Sense of Place – Part I
Until the events of a couple of weeks ago, (Am I Safe) I would generally walk alone in the countryside every morning taking the same road each day. This is the road that leads out of town, to the canyon area and eventually to Arandas, tequila capital of the world. After over two months of walking this same road I found that I had become bored with walking and started to jog, run or take the bicycle out.
What never bored me though was the road. It’s not much to look at but it was ever changing and always showing me something new. Whether it was the people I shared the road with, the animals I came across, a shift in the sun, the crops that line the road, the lake that was starting to fill or the smoke from the brick makers, everyday was like my first time.
When I first arrived the weather was hot, dry and dusty. Everything was a shade of brown covered by a layer of dust. I felt like I had ridden into an old western movie where everything is wilted from the heat and there is just a heavy silence. With the start of the rainy season in June all that has changed. Where I could walk on the side of the road before the grasses and weeds have grown to shoulder height in places and everything is green. It is amazing how such a brown, scrub like landscape can change so dramatically. Oh, by the way the weather is pretty close to perfect, warm to hot during the day, humidity is negligible, the evenings cool off and it generally rains overnight.
Animal and insect life abounds on the road. The cows in the fields are always watching me as I approach to see if I am there to feed them, even as they are munching on fresh grass.
One of my first mornings out I saw what I have come to call my little blue birds. They are a tiny bird the size of a wren with a neon purple blue body that looks like velvet with wings of black and gold. And they are quick, it’s almost as if they know you have gotten a glimpse of them and then they are gone
Other bird life is abundant with the hawks, black and white stripped eagles and then the vultures hovering about. I have vowed never to leave the house without my camera but whenever I do there are always the missed photo ops. One day it was a turtle and a white crane sharing a rock in the middle of a pond to sun them selves on while across the road the skeleton of a tree was filled with black crows.
The grouse or “little chickens” as they are called are the fun ones to startle. They always seem to be in pairs and make a very distinct whup, whup, whup sound with their wings as they slowly take flight. Never going very far or gaining much altitude.
After the rains had started it was the first overcast morning I had walked and all the landscape was a subdued grayish green when I encountered my friend. Mi amiga is pictured in the photograph for PostCardFromMexico Numero Dos, please see below. She stood out so brightly that morning I thought she was a Monarch butterfly. I stopped and spent some time there watching her before resuming my walk only to find her still there on my return. And there she was the next morning, same bush, same branch. And she remained there for a week, every morning it was like visiting an old friend. And then she was gone.
There have been many spiders, dragon flies and giant green beetles but never another one like her. On the last morning I walked the bushes on the west side of the road were filled with giant black beetles while on the east side of the road the bushes were empty.
Turtles and huge black caterpillars are always climbing on to the road for the heat but really it turns into a suicide mission for them.
Like I said the road was always showing me something new and sometimes unexpected. One morning it was a dead dog lying in the grass on the side of the road. You couldn’t see it till you were upon it because of the grasses and even after that first morning it would continue to startle me. But I also became intrigued and developed a morbid fascination with that dog. It like the road was in a constant state of change. That first morning it was just lying there on its side but over the next couple of days it became bloated and the legs of its right side stuck straight up in the air. Over the weeks that followed it would slowly deflate and disappear. It had been a medium sized dog with reddish brown fur but it started to look more like a wet bath towel that someone had tossed out their car window. Then one morning, of all the strange things to happen it was gone. All that was left were a few tufts of fur tangled in the grasses but the rest of it was just gone, bones and all.
The sky here is big, and as you walk up the hill out of town it only gets bigger as you look back. When you are up on the high plain above town everything is laid out before you and you can see mountains, plateaus and valleys miles and miles away. But the sky, it is the sky that brings so much change to the road. Some mornings you are walking in the clouds, some mornings they are below you in the valley, some mornings they are high above you or they may just not be there. It is this constant change in the sky and the light that lets you see things you never encountered before. Like a gate or a lake or the remaining wall of an old, abandoned house. Things that are always there but you never noticed them before the sky played it's trick.
The road is popular with people from town out walking, running or biking. And it is the way to work for many others like the folks who farm the land alongside the road. I have an appreciation for farms and the people that work them. My Grandparents were farmers and I have many fond memories of time spent at the farm. My Grandparents certainly worked hard but I have to think they used more machinery to help with the work than the folks here, here it is manual labor. There is one gentleman who works a field of alfalfa to feed the cattle. He has the field divided into six zones and he is out there harvesting the grass with a machete. He then loads his crop into a wheel barrow to take back to the barn. About the day he finishes one zone the next is ready to be harvested and when he has done all six the first is ready to go again. I am watching acres of corn grow and the farmers walking the field, spreading manure by hand and spraying the field with hand sprayers.
For many weeks I encountered a farmer who would appear at the same time and about the same place on the road each day. There is no gate, no path and no consistent place he would emerge from the fields. He would just walk out on to the side of the road with his bicycle and ride off down the hill. Aside from his mysterious entrance onto the road what makes him so memorable is that as he would ride off down the hill he would let out a yell just like a little kid riding their bike down that hill. To me that yell was such an absolute expression of joy and just having fun with the life you have. I found out recently that is his family farm and each morning when I saw him he would be returning to town from milking the cows.
I do miss my morning walks in the countryside and all they had to offer but like that farmer on his bike no matter what, just enjoy what life has to give you.
This was Part I of Sense of Place, in Part II we will discuss more on the landscape of this area of Mexico while Part III will be about small town life.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Pomegranate and Cactus Fruit
Pomegranate and Cactus Fruit
The other night I ate a pomegranate picked right from the tree. All rich, green hues on the outside and being ripe it had burst open on the tree to expose its deep, ruby red fruit. Too be frank, I didn’t know what to do with it as I was being encouraged to eat it. The pomegranate was too exotic looking to get my mind around and with fruit exposed I was suspect to eat it. It also seemed a bit obscene like a Georgia O'Keefe painting.
“Don’t eat the white, just eat the red. The white is no good.” After some experimenting and scattering the fruit all around me on the floor I figured it out. The pomegranate is a green pod with white compartments that hold the red seeds you eat. The fruit appears dry till you begin to touch the seeds, then they start to release an absolute abundance of juice.
What a treat. The sweetness and the juiciness of those rich red seeds were worth the trepidation and the mess. My hands began to turn red and I’m sure my mouth and face were also.
Many of my stories revolve around visiting folks at their ranches in the country. As I mentioned in a previous post (Spanish 101) I have had the pleasure of meeting a remarkable women who at the age of 96 still maintains an immense garden full of fruit bearing trees with limes, lemons, grapefruit, oranges, peaches, apricots, sour apples that aren’t apples and stuff I have no name for.
Awhile back on what was my first visit to the ranch we were treated to a salsa made by two of the brothers. As everyone sat and talked they picked, peeled and served us the following:
Recipe #1
Diced Oranges - fresh from the tree
Diced Tomatoes - fresh from the vine
Minced Hot Peppers - fresh from the bush
Salt
Grapefruit Juice - fresh squeezed from the tree
For lunch one day there was fresh broccoli and greens they had sent us home with.
Even after my experience with the pomegranate I still wasn’t prepared for the cactus fruit. But it turned out to be somewhat more familiar to me. I knew that you could eat the cactus pads of the nopale but I had no idea that the cactus produced an edible fruit.
During this time of year the cactus bloom and produce fruit called tuna. Some of the tuna is green and has a tangy, sour taste that I have eaten in soups. Other tuna is red, pink or yellow, each one with its own slightly different flavor. To eat one is like putting something in your mouth with the texture of a strawberry but the taste of mixed berries. The most wonderful experience is to eat the tuna in the mornings, right off the cactus and still chilled from the night before. You will see people out picking the tuna everywhere and can find them in the markets for sale. Not only is the tuna eaten as a fruit or used in cookining but makes a great refreshing beverage when blended.
Recently, relatives here had been to the beaches on the west coast and brought us back a fruit, green in color, shaped like a pear the size of a small watermelon and covered with bumpy little spines. When I asked what it tasted like the answer was “Everything. It tastes like all kinds of fruit.” And it did. There were distinct flavors of banana, pineapple, orange and others in a fruit that was thick and kind of creamy.
The fruit and vegetables here may not be uniform in shape and size and may have some blemishes but they are right from the source. A farmer was selling tomatoes in town one weekend. He had his pickup loaded, no crates, no boxes, just tomatoes piled in the bed of the truck. You probably wouldn’t have wanted the ones on the bottom but you know what, they were fresh. These tomatoes weren’t picked green, transported to a warehouse to be gassed and forced to ripen before they reached the supermarket.
Another visit to another ranch one evening and we were eating figs off the bush and picking wild mushrooms for breakfast the next morning. In our yard there is a banana tree with young bananas ripening. There is a tree with fruit that has the texture and flavor of ice cream and then there are the lemon trees they will lay sheets under to collect and dry the blossoms for tea.
I have joked that my new diet is tortillas, beans and beer but in all reality I am most certainly eating better and healthier than I have for many years. The pork, chicken and beef we eat are all raised locally. The amount of processed foods is at a minimum and when we visit folks we are always sent home with fresh eggs or homemade cheese. Aside from the health benefits I have noticed another positive outcome from all this freshness. We produce very little trash in the way of cans, jars and cardboard packaging. With three of us living in this house the amount of trash that is set out each Monday doesn’t fill a normal size trash can halfway.
Look for an upcoming post on Mexican fast food - yes there is McDonalds, Burger King and KFC here but we'll be talking about something better !!!
The other night I ate a pomegranate picked right from the tree. All rich, green hues on the outside and being ripe it had burst open on the tree to expose its deep, ruby red fruit. Too be frank, I didn’t know what to do with it as I was being encouraged to eat it. The pomegranate was too exotic looking to get my mind around and with fruit exposed I was suspect to eat it. It also seemed a bit obscene like a Georgia O'Keefe painting.
“Don’t eat the white, just eat the red. The white is no good.” After some experimenting and scattering the fruit all around me on the floor I figured it out. The pomegranate is a green pod with white compartments that hold the red seeds you eat. The fruit appears dry till you begin to touch the seeds, then they start to release an absolute abundance of juice.
What a treat. The sweetness and the juiciness of those rich red seeds were worth the trepidation and the mess. My hands began to turn red and I’m sure my mouth and face were also.
Many of my stories revolve around visiting folks at their ranches in the country. As I mentioned in a previous post (Spanish 101) I have had the pleasure of meeting a remarkable women who at the age of 96 still maintains an immense garden full of fruit bearing trees with limes, lemons, grapefruit, oranges, peaches, apricots, sour apples that aren’t apples and stuff I have no name for.
Awhile back on what was my first visit to the ranch we were treated to a salsa made by two of the brothers. As everyone sat and talked they picked, peeled and served us the following:
Recipe #1
Diced Oranges - fresh from the tree
Diced Tomatoes - fresh from the vine
Minced Hot Peppers - fresh from the bush
Salt
Grapefruit Juice - fresh squeezed from the tree
For lunch one day there was fresh broccoli and greens they had sent us home with.
Even after my experience with the pomegranate I still wasn’t prepared for the cactus fruit. But it turned out to be somewhat more familiar to me. I knew that you could eat the cactus pads of the nopale but I had no idea that the cactus produced an edible fruit.
During this time of year the cactus bloom and produce fruit called tuna. Some of the tuna is green and has a tangy, sour taste that I have eaten in soups. Other tuna is red, pink or yellow, each one with its own slightly different flavor. To eat one is like putting something in your mouth with the texture of a strawberry but the taste of mixed berries. The most wonderful experience is to eat the tuna in the mornings, right off the cactus and still chilled from the night before. You will see people out picking the tuna everywhere and can find them in the markets for sale. Not only is the tuna eaten as a fruit or used in cookining but makes a great refreshing beverage when blended.
Recently, relatives here had been to the beaches on the west coast and brought us back a fruit, green in color, shaped like a pear the size of a small watermelon and covered with bumpy little spines. When I asked what it tasted like the answer was “Everything. It tastes like all kinds of fruit.” And it did. There were distinct flavors of banana, pineapple, orange and others in a fruit that was thick and kind of creamy.
The fruit and vegetables here may not be uniform in shape and size and may have some blemishes but they are right from the source. A farmer was selling tomatoes in town one weekend. He had his pickup loaded, no crates, no boxes, just tomatoes piled in the bed of the truck. You probably wouldn’t have wanted the ones on the bottom but you know what, they were fresh. These tomatoes weren’t picked green, transported to a warehouse to be gassed and forced to ripen before they reached the supermarket.
Another visit to another ranch one evening and we were eating figs off the bush and picking wild mushrooms for breakfast the next morning. In our yard there is a banana tree with young bananas ripening. There is a tree with fruit that has the texture and flavor of ice cream and then there are the lemon trees they will lay sheets under to collect and dry the blossoms for tea.
I have joked that my new diet is tortillas, beans and beer but in all reality I am most certainly eating better and healthier than I have for many years. The pork, chicken and beef we eat are all raised locally. The amount of processed foods is at a minimum and when we visit folks we are always sent home with fresh eggs or homemade cheese. Aside from the health benefits I have noticed another positive outcome from all this freshness. We produce very little trash in the way of cans, jars and cardboard packaging. With three of us living in this house the amount of trash that is set out each Monday doesn’t fill a normal size trash can halfway.
Look for an upcoming post on Mexican fast food - yes there is McDonalds, Burger King and KFC here but we'll be talking about something better !!!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Am I Safe ???
Am I Safe ???
Last evening, around 9:3pm a man was abducted in our town. I have heard two possible theories on what has happened.
1) Men posing as fake agents of the Mexican FBI took the man and his car into custody because the car had U.S. plates and they claimed they needed to investigate. Their intent being to steal the car, his money and probably ask for ransom. When the Presidente (Mayor) contacted the FBI they said they had no operation going on in San Diego.
2) The second theory is that the man allegedly had drugs in his car and was taken by the Secret Police to a prison in Guadalajara.
Either way nerves are shaken for we are living in what is considered a very safe part of Mexico.
Am I safe ???
This is a question I am constantly asked.
A better question would be…
Do I feel safe ???
Yes
I believe that I have a heightened sense of my surroundings since moving to Mexico.
Maybe it is because I am an outsider and don’t always fit in.
My morning walks alone in the countryside have now ceased since the happenings of last night but even before I was always aware of approaching people and cars and knew my escape route.
I was planning this story to be posted in the next couple of weeks but it seems timelier for today.
Over the past few years in my visits to Mexico I became somewhat used to the military roadblocks. They still tend to unnerve me but the soldiers have always been courteous. Recently there was a checkpoint in town and as we were standing outside the car the soldiers were very patient in trying to get me out of the way of a truck they were pulling over.
On the other hand when we were on our way to Puerto Vallarta in June we were traveling an old mountain highway and were flagged down by soldiers. The soldiers were asking us to help another motorist. The driver approached our car and was asking for a tire iron, my friend who was driving said we had nothing to help them and drove away. The whole situation felt wrong – first soldiers helping a motorist in trouble, then the number of tires lying around the vehicle and finally the fact that between the motorist and the army vehicle they didn’t have a tire iron that would fit. My friend said that it was a set up to rob passing cars.
I have read everything that the U.S. State Department www.state.gov has to write and have registered with the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara. I have looked up reports on the abduction and violence towards U.S. citizens. It would seem that the targeted victims are primarily of Hispanic descent and most of the victims in other cases are innocent bystanders. And when you consider that there are over a million U.S Citizens living in Mexico the percentage touched by violence is negligible.
We will be heading to Guadalajara in the next couple of weeks to live and there is a huge English speaking population. In many areas surrounding Guadalajara English is spoken more than Spanish because of the number of people from the States and Canada.
NPR recently had a very revealing article on the history of the violence in Mexico and how effectively the previous ruling party had controlled the DTO’s (Drug Trafficking Organizations) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129009629
As I have expressed to friends back home part of the problem is if you are in trouble you don’t know who to go to as the police and military are sometimes involved.
We tried to visit an old abandoned hacienda out in the country and found it was being “protected” by the army.
The airport in the neighboring town of Lagos De Moreno has rocks blocking the entrance so you need to enter in a serpentine manner. Again it is “protected” by the army but popular knowledge is that the army is protecting the drug cartels and their shipments.
This morning we were parked downtown across from the police station. I was going to wait in the car while my friends ran errands. The joke was do I feel safe parked in front of the police station or should I be worried
There is so much to write on this subject and as I said in my introduction I would leave the news to the professionals.
My goal here was to let folks know that overall I feel safe, mainly because I am not out there taking chances. One of my dreams was to travel around the countryside by myself taking photographs. I have never done this and probably never will. At this point I never leave the house unless someone is with me and plan to get the cell phone charged and purchase credit.
On a lighter note as all this was happening last night we had been visiting folks at their ranch in the country. When we were leaving I got out to open the gate and stepped in a very soft, squishing cow patty with my right foot. After I expressed a few expletives, with everyone laughing at me as they drove through, I closed the gate and my left foot found another cow pie of its own.
Last evening, around 9:3pm a man was abducted in our town. I have heard two possible theories on what has happened.
1) Men posing as fake agents of the Mexican FBI took the man and his car into custody because the car had U.S. plates and they claimed they needed to investigate. Their intent being to steal the car, his money and probably ask for ransom. When the Presidente (Mayor) contacted the FBI they said they had no operation going on in San Diego.
2) The second theory is that the man allegedly had drugs in his car and was taken by the Secret Police to a prison in Guadalajara.
Either way nerves are shaken for we are living in what is considered a very safe part of Mexico.
Am I safe ???
This is a question I am constantly asked.
A better question would be…
Do I feel safe ???
Yes
I believe that I have a heightened sense of my surroundings since moving to Mexico.
Maybe it is because I am an outsider and don’t always fit in.
My morning walks alone in the countryside have now ceased since the happenings of last night but even before I was always aware of approaching people and cars and knew my escape route.
I was planning this story to be posted in the next couple of weeks but it seems timelier for today.
Over the past few years in my visits to Mexico I became somewhat used to the military roadblocks. They still tend to unnerve me but the soldiers have always been courteous. Recently there was a checkpoint in town and as we were standing outside the car the soldiers were very patient in trying to get me out of the way of a truck they were pulling over.
On the other hand when we were on our way to Puerto Vallarta in June we were traveling an old mountain highway and were flagged down by soldiers. The soldiers were asking us to help another motorist. The driver approached our car and was asking for a tire iron, my friend who was driving said we had nothing to help them and drove away. The whole situation felt wrong – first soldiers helping a motorist in trouble, then the number of tires lying around the vehicle and finally the fact that between the motorist and the army vehicle they didn’t have a tire iron that would fit. My friend said that it was a set up to rob passing cars.
I have read everything that the U.S. State Department www.state.gov has to write and have registered with the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara. I have looked up reports on the abduction and violence towards U.S. citizens. It would seem that the targeted victims are primarily of Hispanic descent and most of the victims in other cases are innocent bystanders. And when you consider that there are over a million U.S Citizens living in Mexico the percentage touched by violence is negligible.
We will be heading to Guadalajara in the next couple of weeks to live and there is a huge English speaking population. In many areas surrounding Guadalajara English is spoken more than Spanish because of the number of people from the States and Canada.
NPR recently had a very revealing article on the history of the violence in Mexico and how effectively the previous ruling party had controlled the DTO’s (Drug Trafficking Organizations) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129009629
As I have expressed to friends back home part of the problem is if you are in trouble you don’t know who to go to as the police and military are sometimes involved.
We tried to visit an old abandoned hacienda out in the country and found it was being “protected” by the army.
The airport in the neighboring town of Lagos De Moreno has rocks blocking the entrance so you need to enter in a serpentine manner. Again it is “protected” by the army but popular knowledge is that the army is protecting the drug cartels and their shipments.
This morning we were parked downtown across from the police station. I was going to wait in the car while my friends ran errands. The joke was do I feel safe parked in front of the police station or should I be worried
There is so much to write on this subject and as I said in my introduction I would leave the news to the professionals.
My goal here was to let folks know that overall I feel safe, mainly because I am not out there taking chances. One of my dreams was to travel around the countryside by myself taking photographs. I have never done this and probably never will. At this point I never leave the house unless someone is with me and plan to get the cell phone charged and purchase credit.
On a lighter note as all this was happening last night we had been visiting folks at their ranch in the country. When we were leaving I got out to open the gate and stepped in a very soft, squishing cow patty with my right foot. After I expressed a few expletives, with everyone laughing at me as they drove through, I closed the gate and my left foot found another cow pie of its own.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Gallery Opening - Omaha, Nebraska
Gallery Opening
When it became certain that I was going to be moving to Mexico my focus in art changed from welded metal sculpture to photography.
It seemed to me that photography would travel better than metal sculptures.
Below are a couple of examples of an ongoing photography project I am working on with the same name as my blog PostCardFromMexico.
These photos are, like a postcard, a snap shot, a glimpse of life and experiences here in Mexico that are different from my life in the States.
And like a postcard they include a story or an observation, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous.
Finished examples of these “PostCards” will be on display. So if you are in the Omaha, Nebraska area please plan to attend the opening next weekend.
Gallery @ Prouty Place
Invites you to an art opening
Saturday August 21st
6:00pm - 9:00pm
Sunday August 22,
2:00pm - 4:00pm
4825 So. 25 St.
Omaha, NE 68107
402.342.1714
When it became certain that I was going to be moving to Mexico my focus in art changed from welded metal sculpture to photography.
It seemed to me that photography would travel better than metal sculptures.
Below are a couple of examples of an ongoing photography project I am working on with the same name as my blog PostCardFromMexico.
These photos are, like a postcard, a snap shot, a glimpse of life and experiences here in Mexico that are different from my life in the States.
And like a postcard they include a story or an observation, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous.
Finished examples of these “PostCards” will be on display. So if you are in the Omaha, Nebraska area please plan to attend the opening next weekend.
Gallery @ Prouty Place
Invites you to an art opening
Saturday August 21st
6:00pm - 9:00pm
Sunday August 22,
2:00pm - 4:00pm
4825 So. 25 St.
Omaha, NE 68107
402.342.1714
Monday, August 9, 2010
Spanish 101
For Mexico 2010 marks 200 years of independence from Spain and 100 years since the revolution against the Porfirio Diaz regime.
Please follow the link for more information on the fascinating history of Mexico and the events surrounding this celebration - www.english.bicentenario.gob.mx
Spanish 101
As most of you know I moved to Mexico with very little knowledge of the language and after living here for over two months my Spanish has improved only slightly.
There are two factors for this –
First, to be honest, I have been lazy to learn – I have the tools, the time and the opportunity but just haven’t applied myself.
Second I have been really shy to use what I do know.
What also enables my English is that it seems nearly everyone I meet has spent some portion of their lives in the State and most times they are more apt to use English rather than speak to me in Spanish.
I have met many folks who have worked in the States and have also met people who were moved to the States as children. They thought of themselves as always living in the U.S. until they were in trouble with the law and sent to Mexico.
There have even been situations where strangers, realizing my nationality will start to engage me in conversation.
Sometimes I am just surprised; people like the owner of the liquor store who I have only known to speak Spanish for two months started to talk to me in perfect English, telling me how he grew up in California.
It would seem that most of the Spanish I have learned involves buying alcohol. My friends feel that for me to go into a store on my own is a great way to learn. Now I do have a fairly good understanding of numbers and money plus after awhile you begin to know what things should cost so I am not totally unprepared.
On one of our Sunday afternoon trips into the country we stopped in a small town and I ran into the store to buy three beers thinking I did very well giving my order. “Tres cerveza por favor, Victoria nonretornable”. But instead of three bottles of beer he starts to hand me three six-packs. That’s when the hand signals and the laughing start. This is truly the best part of being here because nobody has ever shown frustration or anger over my lack of Spanish – they are always helpful and have a good laugh. I don’t know, they could be laughing at me but they are always good natured.
Another Sunday afternoon trip and another small town “convenience” store. This time I’m not feeling real comfortable going in on my own so one of my friends accompanies me. Luckily he did because after what seemed to be a lot of discussion with the elderly lady behind the counter three beers are produced. When it’s time to pay it's very obvious that the woman is extremely inebriated, confused and can not remember where she left her cash box. My reaction to all this was “can you imagine? Me, in there by myself with my Spanish and her drunk?”.
On our trips over to the canyon area we almost always stop for a beer at our favorite “convenience” store. It’s just a nice quiet place out in the country to sit and relax for a moment. Last time we stopped there was one customer standing outside the service window and my friends were doing all the talking. But as we were walking away the customer calls out to me “bye, see you tomorrow”. I guess it’s pretty obvious sometimes that I’m not from around here. Funny part of this story was that the store was completely sold out of beer, just like the gas station was completely sold out of gas one day.
For the folks that don’t speak English but want to communicate sign language can be very effective. The father of the friends I am staying with always likes to talk to me and will start out speaking to me as though I was fluent in Spanish. Eventually the conversation turns from the spoken word to silence and hand signals. My name, Clark, is hard for some folks to understand so the father now calls me "Junior".
The night I learned to ride a horse was very similar with the hands being pushed down and forward to indicate that I should just take it slow. This is great advice if you know how to slow a horse in the first place, but we’ll save that for another story.
Like I said I am shy to speak but some days I do try to use the basics. So here I am in the checkout line at Wal-Mart in Leon. I have made my way through the greeting with the check out girl and then she starts talking to me and all I can say is “no entiende”. Then we start laughing and the hand signals start with her making a side to side motion as if to say forget it.
Of course there are the mistakes in understanding. I have not gotten that far yet but do have a couple of stories from others.
From time to time we visit a truly remarkable woman out on her ranch in the country. She is 96 and the first time I met her we had gone to visit because she was dying, the priest had been called and her sons were coming back from California. She is just a tiny thing, but she had rallied and hers is one of the strongest handshakes I have ever known. Back in the 70’s, while in her 50’s she had walked across the border to work in the States as a nanny to earn money to save the family ranch. When she met her new employer they shook hands and as they shook hands the women said “Hi”. Our friend understood her new employer to say “Aiy” meaning she was hurt and thought – what the hell did I do to hurt this women.
And then there is “Jose” as in “no way Jose”. I was talking with a gentleman who has spent thirty some years working in the U.S. and has a good knowledge of English. His question to me though was why do they always say “Jose”, my name is not Jose………….
I am committed to living in Mexico and I have a desire and a need to learn Spanish. My goal is to study at least one hour a day and practice what I am learning. I have tried in the past to structure my days more but for some reason it’s always going to start tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.
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