anika in mexico

The original plan was to get up early and go to the Bazaar de Sabado, but since I got back at 6am, that was unlikely to happen. When I woke up at 1pm and didn’t feel like doing anything, I decided to skip the bazaar.

I still had to pack for San Miguel de Allende, but a lot of my clothes were still very wet.

I just enjoyed a lazy morning. Karin called and invited me for lunch at 3pm. I got there a bit early so that I could check my email, etc. We didn’t end up eating until around 4pm which was fine with me since I’d eaten a late breakfast.

Chucho and Siggy were both trying to convince me all day to go with them to Chaco’s big birthday party. I wasn’t too hot on the idea since I was planning to leave early in the morning to go to San Miguel, and I still hadn’t packed by 6pm when I finally left Karin’s house.

I got home and started packing. Most of the laundry was still wet (it has been cold and damp here lately, so the laundry just won’t dry, and we don’t have a dryer).

I’d packed what I could within a couple of hours, so I called Chucho and agreed to go to the party if he agreed to take me home at midnight. He agreed, so he picked me up around 9 and we drove over to Chaco’s. We arrived and we saw Walther and Saskia with a couple guys we didn’t know, all talking to the police.

Apparently Walther had accidentally tapped one of the other guy’s motorcycles with his car, and the guy had made a big deal about it, demanding lots of money. They’d already been in that mess for a couple of hours before we got there, so they were able to join the party soon after, but both were understandably unhappy. Apparently nothing at all had happened to the guy’s bike, but he’d taken the opportunity to extort a bunch of money since it had happened in a wealthy neighborhood and the party was in a big fancy house. Apparently this is not and uncommon practice in Mexico, so it’s best to not get in car accidents. Even minor ones. No one has insurance, but everyone wants money.

I actually met some really cool people at the party and was able to talk in Spanish with them! One girl, Yovanna was really sweet and even offered that we could get together and go see some stuff in the city. Unfortunately when I went to leave, I didn’t see her anywhere, so I never got her info.

At one point I got up to get a beer (I’d only had one up to that moment, but it must have gone right to my head). As I leaned over to get a beer from the keg, I felt myself falling backward. I grabbed the tap, trying to steady myself, but it broke off, so I fell, right on my butt, and in the process broke the keg. A shining moment, I’d say. I felt a little silly, but no lasting harm.

As midnight approached, Chucho and I started to say our goodbyes, and we actually left on time. He asked if I wanted to be taken right home, or if we could swing by and pick up Hector who was playing a show. Chucho assumed that they’d be done playing when we got there, but they were actually in the middle of their set.

Of course we had to hang out in the club while the band schmoozed with the crowd and eventually broke down their set up. We left at about 2pm, and Hector kept telling me I had to go back to the party. He said definitively “You’re coming! I’ll see you there!” as he got into his car. Chucho and I luckily drove separately, so I was able to get him to just drop me off at home. I really didn’t want another night where I get back at 6am with a drive to a place I hadn’t been to before ahead of me.

I was dropped off by 2:30am, and I still wasn’t packed, but I fell into bed with my alarm clock set for 7am.

I woke up somewhat late, around 10am. I ate breakfast with Sigrid, and then I cleaned up my room a bit. I left for a walk around 11:30 or so. I went 4 times around the lake, and was awarded with some minor blisters from the semi-new sandals I was wearing. It was an incredibly beautiful day. There are some murmurings that the rainy season might be at its end. I sure hope that’s true because I could really get used to these mild yet very sunny days.

I went to Starbucks and chatted with some friends online and worked on my journals. I got back late–at 3:30 for the family dinner. Everyone was already finished their soup and enjoying some sopes. I explained that I’d lost track of time, and was very sorry. Their response, “ah don’t worry, just means you’re becoming Mexican!”

After dinner I got ready for Liza and Pollo’s birthday party. They just started dating a month or so ago and they have the same birthday. How cute.

Chucho said he’d pick me up at 4:30, but for one reason or another, he finally showed up at 6:30. We headed down toward the south to Liza’s house. We turned off the main road onto streets that were paved with stone, and not very well maintained. Chucho’s poor car had a tough time with it, but we eventually made it to our destination.

The boys went to go get some chelas (beers) and cigarettes (I’m still so amazed about how many people here smoke. I’d say at least 80-90% of the people at the party were smoking). I stayed and chatted with Liza and her friend Elsa. They were both really nice and easy to talk to; something that I’ve found can be rather rare here.

For example, later in the evening I was playing billiards with an architect named Julian, and I won! He got one of his friends to play with me, and the guy was totally kicking my butt. He was solids, and very soon the table looked very stripey. One of his friends (a girl named Andi) came over to him and asked if he was the one winning. When he said yes, she was like “oh good” and made it known that she’d play the next game. I thought, well maybe she’s just happy for her friend and also would like to play. On his last shot, going for the 8 ball in the corner pocket, not only did he miss, he also scratched, so I automatically won.

I looked at the girl who appeared a little surprised and stunned that her friend had suddenly lost. As I was getting all the balls back on the table, assuming that she and I would play next, she quickly made herself scarce. At first I didn’t believe what seemed to be happening. But then all her friends also avoided eye contact, and I realized I was without another player. I’d love to write about only great experiences that I have here in Mexico, but the truth is, sometimes things aren’t so great. Sometimes they are shitty. Well this made me feel pretty shitty. Embarrassed, finding myself rejected by these people, I slinked off into the other room where my “friends” were.

Not to say that the night was all bad. At one point earlier on in the night, I was on a couch in the sitting room, surrounded by people having lively conversations, feeling the isolation of my own private little island of “i only really speak english”. As I sipped my vodka tonic, I fell deeper and deeper into my self pity. I really thought that if someone would ask me if I was ok, I’d start crying. I thought about going to the bathroom to compose myself, but I was stuck. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to sit and feel sad.

Well, I guess this one girl noticed that I was just kind of sitting staring off into space, so she came over and said, “que divertido, eh?” and we both laughed. I thought she was very brave for coming over, admitting that her English wasn’t that good. Then of course we continued to have a conversation together in near perfect English. Ha. After a while she got tired, so we switched to Spanish. It was fun, and she was really nice and interesting to talk to.

After that I went over to refresh my drink, and that’s when I first met Julian. We actually talked mostly in Spanish. Just a few words that I didn’t know I’d say in English, and sometimes he’d re-explain something in English when I hadn’t quite caught the Spanish version. After a while I sensed he was getting a little bored with our conversation (I do speak rather slowly and simply I suppose), so he suggested that we play billiards. We all know how that turned out, but even so, it was nice to talk to someone new for a while.

After the billiards incident, I ate some more tacos. All in all I had 6 tacos that night, which is really a lot, but they were really good.

Chucho and I left at around 3:30 and he dropped me off by 4am. He said that he’s going to pick me up at 9pm to go see his friend’s band play. I told him, we’ll see.

Today was the day of parties. It’s the eve of the Mexican Independence day, so everyone gets into a festive mood.

Before party time (2pm) I spent the early afternoon finishing up a pattern, and was ready just at 2pm, but of course everyone else was late. But soon people were arriving. I met my grandmother’s brother, his wife, all his children, and their children! He’s really great too, and he looks so much like my grandmother, it’s funny. I was really blown away by how easy going and friendly everyone is. Each of the kids, Gerardo, Walter, and Ani, all invited me to meet up with them again.

Walter is trained as an industrial designer, and now has a photo studio. I showed him the stuff I’ve been working on (at Karin’s prompting), and he and his wife were both very interested in what tools I used to make the patterns. I showed them the markers I use, and they were impressed. They’ve invited me to visit to check out their studio and also see their work (his wife, Angeles, is also an artist who does a lot of photo collage).

Ani invited me to come visit her in Toluca, and Gerardo also invited me to their house at somepoint.

After the delicious lunch of Mole de Ollo (a tasty soup with lots of stuff in it), we all played some card games which was great fun. We played “Cucharas” which is a great game for a large group of people. You constantly pass one card to your right and the goal is to get 4 of a kind. If and when you do, you have to discreetly take one of the spoons (there is one less spoon than there are people). If you notice that someone has taken a spoon, you also take one, and the one left without a spoon has to sing a song. It was really hilarious. Especially because I discovered that I know the german song “O Tannenbaum!” and the Mexican song, “La Cucuracha” better than my own National Anthem. Ah well.

Overall I also enjoyed the party because I spoke only in Spanish, and was able to understand and be understood very well.

Everyone left by 8pm, but that was by no means the end of the night for me. I had to run to the Supermarket and get “botanas” which is basically appetizers/snacks for the party at Fernandos. Saskia agreed to pick me up at 9pm, so I didn’t have too much time to get ready. But I painted my eyes with bright green eyeshadow, donned my brightest red t-shirt, wore my white pants, my dingy green camo tennis shoes, and of course red lipstick. Red Green and White in honor of the Mexican Independence Day.

I arrived and Carlos was going to make me a Paloma which is basically a tequila with Squirt, but then Pancho insisted, no, I’d be better off just having a straight tequila, with a lime on the side. So that’s what I drank. And then I had another, and a little while later another. Then everyone had a shot together, and then Siggy wanted to a shot with me “al fondo” or “to the floor/bottom”–theoretically of the glass, but it almost had the more literal effect on me because after that, then I was drunk.

I had a lot of fun though. I danced a lot with Santiago, learned a little Russian from Fernando’s dad (he actually told me you could make any word Russian by adding “uski” or “iski” or “aski” to the end of it. I was speaking perfect Russian within 10 minutes), who also assembled a tostada especially for me, played with Fernando’s dog Rex, laughed a lot, took a lot of silly pictures, ate a lot of cheese and Rancherito chips, passed out on the couch for a bit, and then woke back up to chat with Pancho, Chucho and the German girls.

Chucho drove me and the Germans home and I got to bed by 4:30am.

I had a hard time sleeping last night, as I thought I might. First off, I just had trouble getting to sleep. Secondly, the other guests who are now staying here (a woman from Cancun and her niece) went out at night and didn’t get back until 3am, making lots of noise when they arrived.

I woke up at my scheduled time and made it to school in only 20 minutes! Karin had told me another way to go, and it was a lifesaver.

I wasn’t really looking forward to class, but I was there. My professor came in and I told her that I hadn’t done my homework, which wasn’t a big deal. So instead we went over my exam. I got an 88% on it. One thing was her mistake, so I actually got a 90%, but whatever. Honestly I didn’t care about the grade. What I did, and still do care about is her method for “correcting” me. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but she doesn’t correct my mistakes. Instead, she tells me which one is wrong, and then waits for me to miraculously come up with the right answer. If I’ve gotten it wrong, obviously there is something I don’t quite understand, and I’ve never suddenly been struck by the right answer under her pressure.

So it went on like that for each question. And then the questions I had about why it was wrong (to me some of them seemed ok, like not totally wrong, even if it wasn’t what she was looking for), she would get confused about, and just explain what she’d already told me, which was useless.

And so since I was tired, hadn’t been feeling well all week, include this morning, and was growing increasingly frustrated, I felt tears wanting to push their way through my tear ducts. I didn’t want to cry in front of her, and since I was growing increasingly testy, I suddenly, in the middle of an exercise in the work book, declared that I needed a break, and I went down to the bathroom to compose myself.

I blew my nose, and let myself cry a little bit for 10 seconds. Then I got myself together, and headed back upstairs.

My teacher might inadvertently be a bitch, but she’s not stupid and she’s not unfeeling.

She sensed that something was wrong. Then of course she asked me to talk about it, and then of course, I started crying right in class right in front of her. She said that she understood how hard it is for extranjeros in another country, and she knew that it had been a hard week for me–terrible traffic, not feeling well, the confusion about the classroom change, plus the fact that I’m the only person in the class which also can be stressful. She went on and on about the morning when the secretaries hadn’t told me that my classroom had changed, instead letting me sit in an empty room for 20 minutes. I think that incident really upset my professor more than me. So as she came up with all these reasons why I was upset, I just nodded along. In retrospect, I really should have just told her that it’s very hard for me when she doesn’t just correct my mistakes but drags it out waiting for me to self-correct. But my defenses were up, and my mindset at the time, and perhaps still, is just to get through the class as easily as possible.

The ultimate result of all this is that on Monday I get to have a half an hour with the other class to have conversation with some other “young people” which was one of her other reasons for me being upset–that I didn’t have other young people to talk to in the class. Whatever, at least it’ll be a change of pace. She also said that we can leave the classroom one day and walk around or have a coffee somewhere and just have conversation.

I was more than relieved when the class was over, and now there’s only another week and a half left! Actually less, only a week and 2 days! Plus I’m skipping on Tuesday to go see Siggy talk at a conference. So that’s only 6 more days of class!

After class I went to Gigante (a supermarket near my school) to look in vain for more Brita filters. I did get a few other necessities like cactus fruit, avocados, hair conditioner, and mini-coca-colas.

Then I came home and made a little collage while waiting for Karin to go have lunch at her house. She was already here at my house, but talking to Sigrid for a while. We left at 2:30–I followed her. She’s a whiz on the roads. Whenever there was the slightest bit of congestion, she’s swerve onto some side street where we’d be traffic free for a while.

We ate with Siggy too. We had corn soup and Mexican “fast” food–Fried chicken breasts, rice and beans. It was quite good. For some dessert we had Galletas Marias with Cajeta.

Karin had to go soon after lunch, but I stayed and hung out with Sigs for a while. Then we left to go look for a fondue set, check out a craft store, and get supplies for the fondue party later that night.

Saskia met us when we went to the craft shop. It really was very crafty, and almost entirely uninteresting for me. They are very into the fact that you can “make your own jewelry!!” here. There were aisles and aisles of silk flowers, christmas bulbs, papier mache forms you could “paint yourself!!”, wood blanks, sequins and sparkly things, gaudy figurines for a wedding, a quinceanera, a baby shower, etc. They also had a small section for halloween, which is growing in popularity everywhere it seems.

We were joined by Pancho who seemed about as interested in the store as I did.

I was grateful when we left to go to the bakery to get the brownies that Siggy likes so much. We ran into one of her cousins there from the Marquard family. She seemed rather morose, although she was friendly enough to me.

We headed back to the car, then to the supermarket, where we bought about 10 packets of fondue, 4 baguettes, liquor/beer/wine, soda, and some “Ranchero” flavored chips that I was skeptical about at first, but were actually quite tasty.

Siggy and I swung by my place to pick up another fondue set. Back at Siggy’s, we were met by Jabo, and we started some of the preparations. We had a few margarita-like coctails in tiny martini glasses. I cut up 3 of the baguettes into bite sized pieces.

The 5 of us hung out in the kitchen for quite a while before anyone else showed up. I ate a lot of ranchero chips with cheese.

It was an ok party, but the purpose of it was to introduce everyone’s new girlfriends/boyfriends to the rest of the friends. So it was pretty much couples, a few bachelors, and me. And of course, there was a lot going on, so everyone pretty much just spoke in Spanish very rapidly. I had my vodka cocktails to keep me company, but that was about it. I had a brief hilarious conversation with Fernando, and then a somewhat creepy conversation with this dude Hector who is a drummer in a band called “Candy”. Within the first 3 minutes he asked if I would a) take him with me when I return to the states, and/or b) marry him. Then he kept asking if I’d like to go out to this club called “Bulldog” tomorrow night, or if I would come see him play on the 22nd. When I said, “yeah, maybe, we’ll see.” He was like, “aw that means you’re not going to come.” Haha.

Overall it was a pretty boring party for me, but I did eat a lot of fondue, which was fun. I left at 1:30 and went to bed.

I woke up today and still felt awful. The dogs were yowling all night and it really made it difficult to sleep, plus the fact that I also can’t breathe through my nose doesn’t help matters. Luckily it seems the neighbors have returned from their month-long vacation, so hopefully the dogs will be inside and quiet tonight.

I guess Reyna’s day off is Sunday. I fiddled with Sigrid in the kitchen to make breakfast. I told her I just wanted to go upstairs and read or do something quiet. I just ended up sitting in a chair and basically staring at the walls, thinking a bit. The thought occurred to me that being deep in ones thoughts can be a terrible place to be. Not sure why; my thoughts weren’t particularly terrible at the time, it was just something that I thought of.

Karin came to pick us up around 1 to get to Erwin’s birthday party around 1:30. I seriously considered bowing out gracefully, but in the end I’m glad I went. We were there before almost everyone else, which gave me a good opportunity to check out the house, the garden and the view. Apparently in the past all you could see from the back yard was mostly just trees and rolling hills and maybe a few other houses, but now there are buildings, tall, short, fat, skinny, attractive, and ugly, covering the hillsides.

I met lots of new family, including the baby Annika. She’s cute. She has a very round face/head. But she’s only 6 months old so there’s not much to tell really.

I noticed that all the little girls have pierced ears. Even Annika, the youngest. Sabrina who was almost 3 and Daniella who is around 6 also had pierced ears. Personally I think it’s a little barbaric to pierce the ears of such a young child. First of all, the hole will grow out considerably as the ear lobe gets bigger. Secondly, it just looks a little over-done to see an infant with gold studs. And thirdly, how do you know that the girl would want to have her ears pierced if given the choice? Certainly I wanted to have it done, but I was 12, and mum threatened to make me wait until I was 18. When she let me go ahead and do it, it was a really special and memorable event, and it’s not like it really hurts. To each his own I suppose.

The party was great fun. I didn’t participate too much since I wasn’t feeling well, but it was really nice to see such a large family having such a good time together. They had tamale pie which I didn’t try since I thought it would be too much for my stomach to handle, but I had a nice big salad, and also tried several of the different cakes, my favorite was the “Impossible Cake”: Chocolate cake with a flan topping and caheta and nuts over all of it. Truly impossible to resist. The pflaumen kuchen was so-so since the plums were really sour, but the cake part was really well done. There was this other cake which looked good but didn’t taste like much.

After the party we went to see a movie which seems like the thing to do on Sundays and Wednesdays. We saw “Sin Reservas” with Catherine Zeta Jones and some dude and that little girl from Little Miss Sunshine. It was really rather ho-hum. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, but nothing ever did. Even when you expected the some interesting conflict that and makes the relationship confused and rocky, it was mostly just lame. I suppose it was a good Sunday movie though.

I start school tomorrow and Teocrito is going to pick me up at 8:30 which means I’ll probably have to wait for about a half an hour, but I’d rather do that than take a taxi there, though I’ll likely have to take a taxi back home.

Wednesay I went with Sigrid to her College. It’s very big, and she says there is never enough parking when school is in session. With registration still going on, we didn’t have a problem finding a spot. I was able to check my email and check my favorite sites for a long time while Siggy took care of some things at her work and with her professors. She was worried I would get bored, but really I can keep myself occupied as long as I need to on the internet.

She let me drive her car back to her house. I was a little nervous just because, you know, it’s Mexico City, but it really wasn’t too bad, even when it got a little “crazy”. People don’t follow the traffic rules most of the time, but everyone on the road doesn’t follow the rules, so in a way there’s this collective unconscious that makes things flow pretty smoothly. Everyone’s almost expecting you to pull some crazy maneuver to get where you need to go, and even if they get upset by it, it’s very fleeting. Horns aren’t used as a way to actually alert others, but instead are a great way to relieve some stress when you are in a hurry and things aren’t moving.

After the drive home we ate lunch at Siggy’s parent’s place. I really wasn’t much in the mood for food, but I ate it anyway. It was good, but then I was pretty tired, so Siggy let me go to her room to take a nap. I slept for 2 hours.

We then fought traffic to get to this really beautifully designed mall that has all the really high end stores. They also have a movie theater and we were going to meet Siggy’s friends to see Harry Potter. I really thought it was going to be dubbed in Spanish, but it wasn’t: just subtitles. I actually really enjoyed watching it. Afterwards her friends wanted to go somewhere else and eat. Still not so much of an appetite, but I agreed to go along. I tried an empanada con jamon y queso, but the filling tasted a bit too much like cat food for my palate, so I gave half of it to Fernando, Siggy’s maybe gay friend. He agreed that it tasted a bit odd. Then I nibbled on the left over bread from the fondue that Pancho and Fernando ordered, but didn’t order anything else.

I got home fairly late considering that I had to be up kind of early to get to the school to take my placement test and register for my class. The bottom lock was totally stuck, but luckily Siggy’s friend Santiago was there. He’s quite spry and in no time he hopped the fence and let me in. I went right to bed, but morning still came too soon.

I rolled myself out of bed and was ready promptly at 9 when Siggy told me she would call. She didn’t call until 9:30, and then it was to say that instead of her taking me, her father would drop me off and then I could take the bus or a taxi home. In retrospect, it’s really not a big deal, but for some reason, at the time, it really threw me.

If I’d known that the day before, I could have easily gotten all the information and felt confident about finding my way. But I didn’t. I was not feeling well and then also totally overwhelmed by the task in front of me.

Finally it was decided that Teocrito would indeed pick me up and take me to get the little photos taken that I needed to bring with me in order to register, then drop me at the school where I’d just have to figure things out.

Teocrito showed up earlier than I expected, and it took me several minutes to gather all my stuff and myself together, but I was soon out the door as quickly as I could have been. Perhaps he was a bit annoyed that I kept him waiting, but soon he warmed up, and I eventually kind of snapped out of my weird mood.

Teocrito was actually a great help. He didn’t just dump me on the sidewalk, but instead he asked the security guard where I should go, which was not on the main campus, but down a block to the right at La Casa Rosa. It was literally a pink house. He then parked and walked inside with me. He even sat and waited while I had a conversation in Spanish with the profesora. When we were going to start the written test, I asked him if he wanted to leave, and he came over and asked the lady a bunch of questions until he felt satisfied, and then he left.

I was really feeling kind of out of it, but I managed to get through 3 pages of the test confidently. Then my confidence swayed, and after struggling to remember irregular past-tense conjugations of verbs I finally said that I didn’t want to finish. So I placed somewhere between the 1st and second levels. Because of that, I’m going to take the semi-intensive course rather than the intensive course in which I’d have to start from the very beginning with numbers and the alphabet and all.

I’ll be starting class this Monday, and so I’ll be here for at least another 3 weeks.

After the placement test I had to pay $2,700 pesos (about $270 USD). I literally had $2,600 pesos, so I went to the atm, but when I was there I realized I’d left my atm card in my desk rather than toting it around with me everywhere, as my guide book suggested. So I called Siggy and she had to bring me $100 pesos which she did within a half hour, also picking me up. Santiago was with her since he had borrowed the car overnight and needed a lift to Polanco.

After dropping him off we went to buy me a spanish-english dictionary and a map of mexico city (which I now see is practically useless for me because the magnified maps of the two parts of the city where I’ll be spending the most time cut off right at my street, or right at my school). While at Sanborn’s we got a call from her mom and we had to walk (what seemed a long way in my weakend condition) to buy a kilo of limones and a cake. We stopped at some point and got a Chai Latte which really didn’t agree with me. By the end of our excursion I was feeling really terrible, so I had Siggy drop me off at home rather than go to her house for more food which I so didn’t want to eat at that point.

I got home and just slept. Somehow I managed to pull myself together for Karin’s party but I was not feeling 100% at all. I wrapped her purse in tissue paper and made these really cute little flowers also out of tissue paper. I was very proud of my wrapping job. When I handed it to her she said, “oh, well this must be a purse” and then unceremoniously unwrapped the thing and said, “oh yes, it’s very nice”. I suppose it’s her gift and she can do with it what she wants, but I would have appreciated a little more tact if not ceremony.

The party was ok, but I didn’t eat anything; just water and a bit of tea at the end of the night. I met these 2 girls from Germany. I think one of their names was Anna, but don’t remember the other. One was really friendly and I talked with her a lot. The other also seemed friendly but didn’t say much. I think she understood everything I said in English but wasn’t comfortable speaking it, like I am with Spanish. After 11:30 I finally got the chance to sneak off and lie down for a bit in Siggy’s bed. We left by around midnight, and by then I felt really quite out of it.

Today I’ve just been sick and taking it easy. Karin came in at about 10:30 and gave me some kind of tonic that I am to gargle and drink 3x a day. It’s ok and very mediciney tasting, but I don’t think it’s working any magic. I played some solitaire while Sigrid went to the garden to tell the gardener what to do. I made some more tissue paper flowers, this time with more variations that the ones I made for Karin’s presents. I read some in my text book, and looked up some spanish words, but mostly just took it easy and rested. Tomorrow I’m supposed to go to Metepec with Sigrid and then go look for a car with Teocrito, but we’ll see how I feel. I don’t want to push it.