Last looks

I moved out of my apartment in Xalapa and am now back in Mexico City for one final week of tacos, cervezas, and farewells. There are few signs of Swine Flu having ever been here, except for the city health workers who now stand in the subway, squeezing hand sanitizer out of condiment bottles into the hands of riders before they board. I hope they keep that going—it's great!

Here are some shots from the last few weeks, as I tried to be more disciplined with taking my camera around with me.

The elementary school in Coatepec, near Xalapa

Two streams converge to make this nice little swimming hole at the foot of La Granada waterfall, Coatepec

A neighbor lady talks on her phone while standing on her historic-tastic balcony, Xalapa

Phillip and Itzel in my Xalapa apartment, in the jarana-filled days after Son Jarocho camp

A fandango on my last night in Xalapa (see my official blog for more on this later.)

After moving out of Xalapa, I went to visit my friends Naomi, Jose, and Will in beautiful Queretaro. In New Spain, it used to be the gateway Mexico's mysterious northern territories.

A political rally for the PRI party in Queretaro.

Audio Postcard: Someone Else's Serenade

Ok, before you get depressed by the title of this audio postcard, let me say that it is actually a recording of one of my most contented moments in Mexico. It came after I was feeling pretty rotten yesterday, on both the physical and loneliness scale. Nothing like being sick and alone in a country that has been nothing but sick and alone for two weeks.

But things were looking up by nightfall. I was feeling better, and working through my tapes from Son Jarocho camp. After a few hours, when I took off my headphones around midnight, I was surprised to hear a sound that had been familiar to me back in Mexico City, but is exceedingly rare here in Son Jarocho country. Mariachis were playing somewhere in the open air.

I climbed up onto my roof, where the sound was easier to trace. The mariachis were about half a mile away, standing in front of the well-lit yellow church of San José. The most I could see were their silhouettes strumming and sombreros bobbing. I scanned the nearby balconies and rooftops, hoping to spot the lucky recipient of their serenade, but no luck. No problem, I thought; that made it all the easier to pretend it was me.

Jejeje

¡Yay! The flu is so last week. Everyone's in a good mood, enjoying this strange interval when business are reopening, but school is still out. Kids are sitting in their living rooms and on their porches, wearing T-shirts and taking their school lessons over the radio.

I've been lucky to have a steady stream of visitors from the capital, all of them super low-maintenance since a simple visit to the fruit market is like Disneyworld for them. As I type, we've got some Bowie on the stereo, Caley is roasting poblano peppers and Zach is on the next bus to Xalapa. Don't want to jinx it, but maybe my last three weeks in Mexico will be just as festive as the first.

Swine time

While I'm glad to not be breathing in their pathogens, I totally miss my friends in the capital. My weekends in Xalapa are pretty low-key compared to those D.F., and while this has been great for my work ethic, my freaked-out solitary self was not happy about it last night. 

I stayed in, taking a break from the Orwellian online updates with a novel. Between pages I tried to convince myself that, by moving to sleepy Xalapa two months ago, I should be grateful that I can now just hole up and wait for this thing to blow over. But dang it, I'm missing out on all the action! I want to go downtown and have a soldier give me a face mask! Chucking my novel aside, I fell into a funk. I realized that I've probably got a good deal of boredom and paranoia ahead of me, and only my houseplants to share it with.

At 10 o'clock I ventured out to a payphone to call my old roommate in the capital. Xalapa's streets were deserted, which is normal. I called her twice and she didn't pick up. Walking back to my empty apartment, I imagined all the small-scale rooftop parties that were probably springing up all over in Mexico City as an alternative to the closed theaters and clubs. Scared as they may be, no doubt people were excited on on some level— high-fiving over the obligatory two-week vacation, and cracking pig jokes from behind their matching cubrebocas. 

Visitors in Veracruz

Had an awesome weekend with my visitors from the D.F., Q-Town and Guad. It was so good having lovely people in my apartment that I began to reconsider this whole living alone business. Monk-like solitude in the mountains is cool and all, but I was jonesin' for some company and very un-monk-like gossip (side note: thanks for leaving that book about monks, Mom)

After feasting on much local cheese in my apartment, our group headed to the art opening of our fellow f.b. friend Martie, an inspiring 78-year-old paper maker from New Mexico, whose command of the Spanish vosotros verb-form hints at an exotic European past. While checking out the exhibits I began discussing the afterparty options with my friends. Overhearing me, an older man initiated the following conversation:

Man: Do you need help finding your way to the club?

Me: Actually we do. I just moved here.

Man: Ok. So you know Juarez street?

Me: Er...no.

Man: Ok, how about the Monument to the Mother?

Me: Um....not exactly.

Man: (exasperated) Ok, Sears?

Me: Yes!

Man: Ok, from Sears you walk up the hill to the Municipal Library.

Me: (blank stare)

Man: To the Burger King.

Me: Got it!

Man: (in an unusually blunt manner) You know all of your monuments, but none of mine.

This must have prompted an involuntary chin-quiver on my part, because the man appeared to immediately regret saying this, and offered a suggestion to make amends. Why didn't I take my friends to Cafe Tierra Luna instead of the afterparty, as there was rumored to be a flamenco show?

Feeling like I suddenly owed a cultural debt to this man, to Mexico, and by extension to the entire Iberian peninsula, I loudly announced to my friends that were going to take in some flamenco. We thanked the man and piled into a cab.

Xalapeños doing some Friday-night flamenco at Cafe Tierra Luna

The next day, we traveled to the nearby town of Coatepec to attend Martie's papermaking workshop. It was held in the courtyard of an old museum, and well-attended by the town's artistic folk, including many f.b. people who've settled nearby for their research. We spent all morning with our arms submerged in tubs full of water and pulp, and left with placemats containing our creations rolled up inside. It reminded me of the best parts of preschool.

The next day we piled into Jose's car and headed to the coast. We landed at the tranquil beach of Chachalacas, which was as fun to visit as it was to say ten times fast. The day was cloudy and chilly by coastal standards, so we abandoned our plans to swim and stuck to enjoying some fresh fish and octopus before walking to the nearby dunes. I found some snazzy shells long the way.

(from left) Me, a tiger, a dead bird, and a shark at our seaside cafe in Chachalacas.

Veracruz beaches get a bad rap when compared to their glitzier counterparts in Cancun, Acapulco, etc. But I think their muddy sand, murky water and local bathing dress code of oversized T-shirts instead of swimsuits have a strange appeal.

That evening we pulled into Veracruz, the oldest port city in Mexico (where Hernán Cortés landed in 1519). Since this city is 50% of the reason why I am in Mexico this year, it deserves it's own entry at a later date. Good thing I'm about to hop on a bus and go back today, this time to pick up another visitor: my auntie!

(thank you M. Warp for the righteous photos)

So fresh and so clean

After several days of doing very little, I woke up this morning and felt peppy again. I decided to capitalize on this in several ways. First I hand-washed my bath towel on the roof, suddenly causing it to weigh about 75 lbs, which only made me feel even more invincible when I hung it up to dry. Then I came downstairs and made my favorite oatmeal breakfast, this time with a real vanilla bean since today was going to be spectacular.

While breakfasting I stumbled on this gem of an entry on Macheesemo, one of my favorite cooking blogs. I couldn't hold back my comment, which I typed over the chipper sounds of the Nuñez Sisters' 1960s accordion polka compilation CD. In the time that it took me to wash my entire collection of four dishes, Mr. Macheesmo had replied, leading me to feel that this awesome day now had my online cooking hero's blessing.

I suddenly realized that my visitors (f.b. friends from Guadalajara and Querétaro) are arriving in only two days. This got me even more excited. I decided to buy food for them to diffuse my enthusiasm. I put on flip-flops and a T-shirt, since I now live in a casual college town instead of a major world capital, and left my apartment to hit the cobblestones. I was immediately engulfed in a new sensation - heat. Hot hot heat. Mexico's version of winter (awesome to begin with) is over!

The route to the supermarket led me through the historic heart of downtown Xalapa. The marimba players were out and cha-cha-cha-ing under the portico. I also saw lots of couples making out on park benches. Spring really IS here! 

As I hiked up the tall cobblestone hill to the supermarket, I realized that there was no point in buying any produce until Friday, when I can simply swing by the outdoor market in my neighborhood an hour before my guests arrive. The same goes for bread, eggs, milk, cheese, tortillas, and chocolates—all of these things are available for crazy cheap at mom-and-pop stores within spitting distance of my apartment. I chuckled upon realizing this, threw some Jose Cuervo and a box of Splenda into my shopping cart, and headed to the cash register.

Tea time for me time

Am back in the great state of Veracruz. Coming home today to my apartment in Xalapa, after a three-week absence, was muy satisfying. When I opened the door, I took a quick inventory: everything still here, nothing carried away by thieves or ants. Yes! I then threw down my suitcases, which have become my new Least Favorite Possessions, and ran to the kitchen to relocate my new Most Favorite Possession, which I immediately set to work on making a long-awaited cup of tea.

While enjoying this moment of zen, I started looking back on my pictures from the last few weeks. They reminded me that there were plenty of equally lovely moments on the road, too (see below), so perhaps I owe my suitcases an apology.

(A weathervane and rain cloud in Guanajuato, Mexico; set to the tune of Bésame en la Boca)

Bloggles

Urrgh, the dreaded first entry back after being away for too long. In the last three or six weeks, I can't remember, I have been tossing around the same geographic circuit in a perpetual, lone gym sock-like motion. This means I had lots of fun and did occasional backflips, but mostly craved the moment when the ride would be over. Now it's high time to cool off, and more importantly, to have someone smell me.

February was mostly composed of trips to new lands,  such as Chiapas, Valle de Bravo, Oaxaca, and Michoacan. These are already starting to congeal into one big, blurry super-trip memory in my head, thanks to my awesomely disciplined blogging on the road (note lack of link to further reading). But let it be recorded now that you had much fun, Ms. TwoShoes, even though two of those trips were failed butterfly expeditions.

Late February and March consisted of return visits and retraced steps. Our Fulbright midyear meetup brought me back to the same hotel where we'd landed, clueless, in August, only this time I felt much more at home with my hoop earrings and knock-off designer purse. I had so much fun catching up with the far-flung f.b. gang that I wound up delaying my move to Xalapa another day, so that I could tour the south side canals of Xochimilco with them for a second (totally sweet) time.

My move to the quaint, Alpiney-fresh mountain community of Xalapa took place the next day on a bus, and given my love for The Sound of Music the romance of this was almost unbearable. Fortunately I was bogged down with 6 months' worth of steadily accumulated Mexican crap, such as my collection of knock-off designer purses, making the Fraulein Maria dance to my new apartment pretty much impossible.

I spent 72 lovely hours in my new home, which you can tour thanks to a video by its rad former inhabitants. I spent most of that time inside, working, lounging, and sewing buttons on several sweaters which, again, was suddenly the neatest thing ever in my country surroundings. I did manage to get out to the supermarket, where I realized that setting up a Mexican kitchen from scratch is a tricky but totally exhilarating task. Vanilla extract, for example, comes in only one size: half-liter. Since I didn't have a shopping list, I just conjured up one of those Flemish still lifes in my head and worked from that instead.

But before I knew it, my country life was interrupted and I lugged a suitcase back onto a bus bound for Mexico City, in order to fly back to Chicago for the weekend. Over the course of three days, the weather morphed before me like the colors of a mood ring. What started out green and peaceful suddenly flared up red and hot in the hazy Wednesday evening sunset at the Mexico City TAPO terminal. This was followed by the blue, cold drizzle of Chicago, where I stayed for three days, got interviewed by a parade of professors for a grad program, and turned twenty-four.

In one of my interviews, I snuck a sleep-deprived yawn while my interviewer looked through my file. Noticing that I keep a blog, he commented that blogs often make him feel guilty when he slacks off on their upkeep. I told him I could not understand this better, since I had spent weeks away from my own blogs. But, I had to ask, since I was practically in slumber-party gossip mode, hadn't he ever experienced the feeling of bloggles?

What is bloggles, he asked, inviting me to proceed to ruin whatever academic potential he'd seen in my file.

Holding back another yawn, I suddenly found myself speaking openly for the first time all day. It's the way you start to see the world when you're consistently and actively blogging, I said. It makes you look for themes, and try to frame moments with good composition, like if you were taking a picture. It's good for your imagination, and helps you (er, should help you) to be concise.