been on the fritz for 2 whole days. It came on last night (cross your fingers), hopefully for good for a while, but by then I was too tired to type anything. As it is, 2 weeks of content might be a bit tough to come up with all at once, so bear with me here. I'm going to try a blow-by-blow as best as I can, starting last weekend.
Last weekend, we (my host family including Luis Fernando, and also Arnoud and Joao) went to Tonala in Chiapas for a baby shower. My host mother's family is from there. Beach pictures to follow (Chiapas, at least the bit that I saw, is a lot like a cross between Colorado and the Caribbean). On the way back, we stopped for the night in Tuxtla Gutierrez, incidentally on Halloween night (again, many blurry, Bigfoot-esque pictures to follow -I love my camera, but if there's one thing it cannot do, it's shooting at night). I also got to have the closest thing to the food I love back home since I came here (again, more to follow). I also, for the bazillionth time, got told off for not wanting to go out and party (they can keep saying it, but they can't make me enjoy it. I can't make me like it. Blame my first personality).
After it came the biggest disappointment I've had since I got here. November 2 is Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico. In Mina, everyone goes to the stadium and brings flowers and eats and works on the giant altar and all. I was looking forward to it since before I came to Mexico, since over a year before. So, as you can imagine, I was a little put out when, in the space of 4 hours, I developed a truly spectacular fever and, for all intents and purposes passed out for 12 hours. Insult was added to injury when, the next morning, I was told off again for not trying harder to 'acclimatize'. That was definitely the low point of the last month.
But, things have looked up from there! I still have the flu, possibly exacerbated by some sort of allergy brought on by the bizarre season change, but since pretty much my entire school is identically sick to one degree or another (even so severely as causing a shut-down of the bathrooms for an afternoon to clean up the vomit -charming), I don't feel as special. The season change here is...weird. I usually end up a little under-the-weather around the season changes back home, especially if I am in school or otherwise occupied, since that tends to dictate that I will not be taking care of myself very well or sleeping very much. I thought here, in this soft, tropical climate, I would be fine. But apparently, when the temperature drops, although it may still feel like jeans and a t-shirt weather for us Midwest-Americans, there's still humidity. And the humidity makes it a squidgy, sticky, creeping cold which, among other things, makes it very difficult for someone busy and surviving on 5 hours of sleep a night to get rid of a mild but very annoying cold. On the other hand, the rest of my school is sick too, teachers included.
Now, since this was typed over the course of about a week, and I have trouble remembering what I ate for lunch yesterday (seriously, no clue), than I am going to forget some stuff and refer to it later and you're all gonna be thinking "WTF?", but that can't be helped. Anyway, I have many awesome pictures of Chiapas, which will hopefully make it onto the *___*Picasa*___* page....someday.
School commenced, as previously mentioned, and the week went as normal (Happy Birthday, Patrick!). On Saturday, we drove up to the other house in Veracruz with Louis Fernando. For some reason, I was the only person even remotely worried about the state of the house. This was the first time we had gone up there since the roads had cleared after the last hurricane, about a month ago. I knew the water hadn't made it anywhere near this neighborhood, but I also knew that there's usually a little more to hurricanes than lots of water.
Score one for knowledge.
I'm sure I've smelled something worse in my life (my life has been a little more graphic for my age than most), but for the love of cheese I can't remember what or when. As usual, they had left the fridge fully stocked, to avoid shopping when they came back. Thing you have to remember is, the power in Mexico is very volatile at the best of times (one of the reasons this post took so long is that last week, the power for the whole property was turning on and off every 5 seconds...for 4 days. We still don't know why). So when hurricane winds (not usually known for their kindness to electronics and power lines) blew stuff away, they took the power out with them. And for some reason, when the power came back on for the rest of the street, it didn't come back for the one unoccupied house. Add to that the broken windows, and the fact that with the windows and various cracks around doors and such there was about an inch or so of dry bay-silt on the floors all through the house, and it was not fun. Saddly, I forgot to take a picture of the fridge before they had emptied it out and started hosing it off and...brace for eww....scraping off all the bug casings. I kept trying to help, but no one would let me. Actually, it was sort of interesting from a clinically anthropological sort of way. Petrona and Julia kicked everyone out of the house and wouldn't let anyone back in to do anything unless they found something they couldn't reach or couldn't move. It was hard for me since a) I was bored and b) I'm programmed to try and help when I see a little old lady trying to climb into a cupboard to clean the back. They were very angry, in an unfocused sort of way I'm not used too. It was like they took it as a direct affront to their very old-school Mexican pride in the woman's duty to keep house (which I have been running up against more and more. It will be interesting to see how that comes up in my next 2 families).
That said, it took days to get the smell out of my nose. They actually piled everyone into the car, braved the insanely crowded late-night traffic and parking, and spent 2 hours just wandering around the mall looking at stuff. I didn't understand what we were doing until someone explained we were trying to avoid going back into the house.
Enough of that. School resumed on Monday as per usual, but lead to a breakthrough. As of all the time before, I had kind of been looking for something to learn (aside from Spanish). I've started practicing guitar again, but I can do that at home. I had been thinking about playing soccer, but besides the fact that again, not that hard to do back home, it also seems to be nigh on impossible to accomplish here. It's funny, everyone keeps saying "Oh sure, there's soccer for girls here, I know there is", but no one actually plays it. I've only had one person actually come out and say I'm not going to find that here, but no one seems to have told anyone else. All the adults are still convinced we just haven't looked in the right places. Anyway, the music teacher got trapped inside in our classroom on Monday due to inclement weather (is that how you say that?). I had seen the music students from afar, usually carrying some sort of guitar-like instrument and wrestling a lot (the one's that actually play and don't sing tend to be boys). I, in typical oversight fashion, said to myself that I don't really enjoy mariachi as much (some exceptions), and ignored them. But once I got to hear them practice, I got a descent look at some of the instruments. They are NOT, in fact, guitars, but a sort of cross between a guitar and a ukulele. They come in 3 sizes (accurately called primero, secundo and tercero -first, second, and third) and are as a group called 'jaranas'. It gets better. I've never heard them before (and the Wikipedia page on them is woefully lacking), because they're not played outside of southern Veracruz. The music is very fast, big on percussion, slightly repetitive, and really, really happy-sounding (to me at least). I was instantly enthralled. Of course, as with most things I find fun, people reacted to my wish to try playing with one of those "oh, sure honey" looks, while secretly thinking I'll figure out eventually that it's a boy thing. But after Petrona got over her initial shock that I could actually play guitar (another boy-dominated activity), and I wouldn't shut up about the jarana, she started to look into it. I got my first go on Wednesday. It was the polar opposite of Monday (snigger, get it? get it?), so much so that all the students skipped out on their other classes and played a soccer match with an actual referee (maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seems to me that soccer gets incrementally more violent the more important the score is. Pff. Boys.), or taking the time out to cheer extra loudly from the bleachers (depending on their preference and gender <- if it seems like I'm harping on about it, that would be right, I am. Bear with me, please). I, still exhausted from Veracruz, slept through the first half of the game on the top bench of the bleachers (not on purpose), and I woke up when someone elbowed me in the head (also, I'm assuming, not on purpose). At this point, I noticed the music teacher had piled all his stuff up on one of the big, stone stair/bleach/thingys that hug the elementary school and run parallel to the sports field. I went over, and, after clearing up some initial confusion, he taught me some very rudimentary chords. Jaranas usually have 8 strings, are carved from the core of certain kinds of strings (Chiro, the music teacher, makes his own), and are played a lot like a guitar. I play best on a tercero; it's easier for me to handle and is closer in size to a small guitar. I can play secundo, too (about the size of a standard ukulele), but I have some serious trouble with the ones smaller than that (there's one kind, I think it's a sort of offshoot/soprano thingy which is about the size of a guitar for some sort of American Girl type doll). I LOVE it! I can't play worth crap (it doesn't help that I don't know any Spanish in relation to playing music), but I really want to learn to do this! I was a little put out to learn that I can't really play with the rest of the class. In true Mexican fashion, no one out and told me this, but Chiro is in charge of all the music classes for the whole school, and they're practicing for some sort of competition right now. My friend Patrick was really sweet about explaining that I probably couldn't play with them, since the year before they had had a Korean girl perform with them and gotten a whole bunch of points taken off. I think he was really worried about offending me, which he shouldn't have been. Not only would I not want to play in front of the whole school (I'm shy, I don't know how to play the instrument yet, and all the songs are in Spanish!), but the only people who could offend me through this are the stupid judges! (I was a little put out for some reason. I don't know why, Americans practically invented unfair stereotypical profiling).
Anyway, my host mother found a little school that meets for two hours every Thursday and Friday night (I'm going to have to take a taxi there). The classes are less than $20 USD a month. She was all worried that 'it would be too high'. I tried to explain that my guitar classes back home were about $14 for 1/2 hour once a week and in the U.S. that's reasonable, but I don't think she believed me. So, I'm probably going to start classed once I get back from Ruta Maya on 4 December. The teacher says for now I can use one of his extra jaranas to practice. I can't wait!
Let's see, what else has happened....
Oh! I finally paid for my Ruta Maya seat (thank you guys, I owe you big time, I love you!). For those of you who don't know, it's a Rotary thing (I'm guessing in all countries, although I can only speak for the USA and Mexico) to hold 2 (although I'm guessing that might be slightly harder in places like, say, Belgium). Oh, for familial enjoyment, this comes from a language and country chat I was having with Arnoud and a couple of our Mexican friends a week or so ago. Patrick and I were complaining that most of Europe speaks upwards of 2 languages, were as the U.S. and Mexico, outside of large cities, are almost overwhelmingly English and Mexican Spanish, respectively. Arnoud's counter-argument was that while most of Belgium can speak 2 or more separate tongues, you can also drive all the way across it in about 2 days and it has no mountains to speak of. Jose Louis and I both agreed that we want to go to Belgium. Of course, I followed with: "The question is, why wouldn't you go to Belgium? Belgium."
No one got it. "We are pilgrims in an unholy land".
The real stumper is, why can I remember random lines from Indiana Jones, but I can't remember the correct verb for 'let go of me'.
Also, as some of you may be aware, my birthday is coming up. I'm turning 18 on 21 November. It's just as big a deal here as it is in the states (at least in a legal sense. I think they blow off a bit of the whole 'woo, b-day!' thing with Quincineras). It's starting to look like I'm going to miss my actual birthday completely, party-wise (which sucks, since it actually fell on a Sunday this year). So, my family threw me a party this Sunday instead. It was epic, in a normal sort of way. I got some cool presents (thank you, guys!). Most of the friends I invited actually showed up (at 3pm on a Sunday, which, my host mother was quick to point out to me, probably means they really want to be my friends, which is cool). One person who didn't come actually showed up really late just to wish me a happy birthday and explain why he couldn't make it, instead of just waiting to tell me at school (once again, thanks Patrick!). I had a really good time, and as some people are starting to notice, a truly legendary cake incident (forever immortalized on Facebook. I'm working on getting a copy so I can post it to here. I figure if that many people saw it, what the hell, it was funny!). I promised Jose Louis and Gustavo I would get them back, thereby highlighting another cultural difference. They freaked out a little and I had to explain it's just something you say, as long as you're laughing when you say it you don't actually mean it. BTW, all you lovely folks back home, it was funny here. You try that shit at my 19th b-day, I will put the smackdown on all y'alls. Just sayin'.
Due to my bizarre MentalFloss addiction, I have a fun fact for you. I always thought the Firefly character Badger was named Badger, but it may have been a sly job description. Turns out, a 'badger' was a name for a Medieval age bloke who bought stuff from the people who made/grew/owned it and sold it to vendors or wholesalers, at a profit. Sort of an early middle-man. Obviously, the job was cut out (snigger). Joss is God!
So, party rocked, actual birthday may be spent in a bus on the way to Veracruz (or waiting around for something. This is a Rotary outing we're talking about).
So that brings me to today. Considering how happy I am, it seems more productive to list the only things going wrong right now.
1) I cannot find anyone to come pick me up so I can see the 1st HP7 movie at midnight tonight (and I already have a ticket!)
2) I am really tired (but we should face it, that is not news).
3) I cannot find any stores which sell nice shirts in my size (fun, right?)
4) My freaking ipod finally ate my copy of Zombieland, and The Walking Dead, while good, is severely lacking in both the funny and the Woody-Harrelson-with-a-banjo moments.
And that is it! If I left anything out, take it up with the Complaints department (which, BTW, is a gorilla wearing glasses and reading a 2-day-old copy of The Guardian).
I love you all, good night!
Last weekend, we (my host family including Luis Fernando, and also Arnoud and Joao) went to Tonala in Chiapas for a baby shower. My host mother's family is from there. Beach pictures to follow (Chiapas, at least the bit that I saw, is a lot like a cross between Colorado and the Caribbean). On the way back, we stopped for the night in Tuxtla Gutierrez, incidentally on Halloween night (again, many blurry, Bigfoot-esque pictures to follow -I love my camera, but if there's one thing it cannot do, it's shooting at night). I also got to have the closest thing to the food I love back home since I came here (again, more to follow). I also, for the bazillionth time, got told off for not wanting to go out and party (they can keep saying it, but they can't make me enjoy it. I can't make me like it. Blame my first personality).
After it came the biggest disappointment I've had since I got here. November 2 is Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico. In Mina, everyone goes to the stadium and brings flowers and eats and works on the giant altar and all. I was looking forward to it since before I came to Mexico, since over a year before. So, as you can imagine, I was a little put out when, in the space of 4 hours, I developed a truly spectacular fever and, for all intents and purposes passed out for 12 hours. Insult was added to injury when, the next morning, I was told off again for not trying harder to 'acclimatize'. That was definitely the low point of the last month.
But, things have looked up from there! I still have the flu, possibly exacerbated by some sort of allergy brought on by the bizarre season change, but since pretty much my entire school is identically sick to one degree or another (even so severely as causing a shut-down of the bathrooms for an afternoon to clean up the vomit -charming), I don't feel as special. The season change here is...weird. I usually end up a little under-the-weather around the season changes back home, especially if I am in school or otherwise occupied, since that tends to dictate that I will not be taking care of myself very well or sleeping very much. I thought here, in this soft, tropical climate, I would be fine. But apparently, when the temperature drops, although it may still feel like jeans and a t-shirt weather for us Midwest-Americans, there's still humidity. And the humidity makes it a squidgy, sticky, creeping cold which, among other things, makes it very difficult for someone busy and surviving on 5 hours of sleep a night to get rid of a mild but very annoying cold. On the other hand, the rest of my school is sick too, teachers included.
Now, since this was typed over the course of about a week, and I have trouble remembering what I ate for lunch yesterday (seriously, no clue), than I am going to forget some stuff and refer to it later and you're all gonna be thinking "WTF?", but that can't be helped. Anyway, I have many awesome pictures of Chiapas, which will hopefully make it onto the *___*Picasa*___* page....someday.
School commenced, as previously mentioned, and the week went as normal (Happy Birthday, Patrick!). On Saturday, we drove up to the other house in Veracruz with Louis Fernando. For some reason, I was the only person even remotely worried about the state of the house. This was the first time we had gone up there since the roads had cleared after the last hurricane, about a month ago. I knew the water hadn't made it anywhere near this neighborhood, but I also knew that there's usually a little more to hurricanes than lots of water.
Score one for knowledge.
I'm sure I've smelled something worse in my life (my life has been a little more graphic for my age than most), but for the love of cheese I can't remember what or when. As usual, they had left the fridge fully stocked, to avoid shopping when they came back. Thing you have to remember is, the power in Mexico is very volatile at the best of times (one of the reasons this post took so long is that last week, the power for the whole property was turning on and off every 5 seconds...for 4 days. We still don't know why). So when hurricane winds (not usually known for their kindness to electronics and power lines) blew stuff away, they took the power out with them. And for some reason, when the power came back on for the rest of the street, it didn't come back for the one unoccupied house. Add to that the broken windows, and the fact that with the windows and various cracks around doors and such there was about an inch or so of dry bay-silt on the floors all through the house, and it was not fun. Saddly, I forgot to take a picture of the fridge before they had emptied it out and started hosing it off and...brace for eww....scraping off all the bug casings. I kept trying to help, but no one would let me. Actually, it was sort of interesting from a clinically anthropological sort of way. Petrona and Julia kicked everyone out of the house and wouldn't let anyone back in to do anything unless they found something they couldn't reach or couldn't move. It was hard for me since a) I was bored and b) I'm programmed to try and help when I see a little old lady trying to climb into a cupboard to clean the back. They were very angry, in an unfocused sort of way I'm not used too. It was like they took it as a direct affront to their very old-school Mexican pride in the woman's duty to keep house (which I have been running up against more and more. It will be interesting to see how that comes up in my next 2 families).
That said, it took days to get the smell out of my nose. They actually piled everyone into the car, braved the insanely crowded late-night traffic and parking, and spent 2 hours just wandering around the mall looking at stuff. I didn't understand what we were doing until someone explained we were trying to avoid going back into the house.
Enough of that. School resumed on Monday as per usual, but lead to a breakthrough. As of all the time before, I had kind of been looking for something to learn (aside from Spanish). I've started practicing guitar again, but I can do that at home. I had been thinking about playing soccer, but besides the fact that again, not that hard to do back home, it also seems to be nigh on impossible to accomplish here. It's funny, everyone keeps saying "Oh sure, there's soccer for girls here, I know there is", but no one actually plays it. I've only had one person actually come out and say I'm not going to find that here, but no one seems to have told anyone else. All the adults are still convinced we just haven't looked in the right places. Anyway, the music teacher got trapped inside in our classroom on Monday due to inclement weather (is that how you say that?). I had seen the music students from afar, usually carrying some sort of guitar-like instrument and wrestling a lot (the one's that actually play and don't sing tend to be boys). I, in typical oversight fashion, said to myself that I don't really enjoy mariachi as much (some exceptions), and ignored them. But once I got to hear them practice, I got a descent look at some of the instruments. They are NOT, in fact, guitars, but a sort of cross between a guitar and a ukulele. They come in 3 sizes (accurately called primero, secundo and tercero -first, second, and third) and are as a group called 'jaranas'. It gets better. I've never heard them before (and the Wikipedia page on them is woefully lacking), because they're not played outside of southern Veracruz. The music is very fast, big on percussion, slightly repetitive, and really, really happy-sounding (to me at least). I was instantly enthralled. Of course, as with most things I find fun, people reacted to my wish to try playing with one of those "oh, sure honey" looks, while secretly thinking I'll figure out eventually that it's a boy thing. But after Petrona got over her initial shock that I could actually play guitar (another boy-dominated activity), and I wouldn't shut up about the jarana, she started to look into it. I got my first go on Wednesday. It was the polar opposite of Monday (snigger, get it? get it?), so much so that all the students skipped out on their other classes and played a soccer match with an actual referee (maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seems to me that soccer gets incrementally more violent the more important the score is. Pff. Boys.), or taking the time out to cheer extra loudly from the bleachers (depending on their preference and gender <- if it seems like I'm harping on about it, that would be right, I am. Bear with me, please). I, still exhausted from Veracruz, slept through the first half of the game on the top bench of the bleachers (not on purpose), and I woke up when someone elbowed me in the head (also, I'm assuming, not on purpose). At this point, I noticed the music teacher had piled all his stuff up on one of the big, stone stair/bleach/thingys that hug the elementary school and run parallel to the sports field. I went over, and, after clearing up some initial confusion, he taught me some very rudimentary chords. Jaranas usually have 8 strings, are carved from the core of certain kinds of strings (Chiro, the music teacher, makes his own), and are played a lot like a guitar. I play best on a tercero; it's easier for me to handle and is closer in size to a small guitar. I can play secundo, too (about the size of a standard ukulele), but I have some serious trouble with the ones smaller than that (there's one kind, I think it's a sort of offshoot/soprano thingy which is about the size of a guitar for some sort of American Girl type doll). I LOVE it! I can't play worth crap (it doesn't help that I don't know any Spanish in relation to playing music), but I really want to learn to do this! I was a little put out to learn that I can't really play with the rest of the class. In true Mexican fashion, no one out and told me this, but Chiro is in charge of all the music classes for the whole school, and they're practicing for some sort of competition right now. My friend Patrick was really sweet about explaining that I probably couldn't play with them, since the year before they had had a Korean girl perform with them and gotten a whole bunch of points taken off. I think he was really worried about offending me, which he shouldn't have been. Not only would I not want to play in front of the whole school (I'm shy, I don't know how to play the instrument yet, and all the songs are in Spanish!), but the only people who could offend me through this are the stupid judges! (I was a little put out for some reason. I don't know why, Americans practically invented unfair stereotypical profiling).
Anyway, my host mother found a little school that meets for two hours every Thursday and Friday night (I'm going to have to take a taxi there). The classes are less than $20 USD a month. She was all worried that 'it would be too high'. I tried to explain that my guitar classes back home were about $14 for 1/2 hour once a week and in the U.S. that's reasonable, but I don't think she believed me. So, I'm probably going to start classed once I get back from Ruta Maya on 4 December. The teacher says for now I can use one of his extra jaranas to practice. I can't wait!
Let's see, what else has happened....
Oh! I finally paid for my Ruta Maya seat (thank you guys, I owe you big time, I love you!). For those of you who don't know, it's a Rotary thing (I'm guessing in all countries, although I can only speak for the USA and Mexico) to hold 2 (although I'm guessing that might be slightly harder in places like, say, Belgium). Oh, for familial enjoyment, this comes from a language and country chat I was having with Arnoud and a couple of our Mexican friends a week or so ago. Patrick and I were complaining that most of Europe speaks upwards of 2 languages, were as the U.S. and Mexico, outside of large cities, are almost overwhelmingly English and Mexican Spanish, respectively. Arnoud's counter-argument was that while most of Belgium can speak 2 or more separate tongues, you can also drive all the way across it in about 2 days and it has no mountains to speak of. Jose Louis and I both agreed that we want to go to Belgium. Of course, I followed with: "The question is, why wouldn't you go to Belgium? Belgium."
No one got it. "We are pilgrims in an unholy land".
The real stumper is, why can I remember random lines from Indiana Jones, but I can't remember the correct verb for 'let go of me'.
Also, as some of you may be aware, my birthday is coming up. I'm turning 18 on 21 November. It's just as big a deal here as it is in the states (at least in a legal sense. I think they blow off a bit of the whole 'woo, b-day!' thing with Quincineras). It's starting to look like I'm going to miss my actual birthday completely, party-wise (which sucks, since it actually fell on a Sunday this year). So, my family threw me a party this Sunday instead. It was epic, in a normal sort of way. I got some cool presents (thank you, guys!). Most of the friends I invited actually showed up (at 3pm on a Sunday, which, my host mother was quick to point out to me, probably means they really want to be my friends, which is cool). One person who didn't come actually showed up really late just to wish me a happy birthday and explain why he couldn't make it, instead of just waiting to tell me at school (once again, thanks Patrick!). I had a really good time, and as some people are starting to notice, a truly legendary cake incident (forever immortalized on Facebook. I'm working on getting a copy so I can post it to here. I figure if that many people saw it, what the hell, it was funny!). I promised Jose Louis and Gustavo I would get them back, thereby highlighting another cultural difference. They freaked out a little and I had to explain it's just something you say, as long as you're laughing when you say it you don't actually mean it. BTW, all you lovely folks back home, it was funny here. You try that shit at my 19th b-day, I will put the smackdown on all y'alls. Just sayin'.
Due to my bizarre MentalFloss addiction, I have a fun fact for you. I always thought the Firefly character Badger was named Badger, but it may have been a sly job description. Turns out, a 'badger' was a name for a Medieval age bloke who bought stuff from the people who made/grew/owned it and sold it to vendors or wholesalers, at a profit. Sort of an early middle-man. Obviously, the job was cut out (snigger). Joss is God!
So, party rocked, actual birthday may be spent in a bus on the way to Veracruz (or waiting around for something. This is a Rotary outing we're talking about).
So that brings me to today. Considering how happy I am, it seems more productive to list the only things going wrong right now.
1) I cannot find anyone to come pick me up so I can see the 1st HP7 movie at midnight tonight (and I already have a ticket!)
2) I am really tired (but we should face it, that is not news).
3) I cannot find any stores which sell nice shirts in my size (fun, right?)
4) My freaking ipod finally ate my copy of Zombieland, and The Walking Dead, while good, is severely lacking in both the funny and the Woody-Harrelson-with-a-banjo moments.
And that is it! If I left anything out, take it up with the Complaints department (which, BTW, is a gorilla wearing glasses and reading a 2-day-old copy of The Guardian).
I love you all, good night!
