Botanical Gardens

10.07.07

A gorgeous day for walking through the botanical gardens after a taxi ride up to one of the American enclaved colonias high above the city. All the homes are new and it feels like Malibu, so much cleaner and pristine than the rest of the city. They all seem to be for sale however, and thus the street lifeless.

Gorgeous plants and cactii fill this green palate of a garden and for the first time an airplane, albeit 4 passanger, breaks this silent sky. On the walk down the heal, I pass a group of young men standing around on a sunday morning. In the centro, yet another festival features cross bearing serious faced men and laughing, gyrating dancers in fur loin clothes and skeleton make up. I love the contrast of christianity and indigenous beliefs. The streets are lined with Mexicans and then us oddball gringos with our cameras and questioning faces.

As my stay draws to a close I feel torn between the beauty of this town and the rift between this ex-pat community which drives so much of the commerce and the life of the local people. The pace of life, the sense of community is lovely but until I integrate with the locals I wonder how comfortable I could truly feel. Being in the street daily, walking through town to pick up food or whatever, mingling feels like growing up in Greenwich Village and having people to hang with has made the stay easy and home like. Tomorrow I will pitch my ideas to CASA in the hopes that they will ask me back to help train their counselors in this new skill Motivating Change. And then I reverse migrate back to the land of big.