Standing out, messing up, talking differently, crashing into tree branches

I’ve mentioned before that I strive to blend in here and convince people that I’m Mexican. I’ve also mentioned that everyone laughs when I say this: why would anyone expect a pale, blue-eyed girl speaking accented Spanish to be Mexican? I think what I’ve hoped is that my accent would, one day, be so subtle that I could fool people. Being impatient, I wanted this to be true already. It’s not.

I’m starting to realize, if not completely accept, that I am at all moments a foreigner and my accent will not go away. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few days after a strange series of events that all confirmed that my efforts to blend in, have not been very successful.

Last week in class, a professor corrected a mistake I made when speaking–the first time I’ve been corrected, though it was probably the millionth mistake on my part. The error dealt with vocabulary usage. I wanted to say that something was “shocking,” so I used what I thought to be the equivalent word in Spanish, chocante. The professor informed me that chocante does mean “shocking” in Spain, but here in Mexico it means “grating, irritating.” Deep down, I want to be corrected–making mistakes without even realizing it would not help me improve my skills. But not-so-deep-down, I just don’t want to make mistakes at all, and being publicly corrected embarrassed me. As the professor explained the nuances of chocante, I tried to figure out what to do with my face–smile? nod attentively? appear remorseful? I opted to smile. I could feel everyone looking at me and imagined them all wondering whether I was embarrassed.

Then this past weekend when we were at the beach, I was waiting for Paco outside a public shower. I was still in my beach attire. Two people nearby were talking, and when I accidentally bumped my head on a tree branch, the man nearby said, “¡Aguas!” which means “watch out.” Immediately after, he said in English, “careful!” And my reaction, instant and uncontrolled, was to say in Spanish, “Hey, I speak Spanish. Don’t talk to me in English!” I felt really angry, and I wasn’t sure why.

Finally, yesterday I was in my yoga class, and my teacher asked us all to introduce ourselves to the other students. As I spoke, one of the other students said to the teacher, “I love the way she talks.” I laughed (didn’t know what else to do) and finished my introduction.

Anyway, these three events have got me doing a lot of thinking. The shame I felt at being corrected in class comes from being in denial. I am going to make mistakes, and the people who take the trouble to correct me are doing me a favor. I certainly won’t ever forget how to use chocante! If I don’t expect that I’m going to speak perfectly, since I won’t, then I don’t think being corrected will feel like such an affront, since I already know, rationally, that it is meant to help me.

My unexplained outburst at the public shower–I think there were two things going on. The first is that it confirmed my failure to blend in, since the man assumed (correctly!) that I was American. I don’t like people judging me based on my appearance (who does?), but this poor fellow was not making an outrageous assumption: there are a lot of Americans at the beach. There was absolutely no reason for me to take offense.  I am the one American at the beach who isn’t happy to find an English-speaking Mexican when on vacation.

The second dynamic in this situation is one that I haven’t really talked about here on the blog, but let’s just say that the California-style friendliness I was raised to use with strangers, is interpreted differently outside of California. Here, at least with men, is sometimes mistaken for flirtation or interest. So after some misunderstandings in the past, I’ve tended to be extremely guarded, what seems cold to me, with men I don’t know when I’m alone. Even when it is completely harmless (like warning me about the tree branch I had just crashed into), I tend to feel threatened and become defensive. So I think that might have something to do with lashing out–feeling uncomfortable. Beyond just learning the verbal language of another country, there is a whole other language of gestures, expectations, looks and understandings that are also not native to me, and they won’t ever be, though I will get more adept at understanding them as time goes on. It’s been less than a year since I moved here, after all.

And when my yoga-mate said she loved the way I talk, it suddenly hit me: my accent and peculiar way of expressing myself are not necessarily linguistic defects. They just make me “that girl with an accent.” I don’t know why I never compared my situation before to the international students I went to college with, whose accents and funny ways of saying things endeared them to the rest of us. The fact that I am not Mexican, don’t talk like a Mexican and don’t appear to be Mexican are just quirks that identify me in this society, but my background is not a problem in and of itself.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to latch on to calling myself “just another gringa in Mexico!” or walk around with an American flag on my teeshirt. But I’m going to try to cultivate the new social role for myself as the “intriguing foreigner” instead of pretending to be Mexican. If my accent entertains people, that’s great. Since I started learning Spanish at the age of 18, it’s unlikely I could ever lose my accent anyway.

It’s hard to be the different one. I neatly avoided being  so obviously and radically different for most of life. But once you’ve been “the only ____ in the room,” when circumstances change, you can be a much more sensitive member of the majority. And learning to love being different, well, that is a new goal for this Existential Migrant.

And now, a Legal Migrant, too!

I’ve written a number of times about my long  quest for an FM-3, the Mexican visa given to foreigners who work, study, or live in Mexico. After going through almost the entire process in November and December, I had to withdraw my application in order to return home for the holidays. When I came back to Jalisco in January, I started over, wiser than last time and more circumspect. Although it didn’t go perfectly this time, I knew how to correct my errors much faster.

Last week, as I fumbled with some official-looking documents waiting for class to start, one of my classmates said to me, “so, are you Mexican yet?” Though an FM-3 doesn’t exactly make you Mexican–it’s a nonimmigrant visa–as of 9:45 this morning, I am now “Mexican”–today, I got my FM-3!

Oh, the joy I felt as I nuzzled my thumb into an ink pad to place my prints on so many papers. I didn’t even care that ID picture used in my visa is more mugshot than anything else. Who cares if I have to renew it in 12 months! It’s mine, and I got it without a lawyer. Also, now that I’m no longer a tourist, I can get my money back from the canceled application from December.

Just a quick update on my legal status–my busy, busy world beckons!

The Existential Student

Well, now that I’m officially a grad student, I feel saddled with some universal, but weighty problems that probably afflict most people foolish enough to enter 17th grade and beyond:

“I have so much reading.”

“What will I write my thesis about?”

“What do you mean, we have to read all this by tomorrow?”

“I have so much reading.”

“Why am I doing this?”

“I am a waste of space engaging in self-indulgent, superfluous mind games.”

Except that we’ve learned in the past week that space, like time, is a dimension, not a void to be occupied. To be more academically correct, I should say that I’m wasting the place I occupy, or I’m not making good use of my spaciality.

The fourteen students in Boot Camp have been reduced to ten, four men and six women. I’m the youngest, the only foreigner, and the only student who didn’t attend college in Guadalajara. I’m also woefully unsure of what I’m going to write my master’s thesis on. My main challenges so far have been sitting still for many hours during our long and numerous classes, and not getting offended by professors’ oblique comments that, at least to me, seem to betray an utter skepticism of my Spanish linguistic skills. During an admittedly theoretical, abstract conversation in class, one professor turned to me and said, “You’ve got a look on your face, Rachel. Are you able to follow the discussion?”

Internally, I writhed. Externally, I smiled and said that I was doing fine, which was true–comprehension is not my biggest problem. Being able to eloquently express my own ideas is significantly more challenging. But I was perplexed, and my pride slighted, by the implication that I wasn’t understanding what was going on. I’m hoping that the professor is only overly solicitous and not actually disdainful of me.

We have six classes, and a total of 19.5 hours of classroom time each week, plus a required guest speaker presentation to attend twice a month. The hours are like high school, the reading load is, well, like grad school. The classes are: Theory of History, Theory of the Region, Literature of Jalisco, Art in Society, Regional Geography, and Sources and Methods.

Though this sounds pretty unappealing, the mood so far has been generally jovial, most of the professors approachable if rather sure of themselves, and my classmates are helpful and friendly.

Although I’d like to reflect and analyze more, I actually do have reading to do. Although, I’m starting to see that I will perpetually “have reading to do” for…the next 2+ years, at least. It’s not a bad state to be in, but it does cut blog entries short.

Back in Jalisco, and going back to school!

The Existential Migrant is back from vacation! I returned to Guadalajara last week after a shockingly easy trip: a direct flight from Oakland, California gets me to Guadalajara in 3.5 hours. I couldn’t believe I could be riding through suburban Bay Area streets and passing by dusty, industrial neighborhoods in Guadalajara, all in the same day, and that none of the contrast surprised me. It seems that the transition between the United States and Mexico is getting easier–or more normal. I know that whatever language I’m switching into will feel funny at first, but that it will get better. I know how it feels to drive my dad’s sedan and shop at Trader Joe’s, and I know how it feels to get on the Guadalajara city bus and zone out on a hard plastic seat. Both modes of transportation seem standard to me.

But leaving Paco to go to California, and leaving my family to go to Guadalajara, both feel a little wrong. When I go “home,” I’m also leaving “home.” Feeling comfortable and loved in two places is a blessing, but it also divides me. I feel more or less at ease when I’m in one place or the other, but the movement between them always hurts. Especially difficult is accepting reduced communication: when Paco is at his parents’ house, I can’t call him or email him. He has to go into town to use an internet café to write to me. And of course, I couldn’t really check in with the cat while he stayed at the kennel.

While I was in California, I adamantly refused to eat anything Mexican: particularly, no tortillas and no black beans. On my first night back, my parents took me to eat Indian food–I reached nirvana with the taste of pakora in my mouth. I ate everything that was hard to find in Mexico–goat cheese, blueberry muffins, hummus–and cooked for hours in my parents’ well-equipped kitchen.

I relished brushing my teeth with tap water. I pondered the sound of my voice in English–was it different? The family’s artificial Christmas tree, covered in funny ornaments we’ve had forever, made me smile every morning when I rose, at least an hour before everyone else (still on Central Time). I read the San José Mercury News for nostalgia’s sake, since it’s a dying local paper. I watched two entire seasons of Mad Men. After a week or two, speaking Spanish seemed so foreign, so remote, and I wondered if I’d forgot it entirely.

I thought a lot about Paco, and what it would be like if he were with me in California. He would have so much to learn–dozens of Christmas carols, infinite cultural references, and of course, the English language. Worse, with my family’s tendency toward word humor and the disproportionate number of English teachers in our gene pool, we all speak a rather unusual form of English: changing accents at whim, interjecting archaic vocabulary that came up in a Scrabble match, with many inside word jokes. All this, uttered at the fastest possible comprehensible speed. I imagine any English language learner feeling pretty overwhelmed.

And in fact, I have an idea about how it feels to be thrown to the linguistic wolves in your adopted tongue. I remember the first time I visited Paco’s family in the summer of 2007. I could not understand a single word his father said. Feeling like the kid missing all the dirty jokes, I carefully listened to everyone’s funny stories only to find the punchline a slur of meaningless syllables. But it did get better with time. Lots of jokes still go over my head, but I laugh extra loud when I do get them. I can understand Paco’s father much better. Also helpful was becoming more familiar with the cultural context: it’s easier to fill in the gaps from what I didn’t understand when I can make an educated guess based on the norms of everyday life.

Truth to be told, I do still feel a little rusty in Spanish, but I know that I’ll be back in the swing of things soon. I found out this afternoon that I’ll be starting classes next Monday for my master’s program: I made it past boot camp! So there will be more tales of classroom woes, and the student visa saga will continue, but I’m so happy to be a bona-fide student again.

I hope everyone enjoyed the end of 2009, and I extend a Feliz Año (Happy New Year) to all my readers!

Us versus the Instituto Nacional de Migración, or How do you say “Bah Humbug” in Spanish?

I am in California now. I left Guadalajara early yesterday morning, almost exactly six months after I arrived. I’ll be heading back in a few weeks, but I think I’m still qualified to blog in the meantime. Part of being a migrant is the occasional trip to the home country, seeing what feels the same and what feels different.

I almost didn’t get to return to the United States. Since my last blog, my visa adventures went from frustrating to heartbreaking. On Monday, I went to the office again, this time with Paco, to turn in the last set of paperwork and payments for the student visa, and with my application for permission to leave the country while everything was being processed. Paco and I waited to speak with a licenciado (person with a college degree) so that I could make sure all my complications would be resolved. We watched as an older American man, cursing in English about the bureaucracy, waited with his lawyer. The lawyer apparently knew one of the licenciados, and he made this clear by a sort of “don’t you know who I am?” routine. The trick worked: they were seen immediately. I seethed and shot these rank pullers dirty looks. I really wanted to say a little too loudly, “I guess I should hire a lawyer if I don’t want to wait!”

When it came to be my turn (an hour later), Paco and I went into the office and sat down at the licenciado’s desk. As I explained my situation, the licenciado informed me, “you can’t leave the country.” My voice started to waver as I inarticulately tried to ask another question. Then the licenciado eventually added, “you can only leave if you withdraw the entire visa application process.” So either I was not going to be able to go to the States and see my family, or I was going to lose all of the money, trips, frustration and time I’d dedicated to getting the student visa. Faced with this decision, I started to cry–not just a little. As I was sobbing and blubbering, Paco tried to jump in and rescue me. The licenciado was clearly unmoved. Another woman in the office offered her advice.

“The problem is that you foreigners think you can just come in here and apply for a visa without knowing anything. Then you think you can leave the country whenever you want without asking us. You have to inform yourself. I empathize with your situation,” she told me sternly. I didn’t believe her professed empathy.

Through my tears, I responded, “look, I’m not making these mistakes because of cultural arrogance. It’s because of ignorance. There’s no information on the website, and nobody told me about these restrictions when I started the process.”

“The law says that ignorance does not excuse you from punishment when you break the law,” she said, and I kept crying. Later, I wished that I had said, “Ok, but if you actually want people to follow your laws, you might want to tell us what they are.” I’m sure this wouldn’t have helped at all, so I guess it’s better than I was unable to form a coherent and snarky rejoinder.

“Some people hire lawyers to help them,” she began. I interrupted, “If I were rich, I’d hire a lawyer too!”, and Paco sent me a telepathic message to shut up before we got kicked out of the office.

I didn’t know what to do, but unable to face not seeing my family, and realizing that changing my flight would be more expensive that paying the fees again (though not by much), I agreed to cancel the process. This meant more paperwork to fill out, and there were more obstacles in the way to authorize my departure. When another unfriendly bureaucrat started telling us that it would be impossible to give me the document I needed to leave the country, I started crying again, this time in front of everyone in the waiting room. It was horribly embarrassing, and I would have been sunk if I hadn’t had Paco there as my advocate. He talked when I could only whimper, and he told everyone “thank you” when I was too angry to express gratitude.

It would have saved me time, money, and emotional well-being if I had never set foot in the office at all. I could have stayed on my tourist visa and started the process in January if I were accepted into the master’s program. I thought a lot about what the woman had said to me: was it arrogance that made me think I could do this without asking? She said that I should have consulted with one of the licenciados before even beginning the process. But I realized that when I first visited, I didn’t even know that there were such people or that you could ask for help. There are no pamphlets, no guidelines, and every person tells you something different, and often the next person you talk informs you that the previous one was wrong, but now it’s your problem.

It wasn’t a total failure, because I did leave the country. When I return, I’ll be issued the same tourist visa after filling a form out on the plane, and then I’ll try again for the student visa. I dread dragging myself back to that office, especially since I made such a scene. I cry easily, but not often in public. Now I’ll have to face all the bureaucrats again, watch the people with lawyers get the VIP treatment, and make the same photocopies and the same payments all over again.

Paco and I were talking about the difference between Mexican and U.S. bureaucracy. I likened it to the difference between torture and a quick death. When Paco applied for a visa, it was a brief, horrific and unfair “no, and don’t ask again.” It was expensive, and it was over in two hours. On the other hand, I made so many visits, talked to so many people, dealt with errors, organized papers, and jumped through multiple hoops only to also get a “no,” but unlike Paco, I can try again (Paco won’t be issued a visa until he has a “strong tie” to Mexico, which we think means “earns a big salary in Mexico”). I think both systems are stacked against people without a lot of money and without legal help.

When I think about couples that are from the same town, or even the same country, I feel like everything must be so easy for them: they have the same native language! They don’t need to visas or passports to meet each others’ families! The sting of these barriers flares up when we go against bureaucracy without success. Back in California, I sit in my childhood home, and I feel Paco’s absence acutely. He’s not here only because of an unfair system that doesn’t see us or our situation. Even though our families have given us our blessing to love someone from a different country, our governments have not.

I know that there were officials who did care and showed concern when they saw me crying: not everyone sees me as just another cow among endless cattle to be processed (turned into hamburgers?). I also know that Paco will someday be eligible for other, non-tourist visas that will likely be more successful. Getting what you need out of a bureaucracy requires persistence and patience (and money), and giving up is the only way to really fail.

I talked about California. “I really do want to see that bridge,” he said. “What bridge?” “You know, that famous one.” “El puente portón dorado?” I offered, “the Golden Gate Bridge?” “But the bridge isn’t golden, it’s red,” he protested. I’d never really thought about that. “I guess it’s kind of an orange-red,” I suggested. “You can call yellow things golden, but not red,” Paco told me. As a little girl, I’d thought the same thing about goldfish. “I’d like a picture of us on that bridge,” he said.

I know we’ll take that picture one day, but I wish it were sooner.

Conquistadores, Coffee and Student Visas

I find it comforting, strangely, to be bogged down with papers and reading in December–it feels normal to me. The cycle of newness, stress, projects, sudden ends–the semester way of life. Of course, it all happened so quickly in this pre-Master’s boot camp.

It’s not over yet, but I’m in the final stretch. I’ve been learning about things I wouldn’t seek out on my own, but the information will help me be a better researcher, I hope. The theory and philosophy behind “social science” isn’t riveting, but it also is something I’d never really pondered until now. I wrote an essay last week about a Spanish conquistador who wreaked havoc on Western Mexico in the 1530s, based on a colonial-era account of his adventures. Although it was hard to understand (imagine reading 16th century English…in Spanish!), it reminded me of why I love history so much: the detective aspect, and the idiosyncrasies that make you feel connected to people who died centuries ago. In the colonial text I mentioned–a letter to the King of Spain–the final sentence read, “Everything I say here is true, and to prove so, I sign my name here.” And the below, the editor comments “[There is no signature].” So we actually don’t know who wrote the letter! How mysterious, strange and wonderful! Of course, besides the geeky pleasure of history, there’s also the uncovering of horrors. The conquistador in question tended to torture and kill, both indigenous people and his fellow Spaniards.

I still have three more essays to write: a book review, to be crafted in perfect, succinct prose to prove that I listened in Advanced Writing; an interpretation of a document–I picked a speech given by an indigenous student at a ceremony a few years ago; and a comparison of various theories and approaches to social science (I plan to write this one hyped up on coffee, pretending that I care).

Besides academic endeavors and sitting around not accomplishing things, I’ve been in the process of getting a student visa. So far, I’ve been to the National Institute of Migration (the government office where these things happen) a total of four times. The first time, I got the information about what paperwork I needed to file–it wasn’t online. The second time, I turned in the paperwork. The third time, I returned to pick up the visa, but I was given a letter saying that the bank statements I’d provided weren’t in my name. Except they were. So I waited for two hours to speak with an official, who agreed with me that the statements were indeed in my name, and told me to come back the following day, Friday, to pick up my visa. I went on Monday instead to give them a little more time, but I was informed that the document still wasn’t ready. Since it’s about a 45 minute bus ride to reach the office, I was pretty unhappy about this, especially since the delay was in no way caused by an error of mine. I hope that the fifth visit will finally yield a visa. It seems particularly unfair that Paco and I, as a couple, have to wrangle with two different countries and their bureaucracies! But as Paco reminds me, they ARE going to give me the visa. That’s the difference.

The Migration office is an interesting place, though. I don’t see foreigners very often in my day-to-day wanderings, but there are plenty to be found at the Migration office. I saw a group of blond Mormons (telltale short sleeve dress shirts), and American businessmen. A young, pregnant woman, apparently East Asian, listened to her Mexican lawyer ramble. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I noticed his gold chain, white socks, brown loafers, pale blue jeans, and his mouth, chewing gum as if the pace of his jaw could expedite the bureaucracy.

One benefit of making the trek to downtown Guadalajara is the Café Estancia. It has Wifi and a place to plug in my laptop, so I can write in my favorite work environment: caffeine fueled, consuming something with sugar, not tempted by the distractions of home, the cat, or other people. It’s not quite the same as my favorite American coffee shops–no weird music or muffins (instead, they serve “brawnies”–brownies!).  There’s a poster on the wall that says “Una mujer es como una buena taza de café: la primera vez que se toma, no deja dormir.”  I think I preferred the bizarre local art that adorned my usual haunts in the States. Still, it helps me revive the glory days of college, the mornings and afternoons spent in coffee shops writing my senior essay.

Unfortunately for me, I can’t continue this blog post, since I actually have to write those essays I mentioned. Luckily for you, your reading ends here!

Acción de Gracias

This is my second Thanksgiving in Mexico. Last year, desperately missing Paco, I trekked to the Newark Airport in the wee, small hours of the morning, and while the whole wide world was fast asleep, I sat awake and thought about how excited I was. It was one of those trips you only make when you’re in love–rationally excessive, emotionally vital.

Last year, I made a small-scale Thanksgiving dinner for Paco, his brother and his sister-in-law. I roasted a chicken instead of a turkey. Actually, we prepared the chicken, stuffed rosemary between the skin and the meat (the smell made me think of the rosemary bushes back home in California), and took the chicken to the neighbor’s house, where there was an oven. A bag of dried cranberries turned into cranberry sauce through the magic of reconstitution and warm water. I attempted mashed potatoes for the first time, with somewhat gluey results. I sauteed green beans. We drank cheap wine, and there was no pumpkin pie–it’s hard to make without pumpkins (or their canned incarnations) around. Paco was wearing the new scarf my mom had knit for him, and his sister-in-law snapped pictures of me trying to carve a chicken. It was a quiet meal, the food palatable, but not great, and cranberries were the star of the evening (they aren’t well-known or widely available in Mexico).

It wasn’t right. For my Mexican family, it was an interesting glimpse into American traditions, executed in the haphazard form you’d expect from a cook in her early 20s, lacking in the ways you’d expect without the standard cornucopia of T-day ingredients. But they don’t know what it means, or how it feels, because it isn’t their holiday. In the United States, Thanksgiving is a national consensus: we all stop everything for it. It’s about panic in the kitchen, actually using the sugar bowl that ordinarily collects dust in the cupboard, and the annual re-remembering that I don’t really like roasted turkey.

This year, there won’t even be a surrogate chicken to stand in for the other fowl I don’t even like. I have class this afternoon because it’s a regular Thursday here. But it feels like Thanksgiving to me, because I’ve foolishly read all the newspaper articles online about the horrible relative holiday horror stories, the recipe collections, the sales of heritage turkeys, the travel crunch. It’s all irrelevant.

In my mind, I wake up to the winter California sunshine I love so much, and I walk across the cold floors and say “Happy Thanksgiving” to my parents like it means “good morning,” just because it’s funny when we’re semiconscious and the feast is still hours away. I would make a pumpkin pie with the great recipe I found a few years ago, and I would wonder which color sweater to pick to best evoke the fall. There would be so many stories to tell, the best ones always being Dad’s, which he sneakily saves up for gatherings with the largest and most eager audiences. We would try to remember who is vegetarian, who is lactose intolerant, who doesn’t like chocolate, who wants decaf. Failing, we explain that the vegan is now vegetarian, the dairyphobe brought her Lactaid pills, and everyone eats what they can, which is more than enough.

I knew this would happen when I chose to leave the United States–that certain universal understandings, like to set aside this unremarkable Thursday too close to Christmas as a national pause and feast, would not be universal in another country. No holiday is universal. But that doesn’t make it hurt less, that taste of pumpkin pie is a distant memory and my family and friends are walking those cold floors in that winter sunshine, ready to take their places at the table when late afternoon comes.

Thanksgiving, so hard to say in Spanish, translates to “Acción de gracias,” the action of thanks. Even without the food and the company, I am grateful. I am thankful to know that there will be room at the table when I come back for Thanksgiving, because there is always room, even if we sit so close together we could share napkins across our laps.

“Here come the new chickens”

As I walked into the small research institute where I’m beginning M.A. Boot Camp, someone called out to a professor entering ahead of me, “the new chickens are already here.” She was referring to the new students who, like me, had made it past the preliminary selection rounds and now had to make it through the pre-Master’s course to gain full admission. Fowl-like, we entered a classroom, avoided eye contact, and waited for something to happen. Then our first teacher walked into the door. The subject? English.

I was feeling extraordinarily nervous of how I would explain that I was actually a native English speaker and might not need English classes. I hadn’t said anything yet, so no one knew that I wasn’t Mexican. The teacher asked us to say what our undergrad degrees were in and what our level of English was. The teacher called out my middle name, and I said, “no, it’s Rachel.” “Oh,” she answered, “it says Ranchel here on the paper.” I said that I had a degree in Latin American Studies and I was from California, and my native language was English. “Oh,” said the teacher, “well, I’ll find out if you actually have to take this course.” But first, I had to take a section of the TOEFL, just to prove that I really didn’t need a brush up in English reading comprehension.

I finished the test a good half an hour before my classmates. It was pretty easy, but not that much easier than reading comprehension on the SAT or GRE. Later, the teacher told me that she had indeed gotten permission to excuse me from the class, and that she’d graded my exam. “Well, you did miss two,” she explained, “but I’ll write you a letter saying that you have English proficiency.” I nodded. This means that I am spared from 6 hours of class each week during boot camp, which is definitely a good thing.

But it was such an emotionally confusing series of events. I felt embarrassed to be a native speaker, and then I felt indignant that I had to take a test of English as a Foreign Language administered by someone who isn’t a native speaker herself. I certainly didn’t put up any fuss, but it seemed silly, and since the rest of the classes will be conducted in Spanish–not my native language–and I’ll always be at a disadvantage, it would be nice if people trusted that there was a language I actually do speak fluently and without a foreign accent. But it’s also not necessary to take it personally: I think that it’s more that there isn’t a bureaucratic protocol for dealing with foreign students, so the professors don’t really know what to do with me and my different background. Even knowing that, I still didn’t like feeling singled out and different on the first day of school.

After English class, we had a 3 hour long class on research methods. We spent about two hours talking about everyone’s projects, and then an hour talking about how to cite sources. I can’t sit in class for more than two hours without becoming absolutely desperate to escape, and I was starving, so the discussion on where to put hyphens, what to underline, how to list multiple authors, and other fascinating intricacies of the Bibliography, was pretty much lost on me. Fervently hoping that no one would ask me any questions or otherwise detain me as I left the classroom, I raced to the store, bought a pack of cookies, and introduced Almighty Sugar into my bloodstream as I rode the bus back home.

Before classes started, I had expressed my doubts about the program to Paco. In September, I went to another program’s boot camp for three days, and I hated it so much that I never went back. He said, “you expect things here to be the same as what you’re used to, but they aren’t going to be. If you want to learn about education in Mexico, doing a Master’s program here is a good way to learn.” I think this makes a great deal of sense. But if I miss the way things worked in college, is that because I can’t adjust to a different country’s way of doing things? Is it a sign of ra-ra pro-Americanism? If I can’t sit through five straight hours of class, is it because I’m too impatient, or because two hour lectures were the longest classes given in college?

Seeing my limitations laid bare, struggling to coax initiative or motivation out of myself, and grappling with uncertainty about what I want to be doing–according to Paco, “this is just what happens after college.”  I always thought that I wasn’t going to be one of those lost souls with a B.A.! Never say never.

I told Paco that the most fun part of the day had been the children’s puppet show I saw in the city’s main plaza while killing time before classes started. I talked about the laughing schoolkids, the colorful puppets, the funny skits. “Maybe you should watch puppet shows instead of getting a Master’s,” he teased me. “Or maybe I should sign up for elementary school instead of grad school,” I added.

If you understand Spanish, check out this little documentary on the puppet theater group I saw:

Thinking green in Mexico

Almost no one here uses dryers–it’s so warm most of the year that drying clothes on the line is a much more affordable option. I love seeing how clothes dry. My first summer in Mexico, when I was staying in a rural community, I washed my clothes by hand, hung them out on the line, and eagerly checked them every 20 minutes to monitor their progress as solar energy did its job. It seemed so magical. Clothesline drying  also means that you have to keep tabs on the weather and plan your time well so that the clothes will have enough time in the sun to dry, forcing you to adapt to nature’s whims and be aware of the natural world around you.

I was shocked to read in the New York Times a few weeks ago that in the United States, some communities actually ban clotheslines since they are, apparently, an eyesore. I think clothes drying on the line can look beautiful, and even when they don’t, I can’t see them being particularly visually offensive. In other coverage on the topic, readers commented that you save a significant amount of electricity by line drying, and that clotheslines are standard practice around the world, from Italy to India.

Readers also noted that the absence of dryers in poor countries has much more to do with not being able to afford a dryer than consciously giving it up to be more environmentally friendly. The only dryer I’ve ever seen in Mexico belonged to the wealthy family who sold us the fancy used washer.

Using public transportation, too, is good for reducing carbon emissions, but most folks who ride the bus do so because they cannot afford a car. Paco and I fall in this category. As much as I love the bus, a car is extremely helpful when buying groceries or traveling across town, and we will probably buy a car as soon as we can afford it. Like others with limited income, we’re being environmentally friendly now out of necessity.

In Mexico, sodas are cheapest when purchased in a glass bottle, which must be returned to the vendor. Beer is also sold in recyclable bottles. If you don’t bring an empty bottle when you purchase a full one, you have to pay a deposit. In these cases, there is a financial incentive to recycle because plastic bottles or non-returnable glass bottles are more expensive. But the corporations selling these beverages have realized the advertising possibilities of environmentalism. There’s a sign in our neighborhood, provided by the soda company, that reads, “Take care of your children’s future. Buy soda in reusable bottles.” Alternatively, you could protect your children’s future by not buying soda for them. Health concerns aside, this advertisement assumes that caring for the earth could be a selling point. Frankly, I have seen little evidence that the environment is very high priority among middle and lower class Mexicans. There are many other, more immediate threats to stability and health that come first.

I grew up with recycling trucks collecting our bottles, cans, and newspapers every week. We collected our trash in a city-provided receptacle that was emptied every Thursday by a mechanical claw that dumped the garbage into the truck bed. But here, trucks come by several days a week, announcing their presence with a bell ringer walking down the sidewalk ahead. Most people don’t actually have trashcans, so when they hear the bell, they emerge sleepily (ok, maybe that’s just me) out onto the street with stuffed plastic grocery bags of smelly garbage. There is no recycling, and the garbage collectors won’t take yard waste unless you bribe them. The truck doesn’t have a mechanical claw. It isn’t easy to process leaves, glass, or paper in a responsible way if you don’t have money or a car.

What is cheap is often very disposable. Styrofoam is everywhere, and food vendors often serve food on melamine plates that are covered with a plastic bag–makes washing easier, I guess. Environmentalism hasn’t really become part of the cultural landscape. Even the Mexican Environmental Green Party, whose logo is a toucan, was known mostly for their calls to instate the death penalty (unclear if the toucan was in favor of this platform).

For someone like me, educated in the hyper-green 1990s Bay Area and the 2000s liberal college environments, tossing a plastic bottle into a garbage can makes me cringe, and I compulsively shut off lights. We sewed reusable lunch bags in elementary school to promote trash-free lunchs, and in college, we got nonstop emails about recycling and turning off the fridge over break. This education created a set of guilt triggers within me that compel me to engage in certain rituals of environmentalism. As I write, this guilt is asking me to go turn off the light in the living room, where no one is currently sitting.

But I wonder how much these rituals of care are merely obsessive, symbolic acts that arise more from habit and training than actual awareness of how my actions care for the earth. In the age of “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” (a mantra of the California schoolchild, along with “Drop, cover, and hold!”), I also grew up with Zip-Loc bags–pieces of plastic to be used once and thrown away. I realized during my second summer in Mexico that no one here uses them. Why? They simply are not affordable for most Mexicans, nor for me. I’d sooner spend my 30-40 pesos on a few liters of milk, or a few kilos of tortillas, than on Zip-Locs.

I also wouldn’t buy a dryer, since it’s two months’ rent. The more I delve into the habits and sensibilities of thriftiness, I see how limited income makes people get the most out of their resources–conveniently, to the benefit of the environment. Unless, of course, we’re talking about the affordable styrofoam, or the cheaper, if more toxic, cleaning product.

And the cleverness people manifest in attempting to save money does not fail to surprise me. The previous tenant of our apartment worked for the CFE, or Federal Electricity Commission. All CFE employees are exempt from paying electricity bills, so there’s no incentive at all to save energy. Making the most of this perk, the previous tenant re-rigged the boiler to use electricity, rather than gas, to heat the water. We’re in the process of repairing the 20-year-old boiler to function with gas once again.

Right now, the clothes hanging on the line have been outside for almost two days, since they are under the roof of the patio and the weaker fall sunlight isn’t doing the trick. I could see how one could get lured into buying a dryer, if the money was there. Convenience makes it hard for the wealthy to be motivated to be environmentally friendly, and money makes it hard for the poor to make expensive yet “green” product or lifestyle choices. I’m still trying to understand what factors, beyond economics and guilt, play into our environmental habits. Is Mexico greener than the U.S. because it is poorer? Or does U.S. wealth facilitate greenness? And where do I fit into that picture, raised on Trader Joe’s and Zip-Loc?

Anticipating the Hallowed Cusp of October-November

I started learning Spanish in January 2006. Like most Spanish students, along with grammar and vocabulary, we learned about various tidbits of Latin American cultures. If you’ve ever seen a foreign language textbook, you’d recognize that little box of text–the one that you skipped over while you were studying for the exam. But I always liked the little tidbits (it’s like Wikipedia on paper!). At some point during that first semester, we had to do a presentation on one snippet of culture in the Spanish-speaking world. I picked Día de los Muertos, Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Maybe this was the beginning of my interest in Mexico, now that I think about it. I should also admit that the holiday wasn’t entirely new to me: my little sister Sophi, who had so wisely started studying Spanish in elementary school, had made something called pan de muertos for her classmates. This eggy, orange-flavored bread was delicious. “Dead bread” merited further exploration.

With my extremely limited knowledge of Spanish, I struggled to write sentences to accompany my PowerPoint slides about Day of the Dead. I learned a necromancer’s set of words: skull, coffin, tomb, offering. My professor’s comments after the presentation fell along the lines of “bizarro is not a word in Spanish” and other corrections of missteps in the pursuit of fluency. But more important were the images in my mind of marigolds, jolly skeletons and morbid, sugary creations. I dreamed of spending Day of the Dead in Mexico, but the dream was a remote and vague one.

I often fantasize of being able to convert my current self into an apparition to haunt past versions of me. Sometimes, it’s to give the younger me a little comfort: “Don’t worry, 10 year old Rachel, you will crack 5 feet one day.” But I particularly enjoy the juicy possibility of shocking these past selves with the unpredictable events that came after. For example: just a few months before I began studying Spanish, I announced that I would, in fact, NEVER study Spanish since it would interfere with my years of dedication to French. In my fantasy, the current me in the form of a spirit, invisible to everyone but my former self, breezes in, and with terrible icy breath, I whisper in young Rachel’s ear, “you will fall in love in Spanish. You will move to Mexico.” Young Rachel is shocked, but fearing accusations of madness, can say nothing.

It’s overwhelming to realize my current life is so incongruous with my past visions of the future. Point being, when I made that halting, “bizarro” presentation three and a half years ago, how could I have  dreamed of spending Day of the Dead in Mexico like this: not as a visitor, but as a resident.  I knew I wanted to see the decorated altars and eat as much Dead Bread as possible, but speaking coherent Spanish seemed impossible back then, and much less likely, that I would be living with a mostly-only-Spanish-speaker.

But strange as it is to be here if I get too existential, the impending arrival of Día de los Muertos is something I’ve been looking forward to. Still, I feel that it’s almost been sneaking up on me. Since Paco and I are new in town, we aren’t really sure about how it’s celebrated here, and we don’t know many people here yet to ask. For this reason, we took advantage of the chance to consult our taxi driver friend, Gerónimo, about Day of the Dead here in Guadalajara.

“Oh, we barely celebrate it,” he lamented, “Halloween has taken over. To the point that kids go around to people’s houses asking for candy. It’s sad, because we have so many cultures here in Mexico. Why pick something from the U.S. culture?”

My heart broke in the backseat of the taxi. I think Halloween is a fine holiday, but I’ve done it many times, from my days as a bumblebee in preschool, to a UPS package in third grade, to the cringe-inducing “sexy cat” of high school (cats don’t wear short black dresses or excessive eyeliner). More recent embarrassment ensued from a college Halloween when I went to the dining hall for breakfast–dressed as an elf. Shortly thereafter I realized that once you are no longer in grade school, costumes to be worn only for parties. Last year, my Halloween was merely a preamble to Day of the Dead: I was La Catrina, a Victorian skeleton woman that’s part of the traditional Day of the Dead iconography (fabulous makeup thanks to my dear friend Eliza). I was ready to experience the real thing!

In fact, what I’ve seen so far is a fascinating intermixing of Halloween and Day of the Dead. The traditional papel picado (Mexican art of fine papercutting) that depicts scenes of skeletons now has a black and orange color scheme. Stores are filled with plastic pumpkins and other Halloween decorations, which I then see displayed side-by-side with cutouts of skeleton mariachi bands. The nursery has stocked up on marigolds, the traditional flower for Día de los Muertos, and my beloved Pan de muertos is on sale, and so are ghoulish costumes and bras with bat-print fabric.

The two holidays have much in common–skeletons, sugar, autumn–that facilitate the syncretism of U.S. and Mexican traditions. But they are different in tone. Halloween, for all the ghosts and ghouls and plastic tombstones, is about as much about death as a birthday is about birth: the gritty content of the symbolized life event is so stylized that it’s hardly emotionally powerful. That is, a kid in a white sheet has nothing to do with the eerie breeze you felt in the cemetery when you visited the grave of someone you loved. Halloween is a farce, an exaggeration, and there’s comfort in that.

Gerónimo, the taxi driver, said to us, “We Mexicans laugh at death.” Paco added, “it’s just another part of life.”  The spirit of humor and lightheartedness accompanies Day of the Dead: the skeletons are whimsical, not menacing or covered in cartoony rotten flesh like their American counterparts. At the same time, death is far more real and relevant in the Mexican holiday, for deceased relatives are deliberately and specifically remembered, honored, and celebrated. It’s a party, and it’s about death in the most concrete terms.

In the United States, it’s impossible to have a party about death that isn’t Death caricatured and removed (that is, Halloween). Americans, myself include, don’t laugh at death. We fear it, we obsess over it, we do everything we can to prevent it as if we had more than the smallest measure of control over the inevitable end of life. I think this is, in a way, very natural, given our instinct to survive. I also wouldn’t want to give people the idea that Mexicans shrug or giggle when a loved one dies. But perhaps traditions like Day of the Dead make it easier to experience grief without fear. Knowing that when you are gone, your family will put your picture on display and make offerings of your favorite foods, while drinking and spending time together, makes death seem more natural and less remote. Or, knowing that you will be remembered helps you accept your mortality without bitterness.

If I boil this down to two distinct messages, I’d put it like this: Halloween says, “Death is scary,” and it makes this palatable by the corollary “but it isn’t real.” Day of the Dead’s insistence in celebrating life and death, both real and both ripe for humor. I am very curious to see how these ideas interact when the cusp of October and November arrives.