Vamoos a Mexico

I wasn’t even planning to go to the University of Guadalajara. I was actually trying to think of the name University of Guanajuato because it’s a sister institution to Southern Oregon University, where I took my nine-week intensive course in Spanish last summer. But I couldn’t think of Guanajuato and I was mostly persuaded it must be Guadalajara I wanted since both start with G and have too many u’s a’s, and j’s. It’s easy to see how I got the two confused.

It seems to be a happy confusion, though, because when I got to the Guadawada home page I found out they have a five-week Spanish for foreigners program that runs throughout the year. Guanawana only offers a regular sixteen-week semester, which I couldn’t afford in terms of either money or time away from home and Mary. Or money.

So after a few minutes’ thought, I took the online placement test to see which of ten levels I would be put in. I haven’t heard any results yet, but I didn’t feel like I did too well.

Then went to the registration page and filled that out. I wonder what they’ll think of me since I had to click on a year of birth and their earliest choice was 1950. I was born in 1948, so I lied about my age. Then I had to click on my year in college, which didn’t offer a post-doc option, so I clicked on senior. Then I had to pick a school where I am a student, but this one offered a write-in choice, so I said non-admit. Chances are good they’ll have no idea what non-admit means.

I had, however, no trouble entering my credit card information to pay the non-refundable $150 registration fee, so in the end I think I’ll be accepted and they’ll find a place for me.

I’m excited about the trip. I haven’t studied a lot in the year since I finished the program at SOU. It’s hard to study in a vacuum but that’s mostly what I’ve done in the four years since I first started at the local community college with a “conversational Spanish” course, which in no way led to any conversational skills beyond maybe ordering a chimmichonga at Taco Bell.

So after the four years since I began, I’m really only at a college two-year level, which is to say not much. Right now, though, I’m meeting with two native-speaker tutors who I contacted through an ad, so I’m trying to cram and be as well-prepared as I can be when I get there. I have to keep reminding myself that one goes into a program like this to learn Spanish, not because one already speaks Spanish.

And I’m also a little nervous, though not much. I worry that there will be a fuss at the border since I’ll carry in a two-months’ supply of my prescriptions, of which there are five, plus a dozen of so boxes of OTC medicines that I think I need to survive. Just because I’m something of a hypochondriac doesn’t mean I won’t get diarrhea. I worry I’ll miss the first day or five because I have diarrhea.

I’ll have to take a cab to the home of my home-stay Mexican family, which shouldn’t be a problem, but then I wonder what my family will be like. Then I’ll have to find the university and the right room in time for a Monday morning orientation, then I worry I might have some lazy and ill-tempered instructors, which is probably my most legitimate concern based on past experience with faculty in general.

According to the school’s website, Guadalabamba is “the cradle of Mexican folklore and the traditional culture that is most representative of the nation: mariachi music, charrería and Tequila.”

Great. I absolutely hate mariachi music, I don’t drink, and I can’t find charrería in any of my Spanish dictionaries. It might share the same root with “charrasquear,” which means either to strum a guitar or to stab a person. (I did not make that up.)

I did find a blog of one former student, though, and it seems the tequila was the source of most of her entries, with only a few brief comments about the actual school. She said that to really keep up, she’d like have to study like four hours a day or whatever, so that’s a good sign for me. I don’t see myself going out a lot with all my twenty-something fellow classmates drinking Diet Cokes while they get shitfaced on the local distilled spirits and dirty dance to the primitive polka rhythms of the native mariachi music

Speaking of getting stabbed, though, I take the U. at its website-word when it says it is located in a safe, charming neighborhood where I will enjoy the many restaurants, shops Starbucks and a Wal-Mart as long as I take cabs at night and don’t stray too far during the day. Do not approach large groups of idle young men with tattoos on their necks. Do not make eye contact with their women.

I’m actually not at all worried about security, despite Mexico’s well-deserved reputation for violence which in places like Ciudad Juarez can make Baghdad feel like Colonial Williamsburg. What can go wrong?

So, it’s “¡Arriba, arriba!” or “Up there, up there!” to Mexico, and I have to call the consulate in Portland to see if I need a visa and call my doctor since I’m sure I’ll need lots of shots. If you don’t need some shots to go there, it’s not an adventure.

I have lots of other things to do, and I leave in a month. I could probably be ready to go tomorrow, but a month will give me extra time to worry about details.

Real money

Thank dog it’s over for now. If I learned one thing in this endless debate, it’s that a trillion dollars must be a lot of money. I’m old enough that I still remember when a billion dollars was a lot of money. The late Senator Everett Dirkson famously said, “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Now you’re not. Even a billion isn’t enough to get the country’s attention. A billion is the new million. Now, if you’re serious about being a Republican, you have to talk about a trillion.

Of course, I have no idea how much money a trillion dollars is. If you stacked hundred dollar bills on top of each other, would they reach the moon?

In our little town, even a thousand dollars is still a lot of money. The city has been up in our neighborhood the last few days repaving the street in front of our house. For three days, we’ve had heavy equipment rolling around, making enough noise to wake the dead and even me. Yesterday, I thought the backup beeper on the backhoe was my alarm clock and kept mashing the snooze button until I realized there wasn’t going to be any more snoozing. This was at six a.m., and I usually sleep to about nine. I keep late hours.

We’re really happy to see our tax dollars at work like this. Since we moved into the house twenty-seven years ago, there has been a gravel strip between our sidewalk and the road. Winters, the strip would turn to mud, and the next spring I’d have to bring in more gravel to build it back up. To get my motorcycle out of the garage, I had to roll it backwards down our steep driveway and cross the gravel strip and make that backwards turn to be facing the right direction in the road. It was always a little tense, and fairly often my foot would slip out from under me if I had to touch down in the gravel. Fortunately, I never fell. Now I can roll down backwards and play the game of trying to never put a foot down.

We were lucky to get this work done because the crew chief said there are hundreds of miles of roads in town that need repair, but there’s no money to keep up. Our street was seriously breaking up, but there are others in just as bad a shape, and even some which are still not paved at all. The money for the job came from federal EPA funds because we have enough dust and other particles in the air to be a health hazard, especially in winter when lots of people still burn wood to heat their homes. We hate wood burning and get hit especially hard by one stove from a house on the diagonal behind us, but for a lot of families, it’s burn free wood from a National Forest permit or freeze in the dark.

So a few thousand here and a few thousand there keeps a couple of crews busy doing badly needed road work. This is almost certainly a program that will be cut under the new budget. Republicans hate the EPA, and they don’t care about these small programs that keep people employed doing important work. Next year this time, half of those guys or more will be out of work, drawing unemployment and food stamps, and they’ll lose their health insurance.

Tough beans. We're the Republican Party, and it's not our problem.

A few thousand here, a few thousand there, pretty soon you’re talking real people thrown into financial distress and a big hit to the local economy. At least we got our road paved.