Hogar dulce hogar

Home sweet home.  I'm back in Klamath Falls where it’s cold and dreary, with lows in the low-20s and another storm coming in this weekend.  Quite a shock from the routine mid-70s and sunny skies of Mexico.

Once the Festival Cervantino concluded at the end of October, life in Guanajuato returned more or less to normal.  By this time, I was hosting a bad and persistent cold and cough and energy was down quite a bit.  With no great concerts to tempt me out at night, I usually got back up to my house by mid-afternoon and stayed in until the next morning.   Mary was with me for ten days, and she went home with a cold, too. 

Still, she loved it there as much as I did, and was out and about on her own while I was in school.  She was also picking up Spanish at an alarming rate, mostly from her conversations with Blanca, from whom I rented a room.  They hit it off like old friends, and I learned that Blanca actually spoke just a little English, although she only spoke Spanish to me.   

By the end of week four after Mary had gone back home, I started to feel a little bored with my classes and the whole Mexico thing and was mostly just waiting out the time until I returned home.  How much more Spanish could I learn in a week, anyway?

Fortunately, my attitude turned for the better for week five.  November 2^nd is Day of the Dead, and the Mexican students studying English at our school made an altar for a secretary who passed away last year. [See below] They prepared a little presentation for the rest of us in English, and we in return did the same about Halloween in Spanish.  One of my Mexican instructors asked me what a witch hunt was, and I explained a little about the McCarthy era to her and made it clear that witch hunts and Halloween aren’t related.  I was proud of how well I did until I realized my last words, “no son relajados,” mean “are not relaxed.”  Oops.  I meant “relacionados,” but it was too late.

The altars and ceremonies are very formal, including, of course, the macabre elements of skulls and dancing skeletons that we Anglos find a little weird.  I can only say I thought the combination of reverence and playfulness was a refreshing take on the whole death thing. 

I took Saturday as an extra day to get ready and make one last, leisurely walk around the Centro of Guanajuato.  I was being more careful about what I ate for the last week, so I had a so-so lunch in one of the better restaurants.  For really good Mexican food, I had to go into the small, seedy looking cafés with usually only two or three cramped tables and just pick something off the menu, even though I couldn’t understand much of what I had ordered.  I never regretted a decision. I also never had any stomach problems.

Sunday morning was sad as I finished packing up and then said goodbye to Blanca.  Elias, a driver from school, took me out to the airport and we had a nice chat about this and that.  As long as a conversation partner talked slow enough, I could follow pretty much whatever we were talking about.  I still need a lot of practice on the real Spanish that all native speakers use among themselves, but even here I’m starting to make progress.  Soap operas and movies when I can get them are the best practice for this, although as I said earlier, I can only take soap operas in very small doses.  Still, I made a huge language leap in five weeks, even though my Spanish can still only be described as limited and halting.  The challenge now, as always, will be in finding ways to continue to study in a town that offers little in the way of classes.  I’m meeting weekly with two conversation partners, Leticia and Antonio, and they are very helpful, but it takes a lot more than two hours a week to continue to make progress. 

Flying out from Guanajuato, I looked down on Mexico.  What I know about the violence and brutality that are so common in most of the country was in such contrast to the friendly, genuinely happy demeanor of almost everyone I met or worked with.  I don’t feel any particular desire to retire as an expat in Mexico or anyplace else, but if I did I can’t imagine a better place to live than Guanajuato.  And yet, there’s that feeling that no place in Mexico can stay free for long from the kind of terrorism that has affected most of the rest of the country.  I can only hope I’m wrong and things take a slow turn for the better rather than the worse.

Here’s the most important thing I learned in Mexico:  Mexicans are proud of their country.  They have so many reasons to be so.  If I were Mexican, I’d be proud, too.