About my neighbors

When I return from class, the bus stops on the wrong side of the street. At the stop closest to our apartment, pedestrians cross the street at their own risk, since there is no “walk” sign or predictably safe moment to cross. Not only out of laziness, but also owing to a heightened distaste for “efficiency,” I chose to cross this way rather than waste time and steps by taking the other, longer path across the pedestrian bridge.

There are many pedestrian bridges here: there are more pedestrians, fewer highways, more dangerous, vast boulevards. What I don’t like about them is, again, the inefficiency, the looping back and forth, up and down, just to cross a street! But I am, deep down, risk-averse. So I’ve started to take the high, long road (also because my parents’ disapproval rings in my head, even though they are a thousand miles away and I am purportedly grown up).

All this was just so that I could tell you about the view from the pedestrian bridge: oh, the view! The cars, the polluted sunset, the high rises in the distance, all mediated by the chain-link barrier between me and falling. Sometimes I forget to look out, but I feel masterful when I remember, as though in the six months we’ve lived here this place has become a little bit my own.

On the other side of the bridge is a 7-Eleven, which miraculously smells just like every other convenience store I’ve ever visited: junk food potpourri, a little bit sweet, comforting, makes me want a Snickers bar. They sells donuts (donas) and everything every other little store sells, but at a higher price.

Our neighborhood boasts at least three schools, and we live directly in front of a junior high school. In Mexico, most schools have two shifts: turno matutino y turno vespertino (morning and afternoon shifts). The first group attends class from 7 am to 1 pm, the second group from 1 pm to 7 pm. So at regular intervals, the sidewalks swarm with teenagers, and also with little kids from the nearby kindergarten. Some of our enterprising neighbors set up stands in their front yards at these peak hours, selling candy and fried snacks called chicharrines that are doused with chile and lime.

Though these schools are public, they require students to wear uniforms. It’s been only 10 years since I finished junior high myself, but I already feel so removed from their reality in a way, scandalized at the girls’ short skirts and the boys’ shoving each other around.

The school brings along with it so many sounds: the bells, which ring all day long, and sometimes in the middle of the night if the power went out earlier in the day. At the end of the school day, they play the Mexican national anthem over the loudspeaker, and someone important gives an unintelligible discourse over the PA. At night groups of teenagers congregate in the sort of scuzzy park across the street, and they scream, cackle, and make me feel old.

In fact, we are almost constantly accosted with sensory invasions perpetrated by our neighbors: the boy next door who listens to pop hits from the year 2000 at unbelievable volume, the  other next door neighbor who smokes marijuana several times a day in his backyard, which is directly connected to our backyard, the trucks that pass by loudly selling hot tortillas, tamales,  a new canister of natural gas. Sometimes, these things bother us (loud, bad music especially). But it also seems normal to me–I did live in front of a bar last year.

The truth is, we don’t really know our neighbors, and even in the stores we frequent almost daily, the owners show no sign of knowing us. This has seemed true in all the urban settings I’ve lived in (ok, we’re talking about from 2007 onward). But the familiar faces, though anonymous, do make us feel more natural, more settled where we are.

I didn’t realize how great this tree was until I took a picture of it! (If you’d like to see more photos of the neighborhood, click on the bird to the right).

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!

Life is a lentil…

Either you take it, or you leave it.

That bit of wisdom was written in Sharpie on a metal utility cover in downtown Guadalajara. I don’t really know what it means, but I like lentils, and I like life, so I guess I thought it would be a good way to start this entry.

Besides leaving my country, family and friends behind when I moved here, I also left school: apparently, once you’ve graduated, college is actually over. This is my first autumn without a back-to-school since I was about 2 feet tall. In the absence of school or work,  I’ve taken up another profession–stay-at-home fiancée. Less well known than the stay-at-home mom, my occupation involves reading the New York Times online, drinking a lot of coffee, and considering the possibility of cleaning some part of the apartment. Canelo likes to help by walking on the keyboard, attacking anything that moves, and engaging me in protracted conversations consisting of meows.

This wasn’t what I had envisioned doing before I moved here. I expected to dive into a more concrete research project that would help me learn more about Mexico. But actually, keeping the apartment running puts me in the same position as the many women who live in my neighborhood. I’m learning a lot while getting groceries! Though I haven’t been brave enough to strike up a conversation with my neighbors so far, the little intricacies of domestic life shape my days, too. I wanted to share some of these experiences, and today, it’s all about food.

Keeping the kitchen stocked is a much more complicated endeavor than it is in the United States, mainly because the “supermarket” as we know it, doesn’t really exist here. The closest substitute would be Walmart, or one of a few chains of Mexican megastores. But these places can be very expensive, and their produce is terrifying. The best option for fruits and vegetables is the tianguis: the weekly market set up in different neighborhoods on different days of the week. I’d hesitate to call it a “farmer’s market,” which tends to be a more upscale institution in the United States. The tianguis features fresh produce, tacos, pirated CDs, cheap kitchen supplies, makeup, and garage-sale type “crud,” as my dad would say. The sellers are pretty vocal, making it a cacophony of “Delicious ice cream! Delicious ice cream!” “Tomatoes, come get your tomatoes!” “Come on over, friend!” “What can we get for you, güerita?” (güerita means “light skinned girl,” and that’s what most people call me here).

The problem with the tianguis is that it’s not always there, and it doesn’t have everything. I buy cereal, milk, and juice at the nearby pharmacy. And then of course, there’s the tiendita: the corner store, for last minute purchases. It is pretty convenient to live next door to a tiendita.

Tortillas, the most important food in the Mexican diet, are available at the tienditas, in tortillerías, or from trucks that circle around at lunch time (2-4 pm) announcing on a loudspeaker, “Hot tortillas, directly to your house, we also have dough.” For Paco, a meal isn’t a meal unless it has tortillas. I love tortillas, but sometimes they seem a little excessive: do we really need to eat them with pasta? I think often about how they are equivalent to baguettes in France, or rice in Asia: a staple. All these cultures have developed dishes to use their staple after it’s passed its prime: croutons, fried rice, and tostadas (fried tortillas). Growing up in the United States, I expect variety in my carbohydrates, from bread, to pasta, to rice, to potatoes. Of course, Mexicans eat all of these things, too, but the tortilla reigns supreme.

One of my favorite ways to use old tortillas is to make chilaquiles, a traditional breakfast dish. Old tortillas are first fried, and then cooked in a puree of tomatoes and onions. Once soft, they are served with shredded chicken or hardboiled or fried egg. With a few slices of onion and a little bit of cheese and sour cream on top, it’s a very filling and satisfying meal. Interestingly, it’s also the dish I ordered at the restaurant on the night I met Paco, and I learned to make them by watching his mother (she’s a fantastic cook).

I mentioned earlier that food at Walmart can be expensive, but I think this needs some more explanation. Overall, food in Mexico is quite inexpensive–if it’s domestically produced. That is, Mexican sodas, tortillas, snack foods, restaurant fare are all cheap by American standards. Foods produced by American companies for the Mexican market cost the same as they do in the States, but that makes them expensive by comparison. For example, a loaf of Wonder Bread costs about the same as 2 or 2.5 kilos of tortillas–you get a lot more bang for your peso if you buy local products.

As you may have read, I miss goat cheese. Goat cheese is actually available here, but for the 50 pesos I would spend on it, I could get a steak dinner and a soda at a restaurant. This comparison also makes it hard for me to justify buying a bottle of wine or a bag of chocolate chips. Of course, in the United States, these didn’t seem like unreasonable purchases, since everything is pretty expensive.

So even though I’ve chosen to give up some favorite foods in hopes of saving money, there are so many wonderful and new things here to try that I hardly feel deprived. One of my favorites is nopales: cactus leaves. At the market, vendors cut off the spikes, and they can be sautéed with other vegetables, roasted dry on a griddle, or incorporated fresh into a smoothie. Another new discovery is huitlacoche, a fungus that grows on ears of corn that is actually edible (U.S. farmers call it “corn smut”). It’s considered a delicacy here, and it tastes like a smoky mushroom. It is mindblowing to have avocados and limes so available and so cheap–I won’t even tell you how cheap.

I’m considering starting an online recipe file with some of the dishes I’ve mentioned here: let me know if that sounds interesting to you. Meanwhile, I’m going to go make a cactus smoothie.