New friends

So it’s just kind of funny how much of an “upper class bubble” (as I called it before) I’m in here considering what I was expecting when I came. I say this with renewed wonder after the recent events of last weekend. My roommates and I went out for our last dinner before two of the girls had to leave the next day. We were trying to find this one restaurant that she had seen before, but we couldn’t find it so we just picked another lovely garden terrace-ish place. It looked so expensive so we were surprised to see things on the menu cheaper than cheap places in America. Así es en México. That’s Mexico for you.

Anyways we were the only ones in the restaurant until a few minutes later three guys we had seen loitering outside came in a few tables away. One of them eventually came over and used a pick up line on one of my roommates. I guess it worked because we let them pull their table up to ours and buy our drinks. We soon realized these guys were like no one we had never met before. We were mostly tipped off when they offered to pay all the airline charges in order for two of my roommates to stay longer, when they invited us to Puerto Vallarta on their private jet, and when we learned they could park wherever they wanted because one of their mother’s was the French consul…..

Ashley, who had one more day in Mexico, and I exchanged phone numbers with them and agreed to do something the next night, salsa dancing we had thought. I wasn’t too excited about doing something with these guys we didn’t know, but Ashley had a "good feeling" about them and I really wanted to go Salsa dancing (at this point I had been in Mexico for 9 weeks and still hadn’t gone…) and they said they could take us to a really nice place.

So the next night a bunch of us piled into their chauffer-driven SUV and tried to figure out whether we should’ve been more worried/curious/excited when they insisted on taking us to a “pre-party” at one of their friends’ houses. They told us the house’s name: Hacienda Benazuza (yes, it had a name!). It turns out it is one of the most well known party places in Guadalajara. It has a banquet hall on its grounds, which that night was rented to the graduating class of the University of Guadalajara, as well as a house of the owner, which is where they took us.

The night’s highlights at this house involved jet skiing on a man made lake, Jacuzzi, bathing suits that the guys had bought so that we could go in the Jacuzzi, make-up to put on afterwards, an original Dalí in the living room, lions and jaguars, free alcohol. We never made it to salsa dancing-I guess the “pre-party” turned into The Party-but they and their chauffeurs kindly drove us home when we wished.

How did I end up there- in the complete opposite (literal and metaphorical) place of where I was hoping/expecting to? It felt so nice to be paid for, to have a chauffer, to have free drinks, to probably have whatever we wanted that night, to not have to think about anything except having fun….Ugh. It all seems like luxuries and extravagances that I have put my nose up at ever since I learned about the way the majority of the world’s people live. But what was I supposed to do? Refuse their hospitality (was it even hospitality?)? Not enjoy myself, even though I had decided just a few weeks ago that this should be my focus for the rest of the trip? Not take the chance to make some Mexican friends (which the lack thereof I have been lamenting about…)?

Ay, the questions of life……

*The last pic is of my friend--with the this-is-crazy-I-don't-know-what-to-think-or-do look.

Babel

(Warning: I give away some endings to the movie Babel in this entry. If you haven’t seen it, please do! Then we can talk about it!!)

On the way back during our eight hour bus ride from Mexico City we watched the movie Babel. Thoroughly thought provoking. I felt like it had something to say about the things I’ve been thinking about my American-ness and the various travels I’ve made in my life.

In the movie, there are four different story lines involving people of different nationalities (Moroccan, Japanese, Mexican, American) that all revolve around one incident. All of the story lines are potentially tragic and the Americans and Japanese are they only ones that you are sure had a happy ending (maybe not happy, but not completely awful like the others).

I’ve been thinking about the message this movie is trying to convey. One of my American roommates who just left sees in it that all of us, all around the world, no matter what culture we belong, are fundamentally the same: the same heart, mind, soul, and needs. My American director here (who has lived here for two years and studies linguistics) sees in it a message about how deep cultural differences are: it’s not just the language the separates people from two different cultures, it’s a million more differences under the surface only discovered when the really bad things happen. The thought of this frustrates her as someone who studies linguistics and translation….

Also, I think it had something to say either about Western culture or American culture—a critique on how Western culture negatively affects the rest of the world—bringing materials (like the Japanese man’s gun), ideas, influence, etc. that are foreign and just don’t fit in the way the West would think and actually bring about miscommunication to the point of tragedy.

The fact that the Gun from the West started the whole incident, yet the Japanese and American were the ones to come out “okay”—not dead, not deported— raises some questions: What ways do Americans/ Westerners do more harm then they realize? What effects around the world does our actions, travels, attitudes, etc have? (this reminds me of the article about the effects of America’s Farm Bill my cousin just sent me….)

Maybe it also has something to say about “the system.” There are certain systems in society that are so rigid that the result is harshness over empathy and people do things they wouldn’t normally (a very sociological theme): the Moroccan police officers beating their own residents, the border control man freaking out because the system wasn’t being followed. Perhaps it was these systems of society that the Japanese girl felt so left out of or that caused the suicide of her mother---which was the reason why the father got rid of the gun in the first place.

Whoa.

Some related thoughts on culture from a book my dad sent me here: The Silent Language by Edward T. Hall

“Culture is more than mere custom that can be shed or changed like a suit of clothes. The people we were advising kept bumping their heads against an invisible barrier, but they did not know what it was. They knew that what they were up against was a completely different way of organizing life, of thinking, and of conceiving the underlying assumptions about the family and the state, the economic system, and even of mankind….”

“….Most of our difficulties stem from our own ignorance. Honest and sincere people in the field continue to fail to grasp the true significance of the fact that culture controls behavior in deep and persisting ways, many of which are outside of awareness and therefore beyond conscious control of the individual….”

a lil bit o garlic + a lil bit o Mariachi= LOT O LOVE

Mariachi in the garden. One night I woke up around midnight to really loud accordion and guitar music. Thinking my host brother had put in a CD and was going to turn the volume down any second, I happen to glance out the window near my bed and see the garden outside my window full of dark figures. Un chavo enamorado (a guy in love) paid a four piece mariachi band to play outside Ashley's window, also overlooking the garden. In addition to the band, were three of Romeo’s friends, all singing along to the words and downing a bottle of Tequila among the four of them. Unfortunately, Ashley has a boyfriend and was quite horrified by the situation. After standing around upstairs, not really doing anything, our host sister Josie came up and advised that we turn on a light and give some “sign.” Eventually we all went down to the garden to enjoy the music, take some pictures, and enjoy the Mexican tradition….

Mariachi in the driveway. Last night one of my housemates comes in to wake me up around 1:30 am to show me the most recent serenade taking place. This time, in the front of the house, a different one of my housemates, Stephanie, had a Romeo outside her window. This time, however, he was the one playing the guitar and singing. Stephanie also has a boyfriend in America (why do they pick the one's with boyfriends? HelllllOOOoo, I'm single!), but since we’d seen this once before, she wasn’t quite as horrified.

Making Dinner. Two nights ago Kara and I made dinner for everyone in the house: us four Americans, our new Mexicana roommate, our host sister, Mama Celina, and Papa Oscar. Eight total. We made asparagus, salmon, garlic bread, scalloped potatoes, brownies, and Kara bought red and white wine. ¡Qué Fresón! Ay? It was a little bit of a challenge to find all of the ingredients, but we adapted. The garlic-y smells (which I still have on my hands) must have been drawing her in the kitchen, because Mama Celina came in repeatedly to see how we were making things, exclaiming, ¡Qué Rico!

My main contribution was the scalloped potatoes, something my mom always makes. It was really neat to be able to share this part of my background/culture with my host family. It was the first time I made it, so I was really nervous the whole time, not knowing if I was layering exactly right or putting the right quantity of flour and salt and such, but it turned out okay and Mama Celina asked repeatedly for the recipe. I made sure to tell them that my mom makes it much better.

We all ate at the dining room table, which no one ever eats at, with a special table cloth and special glasses. During the meal, Papa Oscar kept saying, “Yup, you guys are ready to get married now.” And then at the end of the meal he said his traditional sarcastic “Fea! Toda fue fea!” Which literally means the “Awful, everything, awful!”

After eating, Papa Oscar brought out some picture albums, which I had already seen twice before, but are fun to look at because he loves to show them. He points out the first picture of him and Mama Celina in their thirties on the beach kissing and holding hands, his baby pictures, and then all of girlfriends before Mama Celina (there was a French woman, a German woman, and a nun!).

In the first pic: everyone except Josie. In the second: Josie, the four Americans, and Mirabel--our Mexicana roommate

Rodeo Santa Fe

One of my AMerican roommates here, Kara, loves a type of Mexican music called Banda. I thought I had heard of all types of Mexican music/dancing, but I found out I was mistaken when I met Kara and learned of her love for this type of music. It has a very distinctive sound that, according to Wikipedia's information on Banda, is brass based. Also Wiki tells me that it is very recently popular as of the 1990s and it is a mixture between Mexican and German polka music!!
Loving this kind of music, Kara wanted to share it with me and our other roommate so she had been planning for a week to take us to a place called Rodeo Santa Fe, which she had been to a few years ago and is known for it's live bands and live rodeo in an adjacent room. Josie, our host sister, described it as a place of La Raza, which literally means "The Race" and perhaps was supposed to mean something else in that context. Since she contrasted it with another banda place which she described as freson, or classy, I would think she meant Rodeo Santa Fe is the opposite of classy, more real, where the locals go.

So we went and there sure were no fresas (people who are freson). Just your average Mexican dancing their heart out with their sweetheart. The first thing that strikes me about the dance is how close the couples are to one another. Not just because they are close and there is "no room for Jesus," as I've heard said among some religious circles, but because you wouldn't think they could be that close while dancing to the lively beat of banda. But they do. And it's beautiful. It's also striking how it looks really simple, but they jazz it up in the funnest, most unexpected ways. Like dipping the woman here and there, moving their hips or legs in a slightly different direction...the really advanced people do all sorts of gymnastics with their partners (which we witnessed a little bit of last night). But the basic step is easy enough that my friends and I could pick up on it without too much trouble...

I also witnessed a type of music and dancing called Duranguense. I think this kind of dancing fascinated me more than the Banda actually. I guess the music is even more recent than banda, it has more percussion and a faster beat, and it originated in Chicago among immigrants from the Mexican state of Durango!! NPR has an article with sound bytes to listen to. As for the dance, I can't even start to describe it. Check out a You Tube video on the right.

Mexico City

Sitting on the school bus at six in the morning last Thursday, I was not looking forward to the Mexico City trip. It would be two days of a tightly packed schedule of touristy treks and tours sandwiched by two eight hour bus rides. The words of others echoed in my head about how dirty and busy Mexico City is (which they just call “Mexico” for short) and how much better Guadalajara is in comparison. I started thinking all my most unhappy worrying thoughts….“What am I doing on this bus?” “What am I doing in Mexico?”....which always leads to, of course….“What am I doing with my life?...”

I was able to put these thoughts aside, as I’ve gotten good practice doing on this trip, and surprisingly enough I really loved Mexico City. How could I, with all my love for Mexican history and culture, not enjoy all that we did and were exposed to?

Downtown

It turns out that Mexico City was built on the Aztec city Tenochtitlán. The Spaniards built right over everything (their churches and government buildings over those of the Aztecs, etc). There is much controversy about whether current buildings which are also antiquities from the 1500s-1700s should be torn down to uncover the ruins. Anyhow, they have one area, Templo Mayor, that in the 1970s was excavated and now has raised walkways and whatnot so that visitors can actually be inside this temple and see things really up-close.

Right next to this excavated site is the National Palace (which is thought to be over the Aztec Palace of Montezcuma) where past presidents have lived and the current presidents have an office. This building was a highlight because it holds Diego Rivera`s murals that are part of the series titled "Mexico from Prehistoric Times." If you’ve seen the movie Frida, it is the building where she goes just after learning to walk again and yells for Rivera to come down to her to critique her art.

Each mural in the series represents a part of life and history of the Aztecs who lived in Teonochtitlán. There is one portion that depicts the market area, another which depicts the religious ceremony involving a large pole, another which shows women making tortillas from corn, another which shows the process of making a special type of fabric from agave plants. And in the last one in the series, we see the Spanish, depicted as monster like, torturing and enslaving the indigenous.

Teotehuacán

The following day we visited the ruins of Teotehuacán. Located 40 minutes or so outside of the city, Teotehuacán is not an Aztec site, like I thought at first, but rather it was home to a group called the Teotehuacáns (go figure!). The site is about 12 square miles and is supposedly the largest pre-Hispanic city in Mexico. It was built 200 before Christ and was abandoned about 650 years after--for unknown reasons (either they ran out of resources for their estimated 60,000 inhabitants or they were attacked by a northern tribe). We climbed one of the two pyramids (in seven minutes someone calculated), took some pictures, observed the variety of people up there with us (Oriental, European, Latino, etc), climbed back down.

I felt like I should’ve down something else up there, but wasn’t sure what. I felt like I was in a really amazing special place. Is there something special one does when they are in the presence of a 2000 year old structure? I tried imagining what the life of the Teotehuacáns were like, but the only thing that I could picture was an older women
putting one stone on top of another in the process of building one of these structures.

Perhaps this image is staying with me because the beautiful patterns and colors of the stones in all the structures really shocked me and I can’t imagine anyone but a kind old lady creating such beauty out of rocks and granite. I guess I have certain gender roles ingrained in me.....

The stones shocked me because all the ruins I’d ever seen in pictures look like a beige/limestone-ish color. But, fíjate, get this: up close, all the stones were different colors. NO joke. The cement substance in between them was beige/ limestone-ish, but the actual stones were every shade of blue and gray and red and orange. And in between the larger rocks, were trails of itty bitty rocks, making a really pretty pattern.

La Villa de Guadalupe

Way back two years ago when I was a sophomore in college, living in downtown Los Angeles I did a little study of Catholicism in a Latino context for a sociology class. During this project I learned the story of La Virgen de Guadalupe and the meaning behind her image that is seen everywhere in Latino neighborhoods and churches. I even played the part of Juan Diego (the Indian to whom the Virgin appeared) in a little class skit.

I had no idea that little Juan Diego had been an Aztec and that he lived in Tenochtitlán/ Mexico City or that we would be going to the site where the virgin asked to have a temple built in honor of her son. I was really thankful and humbled by this opportunity. I thought about my neighbors back in Azusa a lot this afternoon. I wondered if they had ever been to this sacred site. I bought them all rosaries.

A typical morning (with slight epiphany)

Recently days have been starting around two and three in the morning when I am woken up by the booming rumble of a thunderstorm and I glance out my window—usually to see if Papa Oscar got caught in the rain (he often sleeps out in the garden on a mattress because it is cooler outside at night).

I wake up a little before my alarm at 7:30 and take a shower where I use my shampoo for blondes. (On my first or second day here I got the words for brunette, morena, y blondes, rubia, mixed up when buying shampoo). So this is a nice little moment of humility every morning no matter how good I think my Spanish is getting. I then eat a yummy breakfast of fruit, eggs, and beans. I pack the lovely canvas bag I more or less stole from my APU roommate to take to school and then clean up the rest of my room (so as to prevent any friendly reminders from Mama Celina to not be so messy).

I leave for the bus stop around 9:15. I walk under the shade of the trees in the park behind my house where there are often older ladies getting their morning exercise. I dodge the cars pulling up to a day care center where parents just drive up for two seconds so the employees can walk their children the three feet from the car to the building and then drive away. I pass my favorite house that has a faded bright blue courtyard with a potted palm in one corner. I contemplate the possibility of sitting in front of their house for an hour to paint it and usually decide I wouldn’t be able to withstand the strange looks I’d get sitting on someone else’s property.

I pass by a bank and say hello to an employee there whose sole job is to guide the cars in and out of the parking lot safely. He is older with gray hair and dark leathery skin, usually in the classic dress for a Mexican: plaid shirt, big belt buckle, cowboy hat (which, come to think of it, are kind of fancy clothes seeing as he is outside all day long in the midst of dirty cars by a dirty street.) He wears an orange neon vest and waves a rag to guide the cars in and out. He is always so happy to see me. He greets me with the biggest smile, “¡Hola Señorita!” and shakes my hand so I have to stop walking and says a mixture of “God bless” and “Have a good day.”

I reach my bus stop corner and I wave down a bus usually singing a little song under my breath: “Please stop, please stop, please stop, ooooh please.” Sometimes I squeeze onto the steps right before the doors close and weave my hand in and out of all the other riders in order to get my money to the driver. Other times I am able to walk right to my seat in the back of the bus.

On these latter types of days I have the freedom to look around and admire the decorating job of the bus. All are different, although usually all have a crucifix or virgin de Guadalupe attached to the windshield. My favorite is completely pink on the inside. Its three mirrors up front and its crucifix are surrounded by white fur. There is a LA Laker`s sticker on one of the mirrors. The driver always wears a Hawaiian shirt.

I hit the red button to signal a stop and am let off at the intersection right in front of the gate to my school. I wait to cross the six lane road that although it has zebra stripes, has no walk sign. I contemplate how I would really like to be friends with the little boys that try to sell things at that intersection when the cars are stopped. They are so young—probably the youngest one about seven or eight. Their dark skin looks even darker with the smudges of dirt. Same clothes every day. Sometimes they try to wash cars, sometimes they are selling windshield wipers, sometimes flowers. I try to picture the little kids I know doing such a thing. I try to picture myself doing such a thing—in that nightmare of a road!!

I think that after I see these boys is when my mini panic attack starts every morning. This contrast between the street boys, the marginal of Mexico, and the large stone structure that marks the gate of my private university reflects the contrast between my expectations coming here with the reality. Reminds me of the gap between my desire to have more contact with locals and the kind of life the majority population have, and my actual experience of being kind of secluded in an upper class bubble. My anxieties about not finding an internship/service meet me at the gate, as well as my worries about not learning as much as I thought I would be. And of course every worry I’ve ever had comes at this moment too…especially those about what I’m gonna do after college, what I’m gonna do with my life.

Ok this sounds really bad. But I don’t mean to use panic attack with its literal medical definition. I just freak out mentally. Actually it didn’t happen today. It probably has to do with my recent decisions about leaving early….

Writing this has made me realize that I can be pro-active at this moment. While I don`t have an internship to force me to interact with locals or the majority population, I can talk to those vendedores, the street boys selling things. Maybe I can buy some of their windshield wipers. Anybody need some? Also I can work harder at doing extra things to learn more Spanish and practice more (which I have been doing, but I can do more). And I’m pretty sure I’m gonna go paint that potted palm.

Thoughts/ Pensamientos

The Lord foils the plans of the nations;
he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever,
the purposes of his heart through all generations......Psalms 33:10-11

El Senor frustra los planes de las naciones;
desbarata los designios de los pueblos.
Pero los planes del Senor quedan firmes para siempre;
los designios de su mente son eternos......Salmos 33:10-11

I have to admit that I really identified with these verses the other day when I read them. I feel like my plans have been foiled and my purposes thwarted.

I wonder though which plans and purposes of the Lords are standing firm at this moment???