Guanajuato day 3

7.23.06

I wake with the best intentions of hiking early, but demur for a lovely conversation with la senora over breakfast. I ask her what she thinks of the immigration situation in the u.s. and she shares that she wishes we understood that those who come to our country are the mas humilde (most humble) as she calls them (rather than poor), that the rest of Mexico is filled with talented, dedicated, trained people. I think it´s a good point. OMe of my colleagues here say that when they told people they were coming here, their friends thought of Mexico as a desert with people sitting under cactii wearing sombreros or riding donkeys. Something´s missing from our education.

I go out with more good intentions of going to church but get distracted by a gym nearby and do a spin class. My own religion of sorts. But later pass a church where a parade of drummers is exiting. I am drawn to listen and something brings me to tears, the constant throb in my chest, something basic. I don´t know.

I sit next to a teen playing a computer game which includes a buff woman holding a big gun to a mans head, he calls her a puta and I think how sad that this is how kids areound the world are entertaining themselves.

More walking around, just watching, listening to the sights and sounds around me. It´s busy, filled with tourists from all over, mostly Mexico City, so I just listen in as much as I can. After lunch I plan to go to a msueum but get waylaid by a clown doing a performance in front of Teatro Juarez. It´s a family show so I can undertand most of it and even appreciate some of the humor. At one point he calls for everybody´s attention, and when they don´t, he says : "that´s okay, I know you´re Mexicans, but I´m not the government." At the end, he asks everyone to line up and by the count of 10 give their donations, a straggler comes in after the last count and he forgives her "porgue eres mexicana, and you leave everything until the last minute." So I miss the museum but enjoy the impromptu spanish lesson.

I have noticed a sign for Hospital de la Fe and Sanitorio Sagrado de Corazon de Jesus and am reminded again, of how in dealing with health issues, this people often puts their fates in the hands of God. Perhaps this contributes to the fact that Latinos in teh U.S. outlive whites and blacks by 7 years despite their poorer health and economic status. Maybe I should re'consider my career when I get back home and join the flock.

Nah.

I love how open everything is, the vendors selling gorditos made right in front of you, the vasos de fruta con limon Y chile (my new favorite snack), grilled corn served with mayonaise (if you choose, I don´t) and chile y sal, chocoalte hecho de mano (now this is sweet and grainy dark chocolate, but so much better than a Hershey´s bar). I know what I¨M seeing here is specific to a tourist town like Guanajuato, but in driving to San Miguel ones notes all the street vendors, selling their freshly cooked flautas right next door to the tire shop. (I think zoning doesn´t exist here.) I do know that in southern climes around the world there is more outdoor life, but it feels different from our own South. Not sure how, perhaps because there is so little new construction once you get outside of this city. In the states, you can always find some franchise or sparkling new gas station even in poor areas. here, there are half finished houses, houses that would topple at the slightest earthshake, and impromptu businesses set up on front lawns. I continue to marvel and wince at the lack of seat belt use as moms carry newborns on their laps. A fellow student today passed a car accident complete with dead body everyone was walking around without decorum and having seen some of the driving I would think everyone would wear every safety device possible. But then, there´´s that fatalismo thing going on, so maybe people just don´t worry as much as we do about these things.

I take dinner at a restaurant tonight craving some green vegetables and silence from my lovely sorority sisters. In searching out the mercado to buy soem towels, which are not included in my home stay, I am called instead, again waylaid, by voices singing high mass. I enter on of hte dozens of beautiful churches offering mass today and am swept back in time by a wave of incense that reaches from the altar to the back of my brain I am 10 sitting with my beanie on my head at chapel in my episcopalian school. It brings tears to my eyes, not hte scent but the memory and I wonder of what?

And why am I so sensitive to sounds, scents, sights lately? THe altitude? Or merely the free time to sit, listen, look smell and taste anew?

I am thinking of the lovely language and new words, like bienes racines, ¨"good roots" for real estate and cumpleanos "accomplish years" for birthday. We celebrate the day we were bornñ they acknowledge having achieve another year. One seems rooted in the past, afixed moment in time, the other in the passage of years, the process. Perhaps I am romanticizing the language, but there´s this fluidity, an openess to much of it, like their lovely but frustrating subjunctive, which is all about potential, the "what if", the conditionality of what we do or might do.

To finish my crisp and crunchy meal, I have a cup of coffee and some of the chocolate I bought earlier. Wonderfully crumbly with a hint of cinammon. As the day began, so it ends with me planning to head home and instead getting distracted by the university students in full minstral attire, singing with bandolinos, a base, various guitars and a few other string insturments I don´t recognize. They invite 2 couples for a dance-song that most of the audience recognizes and I´m grateful to understand enough, again, to get the humor, although when they mix the partners and have them dance with each other´s spouses and exchange air kisses, we all get the joke. Some things are universal.