...2012

Last year at midnight I wished that 2012 would be a good year.  For me 2012 included:

• Four months in Mexico
• Four months in Blackfoot
• Four months in Warsaw

Taking in another gorgeous sunset in
Puerto Escondido 

During my four months in Mexico, I: 

• traveled to an ancient pyramid and saw altars where actual sacrifices were carried out
• swam in the Pacific Ocean just offshore the closest thing to Paradise that I may ever encounter
• instilled in my seventh graders an absolute love of Puddles the Duck
• ate salsas that truly tried to sear holes in my tongue and loved it
• laughed harder and drank more cerveza than ever before
• and lived like the Mayan prophesy was really going to come true

During my four months at home, I:

• reconnected with old friends from my past
• bonded with my amazing nieces and did my best to teach them a few bad habits
• and FINALLY conquered the Teton Pass and, to be blunt, made it my bitch during my last few weeks of work at Bindweed Farm

Me with Thing One

And with Thing Two

During my four months in Warsaw, I: 

Looking out at the Vistula River,
with the Old Town behind me

• walked through the most beautiful park I've ever encountered
• learned how to say "please" and "thank you" in my sixth (yes, sixth!) language (English, Irish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Polish.  I rock.)
• successfully spent four months with small children without serious injury to them or to myself
• and managed to add TWO more stamps to my passport with a trip to Worcester, England, and two looooooong layovers in Germany.

2012 was by far the most amazing year I've had thus far; so here's my New Year's Wish for 2013....

A Clipping from my Ex-Pat Diaries: Cooking

Sauteing red pepper and kiełbasa

As I’ve said here before, I love cooking.  I love the magic in the chemistry of cooking.  I love the fact that egg whites, when whipped long enough, will transform from a gooey, questionable substance into beautiful white meringues.  To me, that transformation, like the transformation of whipping cream from liquid to solid, is nothing short of magical.  I likewise love the magic created within the oven or the refrigerator.  A person can put gelatinous, unappealing goo into the oven, set the timer, and (after being tortured by delicious smells for however long) when the timer dings, amazing, solid deliciousness emerges.  The fridge is even better; a person can put a good meal into the fridge and when she pulls it out the next day, the magic of the fridge has transformed that good meal into a great meal.   It’s amazing and, to be entirely honest, a little bit miraculous.

When I cook at my mother’s house, food is miraculous because the number of ingredients and kitchen supplies she has allow me to easily make a flourless chocolate cake or the red sauce to end all sauces.  Being allowed to cook in my mother’s kitchen is like letting loose the kid in the proverbial candy shop—everything I need is there and at my disposal.  Cooking at my mother’s house is adventurous and fun.  When I cooked at my various apartments in Caldwell and Eugene, the food was miraculous because it was almost always for the first time.  I made Chocolate Gran Marnier cake for the first time in my post-college apartment, using nesting saucepans for my double boiler and a blender to give my egg whites soft peaks (not fun, I don’t recommend this method); I made crab cakes with a lemon burre blanc in my second grad school apartment, along with blackberry cobbler, blackberry buckle, and blackberry pancakes; and I made olive oil rosemary cake in my post-grad school apartment.  Cooking in these apartments was a sort of ongoing experiment, a flexing of my culinary wings as I flirted with techniques and styles.  The food was miraculous because it was new, daring, and done completely on my own.

When I cook while living abroad, the food is miraculous simply because it actually comes together.  When I lived in Mexico, cooking was complicated because we lived with a temperamental, leaky old gas stove and an exploded oven.  The stove leaked gas, making each lighting of the pilot light a flirtation with death (seriously, our kitchen often smelled like burnt hair because someone lit the pilot with a WHOOSH and lost their hand hair).  Once the flame was lit, cooking was another matter entirely; the stove only had two settings, barely on and boiling.  To try to achieve some sort of happy medium was basically impossible, so if a person wanted to avoid burning their food, constant vigilance was mandatory (and even then it wasn’t guaranteed). 

My ingredients with their complicated, often
unpronounceable Polish labels

My issues with equipment aside, however, cooking in Mexico wasn’t too terribly difficult because I could always find the necessary ingredients.  Although the ingredients were packaged in Spanish, either my knowledge of the language or its inherent similarity to English usually made grocery shopping relatively easy.  Also, because Mexico is a part of North America, a large majority of the products sold in stores bore a striking resemblance to their English/American counterparts.  This is not the case in Warsaw, however.  While some foods and ingredients share similar names to their English or Latin equivalents (my personal favorite is that bread for sandwiches and toasting is called “tost”), so many others simply do not.  When buying produce or easily recognizable products, like coffee or milk, the language barrier is easily overcome and actually provides an opportunity to learn.  When buying spices, however, the opportunity to learn is present, but it’s more of an after-the-fact type of experience as I learn that “pieprz ziołowy” does not mean “cumin” but in fact means “herbal pepper” and would appear to be some sort of spice mixture or rub for meats.  As often as possible, I try to rely on the picture on the label, though this isn’t the safest of methods.  When trying to make black bean quesadillas last month, I needed black beans; I scoured the bean shelf, located a can that had convincingly small, dark bean on the label and purchased said can with some confidence.  When I pried it open in my kitchen, I discovered that it wasn’t black beans at all, but red. 

My "Warsaw Edition Chili" simmering away

Cooking in Warsaw is miraculous because it’s something of a miracle that I am able to produce something out of the chaos created by language and circumstance.  To my surprise, the pieprz ziołowy has a pleasant scent like anise mixed with Middle Eastern spices, warm and tasty, and it added to the flavors of my soup quite nicely.  Similarly, when mixed with fresh lemon juice and garlic powder, the red beans worked as a fine substitute for black beans in my quesadillas.  Each time I attempt a familiar recipe, I rename it with the addendum of “the Warsaw edition” because so many of my old recipes call for ingredients I cannot find, like black beans. 

Tonight’s attempt is my Polish spin on my favorite vegetarian chili.  I have to admit here that while the Warsaw Edition Black Bean Quesadillas contain red beans instead of black, and therefore aren’t actually “black bean quesadillas,” they do bear a strong resemblance to the original recipe.  My “vegetarian chili,” however, does not.  To start out with, one of the primary ingredients of my vegetarian chili is tofu, an item I have yet to see in Poland.  So instead of tofu I cooked with kiełbasa, or Polish sausage, so I may have to alter the name more than just adding “the Warsaw edition.” 

At home this chili includes:

• Spices: garlic, cumin, chili powder, paprika, chipotle
• Vegetables: red peppers, mushrooms, avocado
• Tomatoes: two cans of whole, peeled tomatoes and a small can of tomato paste
• Black beans
• Tofu
• Freshly grated Tillamook cheese and a dollop of sour cream

In Warsaw, I couldn’t find cumin, paprika, or chipotle, so I’ve had to settle for garlic, chili powder, and pieprz ziołowy.  The store was sold out of mushrooms and I haven’t seen an avocado here for months, so I put in a red pepper, corn, and a “soup mix” that had onion, mushroom, broccoli, and potato.  At the store, I trusted the can label and bought what I thought were diced tomatoes; turns out it was a thick and chunky tomato sauce, so I put in two cans of thick and chunky tomato sauce with one small can of tomato paste.  This didn’t really hurt the chili, but it now has quite the thick consistency.  And, of course, I have no black beans or tofu, so I settled for red beans and kiełbasa.  While it bears only a passing resemblance to my favorite vegetarian chili, though, my “Warsaw Edition Chili” came out warm and delicious and just what I needed on this chilly night.  Like I said before: something of a miracle.

The finished product: a little thicker in consistency than its Eugene counterpart,
and definitely more carnivore in nature, but I can report most happily that my
"Warsaw Edition Chili" is a recipe to be repeated.

Musings on a Snow Day: the Warsaw Edition

Despite the title, I do not have plural musings to log here, but a singular musing to post for posterity. "A Musing on a Snow Day" just didn't have the right ring to it, and as I generally enjoy sequels, I take a particular delight in posting here my own sequel to my earlier musings. Also, pasting "The Warsaw Edition" to the end amuses me because it reminds me of a bad volume collection, like the Now That's What I Call Music franchise with its specially branded Christmas edition, oldies editions, and so on. They might as well just go in for the truth at this point and declare: “We're Absolute Crap at Titles, But Enjoy the Music.”  But I digress.

The view from my window at preschool

I struggle with titles. Titles are daunting. I once sat in a two-hour workshop on titles and their importance, and by the end, my title-anxiety had actually grown. A title should draw the reader in, informing her of the subject without dully stating the obvious. A title should be clever (or at least well-constructed) without being misleading. At some point during my thesis-writing, I actually had more title-anxiety than thesis-anxiety. In the end, though, I did what I've done here--I recycled and updated a previous title and called it good. So now that I've returned to my title--my musing--I shall proceed.

I awoke this morning to snow. My normally bustling neighborhood was hushed by the almost eerie quiet that falls on a city during snowfall and everything has taken on a sort of snow capped charm. It's the perfect setting for a scene: Christmas music playing softly in the background and a hot cocoa in hand as I gaze contemplatively out the window....

[at this point in my musing I had to pause for five hours to resume my day job as “Ciocia Jerica.” First I was an armless, legless Princess Leia battling "Not Good Yoda" and "Not Good Darth Vader" (though the second title seems redundant, my five year old companion felt it a necessary nome de guerre, so I obliged). After ten minutes of attack by the combined forces of evil, during which I died twice but put up a damn good fight both times, I helped coordinate the blocking for our Christmas play--no mean feat I assure you. I spent two hours rehearsing lines for said play, a Herculean task, teaching twenty ESL children ages 3-6 to recite their lines in English. I served lunch to sixteen rowdy children, played three quite successful rounds of the quiet game (it astonishes me that this game works, but thank the various gods above that it does), and spent entirely too much time sniffing five Disney Princess Lip Smacker chapsticks with an enthusiastic five year old. On a side note, adding glitter and a princess label does nothing to lessen the fact that said chapsticks smell like a foul combination of way, rotten fruit, and old lady vanilla musk perfume. And, to cap off my day, I spent several minutes straddling the worlds of vaudeville and burlesque as I chased an al-but-naked child around the classroom as she gleefully evaded me, my partner teacher, and her waiting pile of clothes. My days at preschool are anything but dull.

Making my icy trek home at the end of the day

When I started writing this several hours ago, Warsaw had a light powdered sugar dusting of snow falling, falling, falling. It is still falling, showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. I dislike snow. It's cold, and as it sets it makes my clothes, shoes, and hair wet and cold. Snow makes the roads icy and dangerous and it scares the hell out of me to be on the roads as either driver or passenger. My children love snow, however, creating snow angels or sculptures, eating it with frightening frequency, and pelting me with snowballs thrown with an astonishing accuracy. They love frolicking in snow while I, bundled in my hat, scarf, vest, coat, and boots stand off to the side doing my best imitation of an ice sculpture. The snow is pretty when it falls, but that is the most praise I can muster.

It is six and a half hours from the time I started writing with my singular musing. Six and a half hours of gently falling snow and six and a half hours of outrageous antics with children, all punctuated by what has become an odd stream of consciousness journaling of my day. The snowfall aside, this is actually a fairly typical day. I often start a thought early in the morning, and, returning to it sporadically throughout the day, find myself finally completing that thought eight hours later, when, exhausted, I leave preschool and make the daily trek home. It is tiring, at times overwhelming, and demanding on me physically, mentally, and emotionally, but it's usually worth it to receive one small, bone-crushing hug from a small, sweaty, stinky child.

But, again, I digress. When I started writing this morning, this was to be a short post accompanied by a picture--a crumb offering to satisfy my need to post something here every so often. But somewhere along the way, as I spent my day attempting to return to this thought, I encountered a truth that makes relevant all these musings (now a definite plural). I dislike the snow, but every morning when I wake up to impossible cold around me, my first instinct is to peer out the window to check for snow. I don't want snow; I feel that I should make that clear. I don't want snow, but as I am checking, I feel the same anticipation and suspense as I did when I was six, peeking out the window to spy any evidence of a snow day. Snow days as a child were the best: there was no school and if the snow was right, a person could make a snowman or an igloo or some other snow creation before, numb with the cold, retreating inside to the warmth of a fire and cocoa.  When there is no snow, as when I was six, I feel a small shock of disappointment before remembering that I dislike snow. As an adult, I don't make snowmen or igloos or other types of snow creations, nor do I generally get to enjoy a day free from school or work or obligation.  In short, there is no reason for me to routinely wake up and check expectantly for snow.  But in between storytime and yet another round of Star Wars battling, I realized that I go through this routine of anticipation and expectation each morning because I am still that young six year old who revels in all the magic and possibilities a snow day has to offer.

This is my life now: emoting and hanging out with fuzzy pink
dogs and Polish Tinkerbell. My six year old self loves it.

Oh Nostromo...

To say that I struggled with Nostromo would be an understatement.  I could say that I am still struggling with it, despite having finished the novel in August, for it is now October and I have yet to put into words the jumble of thoughts and impressions Conrad’s novel left me with.  It might be somewhat evident (given my noted lack of writing on the subject) that until now I have no idea what to say about this novel.  This is, in large part, my own fault.  I started Nostromo over a year ago, when I was still living in Eugene and sneaking in a few pages while hunched over my desk during my lunch break at work.  Not long after I started the novel, I took a position as a Paid Volunteer ESL Instructor (it sounds so much more official when I capitalize the title) at an English language school in Mexico.  Conrad’s weighty tome and his even weightier words took a backseat to the multitude of preparations necessitated by first a move back to my hometown and then on to Mexico.  While I was at home in my parents’ house there were too many distractions—new, lighter books to read, old friends to see, and much much catching up to do with family—and once in Mexico there was a whole new world to see and to experience.  When faced with the choice of dinner and drinks with my roommates or an evening with Conrad, I’m afraid that ten times out of ten I chose the dinner and drinks.  But I will now finally attempt to distill this jumble into a somewhat coherent review (or, lacking that, a blog post that will allow me at least to end my current association with Nostromo).

While not a coastal picture, I found this one so deliciously
bohemian that I had to include it.  Much of my Semana Santa
found me ensconced in a hammock valiantly continuing my
struggle with Nostromo, if only for a few pages

As I posted on this blog, finding the time to read over the past year was something of an issue.  I took Nostromo along with me on our Spring Break trip to Puerto Escondido and delighted in the fact that I was reading this coastal adventure story while also away on my own coastal adventure story.  I also managed to sneak in an hour here and there to read a few pages between classes; however, the exhilaration of daily life paired with the exhaustion of teaching and the irresistible warmth of the Mexican sun and conspired to lull me to sleep while struggling with Conrad’s passages.  More often than not, I jolted awake to find that half an hour or so had passed and I was still on the same paragraph. 

After Mexico I found more time to read, but was often so exhausted from farm work of the highs and lows of life on a farm that my progress was sporadic and jerky.  But, spurred primarily by my decision to move to Warsaw, I managed to speed through the last half of Nostromo and conclude the novel mere days before I left the country.  Once in Warsaw, though, I was so busy experiencing life in a new country and (even more intense) experiencing life as a preschool teacher.  Before I knew it, days had turned into weeks and then months and I still had not found the time or the words to talk about Conrad’s masterpiece.

While I had delighted in Nostromo's intersection
of Italian and Latin American, I was even
more delighted at the discovery that Conrad
was Polish.  Perhaps it's appropriate, then, that
Nostromo occupied so much of the last year and
its own intersection of Italian, Latin American,
and Polish.

It was not just circumstance, however, that left me spending a year with Nostromo.  No, some of the blame I will shift onto Conrad and the erratic timeline his novel took.  The story of Nostromo is more than a story of a reportedly incorruptible sailor; it spans the full breadth of the Costaguanan town of Sulaco and its inhabitants.  The reader learns of a sequence of events that took place in this fictional country as they revolved around the feats and, ultimately, the fate of the cargadero Nostromo, but the reader is also treated to the histories of the country’s tumultuous political past, as well as the personal stories of several of Sulaco’s prominent citizens.  These histories, rich in detail, serve to give flesh to this country, to make its fate and the fate of its people important to the reader, to bind them to us in a way and to keep us turning the pages.  I did not object to this; in fact, as I read, I did form attachments to characters as I learned of their various pasts and motives.  No, what I objected to was the manner in which Conrad presented these stories.  The narrative would often jump in time with no indication that we had done so.  I would find myself reading passages set in the novel’s present tense and then find myself immersed in the history of a year past or three years past without any clue from the author that we had made a transition.  This method, while important to both plot and character development, served to confuse me and necessitated more than once a rereading of one or several pages.

I suppose that the case may be made that I am, in fact, to blame for this confusion.  As I have said before, I am a casualty of my generation.  I am so spoiled by modern theatrical storytelling that I have become unused to the styles and tactics of older generations.  I have become accustomed to seeing the passage of time represented with a slow fade to black or white, or with a cheesy montage set to music, or (for the viewers who lack imagination and need facts set before them clearly and unmistakably) with white lettering floating across the screen informing the viewer that the following scenes are set “one year later” or “one year ago,” etc.  In short, I have seen too many films and TV shows, so when confronted by a timeline that shifted without convenient cinematic clues to alert me, I was left to struggle with my own confusion and frustration.

This one complaint aside, though, I found to my own surprise that I actually quite enjoyed Nostromo.  One review I read said that the novel’s greatest strength was in creating characters so rich in detail that they became real, they became people with pasts with whom the reader could form a connection and to whom we could cleave to.  I found this to be the case for me.  I was so invested in the fates of favorite characters that I wanted almost to flip forward in the book, to speed through the book and discover their individual endings.  To present a concrete example, one such character was the town’s doctor.  From the outset this character was presented in a negative light.  It was evident that few of the townspeople liked the doctor, and many made little effort to conceal their feelings.  For almost two thirds of the novel the doctor appeared a shady character with questionable motives, saved only by his apparent loyalty to the central and much loved female characters.  Eventually, though, we are given insight into the doctor’s past and it is there that Conrad’s prose shines with clarity and poignancy and sheer beauty.  Conrad’s descriptions of the doctor, his troubled past and his daily struggles are so detailed and complex, and peppered with beautiful (if terrible) imagery that they immediately lend the reader understanding and compassion.  In a matter of pages, the doctor, previously a tertiary character, largely unimportant to the reader or to the progression of the novel, transformed into a dynamic and central character in whom the reader could invest emotion and care. 

Late Autumn in Warsaw: as the last vestiges of summer's
greenery give way to the vibrancy of autumn, I turn
 my attention to the north of Africa with Albert Camus'
The Plague.

The central plot of Nostromo—the story of how an incorruptible sailor was tempted, tested, and ultimately destroyed—composes a relatively short story.  If one were to cut out the exposition, excising the histories and insights into the various characters, the story of Nostromo could be condensed into a short story or modern-day parable: a proud man is tested by a dangerous situation and gives in to the temptations of greed and ego, destroying himself and others.  While this is an interesting and at times exciting story, it would be insignificant and forgettable without its rich, descriptive prose.  Conrad so convincingly describes scenarios of madness, grief, shame, disgrace and despair that one could easily imagine him living each episode himself in some hellish nightmare of an existence.  Though terrible at times, these descriptions were so vivid and so eloquently phrased that for pages at a time I forgot any complaints I had against Conrad and gave myself over to the allure of a masterfully told story.

When I started Nostromo I feared that I might at last have encountered a novel that I could not endorse as fitting among the ranks of the other great novels I had read.  As I struggled continuously to orient myself in the ever-changing timeline, this fear was repeated over and over again.  More than once I even contemplated abandoning this project, giving in to the temptation of lighter literature.  I persisted, though, and in the end I am glad.  And I am equally glad to finally (a year later) be finished with Conrad and Nostromo.

Red Tape and Yellow Buildings

My first proper glimpse of Old Town

Oh bureaucracy….  At one point in my life I aspired to be a bureaucrat.  I realize that this is an odd dream; people do not dream of being bureaucrats.   People dream of being actors or athletes or great statesmen.  No one dreams of being one of the unseen “little people” who work to aid and support statesmen and politicians as they work to change the world.  For a semester at the end of my junior year of college, though, I believed that I was made to be a bureaucrat, and a damned good one at that.  I have no real reason to offer for this aspiration besides the fact that for most of my life I have known that I am an excellent assistant.  I can take the lead when necessary, but in general I prefer to let others do so, acting as a first mate to someone else’s captain whenever possible.  As such, I believed that as a bureaucrat I could happily and effectively assist great people as they worked to mold and shape our world into a better one.

I have since outgrown this aspiration.  Since my junior year I have desired to be a lawyer, a pub/restaurant owner, a rockstar, a college professor and historian, a rockstar historian, an aesthetician, and a teacher, to name a few.  I have flirted with the idea of working as an assistant, and many of the professions I’ve looked at are in the government and could be said to be within the realms of bureaucracy, but I no longer approach the idea with the same sort of starry eyed enthusiasm as I did at the age of 20. 

No, on second thought that isn’t true.  When I look at jobs working within for and with the U.S. government, jobs that would be considered bureaucratic, I still tend to tint the idea with a fair amount of rosy idealism.  I still cannot help but thrill at the idea of the U.S. government as a whole, and the idea of working for it, even as a paper pusher or severe matron with a modicum of authority and the power to wield a really cool stamp, still appeals to me in some sick, sick way.  And yes, I’m aware I just said that.

It delights me that even the lampposts are
charming with their swoops and flourishes

Bureaucracy, though, has taken on a new meaning for me.  Since coming to Warsaw I have had to encounter oh so many components of Polish bureaucracy as we seek to legalize my prolonged presence in Poland.  A regular tourist visa, granted to the average tourist entering Poland, lasts for three months; my contract, though, is for the period of one year.  For EU citizens, like my Irish roommate, visas are not an issue.  For me, however, it has been over a month of jumping through hoops and signing my name so many times I’ve almost forgotten where to make loops and where to make swoops. 

As a certified ESL instructor, I am not required to have a work visa in Poland, which saved me from making a hasty trip to San Francisco to obtain a visa.  Instead, my employers and I have to file page after page of documents verifying everything from my official place of residence and my work contract to my passport’s travel details and a copy of my boarding pass.  I’ve signed at least six copies of my contract (in Polish and in English), submitted my passport for copying countless times, and signed documents verifying that yes, I have an apartment, yes, I have a job and health insurance, and no, I won’t pay taxes here.  Together with my employers I have filled out almost 80 pages of documents detailing my physical description, my personal and family background, and my reason for wanting to remain in Poland for longer than three months.  I am exhausted simply thinking about all the documents we have assembled.  Every time someone from the office approaches me with another paper to sign, we both laugh and sigh at this latest hoop through which to jump, and inevitably someone says, “Ohhhh bureaucracy.”  But finally, on Wednesday, I went with our administrator Sylwia to file my paperwork.

The first office we visited was located within the “Old Town.”  I should note here that while it is called Old Town, this beautiful area of Warsaw is not actually old.  Like so much of the city, the Old Town was destroyed during the Second World War and has been rebuilt and reproduced in an effort to reclaim some of Warsaw’s cultural history.  Since coming to Warsaw I have been eager to visit the Old Town and see its sights, whose bronze-colored steeples have been calling to me for a month now. 

I felt like a small child as we drove over beautifully cobbled streets, with my face pressed against the window and gasping with delight over the lovely architecture of these official buildings.  I’ve stated several times that merely being in the presence of old buildings gives me a contact high, and although these buildings aren’t technically old, they still thrilled me to my core.  As our car slowly passed a vibrant yellow office with cherubs and statues standing at attention, I even managed to forget my anxiety over my upcoming interview with the bureaucrats who would decide my fate in Poland.

My trip to Old Town was remarkably brief, however.  Immediately upon entering the correct office we were informed by an uninspiring little bureaucrat that it was Wednesday and this office did not accept paperwork on Wednesdays.

Oh bureaucracy.  It would have been so much more palatable had he had a stamp that proclaimed with red ink that he would not accept my claim on a Wednesday—I feel that if one must be an authoritative and disliked (at least by me) bureaucrat, one must at least wield a stamp with red ink.  Or be garbed in a white shirt and branded in red tape with a scarlet B for Bureaucrat.

another steeple peeking through the leaves,
 captured on my phone just as we drove away
from Old Town

We subsequently took my paperwork to a second office (which did accept paperwork on Wednesdays, though I failed to discover whether it accepts paperwork on the other days of the week, perhaps it rejects paperwork on Tuesdays, or Thursdays).  At this second office we had a rather lengthy interview with a terse bureaucrat who reviewed my documents closely.  She told us that the nearly 40 pages of documents I had filled out had been done incorrectly—completed in English when they must be completed in Polish; we also needed more information about me and my travels, much more information.  She, too, sadly failed to possess an official stamp with which to reject my paperwork.  As she held the door open for me to pass out of the bureaucrat’s office, Sylwia smiled tiredly and sighed, “Oh bureaucracy.”

At least I can cling to the memory of that beautiful street in Old Town as it opened up before me, revealing beautiful European churches with their spires and steeples, and buildings of state, accented perfectly by the early colors of autumn.

Mur Getta

From what I could see, the onetime borders of the Ghetto
are now delineated with markers like this that run the
length of the Ghetto

This last Wednesday I had an impromptu trip through part of the Warsaw Ghetto.  It was a very sobering experience to read the markers which detail briefly the number of people forced to live in the Ghetto, and the numbers of people who were subsequently and systematically killed by Nazi forces at one concentration camp or another.  Unfortunately, the pictures I snapped were on an old phone that I have inherited, not my own excellent phone's camera or my new little red camera, so the quality is not what it could be.  Nor do my photos do justice to the weight of the streets I was walking or the history I was visiting.  Over the last few weeks I have reveled over the majesty and grandeur of this great city and its beauty; this week I finally came face to face with the other side of Warsaw, the heartbreakingly painful truth of its own history.  I have not visited its many museums yet, but I do know that a large majority of Warsaw was destroyed during World War II and that so many of the beautiful buildings that I've been delighting in are new, simply designed to replicate their destroyed predecessors.  Beyond this, though, is the even more devastating fact that during the war the Jewish population of Warsaw was rounded up and quartered within the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto.  The Ghetto, as I learned Wednesday, was actually in two parts, the Large Ghetto and the Small Ghetto, and the two were connected by a small footbridge.  I won't attempt to synthesize a brief history of the Warsaw Ghetto, at least not at this time.  There are many, many sites online that can detail with greater clarity and accuracy than I the history and significance of this Ghetto and its role during the war.  But I will post here my photos, and when I have the opportunity to return, and to visit the Uprising Museum, I will update my photos again.

For now, I will say that I am still infatuated with my new city, but, like a woman who finally realizes that her lover has had a long and tumultuous past, I am confronted with my city's past and it has shaken me a bit, changed me in a way that neither pyramids and sacrificial altars in Mexico nor drinks on pallets on the Wisła could.

Off to one side of the footbridge that connected the Large Ghetto
with the Small Ghetto is this small memorial, which includes a topographical
map of the Ghetto, and a few brief details about the Warsaw Ghetto and its people's
fate during and after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943

This is the site of the wooden footbridge that connected the Large Ghetto with the
Small Ghetto.  Like so much of Warsaw, the bridge itself did not survive the war,
but where it once stood is this memorial.  There are two towers with pictures of the
bridge around their bases.  Just behind this bridge tower are a few viewfinders where
visitors may look at four pictures of the Ghetto and the bridge as it stood in 1942

The opposite side of the bridge

My First Impressions of Warsaw

While it pains me to admit, I must confess that my first weekend in was primarily spent recovering from my exhausting day of travel (a full 16 hours of flight split between three flights: Idaho Falls to Denver, Denver to Newark, and Newark to Warsaw, with extra time thrown in for connections, on-ground delays, and weather delays in and out of Newark) and from the dramatic shift forward in time eight hours.  My roommate and I did explore our surrounding neighborhood a bit and ventured out into the downtown area of Warsaw, but for the most part I slept an ungodly amount and walked around in something of a dreamlike haze.  I am more happy to announce, though, that I more than made up for this lack of excitement my first weekend with festivities during our second weekend in Warsaw.

Fresh flowers from a student

The other teachers at our school had organized an evening out to welcome back a friend who had recently been abroad, and to welcome Jean and me, their new friends and colleagues.  On Friday evening we all gathered at the Centrum, a bus stop close to the central bus and metro station in Warsaw.  From the Centrum we traipsed along a few blocks to a small bar popular among college students and foreigners.  The bar itself is so small that it can only seat 20 or so people, but it is set off of a small, quiet road or alley so that most of the bar's patrons (and the patrons of neighboring bars and restaurants) spill out onto the sidewalks and the street itself.  So after purchasing our beverages, we all relocated to sit on the curb and sip our beers.  Our small group of teachers was soon joined by a group of girls who had formerly taught at our school, and after we finished our drinks, they decided to take us to a new club that had just opened and was having a party to celebrate.

The club is nestled against the Vistula River and offered both indoor and outdoor bars, a rooftop area for drinking and sitting, and a stage area for music and dancing.  The seating was a delightful mixture of canvas liquor logo chairs and wooden pallets on wheels that could be rearranged to accommodate larger or smaller groups.  Bathrooms had not yet been set up, so off to the side was a large semicircle of port-a-potties with portable sinks for handwashing.  

I have something of a horror of outdoor bathrooms, particularly those frequented by large groups of people who have been consuming mass amounts of alcohol.  The likelihood of standing or sitting in someone else's urine (or worse) is so strong that I shudder to think of it.  Unfortunately, though, after two glasses of strong Polish beer, I was forced to admit defeat and join the line for the bathrooms.

As I stood in line for the bathroom, I let my mind wander, feeling as though I were pleasantly floating in a sea of Polish.  I soon became aware that I was standing in front of two young men who were blowing into their beer bottles to make a sort of "whoo whoo" flute sound.  I smiled to myself as I heard them say something about Peru, realizing that they must be pretending to be Peruvian pipe players.  They must have seen me react to their antics, or had otherwise been watching me, because immediately after that one of the young men leaned over to me and asked, "Hablas espanol?"  I was so surprised that he was talking to me that I didn't immediately realize that he'd addressed me in Spanish.  I quickly stammered out, "Si, un poco...uh...pero hablo ingles," at which point both the Spanish-speaking fellow and his companion laughed and started talking to me in English.  

We chatted for a few minutes--they wanted to know where I was from and what had brought me to Warsaw, and I was impressed that they spoke not only English but a fair amount of Spanish.  I met up with them again after what can only be described as a harrowing experience in the toilet and managed to cobble together quite the conversation about ourselves that spanned English, Polish, Spanish and (for reasons that can only be attributed to drink) Italian.  Mostly these two men were curious about me and how I was finding Poland.  I tried to explain that for me, growing up in a city that was barely over 100 years old, to find myself in a city that was centuries old was a heady experience.  Despite the fact that much of Warsaw was destroyed during the war and only recently rebuilt, the architecture of the city is beautiful and the buildings, to me, are breathtaking.  I was pleased to discover that although these two men had lived in Warsaw for quite some time, they completely understood what I meant.  

The sun setting on Gagarina street--my street--
as I make my way home from school

At one memorable point in the conversation, I told them that Warsaw was a most beautiful city.  Actually, I think at this point in the evening, my exact words were: "Warsaw es un ciudad bonito.  Muy bonito.  Belissima, che belissima!"  They politely overlooked my slip into Italian and agreed. But Warsaw isn't a city, one told me, it's an idea.  Blackfoot, the place that I was from, that was a city.  Warsaw isn't a city, it's too big, it's too varied.  Warsaw is an idea, a beautiful idea that encompasses so many brilliant facets, like architecture, society and culture.  And, most wonderfully, this party we were at was not a party but a celebration of that very idea.  

Now it's entirely possible that, sensing my inebriated state, these two guys were just messing with me, spouting pretty words to impress the drunk American.  I doubt this, though.  I'd prefer to think that they believed what they were telling me.  That they felt the magic and wonder of this amazing moment.  We were sitting on wooden pallets with the Vistula River at our backs, looking out at a city covered in twinkling fairy lights.  Overhead hovered hot air balloons and around us our fellow celebrants danced to remixed Michael Jackson songs.  The feelings I felt were so complex and so huge that it seemed impossible to give voice to them.  But to characterize the evening as a celebration of the utterly indefinably beautiful idea that is Warsaw seems as an apt a description as any I can find even now.

In the days since meeting those two gentlemen, this part of our conversation has stayed with me when other details (such as their names) has not.  Every time I encounter some new aspect of Warsaw, I recall this description of the city.  I've only been in the city for just over two weeks now, so I'm suffering from equal parts infatuation and lack of experience, but each day as I walk the streets of Warsaw, I feel over and over again that I am incredibly fortunate to be alive and celebrating daily the idea that is Warsaw.

And Finally, Meeting Another Duck in Puerto

The third and final place we stayed during our stay in Puerto Escondido was the Tower Bridge Hostel. While still in Puerto Escondido, the Tower Bridge was a few miles down the coast from the Zicatela Beach. We were a twenty minute walk from the Carizalillo Beach, a beautiful little cove with small, gentle waves perfect for easy floating and learning how to surf.
As the name would indicate, the Tower Bridge was a vaguely British themed hostel owned by a British expat. The front sitting area had old but comfortable couches that afforded a perfect view of the hostel's ceiling, which was an impressive tribute to British singers and bands. The room gave way to a gorgeous open courtyard with an outdoor pool and charming walkways. There was also a bar and food area with the most eclectic collection of graffiti and decorative items. It was also home to the sweetest little Tabby whom a chalk sign informed us was named Doc. It was at the bar that we made ourselves most comfortable, ensconcing ourselves in more comfortably worn-in couches and making easy conversation with our fellow guests. The bar at the Tower Bridge, it seemed, attracted patrons from several surrounding hotels and hostels. This was not surprising, though, as the bar was run by a French chef and a bartender from Portland.
I instantly made friends with Jesse the Bartender, delighted by the fact that he was from Portland, and within minutes I discovered that he too was an Oregon alum and just as in love with Duck football as I. I also found out that even after several months of living and working at the hostel, I was the first Duck he'd encountered in Mexico--Jesse told me that he'd met someone from Oregon State, but to a Duck, a Beaver is a poor substitute. As silly as it was to sit at a bar in the middle of paradise to talk about football and Eugene, it was an absolute pleasure to do so. I happily spent many many hours at that bar talking to Jesse the Bartender (who makes a mean mango margarita and a chili coconut mojito that could bring a person to tears) and to Alexi the French chef who was pausing in Puerto to make French fries and the best guacamole ever before continuing his bike ride down to South America. I also made instant best friends with Damien from Sligo, a couple of girls from Paris, a guy from Guadalajara, and so many others. We talked, laughed, drank, and had a phenomenal time living the good life in this ultimate break from reality.
When we stayed at La Luna, I felt time slow down as we each embraced a slower and more tranquil way of life. At Dan's we sped life up a bit more and learned the true value of a well broken-in hammock, and at the Tower Bridge I fell in love with this Mexican sort of bohemian lifestyle. It was here more than any other one place that I promised myself that I would continue to travel. I swore that I would find more places like the Tower Bridge where I could mingle and meet people from everywhere, and where I could truly escape from the boring or the mundane or commonplace. I would live an adventurous life like Jesse and Alexi and make mojitos in some exotic location. Someday I will be the Duck that some other UO grad will stumble into.
I don't know that Warsaw will necessarily count as my exotic destination or that my new school really equates with drinks mixing, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

Learning to Splash Like a Duck

After leaving the tranquil beauty of la Luna, we moved into almost the heart of Puerto Escondido to a delightful cabana at the Casa de Dan y Carmen.  Dan, whom we met early into our stay, is a Canadian expat who came to surf Puerto's waves and, loving the area, bought up large tracts of land to build a hotel and breakfast cafe.  The cabana we stayed in was a beautiful small apartment, complete with spiral staircase to the bedroom and a charming outdoor shower.  We discovered later that this was where Dan himself lived while he was building his hotel.  

Watching the sunset from Dan's rooftop

Dan's hotel was comprised of several buildings and a beautiful tiled swimming pool, but its best feature was an open rooftop which afforded the most amazing view of the neighboring buildings and the Zicatela Beach.  Guests were allowed to freely come and go from this rooftop, so we happily took drinks and treats up to the roof to watch the sun set over Puerto Escondido.  While my roommate Caroline was greeting the day on the rooftop one morning, she encountered a couple of surfers staying a few cabanas down from us.  They joined us for a slammin' breakfast at Dan's Cafe and then invited us to join them for a drink or two at the beach.  

The Zicatela Beach stretches along the main thoroughfare of Puerto and is dotted with hotels and restaurants.  The sand is beautiful and dark, appearing almost black as it is moved and packed by the roaring tide.  In the sun, however, the sand sparkles and as we walked along barefoot, our feet looked like they were covered with a fine layer of black glitter.

After I carefully made my way back to shore, shaking with
equal parts fear and adrenaline, I snapped this photo
of my companions diving like ducks in the waves

The waves at the Zicatela are not the calm, frolick-friendly type of waves, sadly.  The rip-curl was so strong that as I stood on the wet sand, I was knocked backwards and then sucked forward with the retreating wave.  Our two surfer friends, familiar with all types of waves, warned us that attempting to swim in these waves would be dangerous if not fatal.  If we were interested, though, they would show us how to "duck dive," or dive down under the waves.  If a person dives below the wave just before it crests, she can lie flat just above the ocean floor as the wave breaks and she will pop up behind the wave like a cork in the water.  It is a most singular experience and was without a doubt the most terrifying and exhilarating thing I've ever done.  I barely had time to suck in a frenzied breath or two before I had to dive down again.  As I dove, I could feel the violent churning of water above me, threatening to pummel and pound me if I rose too soon.  Once or twice I didn't dive quickly enough and was somersaulted around until the wave passed.  It was awesome, absolutely awesome in the true sense of the word, inspiring in me a sense of awe and humility at this amazing force of nature.

Bahìa la Luna

So my companions and I endured a day and a half of travel, a major transportation mishap, and, as I described in my last post, a comical episode of miscommunication. By early afternoon on our second day of travel, we were sticky with travel and sweat, tired, and more than a little cranky. Our Combi deposited us in a small town called Pochutla, about an hour outside of Puerto Escondido, and after some negotiation, we commissioned a taxi to drive us to our first hotel, Bahìa la Luna.
Bahìa la Luna is a beautiful hotel set (literally) off the beaten path. The hotel itself is a series of private cabañas set into a small hillside overlooking the hotel’s private beach. There is a common eating area that opens up onto a bright white beach broken only by palm trees and gently swinging hammocks. After the stresses of travel and the ordeal of our drive from Oaxaca, the hotel’s serene beauty welcomed us and put us each at ease again. Within an hour of arriving, we were comfortably settled on the beach, relaxing to the sound of the waves and gently sipping our our Coco Locos (a fresh coconut and rum cocktail served in a hollowed coconut and garnished with a tropical flower). By sundown I was convinced first that I was in paradise, and second, that someone was going to have to forcibly evict me from my cabaña.
We passed two nights and roughly two days at our hidden paradise. We made sand castles, frolicked (yes, actually frolicked) in the waves, snorkled, played a brutal game of beach volleyball, and,in general,had a most fabulous time. We were completely caught up in the magic of La Luna, lulled into a beautiful, peaceful calm.
When we were in Tehuacan, our days were fast-paced and incredibly busy, filled with teaching and lesson planning. On the weekdays we rose early and went to bed late, often snatching only five or six hours of sleep a night. Our weekends were often crazier, a blur of color, music, and tequila. We were badly in need of a break from reality and the hectic pace of our daily lives. La Luna was the perfect escape, allowing us to recharge before rejoining the world in Puerto Escondido.

This is my favorite picture from La Luna.
We were so comfortable and so content, and the scene
was so idyllic, that I felt all we needed was a bucket of beers between us
and we could be in one of those Corona commercials.  Brittany took this picture
so we could make our own Corona ad

I call this adventure: "the time we almost bought weed in Mexico"

So I have one of my many many confessions.  I am a victim of this technological generation; I have been infected by an impulsive need to think of cute or snippy status updates for Facebook and I catch myself thinking in phrases of 140 characters or less.  I punctuate my own thoughts and reactions with hashtags.  I admit this because during my entire four months in Mexico, my one recurring thought--my mantra if you will--was "Ohhhh Mexico."  Usually, this was accompanied in my mind with a hashtag that connected this latest episode with all the other memorable, inane, and "so ridiculous they sound more like fiction than fact" misadventures I encountered. 

The epitome of #Ohhhhh Mexico moments came at the beginning of our trip to Puerto Escondido.  After arriving in the city of Oaxaca we had a gap of about eight or nine hours before our next bus was scheduled to leave.  We had intended to explore the city center, wandering in and out of shops and historic buildings until we needed to return to the bus station.  Minutes after arriving in Oaxaca, though, the heavens opened up  and began pouring.  We were forced to seek refuge at a restaurant with a covered patio, cold and dripping with rain water and disappointment.  

I should mention at this point that we had come to Oaxaca with something of a mission.  My friend Caroline, or Caz, smoked cigarettes with her own rolling tobacco.  Finding tobacco, however, had proved to be a bit of a challenge and we had only located a couple of suitable places thus far.  Knowing that Oaxaca was a major city, we figured we would be able to locate at least one tobacconist in town.  After a cursory exploration of the shops in the city center, though, we were forced to admit that tobacco was not to be found.  We still had several hours before leaving Oaxaca, though, so Caz and I decided we'd explore the local mall in the hopes that we might stumble upon rolling tobacco at the mall.  We interviewed several people, each of whom gave us a different answer (all entirely in Spanish, a language with which neither Cazzie nor I was all that proficient) and after six or seven mall employees told us they didn't know where we could find rolling tobacco, we were ready to admit defeat.  

Caz snapped this picture at some point during our
misadventure.  By the end of this cab ride, we had
somewhat lost the smiles, though it's possible we're laughing
at the thought of the two of us rolling up to some seedy
backdoor location and purchasing weed thinking it was
some local variety of tobacco

We rolled our still-dripping selves out to the main entrance and I hailed a taxi.  As he loaded our sodden luggage into the trunk of the car, I showed him Caroline's bag of rolling tobacco and asked if he knew where we could find this particular brand of tobacco.  The conversation went something like this: 

Me: We want buy this, where possible to buy this?

Taxi Driver: Yes, yes, I know a place.

Me: Yes?

Taxi Driver: Yes, yes, we go.

So we happily piled into the taxi and took off.  As we drove through the maze of a parking lot, Caroline grew increasingly anxious--was I sure he knew where he was going? should we ask again if he knew where we could find a tobacconist?  Eventually she just started chattering to the driver that we needed a tobacconist, we needed a tobacconist.  Finally she realized that he wasn't understanding her words so she translated it as best as she could, "tobacco, para fumar.  Tobacco."  Now, I feel obligated to state that while I had never explicitly said "Me gustaria comprar tobacco," or "I would like to buy tobacco," I believed it to be clearly implied when I handed our driver the bag with huge stamped letters TOBACCO on the front.  The driver took her bag of tobacco again and inspected it closely--examining the front logo, opening and closing the bag, and (somewhat oddly) smelling the tobacco.  Then he started talking animatedly, which was problematic because I only understand when people speak slowly and clearly, and even then it's pretty hit and miss.  My brain finally caught on a single word, however: mota.  At that one word, everything became clear; he thought that Caz and I, two obvious foreigners, were asking him to take us to buy marijuana.  

Over the next few minutes I simultaneously struggled to stifle both laughter and horror and desperately tried to find the words to coherently explain that no, we did not wish to buy marijuana, thank you, and would he please just take us back to the city center.  It was thus that we returned to our companions, sticky with sweat and rain and empty-handed but for the story of the time we almost bought weed in #Mexico.

Semana Santa

La Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is the week preceding Easter. In Mexico, as in the United States, this is a week free from school as many families take the opportunity to travel and vacation. My roommates and I, deciding to seize the opportunity to see more of Mexico, made reservations at three places in and around Puerto Escondido, in the nearby state of Oaxaca.
In the days that follow, I'll post photos of each of the three places we stayed, but today is dedicated to the misadventure that constituted our trip from Tehuacan to Oaxaca and then on to Puerto itself.
Much of Mexico is connected by a wonderful bus line called ADO. Tickets are fairly reasonably priced and afford the luxury of sitting in an air conditioned bus watching a badly dubbed film while the Mexican desert whizzes by. The bus from Tehuacan to Oaxaca city takes about three hours. The bus was 45 minutes late leaving the station, but as our next bus didn't leave for eight hours, we still had plenty of time. We spent the following hours exploring the city center and arrived back at the station with time to spare. The boarding announcements, though, were made solely in Spanish, and the PA system was fuzzy at best. So it's not entirely surprising that we missed the initial boarding call and that, after fighting our way through crowds of vacationers to squeeze our way onto the boarding platform, our bus was gone.
The road from Oaxaca to Puerto is a mountainous nightmare that, by bus, takes approximately 10 hours to wind and wend. The next available bus wasn't until 2 pm the following day, and after 10 hours wasted in transit, we would have lost an entire day that was meant to be spent on a private beach. To say that we were panicking would be a gross understatement.
Fortunately, though, we found a hostel manned by an incredibly helpful clerk who recommended taking a Combi to Puerto (see my earlier posts about Combis). The Combi was not only less expensive, but it took half the time of a bus. We wouldn't lose our entire day in travel.
Unfortunately, to make a drive like that in roughly five hours requires drivers to fly around the sharp corners of the mountain passes at speeds that made my head spin and my stomach turn. The four of us (Joe, Brittany, Caroline, and I) were crammed into the back seat of a minivan, a mess of tangled limbs and sweat. The air was stuffy and stale, the air conditioner was broken, and after two hours, I was convinced that death by plunging into one of the canyons we were flying around was preferable to the insane feeling of nausea that I was fighting. By the fifth hour, I was more dead than alive, breathing slowly with my face pressed against the window and telling myself over and over again that I was going to survive. I don't know that I've ever been so happy to escape a vehicle.
Fortunately, though, all the pictures I snapped were from our first hour on the road, when we were bored but not struggling to maintain sanity and composure.
At some point my roommates and I intend to return to Mexico and to the places we stayed while in Puerto Escondido. We plan to recreate the entire trip, starting in Oaxaca and traveling exclusively by Combi. I'll be sure to pack my Dramamine.

Cholula

Situated in the heart of Puebla, mere minutes away from the capital city of Puebla, is the city/district of Cholula.  During our first month in Mexico, we dedicated a weekend to exploring Puebla and parts of Cholula.  While the city hosts a thriving university and a hopping night life, as well as several churches of beautiful, European influenced architecture, the city is perhaps best known for its ancient pyramid.  According to the literature I've read, the Great Pyramid of Cholula is the largest archaeological site in the New World.  Instead of the stereotypical pyramid made popular by the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, the pyramid in Cholula consists of several building and structures, including a courtyard dedicated to altars for worship and for sacrifice.  The pyramid is phenomenal.  The beauty and precision of the architecture is astonishing, and the extent to which the structures have been excavated and restored is impressive to say the least.  

This is one of my favorite misadventures and
by far one of my favorite pictures from this
trip

While the pyramid is amazing, though, a person can find all sorts of pictures of the pyramid online.  Exploring the visitor-accessible areas of the pyramid did constitute a significant portion of our time in Cholula, but it was not our most memorable experience, however.  As we were leaving the pyramid and slowly making our way back to the bus stop, we encountered a small parade or celebration in a park.  As we stopped to watch the procession, we saw people dressed in all sorts of colorful costumes--dog heads, bird heads, Mexican wrestling masks, etc.  We pulled out our cameras and started taking pictures, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake.  A group of costumed characters (including one frightening man in a cartoon mask dripping fake blood and toting a gun) saw Caroline and me standing alone they immediately closed in on us, surrounding the two of us and cutting us off from the rest of our group.  They clearly meant us no harm, but they did come uncomfortably close, jostling us as they laughed and danced.  Caroline and I laughed, shrieked, laughed more, and screamed at our friends to rescue us.  They did not, but one companion had the good fortune to snap this gem of a photo.

Mis Niños

The other significant aspect of my trip of course was the relationship I formed with my students. I was assigned to teach five classes in five different levels of English, and in each of my classes I was able to bond with my students. It was trying, frustrating, and exhausting to teach every day, but it was the most fulfilling and rewarding work I've ever done.
The first class I taught was on January 3, mere days after arriving in Tehuacan. I was exhausted and overwhelmed and I was terrified to teach. My first class was a seventh grade class with seven twelve-year-olds. I had little to no experience with Tweens and I was truly afraid of being eaten alive. I need not have feared, though. My children welcomed me immediately. They fell over themselves telling me all about themselves, their lives and their families. By the end of the first day I knew their stories and their secrets and I was already well on my way to loving them all. Over the next four months, they challenged me and they questioned everything. They made me laugh and they made me cry more than once. From my seventh graders I learned humility and grace, and how to survive an earthquake. It truly broke my heart to say goodbye.
I love today's picture because it was from one of those extremely rare perfect days. After two difficult and (to be honest) boring days of struggling to understand the perfect tenses of verbs, I decided to reward my kids with some downtime. We went out onto the grass and I read The Little Prince out loud while they listened for adjectives and uses of the past perfect, present perfect, or future perfect. It was exciting to see them correctly identifying the verbs, and touching to see them so engrossed in my favorite story.

Nostromo was Languishing...

Over the last several months, I would be hard pressed to say which has languished more, this blog or my reading project.  I started this blog to accompany my reading project--to document my thoughts, my reactions, and, ultimately, my review of each novel as I finished it.  After I accepted my position with the school in Mexico, I decided to partially hijack my own blog, dedicating it to my reading project and to my experiences teaching English as a Foreign Language in Tehuacan.  Despite a few attempts at both over the last year or so, though, it is safe to say that in this effort I have failed.

As my days in the U.S. grow fewer, however, I feel a renewed urgency to resume both, so this is my attempt.

Nostromo

To say that I have struggled with Nostromo would be something of an understatement.  I have enjoyed it at times; Conrad can write with such descriptive clarity and philosophical insight that his prose is striking and memorable.  The difficulty, for me, has been the sheer number of details to keep straight.  Nostromo is so heavily peopled with characters both major and minor, and so peppered with detail and description, that it is often hard to keep straight what exactly is going on.  This was made no less difficult by the fact that while in Tehuacan, I was only really able to read in snippets.  On the average day, I was able to steal an hour or so between classes to read, but even then I was fighting to focus.  In my last post I wrote about the magic of reading Nostromo in the paradise of Puerto Escondido, and it truly was magical to hear the rise and fall of the waves and a foreign tongue in the background (as opposed to children chanting “Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar,” or my roommate’s adult class engaged in a rather rude game of Charades).  Had I been able to stay hidden away from the world on that magical beach, swaying on a suspended mattress under the shade of palm trees, I suspect that I may have finished the novel more quickly.  

Whenever I was able to dedicate myself to the novel, though, I found myself enjoying it.  I’m nearing the finish line (less than a hundred pages to go) and finally I feel invested in the plot, and I am beginning to understand the major characters, their pasts, and their motivations as we move into the climax and denouement.  And as soon as I finish, I will happily write more.

Mexico

From left to right: Daniel, me, Joe,
Brittany and Caroline.  Standing in front of the
Catedral de Puebla in Puebla, the capital city
of the state of Puebla, about an hour an a half
 north of Tehuacan.

I have similarly struggled with writing about Mexico since leaving.  When I was in Mexico, writing about it was difficult for the plain fact that I rarely stopped moving and working long enough to really write anything of substance about my experience.  Now that I am back, however, I have been struck with a severe case of writers’ block.  In the film Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan’s character suffers from what she terms word vomit.  She is so singularly focused on her quest to destroy her nemesis, Regina George, that she can barely stop herself from talking about Regina nonstop.  Lohan’s character impatiently waits and constantly hopes that someone will even offhandedly mention Regina in conversation so that she can talk and talk some more.  While I am not seeking to destroy a frenemy, I, too, suffer from a sort of word vomit.  I wait and hope that someone will mention Mexico so that I can tell some story or other about Mexico and my adventures.  At any hint of an opportunity I will launch into story after story until someone literally stops me.  When I sit down to write about it, however, the words fail.

I’m preparing to move to Warsaw, though, and as I sort, organize, and pack (and, more importantly, finally unpack from Mexico), I feel the need to write about my time in Tehuacan before I embark on my next adventure.  To this end, for the next three weeks I intend to post a picture every day with an accompanying story.

On our way to our first party.  This was
also the first time we'd ever crammed
this many people into this small a car...

I know of no better way to start than with the people who made my experience what it was: my roommates.  My roommates were my everything while I was in Mexico—they were my friends, my family, my constant companions.  They were the ones to whom I turned with frustrations, successes, failures, and everything in between, and they challenged me to try new things, and to grow and expand my horizons in new ways.  I met Daniel in Mexico City International Airport, bonding over vino as the stress of airline travel slowly ebbed, and I met Joe at our hotel the next morning as we embarked on a daylong odyssey from our hotel in Mexico City to our much anticipated apartment in Tehuacan.  I met Brittany and Caroline the next day as they disembarked from the bus (and an exhausting travel experience that matched our own).  On the first day we all met, we locked ourselves out of our apartment and had to boost Joe and Caroline over a six-foot wall to balance-beam-walk across two walls, scale the roof, jump catlike onto a nearby tree and enlist our neighbors to help us break into our own apartment.  In the days that followed, we explored, watched late-night movies, and drank many many beers.  We conquered faulty hot water heaters, lit frighteningly volatile stove pilots, cooked experimental meals, and lived for days without electricity and running water.  After four or so days of no running water (though it was January, it was Mexico, so the afternoons were still quite warm and, to put it mildly, we stank) in desperation, Brittany and I scooped water from the well, and, equipped with a bucket of shockingly cold water and a pitcher, we washed each other’s hair.  I laughed, cried, and fought with these people, and when we each left Mexico, it was with the promise that someday soon we would all return.  I for one cannot wait.

I love this picture because it is so very descriptive of our group:  Caroline,
Brittany, and I have probably had too much to drink, Daniel is looking adorable,
and Joe is in the background mocking us all.