Classroom English I

This first post contains phrases and vocabulary for classroom English, specifically for communicating with an English speaking Assistant Language Teacher (ALT). It assumes a basic level of English competence.

1. Please pass out the ___A___.
A: handouts, papers, homework, tests, materials

2. Please collect the ___A___.
A: handouts, papers, homework, tests, materials

3. Please read the ___A___ (___B___)
A: sentence, paragraph, page, directions, example, dialogue, story
B: out loud, to the class, to these students

4. Please help them with ___A___.
A: their pronunciation, the activity, the assignment, the vocabulary

5. Have the students ___A___.
A: do this, open their books to page 46, work in their workbooks, work in groups, work independently, repeat after you, form groups of three, write the answers on the board

6. Please ask them to ___A___.
A: answer your questions in English, practice the dialogue, read aloud, use their dictionaries, pay attention, sit down

7. Walk around the room and ___A____.
A: check their work, answer questions, keep the students on task, make sure everyone understands the instructions

8. I want the students to ___A___.
A: complete the test in 10 minutes, start the next exercise now, learn this vocabulary, review the grammar lesson, repeat after you, memorize the dialogue, write the answers on the board, ask each other questions.

9. The point of this exercise if for the students to improve their ___A___.
A: spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, understanding of grammar, reading abilities, comprehension, listening skills, speaking skills.

10. I would like you to ___A___.
A: give a short speech, prepare some examples, make copies of the materials, brainstorm ideas for next week's lesson

11. The students will need to ___A___.
A: complete the sentences by filling in the blanks, choose the right answer, select one of the following words to complete the sentence, use the right verb form, correct the spelling and punctuation, underline the adjectives, translate the passage, read the paragraph out loud.


NEW!
Additional example sentences from our class.

Please check your answer in the back of the book.
Please check your answer in your workbook.
Please check your answers with a neighbor.
Please check the answers with your partner.
Please trade worksheets with your partner and check the answers.
Please trade worksheets with a neighbor
Please trade worksheets with another student.
Have the students repeat each sentence after you.
Please read each sentence twice.
Please read each sentence to the class twice. Then have the students repeat it after you.
Please read each sentence twice. Then have them repeat after you.
I'd like you to make a worksheet for the class.
I'd like you to create an activity for this topic.
I'd like you make a worksheet for this vocabulary.
I'd like you to create a 20 minute activity about this topic.
I'd like you make some example sentences for this grammar lesson.
Please conjugate the verbs.

Pochos and Gringas

Yesterday I saw some pochos on the beach, some guys that looked like they'd been raised in the States. Maybe it was the style of their tats or their Angels caps. Or the fact that they were playing American football. But they sure looked Mexican-American to me, not Mexican. They certainly weren't locals. But I was in the mood for a little English chit-chattery, so, when I noticed their wives/girlfriends/lady escorts sitting nearby on a blanket I decided to wander over with my adorable baby and try to make friendly.

I'm a little blind, though, so it wasn't until we were within a few feet of the misses that I realized they were giving me some pretty snobby looks. So, Hanix and I toddled over to the surf instead and played the always amusing game of catching Hanix before he was pulled out to sea. And that was that.
Hernan apparently observed the whole scene from where he was in the ocean. He's not blind like me. When he came back to the beach he told me that probably they were looking at me all bitchy because everyone knows that gringas who are with Mexican men either already had kids by someone else, have or had a substance abuse problem, are on the heavy side, or are just psycho crazy somehow. They were probably trying to figure out which one I am.

For real? I'd never heard that before.

Oh, yeah! he said, everyone knows that! Kids by another man, drug problem, extra chubby, or crazy as all hell.

So which one am I? Let's examine the facts. I didn't have any kids for the first six or seven years I was with my husband, and the one I've got now is most definitely his. I'm not a user, and alcohol isn't a problem. Got that? I don't have a problem with alcohol. I could quit at any time. Wait, actually, that's not even a joke. I did quit when I found out I was knocked up, and abstained for over a year. I think that clears me of substance abuse. As for weight, I was going to suggest I resemble Skeletor, until I googled him and was reminded that actually, for a skeleton, Skeletor was extraordinarily ripped. So, that doesn't fit. Shall we just leave off with "scrawny" and move on?



So, I can deduce that I'm a crazy bitch.

Sweet.

I shared my conclusion with Hernan, and he just replied "No, baby, you're great. You're the best," which kind of confirmed it, because why else would he try to placate me so quickly?

Has anyone else heard this before? Hernan assures me it's not his opinion, but that it's an extremely common assumption. All you white women with Mexican men - have you ever heard this? Do you fit the stereotype? I think it only applies to white American women with Mexican men, but I'm not an expert on this.

By the way, I didn't know what a pocho was, either. Hernan supplied the term. That makes it two stereotypes I learned in one day. Yay!

Looking Up In Sayulita

It turns out I like it a hell of a lot more here in Sayulita than in San Juan. Here are some reasons why.

1. Where we are living here doesn’t eternally smell like the raw sewage that runs past the house in San Juan.
2. Instead of the cockroach army pooping all over me baby’s toys, we have adorable geckos, which he goes in search of every evening, to snap at and call “ee-oooo!”
3. We don’t have to live according to the schedule and needs of my husband’s family, who we were living with before. What I do here is not subject to scrutiny and commentary. I can eat whatever I want whenever I want, which is why I enjoyed nachos for dinner, straight out of the nacho pot I made them in. With beer.
4. Hernan has time for me again. It’s nice to remember why the fuck I’m living in Mexico - oh yeah, because of this guy.
5. And he has time for Hanix. He has spent more time caring for Hanix in the last few weeks than in the last six months.
6. The beach. The ocean. There are places to walk that don’t smell like sewer. When I leave the house people don’t stare at me, like in San Juan. I CAN leave the house. I enjoy it again.
7. We no longer live on a dusty highway across from the beer store. We no longer go to sleep lulled by the sound of alcoholics telling stories, breaking bottles, and getting into fights. We no longer awake to the sound of trucks breaking with their motors as they enter town. We don’t have neighbors with a garbage heap and rats and dogs that never stop barking because they’re tied up 24 hours a day in one spot. We don’t get interrupted at 11:30 at night because someone wants my husband to cut his hair, or lend him tools, or fix his car, or whatever, even though we had just told everyone downstairs that we were going to bed and we wanted to be alone, so good night already, thank you very much.
8. It’s green everywhere and jungly, and the town has many trees.
9. We regularly see men and women socializing together.
10. We haven’t seen a single fight or heard a single gunshot.

Things I miss:
1. My in-laws. I love having our own house, but it would be fun to be able to visit. Actually, they all came out a week ago to visit. It was fun. I wish they lived a little closer. Just, you know, not that close.
2. Avocados, that my father-in-law brought home by the bag-full from the ranch where he works.
3. It’s far more expensive here. I miss being able to stretch 50 pesos over a few days.

Also, we went to four places before we found somewhere that would change money with a Mexican passport. All the banks down here wanted a foreign passport. Hernan about flipped out on them, repeating that he IS Mexican, but they wouldn’t accept his passport.

Also, also, I got a really painful ear infection + deafness, and after five days of sweating it out hoping it would heal on it own so we wouldn’t have to spend any more money, which I have been made to understand is not the correct course of action to take with these kinds of matters, I caved. We don’t have insurance, but have been going to private consultorios when the need has arisen. Visits usually cost us 200 to 400 pesos. This guy, after TEN minutes, charged me 900 (NINE HUNDRED!) pesos, plus another 100 for some ear drops. I nearly broke down crying, because that was, really, all the money we had just changed and what we were planning on using for food and everything for the next few weeks. So now, we’ll be eating beans with beans, and I’ll be washing our laundry by hand on the scrub board sink thing because we don’t have a machine and can’t afford the laundromat anymore. Boo.

Cool about the visit, though, was that he “cleaned” my ears by shooting water into them and out came, like, Amelia Earhart and ten kilos of earwax. It was so cool. Apparently I have small ear canals and they become clogged quite easily. Now you know.

When I got swimmer’s ear (also in Mexico) five years ago, the doctor in Jocotepec told me to dig the wax out myself using a hair pin. Really. Yeah, that’s what he wanted me to do. Quack.

The bad thing is that after three days of not-so-magic ear drops, my ear still hurts and now I’m going to have to go back and beg him to fix me for a blow job or something, because we have no more money. Mom, totally just kidding about that, by the way.

Also, also, also, we went to Puerto Vallarta today, just to see what it’s like. And it kind of sucks. Big hotels, pushy vendors. Not so great. Sayulita has better beaches and a lot more trees.

And finally, I’d like to report that things are good.

Party on.

Pests And The Move To Sayulita

Mexico’s got a lot of critters. We had our share in San Juan, and we’ve still got critters here in Sayulita. It’s important, however, to distinguish between particular critter varieties, as some are more obnoxious than others. Here for you, then, I present an easy guide to the most common creatures that have shared my home in San Juan and Sayulita.

San Juan Critters

Ants: In San Juan we always had ants. They lived in the kitchen and formed one trail from the electrical outlet to the sink. They pretty much stuck to this trail, unless I was so negligent as to leave cut fruit on the counter. Because the ants stayed within their predictable trail, I was satisfied to let them be. That is, they were annoying, but just thirsty. Also, they were tiny. Really, really small. And I have bad vision, so I could almost pretend they weren’t there. They didn’t get into my food much, they didn’t wander around anywhere, they left no trails, they harbored no infectious diseases, and they were very small. I did sometimes have to watch out for them, though, while kneading dough on the counter. No ant pizza for me.
Obnoxious Rating: 4

Flies: For some reason we had a crap ton of flies in San Juan. They weren’t too terrible year ‘round, but always in the late spring they suddenly would begin to show up by the scores. We had more trouble with them downstairs than in our casita (where we had window screens), but since we ate nearly all our meals downstairs, we usually had them around. Flies are gross, because they land on your food after probably having spent the morning on a pile of poop or a dog carcass. They might carry some kind of disease, or at the very least cooties. They lay eggs which hatch into larva, which most definitely are nasty. Also, they land on people, which is irritating, and the buzz they make is annoying. When we shoo them away they stubbornly settle right back where they were. Also, they are annoying because my husband has to kill as many as he can before he sits down to eat, and waiting for him tries my patience.
Obnoxious Rating: 6

Scorpions: We haven’t had too many of these show up in our house in San Juan, but we have had a few. Because they are infrequent visitors, I don’t mind them as much. Also, they don’t gross me out. I’m pretty sure they’re not after my food and have no intentions of taking up residence in my tea box. However, I am nearly positive that they could kill me if I were to step on one inadvertently (I would never step on one advertently, it goes without saying.) My in-laws assure me that I wouldn’t die from a scorpion strike, but I know they’re wrong. Perhaps the common person would not die, but I would. Those tiny critters are little death machines. It is always my husband’s job to get rid of them.
Obnoxious Rating: 6

Rats and Mice: Rats and mice are gross. I don’t care if you had one for a pet when you were in middle school. They’re pests. They’re nasty. They chew too much, and poop a lot, and when I held your stupid mouse that one time it peed all over me. They’re not clean. They live in garbage. More specifically, they live in my neighbors’ garbage heap, and then come waltzing in our door. We never had them upstairs in my casita, but we had plenty downstairs and out in the yard. They will go after your food. They will take up residence in your home. They will carry fleas that harbor the bubonic plague. In their defense, they have distinguishable faces and fur. This makes them less yucky than most non-mammalian critters. They should really do something about those tails, though. Also bad about them is that they will surprise you. I don’t care for rat surprises.
Obnoxious Rating: 7

Mosquitoes: Mosquitos are obnoxious for two reasons: the itching and the buzzing. Mosquitos were a constant presence downstairs at our old house. Daytime. Nighttime. They were always there. The welts they leave are mildly irritating, but let's be honest: my legs aren't that pretty to being with, so a dozen or two bites all over doesn't matter much. No, it's the itching that's terrible. I wouldn't mind sharing a little blood here and there, because I have plenty, but why do they have to be such bitches about it and leave me all itchy? Also, their habit of buzzing in my ears at night is really obnoxious. I suppose that also troubling is their ability to spread malaria and dengue fever. We have had some outbreaks of the dengue around here.
Obnoxious Rating: 7

Cockroaches: Cockroaches are nasty, faceless, antennae-y, gross, horrible little creatures. They’re even more awful than earwigs. They have the one-two punch of being both disgusting and scary. Also, they surprise me. A Lot. They take up residence in my home. They eat my food. They are capable of both high-speed scurrying (unnerving) and flying (terrifying). They leave behind cockroach poop. They’re worse than rats because they can live anywhere, like inside my appliances, and they will lay in wait for me in my tea box. They surely carry a plethora of diseases. They make scurrying sounds. They could be anywhere! On the ceiling, in my shoe, hiding behind the shower curtain. They’re nasty. They’re terrible. They have sinister intentions. I hate them.
Obnoxious Rating: 10


Sayulita Pests

Ants: The ants here aren’t omnipresent, like the ones that we had in San Juan, but they are a tad bigger. Still small, but I can’t pretend not to see them by squinting. I don’t notice them much until a crumb of food falls on the floor, which actually is pretty common with my baby around. Within minutes we’ll see about sixty of the little tykes trying to take down the food morsel. I admire their speed. I would prefer it, though, if they didn’t hang around so much. It makes it a challenge to be lazy about cleaning up after meals.
Obnoxious Rating: 3

Geckos: That’s right, our new house is teeming with geckos. They live in the nooks and crannies of the walls and ceiling, and in the palapa roof, but never bother me down here where I live, on the floor, in my bed, on the kitchen counters. They don’t go after my food, but instead eat insects. They eat the other annoying pests! They’re like little, adorable super heroes! They also make cute little clicks and songs at night. They have faces. They have cute lizard tails instead of nasty rat tails. My son enjoys watching them, and will follow them without outstretched fingers. They’re cutes-matoots.
Obnoxious Rating: 0

Mosquitoes: We have mosquitoes here, too. Actually our Sayulita house is even more "open" than our San Juan house. It's just a "come on in!" house, I suppose. So of course we have mosquitoes. And yet, they haven't been too much of a pain so far. They're maybe worse than we had them in our casita upstairs, but not as bad as we had them downstairs in my in-laws' place. So, they're about the same.
Obnoxious Rating: 7

Mysterious Animal: Last night we were visited by a mysterious critter. In came into the house through the gap under the back door at around five A.M. It was black and stripy, and at first Hernan thought it was a skunk. It didn’t have a big bushy tail, though, and was much smaller. It had come in and was making a cute sniffling noise, when we surprised it by turning on the light. It scampered up the stairs and out the door and we haven’t seen it since. I asked Hernan if he was sure it wasn’t a rat, and he said, “No, it was cute!” He has since told me about how cute it was three more times. We’ll see whether it returns, and if so whether it gets into any trouble. For now, though, we refer to it as our “cute visitor”. Still, five A.M. was a little early.
Obnoxious Rating: 2



San Juan Total: 40
Sayulita Total: 12

Clearly, the Sayulita total could increase if we discover more pests or if Mysterious Animal starts to cause trouble. Like if he climbs onto a chair and gets into my gin in the freezer. I won't be pleased. Though, then again, that would be pretty resourceful of the little guy, and probably pretty darn cute, so I might forgive him. Unless he's a mean drunk. Or if he doesn't leave me any. So, my point is that these numbers could change. Still, I think you'll agree that Sayulita is in the clear lead.

If we expanded the category from "household pests" to "animals we encounter in various ways", Sayulita would have an ever bigger lead, since we hear no roosters, hardly any barking dogs, and the woman with the hyena laugh stayed behind in San Juan. Also, Sayulita would get a few bonus points for the cute song birds we have outside our house and (ready for this?!) the iguanas who live in the tree across the street! We are neighbors with iguanas! We can watch them crawling around in the tree!

I'm pleased.

Hey Water, Your Mom Is Ugly!

It's not like we didn't know the rainy season was upon us. Just yesterday I told Hernan that we needed to do a few things to prepare for the next big storm. We needed to reseal the roof over the kitchen, move things in from the living room (which is essentially out of doors), move the couches away from the canvas "walls", figure out a way to prevent water from coming in through the somewhat open window in the bedroom... I've said it before, our house isn't really sealed off from outside so much. We've got cracks and holes and big gaping spaces everywhere. It's why my house fills with dust every day during the dry season and why last night at about 2:00 it became a swimming pool.

The storm was really quite fantastic. There was thunder and lightening and it was raining so hard it felt like a water siege, like someone had done something to really piss water off and now water was getting its revenge. The high winds made me think one of the tiles from the roof was bound to blow off and smack me upside the head, and the overall mood was enhanced by the light show going on across the street, where a transformer was shooting off sparks like one of the toros they have in the plaza during the festivities.

Of course, we didn't do those things on the list. Hernan got "distracted" by some buddies, and I didn't think I should have to do all the work if he wasn't going to. So, I guess I'm saying we kind of deserved what we got.

At about two in the morning I woke up to the sound of torrential rain and thought, "What a lovely sound". A few moments later I thought, "Shit! My laptop!" and leaped out of bed and ran into the living room, dragging Hernan with me.

The casualties were numerous: some books, papers, the clean laundry, a chocolate bar, blankets, shoes. Pretty much every last thing in the living room was soaked. My laptop, though, I rescued just in time and is safe and dry.

The kitchen, too, was hit. One of the walls leaks. The bedroom was almost as bad as the living room because of our new window that doesn't really close all the way. It was a scramble of moving things and throwing towels around and doing whatever we could think of to minimize the soakage.

And the critters were trying to escape the storm, too. There were crickets on the walls, a cockroach in our bed (sob!) and a scorpion over the door.

This morning we found everything covered in mud, and puddles all over the floor. We had about three inches of mud in front of the house.

I appreciate that we get an especially sunny day today. I have all of our stuff hung out on the laundry lines drying.

But the rain cleans up the air and makes the mountain green again, and this morning we had a marching band pass in front of our house, so you know it's a good day.

A Fart Joke

As related to me by my brother-in-law, except in English:
(This is probably funnier if you know that all those words that aren't English are cities in Mexico.)


How do little girls fart?
Tepic.

How do grown women fart?
Torreon!

How do old grandmothers fart?
Oaxaca!!



That's all I've got for today, folks.

The Hell Out Of Dodge

We're moving. We're going to try living in Sayulita, Nayarit for a month. We've rented a little tiny studio-style casita with a palapa (thatched) roof. If we find work, we'll stay. If not... I don't know what we'll do. We move July 1st.

My hopes are high. Friends. Jobs. Community. No more gang bangers pulling guns on my husband.

I'm excited that when we walk around Sayulita no one stares at us. No one pays us any attention. Actually, they're kind of rude, and I prefer that to nosy san juanecos who stare at me every time I step outside my house.

We'll have the beach! Even if we're too poor to afford a coffee or a meal in a restaurant, we can still have somewhere to go. We can sit in the sand and watch the waves, or the surfers, or the sunset. This is way more than there is to do in San Juan. Stupid San Juan.

Mango season. Four kilos for 20 pesos! This is helping my mango-a-day commitment.

Not living with the in-laws. While I think I'm going to miss some of my in-laws quite a lot, I am excited to finally have our own place again. I look forward to being able to operate on my own schedule (well, Hanix's, really) instead of everyone else's. Here, for example, no one eats lunch until the men come home from work (or drinking) and decide they're ready. This could be any time between 1:00 and 4:00. I think that's shitty, because I don't like being kept from my food, and I look forward to eating meals whenever I want. (Of course, without mother-in-law around I'll probably be eating a lot more cereal and a lot less of her good cooking. But we'll see. Maybe I'll surprise us.)

Of course, I'm scared about having no help whatsoever, since I don't know anyone there. Even though I'm with Hanix almost all the time, I do occasionally get a few minutes break here or there from a relative.

I'm scared we'll find no work and won't be able to afford the higher prices.

I'm scared Hernan or Hanix won't handle the heat or the humidity, and Hernan will decide to move back to San Juan.

After almost two years of having no friends, I'm scared that maybe I'm actually some kind of antisocial freak who can't connect with anyone, and I'll find myself in a bush, stalking some nice-looking couple with a toddler. They'll discover me and make a scene, and it will ruin all my chances of ever having friends again. Ever. I'll die soon thereafter from a loneliness explosion.

What I REALLY hope happens is that Hernan and I will both make friends, and some of those friends will even enjoy mixed interactions, you know, men AND women, hanging out TOGETHER. And maybe a few of them will even be atheists like us. And maybe a few of them will play board games. And maybe a few of them will have kids too, and Hanix can have play dates, and we'll swap child care sometimes. And maybe we'll get really great jobs. And maybe I'll win the lottery and take up surfing. And I'll become bff with dolphins and sea turtles. And when we walk to the plaza everyone will break out in song and dance and small children will throw ribbons and flowers in the air, and somehow everyone's wearing matching sequined outfits and headbands and is singing on key and the birds are singing and the street dogs play piccolos and a kindly gentleman offers us lemonade and the sun smiles at us all.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Mastitis and Mexican Health Care

One thing that's great about Mexico is that if all of a sudden you begin to die rapidly, you're not (always) forced to choose between dying and selling off an organ to pay for medical care.

About a week ago, Hanix bit me while nursing, little bastard. Bit me like he thought my nipple was a chicken nugget. Made me bleed. There is still a little open wound bite mark. And now suddenly nursing has become excruciatingly painful. It hurts so much my feet start to kick and I get dizzy and start whisper-yelling "Ow, ow, ow!" and all I want to do is hide from him so he won't try to nurse. And I got really tired and was feeling sick, and pretty much had given up on living.

Going cold turkey (cold chicken nugget?) on nursing, though, would not only be awful on my baby, but would mean a whole lot of pain for me, too. I'd also probably run a fever and would risk developing an infection, so says the doctor. I also find nursing convenient, and I'm happy knowing I'm providing my son with top o' the line nutrition. Plus, it's five billion times cheaper than buying formula. Also, and not least important, to suddenly stop nursing him would almost certainly ruin our trip to the beach that commences tomorrow.

So I went to Ajijic to find a doctor at one of the clinics there.

Now, are you ready for what's really cool? The doctors take walk-ins. Yeah. You just show up and ask if the doctor is there. I sensibly waited until after the Mexico-South Africa match this morning. I took a seat, waited a few minutes, and got seen right then. I didn't have to fill out seven pages of medical history. I didn't have to provide proof of insurance (I don't have any). I didn't have to promise to sell my liver to pay for the treatment. Nothing. Easy.

So the doctor saw me. I flashed him my boob. He looked at it. Told me I would die if I didn't get it treated (sort of) and then had the nurse come in and shoot me in the butt muscle with some kind of anti-inflammatory something or other injection. And that was that.

He also was SHOCKED to discover that I'd never given my baby formula, and he sent me home with a free sample to give him. (It looked like he had just had a visit from the formula reps, as his desk was piled high with pricey little canisters to hook families on. I'm not supposed to nurse him for the next 24 hours, though, and the canister was free, so it looks like my baby will finally experience what all his cousins have been drinking.

At first the doctor said I'd have to go five days without nursing. I told him I didn't like that idea, for the reasons stated above, and he told me if I feel better tomorrow I can go back to nursing.

Anyway, besides my sore butt muscle, I'm feeling better already. The whole visit only cost 104 pesos, about $8.00. Sometimes Mexico really pulls through. I can't imagine this happening in the States.

Now to live through the next 24 hours without nursing... I guess I should find that hiding spot now.

Worse Than Full House

Saturday, my husband's pregnant teenage cousin showed up at our house. This was a shock to all of us. As far as we all knew she was in California, living with her parents, and, uh, not pregnant. Guess what, she needs a place to stay.

I think a roll call is in order.

We've got me. (Hi, how ya doing?)
We've got my hubs.
We've got baby bubs.
Then there's mom-in-law,
Pa-in-Law,
Teenage bro-in-law, too.
96 year old Grandma (who pooped on a plate this morning. Thank you.)
And now preggers Cousin + fetus

AND our part-time residents,
Bro-in-law who has breakfast and lunch here six days a week,
His baby daughter, who's here about sixty hours a week,
Eight-year-old nephew, who's here during the mornings and sometimes at night, too,
and sometimes we get sister-in-law or her boyfriend or the other sister-in-law.

And there are usually some cousins around, especially the weekends.

Nuclear family, we are not. And I guarantee we don't have group hugs at the end of every episode day.

I'm so glad I have my own casita upstairs for the three of us. People still wander up all the time (I've got to remember to keep my pants on), but it's still nice having my own shower.

We'll see what happens with New Cuz. I guess I've got a lot to say, but I'm holding my tongue for now.

Gorilla Caregiver!

Hire me hire me hire me hire me!

GORILLA Caregiver / Research Assistant


!

A Mango A Day...

Eleven months out of the year we are avocado wealthy. My father-in-law brings them home by the bag-full from the various trees on the ranch where he farms. And those are just the ones he picks up off the ground. Occasionally Hernan will go out there and climb up in the trees to bring home a whole box of them. It's almost always season for one variety or another, and we nearly always have avocados on hand for every meal.

This time of year is the one exception. For about a month we don't have any. If we get desperate we could always buy some from a shop, but we're too spoiled most of the year to do that. So we take an avo break.

To make up for this lack, I've decided that the month of June will be dedicated to a different fruit. Mangoes, you see, are in season.

I've resolved to eat mango every day for the month of June. It's my duty, as I see it.

Day four, so far so good.

Living in San Juan isn't all bad, I guess.

We Gotta Get Out Of This Place

It's that time, folks! Who wants to play the Where To Next Game? Will it be San Francisco? Berkeley? Portland? Sayulita? Vancouver? Naha? You want to throw out a suggestion? Lay it on me! Know of a good place to live in Mexico? Have a work hook up for me someplace? Because San Juan Donkey Balls Cosalá is a pit of misery and I'm through.

Last night a group of men in a vehicle pulled a gun on my husband. They weren't trying to rob him, they don't know him, as far as we can figure it was a bunch of guys just looking for some Wednesday night fun. He and his buddy jumped off the malecon into Lake Chapala and fled. Who knows if the little gang bangers would have pulled the trigger, but I'm glad no one found out.

My husband has been in his share of fist fights, but he never looks for trouble. I can say that here in town he's friends with everyone and their mom, and I mean it. He really is friends with their moms. And their dads. And their cousins. And their little brothers. He's not the kind of guy that stirs up trouble. But here in San Juan he's been attacked more than once from behind. It's never been from anyone he had any beef with. It's just stupid San Juanecos who have no prospects in life except to grow up to be the biggest asshole on their block. We've been hollered at and followed and he's been attacked, even when he's been with me. In fact, they use me to try to get him to fight them. If they insult me while we're walking, they hope he'll get mad enough to engage them in a fight. When that doesn't work, they just come up from behind and try to hit him in the head.

Hernan seems sure the assholes last night aren't from here, though. He says he doesn't think they're from El Chante or Ajijic, either. Maybe Jocotepec. He doesn't know. He just knows they pulled up, yelled some obscenities and aimed the gun at him.

We're not telling his family because his mother might die of worry, and his older brother might try to get involved. He is going to have a talk with his teenage brother about staying safe, though. We think they were probably looking for just anyone, and we're not in any danger of these guys stalking us or anything. But shit.

This last week I was already gearing up to make a move. I've been thinking of going back to the Bay Area to look for work. I'm too lonely down here. I'm tired of just killing time. Now I'm wondering if I should pick someplace else so I can drag Hernan with me. We both hate this town.

Now, I do of course realize that there are hoodlums with guns everywhere. I do think that in other places we've lived, though, we could usually avoid violence by minding our own business. In San Juan, that doesn't seem to be true.

I don't know what comes next. I do know I'm ready to move on. I hate this town.

Shark Wrestling

Sometimes when you buy a "brand new" battery, it's actually an old crappy piece of crappity crap, that crappily dies all the time because it's crap. This applies to car batteries as well.

In other news, I've finally gone completely mad. I'm storing the base of my blender in the freezer, just to keep the roaches from taking up residence there a third time. There's no room in the fridge, in case you are wondering. And I open all the kitchen cupboard doors at night in a wretched attempt to make the shelves less desirable as living space. I know. I should really get over the cockroaches, but last night I saw a cockroach the size of a nightstand crawl into the house from outdoors through a crack in the wall (one of many) and that may have been what did me in.

This leads me to update number three. If you reread the last paragraph, you may notice that I casually mentioned kitchen cupboards. What's this? Who's got kitchen cupboards now? Me. That's who. They're kind of not finished, in that they don't have handles and some of the shelves still lack doors. And one of the doors kind of refuses to open. BUT I at least have somewhere to put dishes and food now. The book shelf I'd been using was no longer working out so well, now that my baby can reach the three bottom shelves and delights in (1) climbing, and (2) tossing.

That's really all I have to say for myself. I might take pictures of my cupboards just to prove to you how much I've just moved up in the world. But then again, I might not. I guess I'll liven up this boring post my mentioning that I'm training for a shark wrestling competition. Cool, no?

American Dream

Alright - I'm totally stealing this from Rebecca, but I like it.



This is from PostSecret.

Zombies

I like me a good zombie movie. One thing I wonder about, which I wish a director would address, is where's all the zombie poo? You know, they're all over the place, chowing down on people. That's a lot of people. Why aren't the cities covered in zombie doody? I doubt zombies are toilet trained.

I don't suggest anyone make this a major part of any movie, but I think it's an important issue that needs to be addressed by the film industry.

I asked Hernan about this.

"What do you think the zombies do? Do you think they poop?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"So, do they use the toilets, or what?"
"No. But it doesn't matter?"
"Huh?"
"No. It's not like the zombies are trying to get laid. So it doesn't matter how they do it."

That's all.

In The News

I'm not going to blog much about this, because I'm not interested in getting abducted, but this is an interesting topic.

Regarding the army's involvement - is anyone really surprised?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126906809

and

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Drug+drug+deal/3058760/story.html

The Beverage

I believe that we all experience certain moments in life, during which we see our lives with exceptional clarity. Suddenly, events will unfold in a certain way, and we're granted a brief opportunity for unclouded reflection on our experiences. It is during these times that we are able to confront ourselves with the honesty of our true desires, and it is with the lingering memory of this realization that we are able to align our behavior with these desires, empowering us to experience greater satisfaction and integrity.

I recently had such an experience. It was while lying in a thick pile of dead leaves and cow manure on top of a mountain, miles from my shower, with my naked ass voiding itself in one direction, and my abused mouth doing the same in the other, and, between the two, my stomach playing some kind of evil game of organ Twister, that I looked up at the stars above and thought, "I could really use a glass of lemonade."

Yesterday morning, barely recovered from the food poisoning activities of the night before, while carrying my backpack and sleeping mat back down the mountain on my wobbly spaghetti-legs, I woozily recalled the epiphany, and since then it hasn't left my thoughts. I would still like a glass of lemonade.

Actually, I very specifically want a glass of Santa Cruz brand lemonade OR the lemonade they serve at a restaurant in Palo Alto, because it is gently flavored with rose water, and roses smell like delicious.

Now, the rose-y lemonade I can't get, but the jar of Santa Cruz lemonade is available at Super Lake, the fancy pants import grocery store out east of Ajijic. I could take the bus over there and buy it, but my innate miser refuses to shell out the money for such an extravagance. Why should I pay all that money that my broke ass doesn't have when I could just stay here in town and make perfectly good limeade?

But here's the beautiful part of my conundrum. So long as I hold out and don't get this glass of delicious, thirst-quenching marvel of a beverage, I've got my life by the balls. You know? If someone asks me what I lack, I don't have to say "a job" or "community" or "the opportunity to live in my own country with my husband" or even something unobtainable, like "a super-sized trampoline" or "my very own velociraptor". See? All I have to say is, "Gosh, I could really use a glass of lemonade."

Macho, Macho Man!

There are many a thing in this world of which I am a fan, such as eating, bicycles, mummies, and shuffleboard. Machismo, though, is not a thing of which I am a fan. Machismo is a thing by which I am frustrated.

Most frustrating is the fighting, but that I'll save for another post. Today you get to read all about housework.

Women love cleaning. It's a fact. We can't get enough of it. It's our instinct. Quitting my job and becoming a housewife and mother has pretty much fulfilled all of my innate desires. Cloud Nine.

The occupation of housewife is made all the more stimulating by the following factors: (1) I up and had a baby. (2) The side of the highway is an incredibly dusty, dirty place. (3) Our house is "open" to the outdoors, and all that dirt and filth just comes sashaying right in, asking for a cocktail and a footstool. (4) Weak washing machine + laundry lines. (5) All meals must be prepared basically from scratch. (6) Men do no housework ever. (7) My mother-in-law and I are far out-numbered.

So, it's the two of us against my father-in-law, his mother, my husband, his two brothers, my eight-year-old nephew, and the two babies (my mother-in-law watches my niece six days a week). Three meals a day for some seriously picky eaters. Laundry. Mopping. Blah, blah, blah. It's really fascinating, isn't it? Shall, I blog more about mopping? I know it's captivating. Shut up, you love it!

Anyway, this wouldn't be so bad, except the men are all macho guys, who need extra special care. As in, they can't serve themselves food. No, really. My father-in-law and brother-in-law can't serve themselves. My mother-in-law has to. And she's not supposed to start eating until she's served them and her mother-in-law their plates. Then, if they want second helpings, she has to jump up and serve them that as well.

My father-in-law is a very traditional man. He's a farmer. He bathes once a week before going to mass. If my mother-in-law is not at home, he doesn't know how to reheat the meal she left for him in the microwave or warm tortillas. He's probably never washed a dish. He taps cigarette ash onto the floor and throws the butts there, too.

My brother-in-law is married, but because his wife isn't home to make him breakfast or lunch, he comes to his mother's house every day. She'll be busy watching his daughter, making lunch, serving her husband, and who knows what all, but he'll still call to her from the table that he wants her to bring him a glass for his soda. He has never changed his own daughter's diaper.

I thought Hernan and I had been making progress when we lived in California. He sometimes helped around the house and occasionally cooked, particularly if friends were over to witness it. But now, living in Macholand, with his mother (no less!) that's all over. Now he can't let anyone witness him cleaning or picking up after himself, because the other men will ridicule him. He can't even carry plates to the sink outside (the kitchen itself has no running water, so the sink is outside). That's women's work. If I don't launder his clothes, he carries them downstairs to his mother.

I don't really care how the other men in the family behave. It's between them and my mother-in-law. They understand that I'm one of those modern women and a bad wife, which is pretty much exactly what I want them to think. It's my husband who's in the doghouse. I feel like the victim of a bait-and-switch, so I call him off all the time. He comes home and says, "Baby, I'm hungry" and then sits down to watch soaps on TV. So I say, "Alright. Well, I'm feeding our baby, and then I'm giving him his bath, and getting him ready for bed, and getting him to sleep, and about a hundred other things, so unless you feel like helping me you can have yogurt for dinner." But this never results in him lending a hand, because by the time I come back downstairs to my in-laws place, I see that his mom has made him dinner and he's already eaten.

So it's me that gets yogurt for dinner.

There are macho things I do like, I suppose, like how my husband can build and fix things and how he's great at killing cockroaches and rats. But mostly macho makes me mad.

The other day, while we were seated for lunch, my mother-in-law came in from the kitchen to ask what is was she'd been yelled at to bring in. Hernan told her, "Forks!" and she went back to the kitchen to get them. I looked at him and said, "What? You don't have any legs or something?" And then immediately realized that he had only been repeating what his brother had said. Naturally, my brother-in-law assumed I was criticizing him, so he got real quiet and confused. Everyone was kind of amazed that I'd just called him off, since nobody calls him off for anything. Ever.

After a few seconds everyone realized what had just happened, and since then the new joke in the family is to ask my brother-in-law whether he has legs or not. I'm glad it didn't cause a family rift, but my inadvertent criticism hasn't effected any changes either.

Ah well. So it goes.

El Lago De Camecuaro

To celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday, I suggested we take a family day trip to El Lago de Camecuaro (Camecuaro Lake), a national park in the neighboring state of Michoacan.

You might wonder why we bothered to drive six hours round trip to go to ... a lake, when we live about 50 feet* from one. But then I would remind you that our lake is super polluted and nasty and that raw sewage runs straight into it, and then you would stop wondering.

Lake Camecuaro, though, is pretty. The water is super clear. I was in deep enough that I couldn't touch the lake bottom, but I could still see every stick and rock down there. I was happy to enjoy the water without worrying about emerging as a mutant.

The trees are beautiful. Their thick trunks grow in twisty turning angles, and the roots are a jumble both on the land and in the water. If anyone knows what those trees are called, please let me know.

The water is cold. Not everyone wanted to get in. I summoned the shreds of my Oregon pride and dove in. The water was delicious.

This was actually my second time there. We went last August, too, while my sister was visiting. I wish we were closer, because it's so nice to get in the water!

I will say that the place is a great deal more park-like than I anticipated. I guess I think of "going to the lake" to be a very natural experience. This place is definitely A Park. If you go, you'll probably encounter gads of people, almost all Mexican, many probably from Morelia. Many will be playing music, quite possibly a certain song you hate. There are vendors that walk around molesting you to buy a statue of Jesus on the cross. Hordes of children will scream as they run right over your picnic blanket. One side of the lake has restaurants. Another corner has a sizable playground.

Speaking of the playground... yours truly got a stern reprimand for playing on the structures. I took Hanix for his first slide ride. Then we got crazy and I sat down on a swing with him in my lap. Well, not five seconds later, a terribly serious-looking guard came over and made me get off the swing. At first, he wouldn't even talk to me. He just wagged his finger at me and looked at me like I had just spit on baby angels with acid monster saliva. So I got up. But I stared at him, because, seriously? I can't take my baby on the swing? But he had been giggling! Who stops a giggling baby?

So then he said (in Spanish) "No, no. No. Only kids. No." Alright. I get it. Bad dog. I'm a sore loser, so I gave him a dirty look and then laughed at him, to show him that, you know, he is without joy in this world, and I took my nephew and my baby and his adorablitude away.

So unless you have your heart set on swings, I recommend the lake for a pleasant afternoon.

True story.


* I'm a terrible judge of distance, so it might be more or less than that, but basically it's right there, you know. So don't mock me if you know that I'm wrong about this.

Beer In A Bag: My Trip To San Luis Soyatlán

In Mexico it's quite common to drink beverages out of clear plastic bags: juice, choco milk, tejuino.

In all cases, the bevvy is poured into a bag, a straw is thrown in, and a rubber band ties the bag closed around the straw.

Never had I had beer out of a bag, though, not until a little trip to San Luis Soyatlán.

San Juan Soyatlán is another town on Lake Chapala, but on the south shore. It's roughly across the lake from us here in San Juan Cosalá.



As you may notice, San Juan Cosalá is not on this map. This is because nobody is interested in coming here. San Juan is between Ajijic and Jocotepec, over on the northwest shore.

Anyway, back to the discussion of beer... there's a quite popular street stand there on the main drag through town. It's popular probably because of the sheer quantity of liquid they dish out.

Alright, so here's how to order, in case you find yourself thirsty in San Luis.

(1) Locate the booth. This should be easy to do. Just look for a long line of well dressed Guadalajara people looking excited.

(2) Get in line and begin contemplating whether you want to drink a "small" or your own weight in liquid.

(3) When a spunky woman approaches you yelling, holler out "chico" or "grande", but don't bother specifying what drink you actually prefer. That comes later. She will hand you a small or large plastic bag, which you should then open and hold out in preparation for step (4).

(4) Someone will walk down the line pouring ice into the plastic bags. Have yours ready, and hold it open with both hands.

(5) When you finally pass by the fifty-odd crates of rotting produce that precede the drink counter, you are ready to order your drink. The Vampiro is a tequila and fruit juice mix. Micheladas are like a Mexican Bloody Mary: beer and clemato and pepper, and whatever else they throw in.

(6) Keep waiting. Yes, step (6) is to keep waiting, because so far they've only given you the mix. You don't yet have any alcohol in your bag, so don't start sipping away yet. Stay in line.

(7) After proceeding past the sliced fruit and about two hundred wasps, you arrive at the other end of the counter. Now you need to hold open your bag again so that the man at the cash box can pour in either tequila or beer. If you order a michelada, as I did, you'll be getting a whole caguama poured in.

(8) Pay. And Enjoy.


And for good measure, here's a picture of my baby admiring his mama's drinking skills.

Spazzy Personal Update

Excuse the craziness, but I've got news!

Today I went to a real pool. Yes, the kind that gets "built" instead of "inflated" The kind that I can fit my whole body in.

See, my hubs goes out all the time without me. He has friends. They go to bars, or pools, or wherever. They do carne asada. They drink. They don't invite me. It's been established that his friends don't feel comfortable having wives along. But tonight I got invited along. I think the reason was that Hernan has really been wanting Hanix to go in a pool, and this was the big chance. So we went.

Actually, I might not have been invited. When Hernan called this afternoon to tell me to have our baby ready, he never mentioned me being ready, too. Ready, though, I certainly was. The dudes showed up, and I had my bikini on and my towel in hand. If they wanted my baby they were gunna have to take me, too.

But this is only half the news.

The guys largely ignored me, but whatever. I was with my baby and we were in a pool. But then! One of the dudes left to go get more beer, and when he came back he had his wife and baby with him.

!!!!!

Do you all realize what this means?

You know all that talk I just did about parental bantering? Well, I cornered this woman and layed it on, and I even got invited to drop by her house sometime.

I'm doing a happy dance.

I'm officially friend-stalking this woman now.

I have told Hernan so many times that he needs to help me meet people. I told him that if his buddies all brought their wives and girlfriends we could hang out together and leave the men alone (since they want nothing to do with me). But he's unhelpful. He goes out every night and leaves me alone and won't invite me or give me phone numbers or anything.

So now I'm going to wait a few days, because that's what you do when you want the relationship to work out, right? Then I'm going to go drop by (because apparently no one uses phones down here.). Then she and I are going to become BFFs, and I'm going to go out all night and not call home and leave Hernan alone with the baby to worry what happened to me.

That's my news. I'll of course tell you how it all works out.

Cuetes

It has been my experience that Mexicans love their fireworks. Not the fancy ones that leave a glittering image of a unicorn leaping through a ring of flames, just old-fashioned explosions. One big BOOM! after another. They call them cuetes, though I've heard that cohetes is the correct word. I have another word for them, in English, but I won't write that here. In might offend the sensibilities of some of my readers.

Cuetes go off roughly every all the friggin time. And most of the time we no longer notice them. It's hard to pay much attention to the sound over the din of highway traffic, neighbors screaming at their kids, kids screaming at each other, dogs barking, gas truck jingles, bullhorn advertisements, the TV downstairs, bottles breaking, La Cucaracha car horns, drunks whistling and hollering at other drunks, and the lady with the hyena laugh.

But sometimes the neighbors get overly zealous. And then they set of, like, fifty. At 11:00 at night. Or 5:00 in the morning. And I have to ask - is this a special holiday? Is it the day of an important saint? Is tomorrow the remembrance of an event of great historical significance to the nation?

Because, if not, why in tarnation are you waking my baby up?

Secret Parent Club

Watch out - I'm about to get all mommy on y'all.

Mothers' days just passed (In the US it was Sunday, in Mexico it was Monday) and this was my first year being a mom on that day. Sure, last May I was knocked up and as big as a manatee, but, as my in-laws repeatedly reminded me, I wasn't yet a mother. I thought, "Damn well close enough, right?" (my son was born a month later) but they stayed firm that I didn't qualify. I was going to have to push him out and keep him alive for a year if I wanted flowers.

Well, baby boy was born, and suddenly I gained membership into the secret parent club. I didn't even know it was a club until I'd joined, that's how secret. Yes, suddenly strangers would smile at me and say, "My son's about his age! Here, let me help you with your bag." or "Aren't they sweet at that age? My daughter just turned two. Let me get that door for you."

I should be more precise about this though. I gained entry to the US secret parent club. In Mexico I'm still just some gringa, same as always. Instead of offering me a seat on the bus (because I'm carrying my baby and three bags of groceries) they just stare at me and think, "I wonder how that gringa's going to manage holding on to all that stuff while the bus is moving. I hope she doesn't drop that bag of beans on me. It would be funny, though, if she fell on someone. Gringos are so ridiculous."

Thus it was only while traveling in the US this last month that I discovered my recently acquired membership. I was stunned. I also lacked practice. At parks, in grocery stores, at OMSI, everywhere I went mommies and daddies would try to engage me in parent banter, and I had to think fast to keep my side of it.

"How old is he?" some mommy would ask.
"Uh. What? My baby?"
"Yeah, is he your son?" She was already suspicious that maybe I wasn't really a member.
"Oh! Yes. My son is ten months."
...
And then I'd remember to ask, "How old is your son?"
"He's 13 months."
"Oh. That's great." How am I supposed to respond to this?
"Is he walking yet?" she asks. Great. Another question.
"Not yet. He kind of cruises around while holding onto things, but he's not really walking on his own yet."
...
"Is your son walking?"
Other mommy stares at me because her son is, in fact, walking around in front of us at that moment.
"I guess so, huh." I say lamely. "Well, how great that he's walking." But really? What does one say?

But then I realized how great it is to belong to this club, because in San Juan all of my attempts to meet people and make friends fail miserably. They couldn't fail more if they were attempts to run through a brick wall. But in California and Oregon I found myself with thousands of people happy to engage in conversation with me. So my next attempts at parent banter were at least more enthusiastic, even if no more successful.

Mommy and child sit down next to us. I smile at them both waiting for the right moment to initiate parent banter. Babies are both playing. Other mommy smiles and says hi.

"Hi!" I respond. "How old is your daughter?" Using what I've already learned, I cut right to the chase.
"She six and a half months."
"Ah what a sweet time!" I say, my face nearly breaking in half from all the smiling I'm doing. "She's darling."
"Thank you." Mommy smiles. "And how old is your son?"
"He's ten months." Mommy looks like she's about to return a compliment, but as we watch he grabs all of the baby girl's toys and tosses them one by one over his shoulder. Then he looks around for something else to throw and reaches for the girl's bottle.
"No, no, no, sweetie. Here. Look at your book."
"He's sure an active little guy." Mommy says of him.
"Oh, yes. Thanks!" I make it a compliment. "Yep, he's always... uh, exploring."
Mommy becomes distracted with her daughter. I can't let the conversation end.
"So, do you live around here?" Oh my God. I sound like I'm trying to pick up on her. Then I realize, I am trying to pick up on her. I'm cruising for friends at the park, and using my baby to do it. Oh! the shame.
"Yeah, just a few blocks away." She says. "Where do you two live? I haven't seen you around before."
And then I realize the folly of my question. Now I have to confess that I live in Mexico; I'm only visiting. I can't make play dates or talk about child care. I can't bump into them another day. This is a one-day stand friendship at best.
"Oh, uh. No. We don't live around here, unfortunately. We're just visiting..." I try to think of some way to save myself. "But we'll probably be back for another visit soon!" Like she's going to write me in to her calendar and make arrangements to be at the park that day.
"I see. Well, it must be nice you get to visit." Then mommy starts packing up her toys, smiles and says good bye. And off they go. Just like that. They walked out of our lives forever.

I think if we had stuck around I would have become quite adept at it, and by now we'd have more play dates than Elmo. But Alas! we're back in San Juan. The club here works a little differently, and you don't have be the parent to belong. You need only be over six years-old and the closest one to a baby at the moment. Membership sounds like this:

"He's hiccuping! He must be cold. Poor baby, are you cold? Why didn't your mama put a sweater on you? Poor thing. Tell your mama, 'mami, will you get me my sweater?' Poor baby."

"Look at that mark on his arm!"
"Yeah. It's a mosquito bite. We had mosquitoes in the bedroom last night."
"No. I think it's a rash. You must not be bathing him enough. Rub some lime juice on it!"

"Oh my God! Where are that's child's socks and shoes! He's going to catch pneumonia and die! Put some shoes on him. Walking around with no shoes on! Poor thing. He's going to die!"

"You want some of my coffee? Hm. Little baby? Here's a sip..."
"Actually, I don't want him to have any coffee. He's just a baby."
"But one little sip won't harm him. You liked that? Here, have another taste."
"Well, also it's nap time, so please don't give him any more."
"Oh, it's ok. I'm just giving him a little bit because he wants it."

That's how the club works down here.

Motherhood. And you know what? In the end, I didn't even get any flowers.

First Communion After Party

You want to party, but you have no friends? No problem. You want to dance, but avoid the discotheque because everyone else there is fifteen? No problem. You want to pound a few beers, but you're too poor to afford a six pack? No problem.

The solution is a good, old-fashioned first communion party. Or a baptism. Or a wedding. Or a baby shower. Or a birthday. If your family is large enough, there will always be some kind of party to attend. And there will always be food, music, and beer.

Granted, sometimes this means you get suckered out of a nice afternoon of lounging half-naked and drunk in your kiddie pool (can you tell I'm obsessed with the pool?), but life is full of compromises. The flip side is that you get to go tear it up with the fan-dam. If you're lucky, the hosts have decent taste in music and maybe even have hired a band. If you're less lucky, you get to listen to that one really awful song that Mexico is obsessed with, and you don't know what it's called, and you don't understand the lyrics, but you know you hate it, and it sounds like this:

Ma ma- maton,
dabby da-b daton
bla bla- badon...
[repeat for twenty-seven minutes]

Whatever the music, you can pass off your baby to aunts and cousins, and you probably won't see him again until either you go hunt him down or he poops his diaper. In the meantime, you can hit the dance floor, have a beer, eat some birria, eavesdrop on the intra-family scandal gossip, explain for the four-hundred and ninety-fifth time why your baby isn't wearing a sweater, speculate on how lousy Mexico will do in the upcoming World Cup games, and then have another beer.

Not bad.

Hot, Dry, Dusty

For those of you who just can't wait for summer, here's a little over-sharing.

It is so hot here that I'm sweating not just from the usual places, but also from the backs of my hands. Who knew that one could even sweat from there? I'm not even a particularly sweaty person. Not like that guy you got partnered with that one time when your friends dragged you to a ballroom dance class. Not like him at all!

I admit, though, that it could be that I foolishly hung up my laundry in the sun with a 26+ pound baby strapped to my back that was what pushed my body to the point of such desperation that it felt forced to expel water from even my hands. Honestly, I should have just taken the wash and thrown it into a pile on the bed. It probably would have dried in an hour anyway.

Also, I'm sitting here considering what would be the least amount of clothing that I could get away with wearing today. I think a bikini would somehow be less inappropriate than undergarments. If I stayed in the house and didn't go out, I could probably get away with the bikini. If I fill the kiddie pool with water and get in it with my baby, then it even becomes almost understandable. "Almost", because my in-laws don't wear swim gear into the water. They swim in shorts and T-shirts.

Alright - the battle commences: should I endeavor to clean my house, lie on my bed wishing Hanix would nap so I could too, or spend the rest of the day with Hanix in the kiddie pool? Man, life is so full of tough choices.

Wilted

It's too hot.

I wish we lived near a body of water I wasn't scared to enter.

It was foolish to walk part way to the grocery store.

I'll be in my inflatable kiddy pool.

Home Again, Home Again

We're home again.

We're back with my honey.
We're back with my in-laws.
Back to having our own space and having nowhere to go.
Back to mosquitoes and traffic and barking dogs.
Back to dust everywhere, and house projects, and cockroaches.
Back to tamales and taquitos and chilaquiles. Back to knock your socks off spicy food for breakfast.
Back to small town gangsters looking for fights.
Back to food full of sugar and artificial ingredients.
Back to family eager to squeeze Hanix and give him treats.
Back to avocado. Back to mango.
Back to staying out of the afternoon sweltering heat.
Back to the TV always on. Back to sirens.
Back to our kiddy pool.
Back to Hanix's walker.
Back to shoes on in the house.
Back to bottled water.
Back to my bed.
Back to laundry lines.
To loneliness.
To Spanish.
To roosters.
To hugs.

We're home again.

Tailgating?

What have you seen for sale out of the back of someone's pickup truck parked on the side of the road? (Bullhorn optional)

-fish
-coffee
-tonics
-used clothes for the whole family
-bread
-ice cream cones
-all manner of fruit (mango, coconuts, papaya...)
-all manner of vegetables (corn, squash, garbanzos, lettuce...)
-raw meat (there's nothing like seeing cow carcasses bleeding on the tailgate to make me whip out my wallet!)
-tacos
-blankets
-mattresses
-children's furniture
-wooden chairs
-pirated dvds
-shoes
-sombreros
-wood planks and poles
-metal pipes
-raw shrimp

Piñatas

The thing about piñatas is that when the treats begin to fall children swarm, with no concern for the child or adult who is yet wielding the bat, and may still be swinging.

Yesterday we witnessed countless near misses as the shiny-eyed, hopped-up-on-sugar, candy-greedy pack of children rushed the four-year-old girl with the aggressive swing and relentless determination to see Piñata Diego go down!

Two Wheeled Love Affair

The last time I was on a bike I was nine months preggo.

The closest I've come to cycling in the last ten months was pedaling my baby's legs around to help him pass air. But today Hernan decided not to sell my bicycle (yet) and went to retrieve it from the man who thought he was buying it. (Yeah, I don't really know. That's just how it works around here.) We irresponsibly threw Hanix into his carry pack on Hernan's back and took off for Jocotepec.

Let me just say that we fell in love all over again. Me and my bicycle, I mean.

We rode to Joco on the newly paved and newly widened highway. We're still waiting for them to finish the ciclopista (bike path) alongside the highway, but in the meantime the road is pretty nice. They widened the highway so that now there is a lane and a half going in each direction. This extra half lane is, I assume, to make passing easier, and so that slow moving vehicles like old trucks, tractors and donkeys can stay to the side.

Hanix loved the ride. He smiled and watched the world go by, and then conked out and slept the rest of the way.

And mama loves bike rides too.

Once we came up on Jocotepec the roads got uglier, full of potholes and speed bumps and gravel, and traffic was much more chaotic. We bought bags of juice, drank them in the plaza, and then rode home again.

Good day.

The end.

Sick, Skinny, and Toothless

I've mentioned before that I'm a terrible mother to my baby, and I'm regularly reminded of this by well-meaning family. That they tell me this doesn't surprise me, because on other occasions I've heard things like "I didn't like you at first, not at all. I said, 'she's too gringa for him. She'll never last.'" and "My kids are really ugly. They're so dark-skinned." and (to a cousin of the family) "Your older daughter is very pretty, but the younger one is kind of ugly, isn't she?" I've even heard a relative tell a mother her baby was ugly. Tell a mother her baby is ugly!? Isn't that a universal taboo? Not here!

So, I've been ready for the criticism. Here are some of the recent critiques directed at me.

He has ONLY two teeth. He's coming up on 9 month now, so he'd better hop-to. I mean, yeah, I agree that he'd better grow some more teeth at some point. It would be a sad thing to go through life with only two itty-bitty teeth. Can you imagine the teasing? He'd have a heck of a time getting a date. But I'm not concerned that he doesn't yet have a mouthful of teeth. My lack of concern, however, is just a sign of my negligence. I was recently told that not only is it alarming that he doesn't have more teeth, it's also a direct result of my bad parenting. First, I should have started giving him solid foods at three or four months to encourage the onset of tooth growth, because tooth growth only occurs if there is sufficient demand for it. Had I given him chewing gum, I assume, he'd have a whole shiny set of teeth by now. And second, he "isn't getting enough calcium". His near constant nursing plus all the food he eats (and holy smokes does this kid eat!) apparently have left him with a calcium deficiency, which his body has dealt with by putting tooth production on hold.

Nearly our whole household has been sick this month. We're nine people here, and all of us have been sick except the 96-year-old-strong-as-nails grandmother and my been-on-another-drinking-binge-for-two-weeks alcoholic-father-in-law. Go figure. The rest of us able-bodied young folk: sick. This includes my baby boy. And yet, even though all of us are sick, it's clear that he's sick only because I refuse to dress him in sufficiently warm clothing for the near-arctic temperatures we're experiencing. I'm totally nuts in thinking it's hot here, and my refusal to bundle my baby in hat and coat is clearly the reason he now has a runny nose. Poor darling.

Finally, he's not nearly the chubby wonder he was during the first seven months of his life. That's right, Mr. Tubby Rolls has slimmed down. Oh, he's still a heavy weight. The Internet informs me that he's still in the 98th weight percentile for his age, like he has been all along, but he recently grew longer and has been very active with his standing and walking and wounded-soldier crawling all over the house. So, you know, he has a neck now, and I no longer have to excavate the body lint out of his fat rolls. Still, this is a sign that I'm not feeding him enough and he's malnourished.

So there you have it. Bad mother.

On the upside, his great grandmother tells him he's very pretty and she will teach him to sew and that he'll be very good at making tortillas. So there's hope for him yet!

Soundtrack To My Life

The beer store across the street from my house opens around ten in the morning. Usually it's either the woman with the hyena laugh working there or a teenage boy who REALLY likes to blast Soulja Boy on the store stereo. On repeat. His record is "Kiss Me Through The Phone" twelve times in a row. Awful song. Makes me want to chuck beer cans at the store and yell crotchety old lady things, like "Turn that racket down" and "You call that music? It's a nuisance!"

Today the beer store is quiet.

BUT the new car parts store next door is filling the sound void with their music. They even have a speaker out front of the shop, because there's nothing like 80s pop hits from the US to compel motorists to pull over and stock up on motor oil and car fresheners.

Ah well. I'll take the variety of 80s pop hits over Soulja Boy on repeat any day. So, no complaints.

And, yes, I did say "out front of" once again. It seems this is wholly grammatical for me.

Contrail

When we lived in Mountain View we were close to so many airports that at any given moment we could find at least one plane in the sky. Often, looking up, we could spot two or three, along with all the criss-crossing white airplane skid marks they left in the sky. I remember that the sky was never free of these.

A few weeks after we moved to San Juan, a cousin grabbed me one day and pulled me outside to show me the plane flying overhead. "It's a plane!" she explained to me. She was clearly excited.

This morning I looked up at the sky during breakfast through one of our "windows" (a.k.a. "hole in the ceiling") and saw a white airplane trail in the sky.

It took me a moment to remember what it was.

Fregar Los Tepalcates

I like to get my dork on down here with words from Nahuatl and other indigenous languages. Many are place names, like Huejotitán, Tlaquepaque, and Ixtlahuacán. Aren't those just delicious words? Say it: Ixtlahuacán. Yummy. (Or, as Hernan would say, "Jummy".)

Other good examples are tlacuache (opossum), mapache (raccoon), zempasúchitl (marigold), chapopote (tar), and molcajete (mortar - as used in the kitchen to make delicious salsas). Many words are now a part of not only Mexican Spanish but also of English and of many other languages in the world. Consider tomato, chili, jicama, tequila, avocado, guacamole, chocolate, and chipotle. Not all borrowed words are about food, (e.g. coyote), but I'm hungry right now, so those are the ones that first come to mind.

This morning my mother-in-law said she was going to fregar los tepalcates, which means "wash the dishes". I'd heard neither fregar nor tepalcates before. Fregar is not from Nahuatl, but apparently tepalcates is. Besides "dishes", it also means, she explained to me, "broken shards of clay", as from a clay jar. She said when she was a girl she was always told to fregar los tepalcates. Now she usually says lavar los trastes..

Nearby in San Juan is an orphanage, she said that sometimes some girls come down from there to buy items from her shop. Some speak a "dialect of Spanish", which is how people around here refer to the indigenous languages. She said she'd mention to them the next time they come that I'd love to learn their language. If the opportunity presents itself I'd be happy as a lime wedge in a gin and tonic to dork out on a regular basis.

VapoRub, Lime Juice and Chamomile Tea

I've posted before about Vick's VapoRub and its cure-all properties. Well, I bet you didn't know that it also cures cold-sores, callouses and muscle cramps. That's what they tell me, anyway. But that's not all.

Hernan woke up yesterday, and one of his eyes was a bit red. He said it felt a little dry, so his mother recommended he rub a little VVR on it to fix it up fast.

Let me be clear in case anyone has stumbled upon this blog in search of an eye remedy. I am in no way suggesting anyone ever put VapoRub in or around their eyes. In fact, I suggest you do not.

Her other suggestion for him was to put chamomile tea in his eyes, which he did do. He said it felt wonderful.

Chamomile tea has been recommended to us for many things. It might be the runner-up in the cure-all contest. We were told to give it to Hanix as a newborn to quench his thirst, to cure his tummy aches and acid reflux. We were told to put it down his nose to clear out the boogers. Apparently it also goes in the eyes.

Speaking of eyes, a man came to Hernan's job site yesterday to solder some iron beams. He did this without protective eye wear. Hernan was incredulous, because he always wears protective eye wear (a.k.a. his Fox sunglasses. A man's gotta look good while he's building a house.) He told me the man admitted that sometimes he would get metal splinters in his eyes. WHAT!? Shards of metal in his EYES! And he doesn't wear goggles or a mask or anything?

Then the man said that he would have to go to the doctor to get the metal removed, but since he's been going so often he's started having his wife do it for him. WHAT?

I'm a bit incredulous. But then he followed up with, "But sometimes when I just have a lot of dust or limestone in my eyes I just clean them out with lime juice."

Lime juice! In his EYES.

Apparently everyone else on the site agreed, saying that sometimes they put lime juice in their eyes to "clean them".

It seems Hernan got off easy with the chamomile tea.

The Nap

My baby is asleep. He's 8 months old. He normally has two naps during the day, which range from 20 minutes to an hour. At night he wakes up every two hours. Like some kind of adorable but evil clock.

He's been asleep now for 2 hours and 14 minutes. He must be sick or something.

I already checked to make sure he's alive. He is.

Obviously I don't know what to do with myself. I wasn't prepared for this kind of freedom.

Wow. I wish this happened every day.

Gay Marriage Legal In Mexico City

Woo-hoo!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8549400.stm

Land, Huejotitan And The Internet

One way in which life in Mexico is different from life in the States (at least how I lived it) is that down here my friend The Internet knows far less than my friend The Internet up there. "How can this be?" you ask, "isn't there but one Internet?" ("And what are you doing fooling around with the much dumber Mexican Internet when your true love waits for you up North?") You see, it works like this: down here in Mexico we don't use the Interwebs for every little thing (for a variety of reasons, but principally because most Mexicans don't have a computer.) It's been my experience that we also don't use the telephone much (both because it's costly and because not everyone has a phone.) Instead, we have to go someplace, or many places, to find a person to talk with, or a variety of people, who, by the way, might all tell you something different.

Consider, for example, the GDL craigslist page: sure it exists, but it isn't the well-used resource for finding a job, used cars, roommates, dining room tables, WWII sniper gear, and adult-size Dora costume that, say, one might find in SF. There are other websites, like MercadoLibre, but the culture of finding what you need online just does not exist down here.

And the same goes for information. If you want to find out how to renew your vehicle permit, for example, you may have to drive to the border because everyone down where you live will give you wrong and incomplete information, and even though you beg and ask The Internet to tell you what to do it just keeps giving you the finger and telling you you have to drive all the way to the border to get a straight answer, and then you get to the border and find out that all of the government employees in your own state were telling you the wrong thing and now your whole trip was in vain and you wasted a lot of time and money for nothing and why can't they goddamn well put ALL the information you need online, or, now here's a thought, make the permits renewable online too, it's not as if Mexico is a small country and driving to the border ain't no thang for crying out loud! Just an example, mind you.

So, naturally, when we needed to find out more about my late grandmother-in-law's properties and the process for transferring the title we went not to the World Wide Web of Information, but rather to Huejotitan.

Huejotitan is a small town north of Jocotepec, off the highway that leads to Guadalajara. It's the town my mother-in-law was born in. When she was about five years old her father killed a man, and the family relocated to San Juan. At some point the law caught up with him, and he served six months in prison before coming home again.

But that has nothing to do with The Internets.

We still have family in the Huejotitan, like Hernan's grandfather's cousin, a spry old man with few teeth who we went to visit Monday. You see, to answer our questions about the land, we went to the town with jurisdiction over it. We then needed to find the town mayor, and to do so we went in search of an ally who could introduce us. That was "Uncle Chano".

He took the men (Hernan and his uncle) to visit the mayor (men's work), and us women (me and my mother-in-law) were left to walk around the town.

It's a very pleasant town. I noticed that there was very little graffiti anywhere and the people didn't gape at us like San Juanecos do. (Even my mother-in-law doesn't like walking through San Juan because, she says, the people are so nosy.) I saw the house that my mother-in-law lived in as a girl, and she pointed out how much had changed.

When she was a girl they had no outhouse. They did their business in the grass by the mango tree. They had no electricity; not until she was married did she live in a house with lights. And men could pick a wife by riding off with her on a horse.

Meanwhile, using the old-fashioned method of talking to people face-to-face, the menfolk discovered that of grandmother's 12 hectares along the highway, only four remain. The other eight have been claimed by "the communists", because the cousin in charge of maintaining the lands hadn't been doing his job.

We also learned that we have to get the title straightened out under the name of just one uncle, whoever is first in the list of succession. To discover who this is, my mother-in-law and her sister will go to an office in Guadalajara, show their birth certificates, credentials, and a letter they have in order to open a "sealed envelope" and discover the list of successors. (It's all very mysterious and reminds me of that little envelope in the game of Clue.) Then they will tell that person, probably an uncle in California, to come down here and square away the title so that no more land gets converted into community lands.

And now back to the internet. I must have become used to living down here because I was thinking about how one might go about doing this kind of thing in the US, and I couldn't remember. But then I thought that at the very least one could look up online the phone number or location of whoever you need to talk to. You probably wouldn't have to drive to another town and find yourself someone who might know someone who could tell you where to find the mayor so that he could tell you where to find an office in another city where they can tell you who needs to then fly in from another country to go who knows where to get the title in order.

But that's how we do it.

I'm Ready For A Buttito Now Please

Lookout! Here we come!

Plans were made, remade, and are now in the remaking, but Hanix and I are going to California and Oregon. Hot damn!

We changed our plan to spend the month of April in the US instead of March - giving us more time to make dates with all y'all. We're like a popular restaurant: walk-ins welcome, but you're really better off making a reservation.

That's pretty much where the comparison ends.

We'll fly into San Francisco on the 2nd. Try to hit up Mountain View, Santa Cruz, Oakland, before heading up to Eugene and Portland, where we'll probably spend most of the month.

I'm giddy.

I don't have everyone's contact information, so email me, message me, comment me.

Oh boy, ohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyobboy!

Mexican Communists

Apparently in Mexico if you own farmland but aren't growing any crops on it the communists can come take the land away from you so that the community can use it. This might not be true, but this is what my in-laws tell me. And "community land" can thereafter not be sold, though it can be "given away".

My husband's grandmother passed away in September. She left a very large parcel of land out on the highway past Jocotepec. An aunt informed us that a group of these so-called communists were out there making claims.

I am in no way familiar with Mexican law on this, but I doubt they'll lose the property. Interesting predicament, though.

Extreme Hardship

Anyone ever try for the waiver of extreme hardship? Anyone ever hear of that working out for anyone? Anyone? Anyone?

Bueller? ... Bueller?

Older By The Day

I continue to be old. Today I resorted to singing the Indiana Jones theme song to my teenage bro-in-law in an attempt to explain who Harrison Ford is. It didn't work. Add that to the growing list of songs I sing (and dance to) to try to bridge the cultural-generational gap.

When I started explaining Han Solo (because I'm nerdy as well as old, apparently), I realized I may as well be talking about going to the talkies or the nickelodeon for all he understood.

In other news, we can add arthritis to my list of oldities. We've been having unseasonal downpours (hey, leaking roof, how've you been?) and I suddenly become crippled. When the sun finally appears again I suddenly regain my ability to walk. Go fig.

We still have our hearts set on moving back to San Francisco (or nearby) next year. I wonder if we'll become young again once we get out of San Juan. We certainly got a lot older the day we arrived. Then again, we're all parenty now, so maybe we're doomed to old-age from the start.

And to make it perfectly clear, I haven't a problem with oldocity among the elderly. It's this rapid aging in our 20s that was a bit unsettling. But I'm ok with it. You know, I'm very much looking forward to learning to play bridge.

To Cure What Ails You

I went more than a year down here without any, er, digestive problems, the kind for which Mexico is famous. I thought maybe I'd become super-powered and immune, until I was twice struck down this winter. The following home remedies were suggested to me.

• Three raw eggs in a glass with LOTS of fresh lime juice. Add sugar to taste. Drink it down!

• Drink a small bottle of olive oil straight. Then drink a cup of mint tea. Apparently the kind of olive oil sold as a hair treatment is preferable to food-grade extra virgin.

• Corn starch mixed with lime juice and 7Up.

• Mix limestone, Coke and lard. Shake. Serve chilled. Mini drink umbrella optional.

• Eat a plate of guajes with the mid-day meal. (But you may have to sleep alone during the night. Gnarly gas will ensue.)

• Toss back a handful of coriander seeds and chase it with a beer.

• Pepto every three hours, and rub VicksVapo rub on your abdomen.


Now you're ready for Mexico!

On a related note, I recently saw a restaurant in Guadalajara by the name of "Restaurant Moctezuma". I wonder how many gringos they get in there.

Great Great Great

My husband's grandmother will be 97 this spring. I've posted about her before, here and here. Today I learned that not only is she a great-grandmother to my baby, but a great great great grandmother, too. That's extraordinarily great. Six (count them: one, two, three, four, five, six!) generations! Holy frijoles, but that's impressive.

Then again... I don't think there's much to do in San Juan except make babies. Uh, Exhibit A: yours truly.

My grandmother-in-law can't remember if my baby is a girl or boy. She regularly asks, "What is it, a boy or a girl?" Someone will shout "It's a boy, Mari." "Oh," she says, "Either works."

Piggie-Glutton

I love food. Now that I'm rich (which you should understand to mean "no longer so poor that I can't afford flour") I decided to go out to dinner with my man candy last night. I'd been sick for two weeks and had finally won my stomach back from the Dark Side. Thus I had already eaten all the food in the house, and there was nothing left for dinner except a box of corn starch and some weird fruit drink that Hernan likes. I do not enjoy fruit drink, and the corn starch was a little dry, so when Hernan got home I told him we were going out.

We don't go out much, on account of the poverty, but having people bring me delicious food is one of my favorite things in this great world or ours.

We headed to Ajijic, where there are many restaurants, and tried a new place that had been recommended to us. We ordered drinks and a pizza and then devoured the complementary bowl of popcorn. When the pizza arrived, we exchanged looks because it clearly would not be enough. We had already waited a good while for it, so ordering another wasn't going to work.

"Let's stop for tacos on the way home." I said while stuffing a cracker-sized "slice" into my mouth.

"Yeah, we're going to the place on the highway."

"Good. That's what I had in mind."

Fifteen minutes later Hernan had a plate of tacos and I had two tortas. The pizza was a tasty appetizer.

Small-portion restaurants are such teases. They should really put a warning on the menu, or preferably at the entrance, "Caution: We serve teeny-tiny portions fit only for people who don't like food very much. One order wouldn't even satisfy your seven month-old giganto-baby. Be advised that if you are a piggie-glutton you will need to order three or four dishes. Five, if you're a nursing mom. Six, if you're nursing a giganto-baby. Thank you."