Originally posted Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 3:13am
A few thoughts from my first two weeks back at school.
One of my best friends, Christopher Krychokins, is my RA. This year is going to be so much fun; I'm going to invent so many imaginary problems with my room for Chris to deal with. For example, the flux capacitor in the room isn't working. The wall outlet had a short and nearly killed Anthony when he tried to plug in his whosy-whatsit. The room isn't big enough or pretty enough. Oh, and I just ended a sentence four sentences ago with a preposition, which Chris might object to, but which I know better than to care about.
I flew in to Oklahoma on a Wednesday, and the next day was freshman move-in day. I didn't actually help any freshmen move in, because I'm . . . cool like that, but my hats are off to all of you who did. I wanted to, though. They had the tents outside the dorm with all of the random free stuff, and ordinarily I lack the willpower to resist free things, but this year I decided to focus only on those things I can eat. I'm tired of finding things in May that I got free in August, not having a clue what to do with them, and leaving them on the table in the social lounge. (Chris, if you find any random crap on the table in the social lounge in May, it wasn't me.) The following Sunday afternoon more free stuff was being given out. I went to help the Reformed University Fellowship people hand out fliers and freeze pops, but there were a lot of other Christian organizations out there too, which made me feel a little bit strange. Don't get me wrong, it's great that so many Christians are all out there trying to reach people and spread the word, but I just felt strange. What really got me is that before I even reached the RUF table, the Lutheran vicar tried to Lutheranize me. He gave me THREE different things to read without even being asked any questions. Hopefully I will enjoy reading them, but I can't eat them, now can I?
Now, last spring I went to a fantastic missions conference in Glorieta, New Mexico, where the speaker explained why most of the things missionaries do don't actually work. He said a lot of local people get hooked onto "Jesus plus": they accept Christianity because they can get food or jobs or shelter from the missionaries, and then when the missionaries leave, they go back to their old lives. (Which is not to say that helping people is bad, because obviously it isn't, but following Christ should be valuable for its own sake.) Anyway, long story short, about a week ago I went out chalking the sidewalk with RUF to promote their ministry, and I kind of felt like a horrible person for deciding to chalk "Jesus + root beer floats."
It's amazing following my roommate Anthony around, seeing how everyone is always calling him, texting him, and yelling out to him from the streets. Have you ever been hanging out with a friend when you run into somebody you both know, and they give your friend a hug and you a handshake? That's happened to me at least half a dozen times this year already. Not that I mind, really. It's a good thing I don't like hugs anyway. (Sniff, sniff.)
The first day of classes, I came back to my room late at night, and Anthony was already in bed. Now, because I like to talk to Anthony while he's trying to sleep, I started talking. He, in turn, felt the need to give me some kind of meaningful response, so he summoned every last reserve of energy he had, and responded thusly: "Eurgh." And then he fell asleep.
After that, I didn't see him again for a day and a half, but he must have remembered something of our conversation, because he had already told at least three people that story by then. Clearly, this extended separation is a sign that our relationship is in trouble. I've told Anthony that I'll kill him if he gets married this year and I find out on facebook.
I'm not sure if I'll like my classes yet. One of my philosophy classes is with a professor I had two years ago. I discovered that I most likely won't have to buy one of the required books because it's included in a coursepack I still have from that previous class, which is great, but I'm hoping we won't cover all of the same things again. Most of my classes shouldn't be too too difficult, but I have a pretty busy schedule with lots of activities.
It's weird working at Crossroads again and dealing with all of the freshmen who don't understand how meal plans work yet. Also, last week a customer told me that all of our employee nametags say "(First Name) Crossroads" on them because it's a family business, and you know, I really think that makes a lot of sense. President Boren did tell us at his annual Convocation speech for freshmen that Chris suckered me into attending that the university is like one big happy family.
This weekend I did a lot of socializing with my awesome friends, which was awesome. On Saturday we played the story game again, which is the super-fun game where you write part of a story, fold over everything before that part, and then pass it to the next person to continue the story. I just love how we fill half our stories with gratuitous Catholicism every time our token Catholic friend Alex Kelley plays with us. We love you, Alex. But I digress.
I had a great Labor Day hanging out with lots of friends, but the holiday kind of screwed me up. What with not having any classes and all, I somehow forgot that Crossroads is open 24/7 and forgot to go to work. I also forgot that if my newspaper story was going to run on Tuesday, I needed to turn it in on Monday. The office was closed, however, which probably means I was supposed to turn it in on Sunday. I did turn my story in eventually, and hopefully if the editors don't hate me my first story will appear by Wednesday.
Happy belated Labor Day.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The end of summer
Originally posted Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 3:33am
So I haven’t done too much at home since I’ve gotten back from Mexico. A lot of housecleaning and Olympics watching.
My sister threw my tea away, which is annoying. She must have thought nobody drank it. She also threw away our ceramic candleholders from Honduras because she thought they were old and nasty-looking, but I thought they were cool, and I don’t even know how we got them. Granted, we never used them, but that’s mostly because my dad is afraid of candles. Also partly because the dining room table was rarely ever clean, but I cleared it off two days ago, which is perhaps a bigger achievement than it sounds.
On the plus side, she found $50 in one of my old sixteenth birthday cards, which sort of makes up for it. She also found an enlarged picture of a slightly pudgy, middle-aged man bearing the following inscription:
To Brian,
Now that we’re BOTH in Concord, lets do lunch some day!
GOOD LUCK
GEORGE
We asked my dad who George was, but strangely enough, he had no idea. An hour later, it occurred to him that George was a convicted criminal who got sent to the New Hampshire State Prison twenty years ago, and one of his colleagues had given the picture to him as a joke. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving.
As far as the Olympics are concerned, I must say that I am really not a fan of Michael Phelps. With the notable exception of the smiling assassin, Muttiah Muralitharan, I tend to dislike teams and athletes that always win everything. I dislike swimming, or rather, I dislike watching other people swim. I dislike the fact that they give out swimming medals as if they were candy. Lastly, I dislike the fact that Michael Phelps’ mother gets more coverage than most Olympic athletes do.
If that makes me a heartless and spiteful person, so be it. Please don’t take this as an endorsement of black magic or anything, but if I had a cute little Michael Phelps voodoo doll, I would take a pair of pliers and fasten them onto his nuts two seconds before his next race. Let’s see him win eight gold medals under THAT kind of pressure.
But unfortunately for me, Phelps did indeed win his eighth gold medal in Beijing, making this “probably” the best week of his life. This means Michael Phelps has now singlehandedly won, in a single week, eight times as many gold medals as the nation of Togo has won in Olympic history. Phelps is also the most popular American Olympian as measured by number of facebook friends.
I watched that race tonight at a bonfire/cookout hosted by two of my best friends from high school, and we also watched Usain Bolt of Jamaica set a new world record in the hundred meters despite not really trying. I attempted at one point to ask the other guests, “If Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt met in a dark swamp and had to race each other through a field of waist-deep mud and rotting leaves, who would win?” But I stumbled over my words and actually said, “What if Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt melted?” The answer to this question is: they would coalesce into a superhuman frog-being.
At this party I also realized that you can instantly improve any story simply by including the phrase, “He, in turn, interpreted this as a challenge to his manhood.” Five points to Slytherin if you can correctly name the story I was telling.
About seven or eight years ago, my family took a vacation to Florida, and while we were there, we went to see some sort of gymnastics competition. I remember seeing a dinosaur from Uzbekistan named Oksana Chusovitina, who was very good at the vault but was around twenty-six at the time, which is already prehistoric for a female gymnast. It turns out that Chusovitina is now thirty-three, a naturalized German citizen, and competing in her fifth Olympics, a record for female gymnasts. She even has a daughter and moved to Germany to get better treatment for her leukemia. And to think, I actually got to see Chusovitina’s fossilized remains compete in person!
A new school year is almost upon us, and I have been giving some thought to the question of all the things I am looking forward to. Really, I am hoping that this year is the beginning of a new and improved Tim Graf. Sleeker. Faster. More aerodynamic and fuel-efficient. I’m not sure exactly how I will make all of this happen, but I’m thinking possibly hair extensions.
I am definitely looking forward to seeing all of my old friends again and catching up. I’ve decided that there haven’t been enough road trips in my life, so maybe if the right opportunity comes along I will get to do one or two of those.
I’m hoping to finally become a member of my church, but as far as Christian ministries go, I am probably going to take a different approach this year and devote less time to them. I want to break out of the Christian ghetto and develop interests, abilities, and relationships elsewhere. That being said, I intend to focus on one in particular and try to involve myself in their ministry as much as I can. I’d like to co-lead a Bible study, or possibly disciple somebody. I mean, if the right baby bird came along, I wouldn’t mind taking it under my wing, although I am led to believe that I may not be cut out for that sort of work. What disciples need, my friend, is emotional stability, and what I have to offer . . . isn’t that. I'm more like a beautiful trainwreck.
I’m not expecting my classes to be either particularly enthralling or particularly soporific. I am doing an honors research project in linguistics, which terrifies me because I don’t know what my topic will be.
I also need to figure out my Spanish situation, because I earned upper-division Spanish credit in Mexico this summer, but I’ve never taken a Spanish class at OU or taken the necessary steps to earn advanced standing. I’m not sure if I’m going to take more Spanish or not.
I am hoping I will be able to sing in the opera chorus for “Lakme” this semester so I can have a challenging opportunity to strengthen my voice and express myself creatively. Some people have told me I have a good voice, but I still have a lot to learn about choral singing. I will need to change my schedule around slightly to do this because the rehearsals conflict with Second Language Acquisition, but I thought I had a goofy schedule to begin with, so I won’t really mind.
I’m also hoping I can join the Oklahoma Daily in some capacity. I would love an opportunity to reenter the world of journalism, if I have the time.
Last semester I was working eleven hours a week at Crossroads; making smoothies in the mornings was kind of fun, although I did not particularly enjoy working in the kitchen for five hours every Saturday night. I assume I still work there, but honestly I have no idea what’s going to happen with that. I just found out yesterday that apparently when I was in Mexico I received a letter informing me I had mandatory orientation this Monday and Tuesday, which poses an interesting logistical challenge for me because I’m not flying into Oklahoma until Wednesday.
The thing people don’t realize is, I’m not from Oklahoma. I’m from halfway across the country. If you have some kind of activity planned before the semester starts, you need to let me know about it MONTHS in advance. If you don’t do that, I won’t be there. It’s called booking flights while they’re cheap, people!
Also, the ironic thing about this mandatory orientation is that they didn’t actually train me at all before I started working. They just threw me to the wolves, and I had to learn how to feed them as I went along.
Anyway, there are a number of other things I am excited about as well. Playing Ultimate Frisbee again on a regular basis. (I fully intend to score at least one touchdown this year with my “secret throw.”) Curling around the TV with good friends and watching OU dismantle lesser schools on the gridiron. Working out if I can find the time and some other guys to do it with. Taking in some concerts and shows and visiting the art museum. Maybe getting one of my musically talented friends to give me piano lessons.
Reading as well. OU has a lot of crazy linguistics books in the library just begging to be read, and I wouldn’t want to let them down, now would I? You can actually find an entire book about . . . I don’t know, pronouns. You can read a whole book about pronouns. Or conjunctions. Maybe a few of them will come in handy for my project. I’ve also just started a massive volume on church history by Justo Gonzalez which should be a cracking read.
I should probably say something also about community service, because I think it’s important, but I don’t really know what I’m going to do about that. Perhaps I will make it the subject of a future note.
This note is dedicated to my good friend Josh, who asked me what I was looking forward to this semester three times. OK, it may have only been two, but it’s funnier if I say three.
Oh, and I’m also looking forward to getting a ride to OU from the airport. So, if any of you love me and are going to be in Norman at 1:00 pm on Wednesday, would you like to give me a ride? Tell you what, you don’t even have to love me. You mostly just have to have a car with seats.
So I haven’t done too much at home since I’ve gotten back from Mexico. A lot of housecleaning and Olympics watching.
My sister threw my tea away, which is annoying. She must have thought nobody drank it. She also threw away our ceramic candleholders from Honduras because she thought they were old and nasty-looking, but I thought they were cool, and I don’t even know how we got them. Granted, we never used them, but that’s mostly because my dad is afraid of candles. Also partly because the dining room table was rarely ever clean, but I cleared it off two days ago, which is perhaps a bigger achievement than it sounds.
On the plus side, she found $50 in one of my old sixteenth birthday cards, which sort of makes up for it. She also found an enlarged picture of a slightly pudgy, middle-aged man bearing the following inscription:
To Brian,
Now that we’re BOTH in Concord, lets do lunch some day!
GOOD LUCK
GEORGE
We asked my dad who George was, but strangely enough, he had no idea. An hour later, it occurred to him that George was a convicted criminal who got sent to the New Hampshire State Prison twenty years ago, and one of his colleagues had given the picture to him as a joke. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving.
As far as the Olympics are concerned, I must say that I am really not a fan of Michael Phelps. With the notable exception of the smiling assassin, Muttiah Muralitharan, I tend to dislike teams and athletes that always win everything. I dislike swimming, or rather, I dislike watching other people swim. I dislike the fact that they give out swimming medals as if they were candy. Lastly, I dislike the fact that Michael Phelps’ mother gets more coverage than most Olympic athletes do.
If that makes me a heartless and spiteful person, so be it. Please don’t take this as an endorsement of black magic or anything, but if I had a cute little Michael Phelps voodoo doll, I would take a pair of pliers and fasten them onto his nuts two seconds before his next race. Let’s see him win eight gold medals under THAT kind of pressure.
But unfortunately for me, Phelps did indeed win his eighth gold medal in Beijing, making this “probably” the best week of his life. This means Michael Phelps has now singlehandedly won, in a single week, eight times as many gold medals as the nation of Togo has won in Olympic history. Phelps is also the most popular American Olympian as measured by number of facebook friends.
I watched that race tonight at a bonfire/cookout hosted by two of my best friends from high school, and we also watched Usain Bolt of Jamaica set a new world record in the hundred meters despite not really trying. I attempted at one point to ask the other guests, “If Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt met in a dark swamp and had to race each other through a field of waist-deep mud and rotting leaves, who would win?” But I stumbled over my words and actually said, “What if Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt melted?” The answer to this question is: they would coalesce into a superhuman frog-being.
At this party I also realized that you can instantly improve any story simply by including the phrase, “He, in turn, interpreted this as a challenge to his manhood.” Five points to Slytherin if you can correctly name the story I was telling.
About seven or eight years ago, my family took a vacation to Florida, and while we were there, we went to see some sort of gymnastics competition. I remember seeing a dinosaur from Uzbekistan named Oksana Chusovitina, who was very good at the vault but was around twenty-six at the time, which is already prehistoric for a female gymnast. It turns out that Chusovitina is now thirty-three, a naturalized German citizen, and competing in her fifth Olympics, a record for female gymnasts. She even has a daughter and moved to Germany to get better treatment for her leukemia. And to think, I actually got to see Chusovitina’s fossilized remains compete in person!
A new school year is almost upon us, and I have been giving some thought to the question of all the things I am looking forward to. Really, I am hoping that this year is the beginning of a new and improved Tim Graf. Sleeker. Faster. More aerodynamic and fuel-efficient. I’m not sure exactly how I will make all of this happen, but I’m thinking possibly hair extensions.
I am definitely looking forward to seeing all of my old friends again and catching up. I’ve decided that there haven’t been enough road trips in my life, so maybe if the right opportunity comes along I will get to do one or two of those.
I’m hoping to finally become a member of my church, but as far as Christian ministries go, I am probably going to take a different approach this year and devote less time to them. I want to break out of the Christian ghetto and develop interests, abilities, and relationships elsewhere. That being said, I intend to focus on one in particular and try to involve myself in their ministry as much as I can. I’d like to co-lead a Bible study, or possibly disciple somebody. I mean, if the right baby bird came along, I wouldn’t mind taking it under my wing, although I am led to believe that I may not be cut out for that sort of work. What disciples need, my friend, is emotional stability, and what I have to offer . . . isn’t that. I'm more like a beautiful trainwreck.
I’m not expecting my classes to be either particularly enthralling or particularly soporific. I am doing an honors research project in linguistics, which terrifies me because I don’t know what my topic will be.
I also need to figure out my Spanish situation, because I earned upper-division Spanish credit in Mexico this summer, but I’ve never taken a Spanish class at OU or taken the necessary steps to earn advanced standing. I’m not sure if I’m going to take more Spanish or not.
I am hoping I will be able to sing in the opera chorus for “Lakme” this semester so I can have a challenging opportunity to strengthen my voice and express myself creatively. Some people have told me I have a good voice, but I still have a lot to learn about choral singing. I will need to change my schedule around slightly to do this because the rehearsals conflict with Second Language Acquisition, but I thought I had a goofy schedule to begin with, so I won’t really mind.
I’m also hoping I can join the Oklahoma Daily in some capacity. I would love an opportunity to reenter the world of journalism, if I have the time.
Last semester I was working eleven hours a week at Crossroads; making smoothies in the mornings was kind of fun, although I did not particularly enjoy working in the kitchen for five hours every Saturday night. I assume I still work there, but honestly I have no idea what’s going to happen with that. I just found out yesterday that apparently when I was in Mexico I received a letter informing me I had mandatory orientation this Monday and Tuesday, which poses an interesting logistical challenge for me because I’m not flying into Oklahoma until Wednesday.
The thing people don’t realize is, I’m not from Oklahoma. I’m from halfway across the country. If you have some kind of activity planned before the semester starts, you need to let me know about it MONTHS in advance. If you don’t do that, I won’t be there. It’s called booking flights while they’re cheap, people!
Also, the ironic thing about this mandatory orientation is that they didn’t actually train me at all before I started working. They just threw me to the wolves, and I had to learn how to feed them as I went along.
Anyway, there are a number of other things I am excited about as well. Playing Ultimate Frisbee again on a regular basis. (I fully intend to score at least one touchdown this year with my “secret throw.”) Curling around the TV with good friends and watching OU dismantle lesser schools on the gridiron. Working out if I can find the time and some other guys to do it with. Taking in some concerts and shows and visiting the art museum. Maybe getting one of my musically talented friends to give me piano lessons.
Reading as well. OU has a lot of crazy linguistics books in the library just begging to be read, and I wouldn’t want to let them down, now would I? You can actually find an entire book about . . . I don’t know, pronouns. You can read a whole book about pronouns. Or conjunctions. Maybe a few of them will come in handy for my project. I’ve also just started a massive volume on church history by Justo Gonzalez which should be a cracking read.
I should probably say something also about community service, because I think it’s important, but I don’t really know what I’m going to do about that. Perhaps I will make it the subject of a future note.
This note is dedicated to my good friend Josh, who asked me what I was looking forward to this semester three times. OK, it may have only been two, but it’s funnier if I say three.
Oh, and I’m also looking forward to getting a ride to OU from the airport. So, if any of you love me and are going to be in Norman at 1:00 pm on Wednesday, would you like to give me a ride? Tell you what, you don’t even have to love me. You mostly just have to have a car with seats.
The gates of Hades shall not overcome it
Originally posted Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 3:08am
The last(?) installment of my adventures in Guadalajara.
We had some changes in the house I was staying at. The medical students left after I was there for two weeks; one went back to El Paso, and the other bought his own house in the city so he could attend medical school here for the next four years.
We also had a new arrival, a Texan named Garrett who is only just beginning his journey towards fluency. He was here for two weeks before leaving to spend a fortnight in Puerto Vallarta with his family. Garrett was not good for my Spanish because his functional vocabulary was basically limited to "hello," "goodbye," "yes," "no," "please," "thank you," and "beer," but Josh and I still enjoyed having him around, and honestly, translating between him and the señora was downright invigorating. I could have said whatever I wanted, and they wouldn't have known.
The ironic thing is that Josh and I are actually good at Spanish, but we're both whiter than ghosts, whereas Garrett can pass as Mexican until he starts talking.
The other ironic thing is that Garrett was the only one of us who actually landed a date with a real live Mexican girl. You may be wondering how he pulled that off, and the answer is: he macked on an 18-year-old Starbucks barista that speaks really good English. The date didn't end up happening, because they planned on meeting at a bar later than her parents would allow, but that's not the point.
I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure there are a million Starbucks in Guadalajara. I think I passed three of them just on the way to church.
On Saturday, August 2, Garrett and Josh and I forayed downtown on a sightseeing expedition. We took the bus to Calle Pedro Moreno and walked to the San Juan de Dios market, which Josh and Garrett wanted to explore. Now, for the past two Sundays I had attended a Presbyterian church run by American missionaries in the suburb of Bugambilias, and laboring under the impression that they held a service on Saturday afternoons on a nearby street called Aldama, I left Josh and Garrett to their own devices for half an hour and set off to find it.
I was in a hurry because I was running late, but strangely enough, I ran into someone I knew. Are you ready, children? Because it's story-within-a-story time!
***
So, the previous Saturday I also visited San Juan de Dios and was approached by a man we'll call Donatello, who told me in impeccable English that he had lived almost all of his life in the U.S., but was born in Mexico and had been deported recently, and had just found himself the reluctant beneficiary of an 18-hour bus ride to Guadalajara. He even showed me a file with some pictures and documents from Immigration and Naturalization Services. He said he needed money for dinner and a bus ticket to the state of Michoacan to find his family, so I ended up giving him a small fortune in pesos. He gave me a phone number and an address for his sister in California, who he said would pay me back later, and also took seven or eight pictures for me of various mariachis posing with me.
***
Don was trying to use a pay phone when he saw me walk past and started yelling until he got my attention. He seemed surprised I was still in Guadalajara, and told me that the police had confiscated the money I gave him. He didn't ask for any more, however, and assured me again that his sister would reimburse me. I should have asked him what he could possibly have been up to for the past week, but like I said, I was kind of in a hurry. I still haven't tried to contact his sister, but I'm thinking Donatello lied to me maybe.
Anyway, I found Aldama and turned onto it. Now, it so happens that Aldama leads to a REALLY bad neighborhood. The kind of place you should go to at night if you're interested in getting shot. As I was walking down the street, I passed a couple guys and a girl who started saying something to me about Bugambilias and missionaries. I interpreted this as a sign that I was on the right track, and that is indeed one way of looking at it. Another way is: these people know exactly what I am here for just by looking at me. I stick out like a man with no thumbs.
Because I am both stupid and crazy, I pressed on.
The girl led me for several blocks and then told me the place was two and a half doors down on the left. I saw some little shops, but I didn't see anything that looked like it wanted to be a church service. One set of doors was slightly ajar and had a long hallway behind it, and it appeared to be either a flea market, or possibly what I was looking for.
I walked in, but I didn't see a flea market. All I saw was three or four women sitting at a table 15 or 20 feet away. I began to wonder if I had just committed a major faux pas and walked into somebody's house uninvited, but they didn't say anything.
Suddenly a man yelled to me from the doorway, "Hey, do you speak English?" I said yes, and then he said to me, "Do you have any idea where you are?"
This man's name was John, and he was an American from Texas who had been living in the neighborhood for the past year. I forgot to ask him why on earth he would do that. It turns out he also knew Paul Fisher, the music director from the church in Bugambilias, who was exactly the person I was hoping to meet, and who was running the mission in Aldama. John kept telling me how dangerous the neighborhood was as he led me out of it, and that an American friend of his had been shot there. He did show me the place I was trying to find, but it was closed up.
John also told me that two years ago he was shot in the chest six times and still has two bullets lodged in his heart. I forgot to ask him how or why. He lifted up his shirt, but I couldn't see the scars very well.
So a few minutes later, I reunited with Josh and Garrett, and we set out on a long walk to see the Expiatory Temple, an enormous Catholic church where tiny mechanical representations of the Twelve Apostles make an appearance on the balcony three times a day, like a holy cuckoo clock.
On the way there we passed a random Mexican man who started speaking to me in English. At first he was just making small talk, but then he tried to offer me his two female cousins, or “primas,” as we like to call them. I rejected his offer. Prima Man seemed disappointed and asked me why not. I told him his primas didn't interest me, and he, in turn, asked if I was gay. Come to think of it, Donatello had also questioned my sexuality the week before after he asked if I had a girlfriend.
So anyway, Prima Man wasn't taking no for an answer, but he finally told me that he was only joking, and I like to think that he meant that. Josh said he liked to think that Prima Man was NOT in fact joking, but rather, intended to kidnap and rape us. He quickly amended this statement to say that while he did not in fact LIKE to think this, he found himself compelled to consider the possibility. I reflected that being kidnapped might not be so bad, as long as there were cousins involved.
So anyway, the church was pretty cool, although the twelve Apostles were a lot shorter than I expected. In the courtyard of the Expiatory Temple there is a large fountain with a statue in the center of the plant you make tequila out of. There’s also a small picture inside the door of the church of Moses with horns, a sad state of affairs which originated with a medieval mistranslation of Exodus 34:29 as saying “Moses had horns” instead of “Moses’ face shone.”
In front of the church an older man approached me, but I could barely understood a word he said. Something about food and a bus ride, I think, so I gave him a few pesos.
We walked back to San Juan de Dios so we could take the subway home, and Josh was not so much approached as physically accosted by a random stranger, who bumped into him on purpose and then grabbed his arm. I’m not sure what this guy was selling, but it was probably stolen. Josh managed at last to extricate himself from his predicament, and we proceeded on our merry way.
You can buy tons of American movies and TV shows inside San Juan de Dios, and they’re already dirt cheap because they’re all pirated, but I’ve often wondered what would happen if you were to just flat-out steal one. I mean, they’re already stolen, right? And they’re all American shows, so in a sense, it would be sort of like you were stealing them back*.
I'm guessing they can't really call the police, so they probably just beat the crap out of you. This sounds like a good project for the next time I visit Mexico.
The next morning I went back to Cristo Redentor, the Presbyterian church in Bugambilias, and finally met Paul Fisher.
I only knew about this church in the first place because I found out by chance that a friend of a friend had recently gone to Guadalajara on a mission trip, and she told me about it. Paul was the guy her church group had been working with, which was why I wanted to meet him.
I'm glad I did find the church, because there are few things better than finding a great Christian community to be a part of. That, and I didn't really want to become Catholic for a month.
After church I went out with three other American college students working in Mexico as missionaries this summer. We went to a long narrow one-story mall with a courtyard in the center called the Plaza del Sol, bought some food at a grocery store inside the mall, and then ate lunch in the courtyard.
Two of us sat on a bench and the other two sat on the floor across from them. We were eating rice and other foods with our bare hands, and the three missionaries bought a six-pack to share amongst themselves, although they were kind of sheepish about actually drinking it, and one of the guys even put his bottle inside a brown paper bag. We weren't sure if you were technically allowed to drink inside the mall or not.
It turns out you’re not, but at least the police were nice about it.
We must have cut quite the ridiculous figure. I like to imagine the following conversation:
Mall Shopper: Just look at all of these dirty homeless Americans.
Us: Actually, we’re missionaries.
I hope I am not bringing the church into disrepute by sharing that anecdote. Discretion is the better part of valor and all, but really, I have a lot of respect for the work my three friends were doing in Mexico and for the fact that they are willing to go out and share the gospel on the streets. I sometimes wished that I myself were there for something more meaningful than merely studying Spanish at the university.
After lunch we hung out at a coffee shop and talked for a few hours, and then we went back to Aldama, because the mission I had tried to visit the previous day was actually having its inaugural service that evening. Paul was leading worship on guitar, and John was playing drums. We sang some worship songs in Spanish and a few people shared short personal testimonies. John talked more about when he had been shot and had been laid up in the hospital for two months, breathing through a tube in his mouth and eating through a tube in his nose. He said that to this day half his heart doesn't work at all. The doctors told him he would never think the same or walk the same, but God saved his life.
Afterwards, when I spoke with Paul Fisher again, he said the locals told him a skinny gringo had been wandering around the neighborhood looking for him the day before, and he replied, “I think I met him this morning.”
Incidentally, I have decided that if I were a Mexican superhero, I would call myself the Skinny Gringo, and my superpowers would include extreme paleness and the ability to flop around like a fish out of water.
I would have to say that all in all, that Sunday was the most fun I had in Guadalajara. I did have some problems getting home, though. Despite knowing where I was and which bus I wanted, it was getting dark and hard to see the buses or vice versa, and I had a little trouble finding the bus stop. Some guy did start trying to help me; he even flagged down a bus for me and boarded it with me, but I really couldn’t understand anything he was saying. I asked him to write it down at one point, but I don’t think he knew how to read.
It wasn't the right bus, but the bus I actually wanted somehow ended up right in front of the bus I was actually on, so I did the needful and was on my way.
*I don't actually condone stealing.
The last(?) installment of my adventures in Guadalajara.
We had some changes in the house I was staying at. The medical students left after I was there for two weeks; one went back to El Paso, and the other bought his own house in the city so he could attend medical school here for the next four years.
We also had a new arrival, a Texan named Garrett who is only just beginning his journey towards fluency. He was here for two weeks before leaving to spend a fortnight in Puerto Vallarta with his family. Garrett was not good for my Spanish because his functional vocabulary was basically limited to "hello," "goodbye," "yes," "no," "please," "thank you," and "beer," but Josh and I still enjoyed having him around, and honestly, translating between him and the señora was downright invigorating. I could have said whatever I wanted, and they wouldn't have known.
The ironic thing is that Josh and I are actually good at Spanish, but we're both whiter than ghosts, whereas Garrett can pass as Mexican until he starts talking.
The other ironic thing is that Garrett was the only one of us who actually landed a date with a real live Mexican girl. You may be wondering how he pulled that off, and the answer is: he macked on an 18-year-old Starbucks barista that speaks really good English. The date didn't end up happening, because they planned on meeting at a bar later than her parents would allow, but that's not the point.
I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure there are a million Starbucks in Guadalajara. I think I passed three of them just on the way to church.
On Saturday, August 2, Garrett and Josh and I forayed downtown on a sightseeing expedition. We took the bus to Calle Pedro Moreno and walked to the San Juan de Dios market, which Josh and Garrett wanted to explore. Now, for the past two Sundays I had attended a Presbyterian church run by American missionaries in the suburb of Bugambilias, and laboring under the impression that they held a service on Saturday afternoons on a nearby street called Aldama, I left Josh and Garrett to their own devices for half an hour and set off to find it.
I was in a hurry because I was running late, but strangely enough, I ran into someone I knew. Are you ready, children? Because it's story-within-a-story time!
***
So, the previous Saturday I also visited San Juan de Dios and was approached by a man we'll call Donatello, who told me in impeccable English that he had lived almost all of his life in the U.S., but was born in Mexico and had been deported recently, and had just found himself the reluctant beneficiary of an 18-hour bus ride to Guadalajara. He even showed me a file with some pictures and documents from Immigration and Naturalization Services. He said he needed money for dinner and a bus ticket to the state of Michoacan to find his family, so I ended up giving him a small fortune in pesos. He gave me a phone number and an address for his sister in California, who he said would pay me back later, and also took seven or eight pictures for me of various mariachis posing with me.
***
Don was trying to use a pay phone when he saw me walk past and started yelling until he got my attention. He seemed surprised I was still in Guadalajara, and told me that the police had confiscated the money I gave him. He didn't ask for any more, however, and assured me again that his sister would reimburse me. I should have asked him what he could possibly have been up to for the past week, but like I said, I was kind of in a hurry. I still haven't tried to contact his sister, but I'm thinking Donatello lied to me maybe.
Anyway, I found Aldama and turned onto it. Now, it so happens that Aldama leads to a REALLY bad neighborhood. The kind of place you should go to at night if you're interested in getting shot. As I was walking down the street, I passed a couple guys and a girl who started saying something to me about Bugambilias and missionaries. I interpreted this as a sign that I was on the right track, and that is indeed one way of looking at it. Another way is: these people know exactly what I am here for just by looking at me. I stick out like a man with no thumbs.
Because I am both stupid and crazy, I pressed on.
The girl led me for several blocks and then told me the place was two and a half doors down on the left. I saw some little shops, but I didn't see anything that looked like it wanted to be a church service. One set of doors was slightly ajar and had a long hallway behind it, and it appeared to be either a flea market, or possibly what I was looking for.
I walked in, but I didn't see a flea market. All I saw was three or four women sitting at a table 15 or 20 feet away. I began to wonder if I had just committed a major faux pas and walked into somebody's house uninvited, but they didn't say anything.
Suddenly a man yelled to me from the doorway, "Hey, do you speak English?" I said yes, and then he said to me, "Do you have any idea where you are?"
This man's name was John, and he was an American from Texas who had been living in the neighborhood for the past year. I forgot to ask him why on earth he would do that. It turns out he also knew Paul Fisher, the music director from the church in Bugambilias, who was exactly the person I was hoping to meet, and who was running the mission in Aldama. John kept telling me how dangerous the neighborhood was as he led me out of it, and that an American friend of his had been shot there. He did show me the place I was trying to find, but it was closed up.
John also told me that two years ago he was shot in the chest six times and still has two bullets lodged in his heart. I forgot to ask him how or why. He lifted up his shirt, but I couldn't see the scars very well.
So a few minutes later, I reunited with Josh and Garrett, and we set out on a long walk to see the Expiatory Temple, an enormous Catholic church where tiny mechanical representations of the Twelve Apostles make an appearance on the balcony three times a day, like a holy cuckoo clock.
On the way there we passed a random Mexican man who started speaking to me in English. At first he was just making small talk, but then he tried to offer me his two female cousins, or “primas,” as we like to call them. I rejected his offer. Prima Man seemed disappointed and asked me why not. I told him his primas didn't interest me, and he, in turn, asked if I was gay. Come to think of it, Donatello had also questioned my sexuality the week before after he asked if I had a girlfriend.
So anyway, Prima Man wasn't taking no for an answer, but he finally told me that he was only joking, and I like to think that he meant that. Josh said he liked to think that Prima Man was NOT in fact joking, but rather, intended to kidnap and rape us. He quickly amended this statement to say that while he did not in fact LIKE to think this, he found himself compelled to consider the possibility. I reflected that being kidnapped might not be so bad, as long as there were cousins involved.
So anyway, the church was pretty cool, although the twelve Apostles were a lot shorter than I expected. In the courtyard of the Expiatory Temple there is a large fountain with a statue in the center of the plant you make tequila out of. There’s also a small picture inside the door of the church of Moses with horns, a sad state of affairs which originated with a medieval mistranslation of Exodus 34:29 as saying “Moses had horns” instead of “Moses’ face shone.”
In front of the church an older man approached me, but I could barely understood a word he said. Something about food and a bus ride, I think, so I gave him a few pesos.
We walked back to San Juan de Dios so we could take the subway home, and Josh was not so much approached as physically accosted by a random stranger, who bumped into him on purpose and then grabbed his arm. I’m not sure what this guy was selling, but it was probably stolen. Josh managed at last to extricate himself from his predicament, and we proceeded on our merry way.
You can buy tons of American movies and TV shows inside San Juan de Dios, and they’re already dirt cheap because they’re all pirated, but I’ve often wondered what would happen if you were to just flat-out steal one. I mean, they’re already stolen, right? And they’re all American shows, so in a sense, it would be sort of like you were stealing them back*.
I'm guessing they can't really call the police, so they probably just beat the crap out of you. This sounds like a good project for the next time I visit Mexico.
The next morning I went back to Cristo Redentor, the Presbyterian church in Bugambilias, and finally met Paul Fisher.
I only knew about this church in the first place because I found out by chance that a friend of a friend had recently gone to Guadalajara on a mission trip, and she told me about it. Paul was the guy her church group had been working with, which was why I wanted to meet him.
I'm glad I did find the church, because there are few things better than finding a great Christian community to be a part of. That, and I didn't really want to become Catholic for a month.
After church I went out with three other American college students working in Mexico as missionaries this summer. We went to a long narrow one-story mall with a courtyard in the center called the Plaza del Sol, bought some food at a grocery store inside the mall, and then ate lunch in the courtyard.
Two of us sat on a bench and the other two sat on the floor across from them. We were eating rice and other foods with our bare hands, and the three missionaries bought a six-pack to share amongst themselves, although they were kind of sheepish about actually drinking it, and one of the guys even put his bottle inside a brown paper bag. We weren't sure if you were technically allowed to drink inside the mall or not.
It turns out you’re not, but at least the police were nice about it.
We must have cut quite the ridiculous figure. I like to imagine the following conversation:
Mall Shopper: Just look at all of these dirty homeless Americans.
Us: Actually, we’re missionaries.
I hope I am not bringing the church into disrepute by sharing that anecdote. Discretion is the better part of valor and all, but really, I have a lot of respect for the work my three friends were doing in Mexico and for the fact that they are willing to go out and share the gospel on the streets. I sometimes wished that I myself were there for something more meaningful than merely studying Spanish at the university.
After lunch we hung out at a coffee shop and talked for a few hours, and then we went back to Aldama, because the mission I had tried to visit the previous day was actually having its inaugural service that evening. Paul was leading worship on guitar, and John was playing drums. We sang some worship songs in Spanish and a few people shared short personal testimonies. John talked more about when he had been shot and had been laid up in the hospital for two months, breathing through a tube in his mouth and eating through a tube in his nose. He said that to this day half his heart doesn't work at all. The doctors told him he would never think the same or walk the same, but God saved his life.
Afterwards, when I spoke with Paul Fisher again, he said the locals told him a skinny gringo had been wandering around the neighborhood looking for him the day before, and he replied, “I think I met him this morning.”
Incidentally, I have decided that if I were a Mexican superhero, I would call myself the Skinny Gringo, and my superpowers would include extreme paleness and the ability to flop around like a fish out of water.
I would have to say that all in all, that Sunday was the most fun I had in Guadalajara. I did have some problems getting home, though. Despite knowing where I was and which bus I wanted, it was getting dark and hard to see the buses or vice versa, and I had a little trouble finding the bus stop. Some guy did start trying to help me; he even flagged down a bus for me and boarded it with me, but I really couldn’t understand anything he was saying. I asked him to write it down at one point, but I don’t think he knew how to read.
It wasn't the right bus, but the bus I actually wanted somehow ended up right in front of the bus I was actually on, so I did the needful and was on my way.
*I don't actually condone stealing.
If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that
Originally posted Monday, August 11, 2008 at 9:30pm
So, I hopped on a few airplanes on Saturday, and it turns out that when I was finished, I was back in New Hampshire. My family tells me it rained almost every day while I was gone. We also had a tornado a few weeks ago, which is kind of like having hurricanes in Kansas. Or possibly earthquakes.
I didn’t have a lot of good books to read on my flights, so I read a couple of in-flight magazines instead. There were a lot of University of Alberta students who came to Guadalajara from Edmonton to study Spanish, and interestingly enough, one of the magazines had an article about all the fun things there are to do in Alberta. Apparently the province has a lot of ridiculously large statues of things like Ukrainian sausages, oil lamps, and pinto beans dressed up as cowboys. There’s also a small town called Vulcan, Alberta, which has finally yielded to the inevitable and become a Star Trek tourist trap.
Living in Guadalajara has forced me to become acquainted with our friends the cockroaches. My housemate Josh and I decided that once cockroaches reach waist height, and you have to start killing them with axes and handguns, the size-versus-disgustingness graph flattens out, although the size-versus-terrifyingness graph keeps going up.
Occasionally in Mexico I would see policemen carrying rifles, once outside a 7-11, and once outside a bank. I can only assume that the rifles are for killing very large cockroaches.
Now, I’m no Mexican action hero, dear reader, but if I were, my next big film would be “The Cockroach that Ate Guadalajara," and all the little boys and girls would see it. Then their parents would sue me for corrupting the youth.
In reality, the cockroaches were much smaller than the ones on TV, and I don’t actually know anything about the culinary preferences of cockroaches, but I’m pretty sure that if cockroaches were 10 stories tall they would eat cities.
Speaking of movies, I went to the mall again last week and watched “The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” and I must say, this movie had the exact same storyline as “Hellboy II.” An ancient army lies dormant underground, and some evil dude is trying to magically awaken them. If the army is awakened, then the world as we know it is doomed. A small band of heroes tries to prevent this, and a female insider tries to help out our heroes and becomes romantically involved with one of them.
As you can see, both movies have the same plot. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that “Dragon Emperor” and “Hellboy II” are literally the same movie. Numerically identical, even. The only difference is that “Hellboy II” is a lot more entertaining.
Some things in Mexico are really cheap and others are really expensive. If you want, you can go to the mall and watch an IMAX movie for only 70 pesos, but it cost me more than that to do a load of laundry.
My old shoes were pretty worn out, and the señora was starting to complain about the smell, so I left them in Guadalajara and bought a nice new pair of sneakers for only 198 pesos at the Great Satan. I thought that was a pretty good deal, but my sister thinks I could have gotten them for the same price at the Great Satans in America.
James 3:1-2
1 Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2 We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.
So, I hopped on a few airplanes on Saturday, and it turns out that when I was finished, I was back in New Hampshire. My family tells me it rained almost every day while I was gone. We also had a tornado a few weeks ago, which is kind of like having hurricanes in Kansas. Or possibly earthquakes.
I didn’t have a lot of good books to read on my flights, so I read a couple of in-flight magazines instead. There were a lot of University of Alberta students who came to Guadalajara from Edmonton to study Spanish, and interestingly enough, one of the magazines had an article about all the fun things there are to do in Alberta. Apparently the province has a lot of ridiculously large statues of things like Ukrainian sausages, oil lamps, and pinto beans dressed up as cowboys. There’s also a small town called Vulcan, Alberta, which has finally yielded to the inevitable and become a Star Trek tourist trap.
Living in Guadalajara has forced me to become acquainted with our friends the cockroaches. My housemate Josh and I decided that once cockroaches reach waist height, and you have to start killing them with axes and handguns, the size-versus-disgustingness graph flattens out, although the size-versus-terrifyingness graph keeps going up.
Occasionally in Mexico I would see policemen carrying rifles, once outside a 7-11, and once outside a bank. I can only assume that the rifles are for killing very large cockroaches.
Now, I’m no Mexican action hero, dear reader, but if I were, my next big film would be “The Cockroach that Ate Guadalajara," and all the little boys and girls would see it. Then their parents would sue me for corrupting the youth.
In reality, the cockroaches were much smaller than the ones on TV, and I don’t actually know anything about the culinary preferences of cockroaches, but I’m pretty sure that if cockroaches were 10 stories tall they would eat cities.
Speaking of movies, I went to the mall again last week and watched “The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” and I must say, this movie had the exact same storyline as “Hellboy II.” An ancient army lies dormant underground, and some evil dude is trying to magically awaken them. If the army is awakened, then the world as we know it is doomed. A small band of heroes tries to prevent this, and a female insider tries to help out our heroes and becomes romantically involved with one of them.
As you can see, both movies have the same plot. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that “Dragon Emperor” and “Hellboy II” are literally the same movie. Numerically identical, even. The only difference is that “Hellboy II” is a lot more entertaining.
Some things in Mexico are really cheap and others are really expensive. If you want, you can go to the mall and watch an IMAX movie for only 70 pesos, but it cost me more than that to do a load of laundry.
My old shoes were pretty worn out, and the señora was starting to complain about the smell, so I left them in Guadalajara and bought a nice new pair of sneakers for only 198 pesos at the Great Satan. I thought that was a pretty good deal, but my sister thinks I could have gotten them for the same price at the Great Satans in America.
James 3:1-2
1 Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2 We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.
A mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes
Originally posted Friday, August 1, 2008 at 7:15pm
Part the Third of my monthlong adventures in Guadalajara.
Last Saturday i went downtown to see the famous Ballet Folcórico de la Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara at the historic Teatro Degollado . Now, I don't know much about "folkloric dance," but I do know there were a lot of strange costumes and props in that show. At one point some dancers came out wearing bulls and their heads and stampeded at the other dancers. The bulls also seemed to have light-up wheels on their sides for some reason. It was almost like something out of the book of Ezekiel. Anyway, if you're ever in Guadalajara, it's sort of interesting, although it probably would have been more fun if I hadn't gone by myself. You should also buy tickets early if you want the cheap seats.
I have been getting better at using the public transportation and managed to get home with no problem this time. The buses stop running at 10 pm, but the subway goes up to 11.
I also went back to the Cathedral to buy more stickers, and my notebook now has on it three pink hearts which say "Feliz Día," "Te Quiero," and "Pienso en Ti," respectively. (Happy Day, I Love You, and I'm Thinking About You.) A couple days later I finally caved and bought a towel at the Great Satan (Wal-Mart). No traveller should be without one.
There are some strange shows on Mexican television. One of them is a game show called "Asgaard" which was inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. Two teams proceed through a forested gameboard and interact with people dressed up as pixies and magicians, who give them bizarre challenges to perform in pursuit of silver coins. Landing on a blue square equals a fun challenge. Landing on a red square equals a visit to the creepy goblin dude and his dwarf henchman, and an unpleasant challenge.
There is another game show called "Aguas con el Muro" which is much simpler, but no less ridiculous. Contestants wear shiny suits and helmets and stand at the edge of a pool, while a wall comes at them with some sort of shape cut out of it. If the contestant can fit his or her body through the opening successfully, he or she avoids getting knocked into the water and earns points for his or her team. Repeat this scenario ad nauseam.
I discovered "Asgaard" on my own, but I must say that Javier watches a lot of TV. At one point last week I decided that we needed to talk about his television choices after I sat through "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo." I had never seen this alleged "movie" before, but I am pretty sure it sucks just as much in English as it did in Spanish. My favorite film critic, Roger Ebert, gave it a grand total of zero stars, which is probably a tad generous.
Having previously watched "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" in the Plaza Galeria, a three-story mall near my house in Guadalajara, I saw most of the original film on TV last week. As a result, I would like to offer the following observations about the Guadalajaran director, Guillermo del Toro:
1) there is a scene in "The Golden Army" where Hellboy and his esteemed colleagues visit the troll market. Ebert surmises that this scene was inspired by the cantina scene from the original Star Wars film. It also seems likely to me, however, that del Toro has visited San Juan de Dios a few times.
2) Guillermo del Toro has a thing for enormous octopus creatures.
(That shouldn't give anything away, I don't think. Incidentally, I recently discovered that Wikipedia has a policy whereby it is not considered acceptable to delete information from an article just because it spoils the plot of a book or movie. I really think Wikipedia has it all backwards. It's not acceptable to spoil the plot just because you think the world needs to know that they all die in the end. I don't want to know that, OK? I don't want to know that the little boy is really the old man's father.)
After my roommate Javier and I watched the original Hellboy, a boxing match came on, which I wouldn't ordinarily watch at home, although as you can probably tell I have watched a lot of things here that I wouldn't ordinarily watch. A Mexican named Antonio Margarito scored a TKO over some Puerto Rican boxer in the 10th round to become the welterweight champion of the world, but as I told Javier in the eighth round, if Margarito were a very large octopus, he would have already won.
And ever since then, I have been unable to stop picturing Javier as a giant Mexican octopus with a moustache, trundling home from school in a white lab coat and sitting on his bed, holding the remote control in one tentacle and texting his girlfriend with the other seven. Every now and then he takes out his anatomy textbook with four of his tentacles and studies it.
I guess it is probably a good thing he is NOT a giant octopus, though. It may give you a big advantage in the taking over the world department, but it is probably a pain having to wash all your tentacles before every meal.
I need to be a lot more careful about hygiene and about what foods I eat, since it is very common for travellers to get sick here, and it has already happened to me. Not only tap water, but also ice should be avoided, as well as fresh cheese and raw fruits and vegetables, if you are not sure whether they have been washed or you haven't peeled them yourself. Lately I have started using an antibacterial hand lotion that I took with me from home. The only problem with this product, however, is that it leaves glitter on your hands every time you use it. And this is not in an apologetic, we-found-a-really-great-way-to-kill-bacteria-on-your-hands-but-unfortunately-the-formula-leaves-glitter-everywhere kind of way. I am clearly not the target audience for this product, since it tells me about the glitter as if it were a good thing. I disagree, and so I have to wash my hands after I use it.
Also, the hand lotion is supposed to smell like blueberries, which I think is accurate, if by blueberries you mean stale Play-Dough.
As far as unfamiliar foods and drinks go, agua de horchata is quite common. It's a drink made from rice, almonds, sesame seeds, barley, or tigernuts, and it's pretty much my new best friend (sorry, Anthony). Also quite common is agua de jamaica, which is made from sort of flower. The word for cake here is "pastel"; you might be used to using the word "torta" for that, but tortas are sandwiches. A lot of places here serve tortas ahogadas (drowned sandwiches), which have sauce on them. I have not yet tried the tacos de cabeza (head tacos). I heard they are made with cow brains, but I don't know if that's actually true.
Earlier today I went on an excursion with most of the other international students here to the city of Tequila, which is where they make the drink of the same name from the blue agave plant. We got to try a couple of (very small) free samples of different kinds of tequila, plus some sort of pre-tequila concoction which burned like the devil and probably ranks among the top five worst things I have ever put in my mouth. We also got to try eating a few different things (raw agave, which is kind of like eating a raw potato, except not), and something else that was sweet and very fibrous (ordinary sugar cane, or maybe some other part of the agave, I'm not sure). At the end of the tour we got a free margarita. I also bought a bottle of agave syrup at the gift shop, which I'm hoping is good on pancakes.
The syrup, I mean. I wouldn't try to eat the gift shop.
Tequila is an important part of Mexican cultural identity, and Mexico tries to maintain its status as a geographically identified product, which can only be sold under that name if it's produced in the state of Jalisco or a few other parts of Mexico. Now, I'm no Mexican alcohol manufacturer, dear reader, but if I were, I would circumvent this problem by calling my product "I Can't Believe It's Not Tequila!"
I should mention that I don't regard drunkenness as part of a moral lifestyle, and with the exception of this excursion and the communion wine at church I have not been drinking at all in Mexico, although it is legal for me to do so. Incidentally, the alcohol commercials here don't say "Drink Responsibly," the way they do in the U.S. They say "Evita el Exceso" (Avoid Excess) or "Todo con Medida" (Everything with Moderation). I thought this was sort of odd on a commercial celebrating the fact that their beer is now available in larger bottles.
Ephesians 5:1-2, 15-21
1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Part the Third of my monthlong adventures in Guadalajara.
Last Saturday i went downtown to see the famous Ballet Folcórico de la Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara at the historic Teatro Degollado . Now, I don't know much about "folkloric dance," but I do know there were a lot of strange costumes and props in that show. At one point some dancers came out wearing bulls and their heads and stampeded at the other dancers. The bulls also seemed to have light-up wheels on their sides for some reason. It was almost like something out of the book of Ezekiel. Anyway, if you're ever in Guadalajara, it's sort of interesting, although it probably would have been more fun if I hadn't gone by myself. You should also buy tickets early if you want the cheap seats.
I have been getting better at using the public transportation and managed to get home with no problem this time. The buses stop running at 10 pm, but the subway goes up to 11.
I also went back to the Cathedral to buy more stickers, and my notebook now has on it three pink hearts which say "Feliz Día," "Te Quiero," and "Pienso en Ti," respectively. (Happy Day, I Love You, and I'm Thinking About You.) A couple days later I finally caved and bought a towel at the Great Satan (Wal-Mart). No traveller should be without one.
There are some strange shows on Mexican television. One of them is a game show called "Asgaard" which was inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. Two teams proceed through a forested gameboard and interact with people dressed up as pixies and magicians, who give them bizarre challenges to perform in pursuit of silver coins. Landing on a blue square equals a fun challenge. Landing on a red square equals a visit to the creepy goblin dude and his dwarf henchman, and an unpleasant challenge.
There is another game show called "Aguas con el Muro" which is much simpler, but no less ridiculous. Contestants wear shiny suits and helmets and stand at the edge of a pool, while a wall comes at them with some sort of shape cut out of it. If the contestant can fit his or her body through the opening successfully, he or she avoids getting knocked into the water and earns points for his or her team. Repeat this scenario ad nauseam.
I discovered "Asgaard" on my own, but I must say that Javier watches a lot of TV. At one point last week I decided that we needed to talk about his television choices after I sat through "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo." I had never seen this alleged "movie" before, but I am pretty sure it sucks just as much in English as it did in Spanish. My favorite film critic, Roger Ebert, gave it a grand total of zero stars, which is probably a tad generous.
Having previously watched "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" in the Plaza Galeria, a three-story mall near my house in Guadalajara, I saw most of the original film on TV last week. As a result, I would like to offer the following observations about the Guadalajaran director, Guillermo del Toro:
1) there is a scene in "The Golden Army" where Hellboy and his esteemed colleagues visit the troll market. Ebert surmises that this scene was inspired by the cantina scene from the original Star Wars film. It also seems likely to me, however, that del Toro has visited San Juan de Dios a few times.
2) Guillermo del Toro has a thing for enormous octopus creatures.
(That shouldn't give anything away, I don't think. Incidentally, I recently discovered that Wikipedia has a policy whereby it is not considered acceptable to delete information from an article just because it spoils the plot of a book or movie. I really think Wikipedia has it all backwards. It's not acceptable to spoil the plot just because you think the world needs to know that they all die in the end. I don't want to know that, OK? I don't want to know that the little boy is really the old man's father.)
After my roommate Javier and I watched the original Hellboy, a boxing match came on, which I wouldn't ordinarily watch at home, although as you can probably tell I have watched a lot of things here that I wouldn't ordinarily watch. A Mexican named Antonio Margarito scored a TKO over some Puerto Rican boxer in the 10th round to become the welterweight champion of the world, but as I told Javier in the eighth round, if Margarito were a very large octopus, he would have already won.
And ever since then, I have been unable to stop picturing Javier as a giant Mexican octopus with a moustache, trundling home from school in a white lab coat and sitting on his bed, holding the remote control in one tentacle and texting his girlfriend with the other seven. Every now and then he takes out his anatomy textbook with four of his tentacles and studies it.
I guess it is probably a good thing he is NOT a giant octopus, though. It may give you a big advantage in the taking over the world department, but it is probably a pain having to wash all your tentacles before every meal.
I need to be a lot more careful about hygiene and about what foods I eat, since it is very common for travellers to get sick here, and it has already happened to me. Not only tap water, but also ice should be avoided, as well as fresh cheese and raw fruits and vegetables, if you are not sure whether they have been washed or you haven't peeled them yourself. Lately I have started using an antibacterial hand lotion that I took with me from home. The only problem with this product, however, is that it leaves glitter on your hands every time you use it. And this is not in an apologetic, we-found-a-really-great-way-to-kill-bacteria-on-your-hands-but-unfortunately-the-formula-leaves-glitter-everywhere kind of way. I am clearly not the target audience for this product, since it tells me about the glitter as if it were a good thing. I disagree, and so I have to wash my hands after I use it.
Also, the hand lotion is supposed to smell like blueberries, which I think is accurate, if by blueberries you mean stale Play-Dough.
As far as unfamiliar foods and drinks go, agua de horchata is quite common. It's a drink made from rice, almonds, sesame seeds, barley, or tigernuts, and it's pretty much my new best friend (sorry, Anthony). Also quite common is agua de jamaica, which is made from sort of flower. The word for cake here is "pastel"; you might be used to using the word "torta" for that, but tortas are sandwiches. A lot of places here serve tortas ahogadas (drowned sandwiches), which have sauce on them. I have not yet tried the tacos de cabeza (head tacos). I heard they are made with cow brains, but I don't know if that's actually true.
Earlier today I went on an excursion with most of the other international students here to the city of Tequila, which is where they make the drink of the same name from the blue agave plant. We got to try a couple of (very small) free samples of different kinds of tequila, plus some sort of pre-tequila concoction which burned like the devil and probably ranks among the top five worst things I have ever put in my mouth. We also got to try eating a few different things (raw agave, which is kind of like eating a raw potato, except not), and something else that was sweet and very fibrous (ordinary sugar cane, or maybe some other part of the agave, I'm not sure). At the end of the tour we got a free margarita. I also bought a bottle of agave syrup at the gift shop, which I'm hoping is good on pancakes.
The syrup, I mean. I wouldn't try to eat the gift shop.
Tequila is an important part of Mexican cultural identity, and Mexico tries to maintain its status as a geographically identified product, which can only be sold under that name if it's produced in the state of Jalisco or a few other parts of Mexico. Now, I'm no Mexican alcohol manufacturer, dear reader, but if I were, I would circumvent this problem by calling my product "I Can't Believe It's Not Tequila!"
I should mention that I don't regard drunkenness as part of a moral lifestyle, and with the exception of this excursion and the communion wine at church I have not been drinking at all in Mexico, although it is legal for me to do so. Incidentally, the alcohol commercials here don't say "Drink Responsibly," the way they do in the U.S. They say "Evita el Exceso" (Avoid Excess) or "Todo con Medida" (Everything with Moderation). I thought this was sort of odd on a commercial celebrating the fact that their beer is now available in larger bottles.
Ephesians 5:1-2, 15-21
1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
. . . spend a year there, carry on business, and make money
Originally posted Friday, July 25, 2008 at 7:33pm
Part the Second of my reflections on my month in Guadalajara.
On my first weekend here I went downtown twice, once on Saturday with a tour for the international students, and the next day on my own. On Sunday, I went to San Juan de Dios, which I have heard is the largest covered market in all of Latin America, and spent a few hours there. The market has three levels, and you can buy all kinds of everything there. I bought several things and ate some tasty food that may or may not have been sanitary. Unfortunately, I forgot that you are supposed to haggle with the vendors, so I probably ended up paying what we may affectionately refer to as "stupid American tourist prices."
I also went to a mass at the big cathedral since I was already downtown anyway and I couldn't locate a Protestant church here if I tried. (I have tried, actually, and while they do exist, I can't locate them.) Now, there are a number of beggars who congregate in front of the cathedral looking for handouts. Most of them seem to be women with babies or small children. The women all seem to wear gray shawls, because I guess it helps them look more beggarly. The children run around with stickers and try to stick them on people without being invited to do so, in hopes of being rewarded with a few coins. Most people would flee these sticker-wielding children and run in the other direction, but I actually like stickers, so on Sunday I went and bought a couple; the cover of my notebook now sports a sun wearing sunglasses and a bumblebee giving two thumbs up. This transaction probably confused the beggars more than anything.
It is sad, when you think about it. Where do they sleep? What do they eat? Do they have family?
In the evening, dozens and dozens of mariachis congregate near San Juan de Dios. They look kind of like matadors, except a little less fancy, and will play a song for you for a small fee. I have not yet stayed downtown late enough to hear them play; as I was leaving on Sunday, they were just starting to come out of the woodwork, although for some reason they didn't seem to have any instruments with them.
Now, I had gotten downtown without too many problems, but as I am going home, I decide it would be a good idea to take a random city bus without looking where it is going. This probably ranks as one of the top five dumbest things I have ever done, although I am not sure, because I refuse to make that list. Such a list would be funny for you, dear reader, but depressing for me. Anyway, the bus drives for over an hour from the city out into the middle of nowhere. I think at one point we went through a marsh.
So, it turns out the bus has driven all the way to the airport, which is to the extreme northeast, outside the city. My house is on the WESTERN edge of the city. Problems.
Now, the city buses can get crowded at times. At one point on the ride the bus is standing-room-only, and there are wall-to-wall Mexicans hanging all over me. But by the time we reach the middle of nowhere, also known as the airport, I am the only real passenger left. The driver looks at me and says, "¿Qué haces?" (What are you doing?) I tell him I thought the bus went around in a circle. Apparently it doesn't. He gets out and talks to a few people outside a nearby building for several minutes; they are probably laughing at me.
Eventually he heads back in the opposite direction and drops me off somewhere, I'm not sure where. I wait and wait for the bus he told me to wait for, but it never comes, so eventually I ask another driver, and he tells me a different number. So I wait for that bus and get on it, hoping to get to Avenida Patria, a major road that I use on the way to the university. The problem is that Patria is an enormous road, and the stops really aren't marked so well, and I'm sort of enjoying seeing the city, and I'm kind of shy about speaking Mexican since I have a hard time understanding people, so I just sit there for a while. Eventually I ask where Patria is, and the driver tells me, "Ya pasamos," (We already passed it), so I immediately get off and flag down another bus with the same number going the opposite way.
After I get to Patria, I eventually find another bus which is supposed to go to the university, so I get on, but the bus drives and drives and I never see anything I recognize. It gets to be 10 o'clock, and the driver makes everyone get off for the evening. I ask where the university is; apparently we have already passed it. Apparently the bus doesn't stop at the university per se, it only goes by it. My backpack gets caught on the seat. I start yelling at the bus driver in Spanglish. The driver says he is sorry in that voice that people use when they don't actually mean it.
Long story short, the taxi ride home cost 52 pesos, and it got me there fast enough. By contrast, for only 5 pesos, a mere fraction of the cost, dear reader, you can board just about any city bus you want and ride for hours and hours without getting anywhere.
I did get to see a lot of the city this way. I can now tell you that the city of Guadalajara has at least three Wal-Mart Supercenters, a million and a half Oxxo convenience stores, a million and one government-owned Pemex gas stations, a small army of street vendors, and several El Pollo Pepe restaurants, among other things.
I like to tell my Mexican roommate that all the El Pollo Pepe restaurants are calling his name, wanting him to eat them, because he's never been to one. Their advertising slogan is "Tenemos el sabor que más se lleva." Loosely translated, this means that their food tastes the best, all the cool kids are doing it, and your parents will never find out. (Apologies to Isaac Freeman for stealing his joke.)
(Update: I have finally located a Protestant church, but I had to pull a few teeth to do it. I think the population is something like 97% Catholic here. Also, there are at least four Wal-Mart Supercenters in Guadalajara.)
So far I have yet to embark on a non-university-guided city excursion (or as I like to call them, a "crazy adventure") without having to use a taxi at some point, although I am getting better at using the buses. So far the taxis have been pretty fair to me, but one of my housemates told me that he and a few other international students had been significantly overcharged on one of their outings. Fortunately, Americans can afford to get taken for a ride.
A lot of people here have jobs that I am very glad I don't have. For example, I would hate to be the guy whose job it is to try to walk around and talk strangers into buying crap they don't want. I took a taxi ride home from downtown the other day and saw an old man walking between lanes on the highway, trying to sell flowers to the motorists. I kind of felt sorry for him. If I had a cute Mexican girlfriend, I totally would buy her some of that guy's flowers.
Sadly, no cute girlfriends at all, regardless of nationality. If you were to assemble all of my past and present girlfriends in a room together, it would be kind of like visiting the United Nations building immediately after an anthrax evacuation. If you were to place them all end-to-end along the circumference of the earth, they would converge at a point.
Guadalajara has a lovely springlike climate, but it sure does rain a lot here in the summer. I get wet sometimes.
This probably isn't what your Spanish dictionary will tell you, but here in Guadalajara, pies are pronounced the same way but spelled "pays." We were discussing the Rights of Children in my conversation class the other day and determined that apple pay was one of them. Also, that fringe on a sheet of paper after you tear it out of a notebook.
Then we read an article in that class about how Wal-Mart is the Great Satan because they exploit children in Mexico City. Apparently children can work as baggers there up until the age of 16 and make more than some adults make, but they have to follow all sorts of company rules and don't receive any sort of salary or benefits. I guess they make all their money off of tips.
Afterwards we were divided into teams and quizzed on the contents of the article. A rival team decided to call themselves Hillary Clinton, claiming that she used to be a top lawyer for Wal-Mart. Consequently, my team could not decide whether we wanted to be butterflies or Hillary's main political rival, so we ended up being Las Mariposas Obama.
At least in my neighborhood, the houses are kind of blocky and tend to have a gate and/or a wall separating them from the sidewalks. A lot of families have pet dogs which they keep behind the gates. The dogs like to startle me when I walk past them. Many streets here are named after famous people: Sebastian Bach, L. Van Beethoven, Luigi Pirandello, Victor Hugo, Jorge Santayana, Aldous Huxley, and Leon Tolstoi. Sadly, there does not appear to be a Leon Trotsky Street.
Incidentally, if any of you are pondering names for your first imaginary child, I suggest Cuauhtemoc.
I don't know if I'll get to play any sports here at all, but the university offers several, including tenís, frontón (kind of like racquetball), basquetbol, futbol soccer, and futbol rápido. Futbol rápido is basically what we Americans would call indoor soccer, except that UAG's futbol rápido field is outdoors. It must not be the futbol rápido season or something, because they need to replace the artificial turf on it badly.
I went to my first ever professional soccer match on Tuesday with my American housemates; UAG was playing a preseason warm-up against the famous Argentine club Boca Juniors. At the game I got a giant ball of fudge covered in pecans for only 15 pesos, plus a personal pizza for only 25. Lots of things here are served with sauce packets, like the bags of potato chips in the vending machines at school, and my pizza was no exception. It came with two packets labeled "Salsa Catsup," although the sauce wasn't really either of those things.
I must have spaced out while I was eating my giant ball of fudge and waiting for the game to start, because I thought the players were still doing warm-ups until I noticed that they were wearing different colored shirts and were passing and playing defense. I asked one of my housemates, who informed me that the game had in fact been in progress for the past eight or nine minutes.
The final score was 1-1, unless some other goals were scored that I don't know about.
(Incidentally, before the game started, I saw a couple of people sleeping inside the luggage compartment on the outside of a tour bus, and I have the photographic evidence to prove it. I don't care what you find comfortable; that's just weird.)
Call me crazy, but whenever I visit a new place, I love to go into any grocery or convenience store I can find looking for new foods. I also like eating food from tiny local taco shops and street vendors here for the same reason. It makes me feel more Mexican, and it's cheap. If the food is served piping hot, it's probably pretty safe, although I should try to be more careful about this in the future.
You can also get some interesting things from the vending machines here. The major purveyor of packaged snack foods here is a company called Bimbo, and their logo consists of a dopey, smiling white bear wearing a chef hat. The other day I got rebanadas, basically two pieces of hard toast with frosting on them, from the Bimbo machine.
So, many of the other international students are going to either Mexico City or Puerto Vallarta this weekend. I am going to neither of those places, because I, perhaps wrongly, did not want to spend the money. It all works out, though, because I became somewhat ill on Wednesday and wouldn't have felt well enough to leave on Thursday.
There is a special University of Texas Houston research program for such cases that pays $160, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through, plus a 50% chance you'll only receive a placebo. Besides which, they apparently don't let you do the program if you have a fever of 102.
But don't cry for me, Argentina. I'm starting to feel better, and I probably don't have any of those diseases that always kill people in Oregon Trail. And there are plenty of things I can do in Guadalajara this weekend.
Sometimes I wish I had a friend that would follow me around and tell me not to do stupid things, like a miniaturized, shoulder-mounted version of Anthony.
James 1:5-8
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
I wish I had brought a towel.
Part the Second of my reflections on my month in Guadalajara.
On my first weekend here I went downtown twice, once on Saturday with a tour for the international students, and the next day on my own. On Sunday, I went to San Juan de Dios, which I have heard is the largest covered market in all of Latin America, and spent a few hours there. The market has three levels, and you can buy all kinds of everything there. I bought several things and ate some tasty food that may or may not have been sanitary. Unfortunately, I forgot that you are supposed to haggle with the vendors, so I probably ended up paying what we may affectionately refer to as "stupid American tourist prices."
I also went to a mass at the big cathedral since I was already downtown anyway and I couldn't locate a Protestant church here if I tried. (I have tried, actually, and while they do exist, I can't locate them.) Now, there are a number of beggars who congregate in front of the cathedral looking for handouts. Most of them seem to be women with babies or small children. The women all seem to wear gray shawls, because I guess it helps them look more beggarly. The children run around with stickers and try to stick them on people without being invited to do so, in hopes of being rewarded with a few coins. Most people would flee these sticker-wielding children and run in the other direction, but I actually like stickers, so on Sunday I went and bought a couple; the cover of my notebook now sports a sun wearing sunglasses and a bumblebee giving two thumbs up. This transaction probably confused the beggars more than anything.
It is sad, when you think about it. Where do they sleep? What do they eat? Do they have family?
In the evening, dozens and dozens of mariachis congregate near San Juan de Dios. They look kind of like matadors, except a little less fancy, and will play a song for you for a small fee. I have not yet stayed downtown late enough to hear them play; as I was leaving on Sunday, they were just starting to come out of the woodwork, although for some reason they didn't seem to have any instruments with them.
Now, I had gotten downtown without too many problems, but as I am going home, I decide it would be a good idea to take a random city bus without looking where it is going. This probably ranks as one of the top five dumbest things I have ever done, although I am not sure, because I refuse to make that list. Such a list would be funny for you, dear reader, but depressing for me. Anyway, the bus drives for over an hour from the city out into the middle of nowhere. I think at one point we went through a marsh.
So, it turns out the bus has driven all the way to the airport, which is to the extreme northeast, outside the city. My house is on the WESTERN edge of the city. Problems.
Now, the city buses can get crowded at times. At one point on the ride the bus is standing-room-only, and there are wall-to-wall Mexicans hanging all over me. But by the time we reach the middle of nowhere, also known as the airport, I am the only real passenger left. The driver looks at me and says, "¿Qué haces?" (What are you doing?) I tell him I thought the bus went around in a circle. Apparently it doesn't. He gets out and talks to a few people outside a nearby building for several minutes; they are probably laughing at me.
Eventually he heads back in the opposite direction and drops me off somewhere, I'm not sure where. I wait and wait for the bus he told me to wait for, but it never comes, so eventually I ask another driver, and he tells me a different number. So I wait for that bus and get on it, hoping to get to Avenida Patria, a major road that I use on the way to the university. The problem is that Patria is an enormous road, and the stops really aren't marked so well, and I'm sort of enjoying seeing the city, and I'm kind of shy about speaking Mexican since I have a hard time understanding people, so I just sit there for a while. Eventually I ask where Patria is, and the driver tells me, "Ya pasamos," (We already passed it), so I immediately get off and flag down another bus with the same number going the opposite way.
After I get to Patria, I eventually find another bus which is supposed to go to the university, so I get on, but the bus drives and drives and I never see anything I recognize. It gets to be 10 o'clock, and the driver makes everyone get off for the evening. I ask where the university is; apparently we have already passed it. Apparently the bus doesn't stop at the university per se, it only goes by it. My backpack gets caught on the seat. I start yelling at the bus driver in Spanglish. The driver says he is sorry in that voice that people use when they don't actually mean it.
Long story short, the taxi ride home cost 52 pesos, and it got me there fast enough. By contrast, for only 5 pesos, a mere fraction of the cost, dear reader, you can board just about any city bus you want and ride for hours and hours without getting anywhere.
I did get to see a lot of the city this way. I can now tell you that the city of Guadalajara has at least three Wal-Mart Supercenters, a million and a half Oxxo convenience stores, a million and one government-owned Pemex gas stations, a small army of street vendors, and several El Pollo Pepe restaurants, among other things.
I like to tell my Mexican roommate that all the El Pollo Pepe restaurants are calling his name, wanting him to eat them, because he's never been to one. Their advertising slogan is "Tenemos el sabor que más se lleva." Loosely translated, this means that their food tastes the best, all the cool kids are doing it, and your parents will never find out. (Apologies to Isaac Freeman for stealing his joke.)
(Update: I have finally located a Protestant church, but I had to pull a few teeth to do it. I think the population is something like 97% Catholic here. Also, there are at least four Wal-Mart Supercenters in Guadalajara.)
So far I have yet to embark on a non-university-guided city excursion (or as I like to call them, a "crazy adventure") without having to use a taxi at some point, although I am getting better at using the buses. So far the taxis have been pretty fair to me, but one of my housemates told me that he and a few other international students had been significantly overcharged on one of their outings. Fortunately, Americans can afford to get taken for a ride.
A lot of people here have jobs that I am very glad I don't have. For example, I would hate to be the guy whose job it is to try to walk around and talk strangers into buying crap they don't want. I took a taxi ride home from downtown the other day and saw an old man walking between lanes on the highway, trying to sell flowers to the motorists. I kind of felt sorry for him. If I had a cute Mexican girlfriend, I totally would buy her some of that guy's flowers.
Sadly, no cute girlfriends at all, regardless of nationality. If you were to assemble all of my past and present girlfriends in a room together, it would be kind of like visiting the United Nations building immediately after an anthrax evacuation. If you were to place them all end-to-end along the circumference of the earth, they would converge at a point.
Guadalajara has a lovely springlike climate, but it sure does rain a lot here in the summer. I get wet sometimes.
This probably isn't what your Spanish dictionary will tell you, but here in Guadalajara, pies are pronounced the same way but spelled "pays." We were discussing the Rights of Children in my conversation class the other day and determined that apple pay was one of them. Also, that fringe on a sheet of paper after you tear it out of a notebook.
Then we read an article in that class about how Wal-Mart is the Great Satan because they exploit children in Mexico City. Apparently children can work as baggers there up until the age of 16 and make more than some adults make, but they have to follow all sorts of company rules and don't receive any sort of salary or benefits. I guess they make all their money off of tips.
Afterwards we were divided into teams and quizzed on the contents of the article. A rival team decided to call themselves Hillary Clinton, claiming that she used to be a top lawyer for Wal-Mart. Consequently, my team could not decide whether we wanted to be butterflies or Hillary's main political rival, so we ended up being Las Mariposas Obama.
At least in my neighborhood, the houses are kind of blocky and tend to have a gate and/or a wall separating them from the sidewalks. A lot of families have pet dogs which they keep behind the gates. The dogs like to startle me when I walk past them. Many streets here are named after famous people: Sebastian Bach, L. Van Beethoven, Luigi Pirandello, Victor Hugo, Jorge Santayana, Aldous Huxley, and Leon Tolstoi. Sadly, there does not appear to be a Leon Trotsky Street.
Incidentally, if any of you are pondering names for your first imaginary child, I suggest Cuauhtemoc.
I don't know if I'll get to play any sports here at all, but the university offers several, including tenís, frontón (kind of like racquetball), basquetbol, futbol soccer, and futbol rápido. Futbol rápido is basically what we Americans would call indoor soccer, except that UAG's futbol rápido field is outdoors. It must not be the futbol rápido season or something, because they need to replace the artificial turf on it badly.
I went to my first ever professional soccer match on Tuesday with my American housemates; UAG was playing a preseason warm-up against the famous Argentine club Boca Juniors. At the game I got a giant ball of fudge covered in pecans for only 15 pesos, plus a personal pizza for only 25. Lots of things here are served with sauce packets, like the bags of potato chips in the vending machines at school, and my pizza was no exception. It came with two packets labeled "Salsa Catsup," although the sauce wasn't really either of those things.
I must have spaced out while I was eating my giant ball of fudge and waiting for the game to start, because I thought the players were still doing warm-ups until I noticed that they were wearing different colored shirts and were passing and playing defense. I asked one of my housemates, who informed me that the game had in fact been in progress for the past eight or nine minutes.
The final score was 1-1, unless some other goals were scored that I don't know about.
(Incidentally, before the game started, I saw a couple of people sleeping inside the luggage compartment on the outside of a tour bus, and I have the photographic evidence to prove it. I don't care what you find comfortable; that's just weird.)
Call me crazy, but whenever I visit a new place, I love to go into any grocery or convenience store I can find looking for new foods. I also like eating food from tiny local taco shops and street vendors here for the same reason. It makes me feel more Mexican, and it's cheap. If the food is served piping hot, it's probably pretty safe, although I should try to be more careful about this in the future.
You can also get some interesting things from the vending machines here. The major purveyor of packaged snack foods here is a company called Bimbo, and their logo consists of a dopey, smiling white bear wearing a chef hat. The other day I got rebanadas, basically two pieces of hard toast with frosting on them, from the Bimbo machine.
So, many of the other international students are going to either Mexico City or Puerto Vallarta this weekend. I am going to neither of those places, because I, perhaps wrongly, did not want to spend the money. It all works out, though, because I became somewhat ill on Wednesday and wouldn't have felt well enough to leave on Thursday.
There is a special University of Texas Houston research program for such cases that pays $160, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through, plus a 50% chance you'll only receive a placebo. Besides which, they apparently don't let you do the program if you have a fever of 102.
But don't cry for me, Argentina. I'm starting to feel better, and I probably don't have any of those diseases that always kill people in Oregon Trail. And there are plenty of things I can do in Guadalajara this weekend.
Sometimes I wish I had a friend that would follow me around and tell me not to do stupid things, like a miniaturized, shoulder-mounted version of Anthony.
James 1:5-8
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
I wish I had brought a towel.
Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city
Originally posted Monday, July 21, 2008 at 9:40pm
A few people have been asking me how Mexico is. The short answer is, it is Mexicotastic. For those of you who know me well, I hope this both violates your expectations and fulfills them at the same time.
I am taking taking two classes at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, a grammar in the morning and conversation afterwards. It's pretty exciting that I am actually an international student here; I even have a student ID and everything. But for some reason my name was copied down wrong on their official list, and my ID card would have said "Tomonthy Graf" if I hadn't stopped them. Why did I stop them?
Also, for some reason my host calls me Mateo, but I don't mind as long as I can remember who I am. (But if you are my sister and you are reading this, you are still not allowed to call me Timothy.)
Besides my academic classes, I am also doing a few other activities here: a Mexican cooking class, a couple of piano and singing lessons, and what is officially described as a salsa class but seems more like Latino aerobics.
Our first full day we had an orientation on campus and had to listen to several different speakers tell us mostly unimportant things. Included in this orientation was a short video about the university. The voice-over man was some Mexican person who spoke pretty good English, except that we got to hear him mispronounce the words "integral formation" two dozen times. Apparently they're pretty big on their integral formation here at UAG.
One of the speakers was representing the University of Texas Houston. They have a research program here at UAG to study genetic factors involved in whether travellers to Mexico get Montezuma's revenge or not. I am getting $60 or $80 to participate in their study by providing a couple of blood samples and filling out a daily log of symptoms, and if I get sick, I think I will make a lot more money than that. The sad part is, I think their program actually provides an economic incentive for contracting diarrhea.
En route to Mexico I had to fly from Manchester to Philadelphia to Chicago to Guadalajara. My first two flights were on US Airways and my third was on Mexicana. At Chicago O'Hare you have to take a little train from Terminal 2, the normal part of the airport, to get to Terminal 5, the international terminal. In line to go through security for Terminal 5, the security guard informed me that I needed a boardng pass and suggested I get back on the little train and go to Terminal 2 to get one from the US Airways ticketing area. However, the US Airways agent suggested I go back to Terminal 5 to get one from the Mexicana ticketing area. Long story short, I boarded my flight two minutes after it was scheduled to depart, but they must have really wanted me, because they were calling my name plaintively over the intercom. The plane was almost half-empty and didn't leave for another 15 minutes.
Guadalajara is the second-largest city in Mexico and the capital of the state of Jalisco. It is home to the director Guillermo del Toro, a number of Jose Clemente Orozco murals, and mariachi music. There is even a special Spanish word, Tapatío, which refers to Guadalajaran things. Also, the city has 3 top-flight professional soccer teams. The biggest team in Mexico is Club Deportivo Guadalajara S.A. de C.V., better known as Chivas. They share a stadium with F.C. Atlas A.C. And finally, there is the Club de Futbol Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, also known as UAG or Los Tecos. The Tecos are owned by the university and play on a field called Estadio 3 de Marzo. For reasons that I may never fully understand, UAG also has some sort of American football team, which plays inside Estadio 23 de Octubre.
Incidentally, I'm thinking about starting a Society for the Abolition of Gratuitously Long Soccer Team Names, and Possibly Also for the Abolition of Other Kinds of Gratuitously Long Things As Well. We'll call it SAGLSTNXPAAOQKGLTAW for short.
My host is a Mexican woman who doesn't speak English, hereafter referred to as "the señora." I believe she has 4 sons, all of whom are married and live elsewhere. About 20 minutes after I first arrived, a whole horde of people, including a pregnant woman and several small children, barged through the door. That kind of freaked me out a bit, because the house is not that large and there are already five international students staying here, but fortunately they were only visiting.
I'm sure I had all sorts of preconceptions and stereotypes in my mind of what Mexico would be like, but so far I have only seen one person sleeping on top of a car. And I mean, really, if that's what you find comfortable, more power to you.
I think my host makes a career out of hosting students. Two of us are from the University of Oklahoma, two others are medical students, and all of us are American except for my roommate, who is a Mexican from the state of Sonora and doesn't speak English. Javier here likes to watch television while sending an endless stream of text messages to his girlfriend, or as he likes to call her, his "novia." It is amazing how many American movies and TV shows are dubbed into Spanish here. Last week Javier and I watched part of "The Longest Yard." It was about American football, and it was in Spanish, which means neither one of us fully understood what was going on.
The house is small but cozy, and about a half-hour walk to the university. It does make me appreciate all the things I take for granted in the US, like Catholic churches that don't ring their bells all the time directly across the street from my house, or freight trains that don't blow their horns all the time 200 yards from my house. On the plus side, there is a churro stand nearby, which is great if you want a delicious churro with any one of three delectable fillings, but sort of irrelevant if you don't want a delicious churro. The señora feeds us three meals a day on weekdays, and her food is pretty good.
Also, the señora has a lot of English-language coffee-table books about various places in the U.S, probably from previous guests. As a result I have been learning all about Little Rock, Arkansas, more than I ever dreamed possible. Every prominent Arkansas business imaginable is covered in this book, including banks, real-estate agencies, and wastewater treatment firms.
I'm also reading a short book my sister bought me in Costa Rica called "Carta de Santiago," which is a commentary on the Epistle of James. At first I thought this book had the worst page numbering ever, because after page 16, there is a sequence that goes 21, 18, 19, 24, 17, 22, 23, 20, 29, 26, 27, 32, 25, 30, 31, 28, and 33 before returning to the sequential order that we all know and love. As it turns out, however, all of the page numbers are on the right pages; it's just that whoever bound the pages didn't know what they were doing.
Seeing all those numbers almost makes me feel a little wistful. I'm no mathematician, dear reader, but sometimes I think it's sad that I'm not studying to become one, because if I were a mathematician, then all the natural numbers could be my friends, and then I could have infinitely many friends, each one greater than the last.
As always, a bit of Scripture:
James 4:4 You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Here is hoping that I can be "in the world without being of the world." Your faithful servant,
Tomonthy
A few people have been asking me how Mexico is. The short answer is, it is Mexicotastic. For those of you who know me well, I hope this both violates your expectations and fulfills them at the same time.
I am taking taking two classes at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, a grammar in the morning and conversation afterwards. It's pretty exciting that I am actually an international student here; I even have a student ID and everything. But for some reason my name was copied down wrong on their official list, and my ID card would have said "Tomonthy Graf" if I hadn't stopped them. Why did I stop them?
Also, for some reason my host calls me Mateo, but I don't mind as long as I can remember who I am. (But if you are my sister and you are reading this, you are still not allowed to call me Timothy.)
Besides my academic classes, I am also doing a few other activities here: a Mexican cooking class, a couple of piano and singing lessons, and what is officially described as a salsa class but seems more like Latino aerobics.
Our first full day we had an orientation on campus and had to listen to several different speakers tell us mostly unimportant things. Included in this orientation was a short video about the university. The voice-over man was some Mexican person who spoke pretty good English, except that we got to hear him mispronounce the words "integral formation" two dozen times. Apparently they're pretty big on their integral formation here at UAG.
One of the speakers was representing the University of Texas Houston. They have a research program here at UAG to study genetic factors involved in whether travellers to Mexico get Montezuma's revenge or not. I am getting $60 or $80 to participate in their study by providing a couple of blood samples and filling out a daily log of symptoms, and if I get sick, I think I will make a lot more money than that. The sad part is, I think their program actually provides an economic incentive for contracting diarrhea.
En route to Mexico I had to fly from Manchester to Philadelphia to Chicago to Guadalajara. My first two flights were on US Airways and my third was on Mexicana. At Chicago O'Hare you have to take a little train from Terminal 2, the normal part of the airport, to get to Terminal 5, the international terminal. In line to go through security for Terminal 5, the security guard informed me that I needed a boardng pass and suggested I get back on the little train and go to Terminal 2 to get one from the US Airways ticketing area. However, the US Airways agent suggested I go back to Terminal 5 to get one from the Mexicana ticketing area. Long story short, I boarded my flight two minutes after it was scheduled to depart, but they must have really wanted me, because they were calling my name plaintively over the intercom. The plane was almost half-empty and didn't leave for another 15 minutes.
Guadalajara is the second-largest city in Mexico and the capital of the state of Jalisco. It is home to the director Guillermo del Toro, a number of Jose Clemente Orozco murals, and mariachi music. There is even a special Spanish word, Tapatío, which refers to Guadalajaran things. Also, the city has 3 top-flight professional soccer teams. The biggest team in Mexico is Club Deportivo Guadalajara S.A. de C.V., better known as Chivas. They share a stadium with F.C. Atlas A.C. And finally, there is the Club de Futbol Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, also known as UAG or Los Tecos. The Tecos are owned by the university and play on a field called Estadio 3 de Marzo. For reasons that I may never fully understand, UAG also has some sort of American football team, which plays inside Estadio 23 de Octubre.
Incidentally, I'm thinking about starting a Society for the Abolition of Gratuitously Long Soccer Team Names, and Possibly Also for the Abolition of Other Kinds of Gratuitously Long Things As Well. We'll call it SAGLSTNXPAAOQKGLTAW for short.
My host is a Mexican woman who doesn't speak English, hereafter referred to as "the señora." I believe she has 4 sons, all of whom are married and live elsewhere. About 20 minutes after I first arrived, a whole horde of people, including a pregnant woman and several small children, barged through the door. That kind of freaked me out a bit, because the house is not that large and there are already five international students staying here, but fortunately they were only visiting.
I'm sure I had all sorts of preconceptions and stereotypes in my mind of what Mexico would be like, but so far I have only seen one person sleeping on top of a car. And I mean, really, if that's what you find comfortable, more power to you.
I think my host makes a career out of hosting students. Two of us are from the University of Oklahoma, two others are medical students, and all of us are American except for my roommate, who is a Mexican from the state of Sonora and doesn't speak English. Javier here likes to watch television while sending an endless stream of text messages to his girlfriend, or as he likes to call her, his "novia." It is amazing how many American movies and TV shows are dubbed into Spanish here. Last week Javier and I watched part of "The Longest Yard." It was about American football, and it was in Spanish, which means neither one of us fully understood what was going on.
The house is small but cozy, and about a half-hour walk to the university. It does make me appreciate all the things I take for granted in the US, like Catholic churches that don't ring their bells all the time directly across the street from my house, or freight trains that don't blow their horns all the time 200 yards from my house. On the plus side, there is a churro stand nearby, which is great if you want a delicious churro with any one of three delectable fillings, but sort of irrelevant if you don't want a delicious churro. The señora feeds us three meals a day on weekdays, and her food is pretty good.
Also, the señora has a lot of English-language coffee-table books about various places in the U.S, probably from previous guests. As a result I have been learning all about Little Rock, Arkansas, more than I ever dreamed possible. Every prominent Arkansas business imaginable is covered in this book, including banks, real-estate agencies, and wastewater treatment firms.
I'm also reading a short book my sister bought me in Costa Rica called "Carta de Santiago," which is a commentary on the Epistle of James. At first I thought this book had the worst page numbering ever, because after page 16, there is a sequence that goes 21, 18, 19, 24, 17, 22, 23, 20, 29, 26, 27, 32, 25, 30, 31, 28, and 33 before returning to the sequential order that we all know and love. As it turns out, however, all of the page numbers are on the right pages; it's just that whoever bound the pages didn't know what they were doing.
Seeing all those numbers almost makes me feel a little wistful. I'm no mathematician, dear reader, but sometimes I think it's sad that I'm not studying to become one, because if I were a mathematician, then all the natural numbers could be my friends, and then I could have infinitely many friends, each one greater than the last.
As always, a bit of Scripture:
James 4:4 You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Here is hoping that I can be "in the world without being of the world." Your faithful servant,
Tomonthy
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