windows

6.10.07

The morning's wanderings takes me past windows which inspire me for a motif to use in designing a website. I'm thinking of windows into people's minds and hearts, opening conversations, listening. The artists mercado is filled with artisan crafts and trying to choose for an 8 and 10 year old who are mostly into Americana is hard. I am amazed at the number of Americans everywhere and feel like I"m in Malibu or the Hamptons. But side streets offer respite and the little shops for vegetables and bread a retreat from souvenirs.

MOtivational INterviewing

6.9.07

More work in the patio of PACEMED, translating and now listening to CPR practise with various cases being discussed, intubations taught and the teacher “snoring” away to illustrate a particular situation. I wrap up and head out for some delicious mole for lunch and more wanderings through mercados and the art market, wondering what souvenirs to get for the kids who have outgrown chatchkes.

A meeting at Lifepath inspires another idea for working with teachers in local schools, giving them ideas on how to educate kids on obesity prevention. He reminds me of Jung’s conviction that the second half of life is one of service, the first being one of ego development. Although our nation seems to be stuck in service of self throughout life and our nation’s leaders do no better. He suggests I approach local realtors and wealthy people to fund the workshop, which they would help promote pro-bono. We also discuss doing a mindful eating workshop for their paying clients.

In the jardin farmers protest the state for a building they do not want, blaring their speech on a loudspeaker, and following with a pick up truck carrying a bull. They block traffic and no one seems to mind.

A lazy afternoon as the weather changes from hot and dry to windy and cooler and I hole up to correct my rapid translations.

PACEMED

6.8.07

5:30 am and, again, I toss and turn, finally give up on this endeavor and write instead. I’ll meet with the PACEMED people in the morning and hope for an afternoon nap which seems to come easier these days. Dogs are now barking, joining the roosters and odd truck here and there and I flash back to Madrid, a similar room with French doors, and Paris, places where I felt the earth under my feet as I looked for something. I think of my sister who seems never settled for long on any continent and wonder how different, yet alike, we are in some ways. I have stayed put for 15 years in one place and built a family and home. She has wandered the continents. Yet we share this common past of having doors opened to the world every year. I am lucky to have the best of both worlds and hope she is finding her place here as well.

I have a fresh breakfast of their famous French toast, fruit and yogurt, then take a long walk around town and head over to the school where I get to watch a CPR class being conducted with Mexican EMT’s. It’s a small class held in the courtyard and fun to listen to in Spanish. I meet with Kitty, PACEMED’s marketing person, freshly de-camped from NYC as of a year and we have lunch nearby. Then we discuss my workshop idea and the possibilities of having it work. It’s exciting to explore first steps of the dream process.

I nap in the barcalounger, listening to the sounds of Mexican EMT’s practicing CPR in the jardin and then meet with my tutor for more translating of the this Motivational Interviewing technique I hope to use. Dinner out is interesting in a restaruante with a Polish singer crooning in French and Spanish. Again surrounded by Americans and aware of how we take over a space when we move in.

San Miguel

6.7.07

My lesson for yesterday included going into town to have dinner and further chat with Alejandra, then joining her husband in a café. He is a doctor with the Public Health department and we have a long discussion about the role of depression in ill health. Guanajuato is suffering an increase in suicide caused by lack of work, the changing roles of men and women, the increasing desire for things and inability to pay for them. We discuss the difference in health beliefs and I am impressed by the quick response this city makes to a crisis by gathering resources together to get to the root of a problem. They do studies and hire psychologists. Back at the house, I face the talking parrot, the church bells, my laughing neighbors and stuffy air as I try to manage some sleep. Awoken by the hourly church bell at 4am I take an anti-histamine and try for sleep again. Finally I slumber.

A morning jog/run through this part of town raises eyebrows as I swish by women cleaning the streets with hay switches, the children in their uniforms and the many workers awaiting city buses. Maria, la alma de casa arrives at 9 to cook a breakfast of the saltiest pork chop I’ve ever had and I get to know the med student a little better. We are both a bit frustrated by the lack of activity here in PACEMED GTO as it’s a new program and I opt to head to their headquarters today to get more exposure to their school. Alejandra and I take 4 hours to work on translating this Motivational Interviewing style of medical visits. She’s very helpful and I enjoy getting sidetracked by life issues, a friend is made. David helps us take photos of me in “action” pretending to do my thing with Alejandra, una paciente tipica. I note that the beautiful house we’re staying in is for sale and dream.

The bus ride to San Miguel feels like a little piece of Americana as a Hollywood film, dubbed in Spanish, bleats from the TV screens. Nicer than Greyhound, with spacious seats and a free snack, the cost is only $8 for the 1 ½ hour ride. I watch rain on one side of the road and sun on the other as we wend along the rural highway.

I am greeted at the bus station by a terse Tony who takes me to the guest house where I drop my things and then off to the PACEMED offices, hidden like so many businesses here behind a coffee shop and courtyard. I meet some of the staff, get to make a free landline call home, although the connection isn’t very good, and then am swept off again for a tour of this lovely city. Like GTO it’s all cobble stone streets and multi-colored houses but much flatter. Tony’s not much of a talker but prefers to speak English as he spent years in Florida so I indulge his need and take in the lovely wooden doors, iron lampposts and flower pot holders. There is preparation for yet another celebration in the jardin where I run into a woman I had met last year at the boarding house I stayed in GTO. A nurse, she’s back indulging her wanderlust and working on her Spanish again. We share dinner, another salad lover, and ponderings over life and then wander the night, which seems to change the air from whippety to soft. Fireworks pop here and there and it’s lovely to just sit in the night air again and watch people, something we don’t get much in LA. We take in a late glass of wine and join some other students beginning their rotations and it feels like college again. Finally I head back, flummoxed again by either the phone system, or my calling cards which puts me through to someone in Germany it sounds like rather than home. I realize how used to instant communications one can get, as soon as they don’t work.

Back at the Casa Aurellana I am confounded in the dark as people always turn off lights here and finally make it to my single bed. Sleep comes hard again as bells ring, traffic barrels under my window and the still air cloisters my body. I stuff tissue paper in my ears (vowing to remember not to flush it when using the toilet, another convenience taken for granted) and pop another Simply Sleep in the hopes of some relief.

6.8.07

5:30 am and, again, I toss and turn, finally give up on this endeavor and write instead. I’ll meet with the PACEMED people in the morning and hope for an afternoon nap which seems to come easier these days. Dogs are now barking, joining the roosters and odd truck here and there and I flash back to Madrid, a similar room with French doors, and Paris, places where I felt the earth under my feet as I looked for something. I think of my sister who seems never settled for long on any continent and wonder how different, yet alike, we are in some ways. I have stayed put for 15 years in one place and built a family and home. She has wandered the continents. Yet we share this common past of having doors opened to the world every year. I am lucky to have the best of both worlds and hope she is finding her place here as well.

Guanajuato Redux

6.5.07 TakingOff

At LAX the smell of jet fuel takes me places even before I arrive at check-in. I love that aroma, the promise of something new and different. A family dressed in black reunites at my gate, a tall man carrying a glossy small mahogany box with a color photo embedded on top. I imagine the deceased’s ashes inside, being returned to the ancestral dirt, the importance of one’s roots.

A few minutes into taxi-ing on the runway, in the dark, I am awoken by the screams of an agitated man. They escalate as he wails in Spanish about “los ninos” Bush, the war, he is Jesus and some other man is about to blow up the plane. This other man, approaches the distressed guy who gets out of his seat and still yelling, starts banging on the overhead bins. The flight attendants approach and along with others, try to calm him. One brings a glass of water and this other man in a camel overcoat stands in front of the psycho, keeping his attention. We all listen to his rantings as the attendants scurry about, the plane turns around and oddly we all remain calm at midnight. He takes off his shirt and keeps up his tirade, directing it at this quiet young man who just maintains eye contact. At one point the wacko threatens to punch him and a female attendant tells him to calm down and punch her instead, knowing it seems, that he will not hit a woman. He is encircled by a few passengers who all just watch as if to contain his rage in a fixed area. And the silent man’s steadfast-ness seems to ground the man. Finally the firemen arrive and try to talk him down with no success. He climbs onto the arm of a chair and starts pumping his hips at a woman and begins to undo his belt, his torso already bare. The 3 Firemen wrestle him to a seat and the police arrive as he continues to vacillate between babbling in the voice of a child and yelling at the injustices of America and how the money continues to burn him.

We finally have to dis-embark for a security check of the plane and I approach the silent man in the camel coat, a Mexican, asking if he works in mental health. No, but with street kids. He knew the man needed to have calm around him to not fuel his agitation and I agreed that had it been an American flight, the attendants would have reacted more physically. It felt more like a family “intervention” than a confrontation and we laughed at the difference in cultures. I thank him for his help and wonder how the event would have turned out had it been a linebacker on his way down to Cabo who decided to intervene.

So, with 3 hours to spare in Mexico City aeroport, I enjoy my typical breakfast of fruit and cottage cheese, awaiting a connection having missed my first one. I love these places of transit, of floating between realities.

Alejandra, a chatty lovely young thing meets me at the Leon airport with a kiss and a smile and David, med student from North Carolina with a handshake. We stop off to have posole for lunch and then I am deposited at the lovely Casa Marfil. 3 levels with a lovely garden in between and Mamacit the dog. Birds of various ilk and a rooster portend little sleep but the solid stone floors promise cool air in the hacienda. Alejandra tells of her first American husband who put her on a bicycle and told her not to come back until she had found a job. She has since married a Mexican.

I take a walk down the street after making some coffee in the kitchen that smells of guavas. The blue sky I remember so well hovers lightly on my shoulder and the quiet follows me down the roadway. The sweat feels good as I march along and watch the students leave school. I return to Casa Marfil and play the flute a bit in the acoustically friendly salon but am interrupted by what sounds like a 78 record player next door playing Scott Joplin rags. We tangle for air space and then I sit down to prepare for my meeting at 6.l