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.