This guy, a-flop on my deck, looked dazed and confused so I thought I had all the time to take all kinds of angles, but after the fourth shot he disappeared. He vanished so quickly and so silently I wondered if I’d imagined him.

This post is for rakkity who likes to keep track of fall in New England. Sorry, no heron in the bottom photo. I’m always looking but I guess he or she found another place to feed. The first picture was taken at our local gas station.

Hi there.
I’m so, so, so sorry I haven’t called. I really want to, and keep not getting my shit together. I have to go buy a phone card, so reaaaally I’m going to do that today or tomorrow, and call you tomorrow. OR get SKYPE because I LOVE IT and then you can see my pretty face, even if you don’t have a camera on your computer. Like, all you need to do is buy those dorky headphones with a microphone and we’re set!

But you said you can’t really write, but it seems that you might enjoy hearing about things here in the meantime, before we work out the phone/chatting things. I didn’t realize for, like, a week that you had put up my last email — I didn’t kill you, as you can see. I guess just change names if you put this one up?

So, this past weekend was a disaaaaster weekend, because of the fact that some people (Mexicans) live in Mexico time, and other people (me) have not yet learned how to be quite so flexible…. Firstly, Friday night was really nice. We went to a pre-anthro (anthro = discoteque = dance club) for my friend Hannah’s birthday, which was really cute. All of us who aren’t sick went, so we were just missing 2 people. That was super cute, since there are definitely some people who aren’t that into going out and partying, and don’t drink, and there’s another set of people who go out all the time (including during the week), and then there’s those of us who go out on the weekends. So it was cute for us all to be together for Hannah’s birthday celebration. After the pre-anthro we went to the house of a family member of one of the girls on the program, chilled out, and I got a ride home around 3am.

The disaster begins Saturday… One girl had invited me to go to a wedding with her and her family which was supposed to begin at 6pm. Her family is really chill and nice, a bunch of brothers and cousins in their 20s who are really close, and they’re like “Yeah, going to the wedding in Guerrero (the state over) is easy — it’s about 2 or 3 hours away, and we can go to Acapulco afterwards!” So we’re interested, and meet up at 4pm to go to the wedding. At 5:30pm we FINALLY leave Cuautla after picking up more family, and then it takes us 3.5 or 4 hours to get there, stopping fairly often because two of the girls on the trip are sick.

Fast forward to Saturday night, when one of the girls on my program is puking, not from alcohol but from this stomach infection, one of the girls is exhausted and taking a nap in the car, I am cranky and tired, and the girl who actually lives with this family is also sick. So we finally, finally get to a family friend’s house to sleep at 5:30 am. I sleep in the same house as the girl who is puking, and Sunday I spend that whole day taking care of her, making her drink water, holding her hair while she pukes… Etc. I had made a Skype date with Sara-Alicia (ya know, my roommate from last year/one of my best friends who I love soooo much) for 5pm (because she has to go specially to the Language Lab, since her computer doesn’t have the ability to do it), and I had made that phone date with with you for 6pm (7pm your time)… Finally we leave Guerrero at 4pm, and it takes us 4 hours to get back. Again, those of us from the program are split up so I’m with the sick girl, and the other two girls are with other family members…

Moral of the story: It was a huge fiasco.
In sum, the important parts:
I need some more time here in order to really master “Mexico time”
Everyone on the program is sick/has been sick EXCEPT for me. I’m biding my time.
I like to sleep and Mexico does not allow for that desire during the weekends.
Everyone is crazy.

It’s okay now. At the time, when it was 5pm, and then 5:30pm, and I was missing my Skype date with Sara-Alicia, and then missing chatting with you, I was alllmost in tears in the car. But it’s okay now. I just needed a day or two to sleep and chill out before thinking it was funny. I mean, it was funny at the time, too, in a bittersweet, sort of way.

Other than that, things are going really well. I really like a couple people — Isona, who’s Japanese American and just fascinating to talk to. We chat about politics and cultures and our homework and I really like it. Then there’s Hannah, who I hang out with and chat with, but normally not about the same sorts of things as me and Isona. Everyone else is really nice, but I like Isona and Hannah the best, I suppose.

My classes are going well, and I’m doing well IN them too. They’re mostly super easy, and the ones that I have more reading for are pretty interesting. I’m feeling really good about my Spanish most of the time, although every now and then I realize again that my family and teachers and stuff dumb things down for us, and talk slower, and listen more carefully to what we’re saying. At my vegetable stand, the guy who owns it doesn’t really know how to communicate with me very well. I really like him, and I like the stand a lot, but today I was trying to ask a couple questions about where stuff comes from, and if it’s organic, and I realized that my family knows the KINDS of mistakes I’m likely to make, and thus can sort of decipher my pronunciation and word turn-arounds, whereas Jaime just hasn’t been with people who are learning Spanish as a second language as much. So I’m thankful for my family.

Things are going well in the house, although on Sunday they made me read aloud from their magazine that they read every Sunday night that’s about the Bible. Well, the magazine isn’t about the Bible… They get this magazine from their church which has different topics, and then they read aloud passages from the Bible to see how they relate. So I read aloud from the magazine for probably close to 30 minutes, and I was kind of furious. I was exhaaausted from the trip to Guerrero, and I was sad about missing the Skype date with S-A and with you, and it was just bad. But other than that, things are going really well with them. Hahaha.

I should go and do some homework. This weekend we’re going to D.F. (Ciudad de Mexico) and we’ll be going to the house of Frida Kahlo, the National Museum of Anthropology (which is the 3rd biggest in the world!), Teotihuacan, and the National Palace (which has Diego Rivera murals). So that’s pretty great, but I have a lot of work for tomorrow and next week.

Love you. Miss you tons and tons.
Daughter Dearest

Long time a child, and still a child, when years
By Hartley Coleridge

Long time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I;
For yet I lived like one not born to die;
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.
But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep; and waking,
I waked to sleep no more, at once o’ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears
Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man,
Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is grey,
For I have lost the race I never ran:
A rathe December blights my lagging May;
And still I am a child, though I be old:
Time is my debtor for my years untold.

I like the almost not there quality to this photograph, how the house resembles a faded watercolor, as if there are lots of possibilities for change. So different from my normal need for sharp focus.

No, it’s not Tuesday but when I opened my youtube page this was recommended based on my viewing habits.

The blonde Hilary, who’s in Sevilla wrote this:

Today was the first day of classes!! this is what my schedule look like – Mon and Wed

1030-1150: international marketing (in English)
1200-120: Spanish civilization and culture (all in Spanish)
130-250: Spanish phonetics and phonology (all in Spanish)

Tues and Thurs
12-120: Spanish contemporary literature (all in Spanish)
130-250: Spanish for business (all in Spanish)

So that’s what I have for classes. Today we obviously had the ones for Mon and Wed and I like them all and I like all of my professors. They won’t be all that much work I’m hoping, but I think they will all be a lot of information at once. I’m finding that i know a ton more Spanish that I thought i did. Speaking it is harder than listening and understanding, but when I sit through three straight hours of Spanish lectures, my brain actually hurts from processing that much Spanish at once. On the class placement test i placed as advanced 1 (the highest level is advanced 2 which is mostly only native speakers) so i was really happy about that.

Other than classes, I’m getting what they call an ‘intercambio’, which is a student at the University from Sevilla who wants to learn English and they help teach me Spanish. You meet up as much as you want and do whatever you want and talk as much as possible and learn from each other. It’s a great way to meet locals and use vocabulary that you might not ordinarily use. I’m also planning on doing intramural beach volleyball, Tai Chi and yoga, and joining a program that helps teach English to elementary school kids (all offered for free by my university). I’m finding that when i keep myself busy I don’t feel like I’m in another country at all. but when I’m sitting in my tiny museum of a home where I can’t touch anything and feel unwelcome and uncomfortable I don’t want to be here at all. I know that when i get a new family I will be so much happier. i wouldn’t be so obsessed with getting a new family other than the fact that I listen to the other kids in the program rave about how great their families are all day, so i know that what I’m experiencing is not the norm.

Going out at night is probably my favorite part of the day so far. The nightlife here is so much fun and so crazy. Lunch is eaten between 2 and 3, followed by a siesta resting period, and dinner is not till 9. After that everyone gets ready and is out until so so late. We usually get home around 3 or 4 and all the bars are still open and the locals are out for much longer. Us gringos are not totally used to doing things so late. Luckily, i got over jet lag in like 2 days by staying up so late.

The other kids on the trip are really nice, I’ve made a good group of friends and when we go out at night there are a solid 20 of us that you can expect to be there every time. There are a few from Umass that remind me of my friends from there, even though we didn’t know each other until we got to Spain.

This city is so beautiful. When i walk around with a camera i want to take a picture of every single thing because it all should be on a post card. We have the biggest cathedral in Spain, apparently you can fit every person from the Dominican Republic in it haha but don’t quote me on that. And guess whose crypt we saw there in that cathedral? Christopher Colombus! haha they did a DNA test on his living relatives and it actually was him in there.

So I’m at an internet cafe right now for email and stuff, but I can’t upload the hundreds of pictures that I’ve taken because they don’t all fit on my thumb drives and I’m too lazy to save them as another type of file or whatever i need to do.

i can’t wait to get into the full swing of classes and get into the rhythm of being here more.

Hope all is well with you and everyone else at home.

hasta luego

hil

Blogmeister’s note: No, I didn’t ask for permission to post this and I hope yet another Hilary is not mad at me. I did edit out the paragraphs where Hil said she’d joined the Basque Separatists.

Hilary wrote me from Mexico and I didn’t answer her right away, so when I saw her parents they indicated she wasn’t going to write back until I wrote. I jumped on my computer and fired off a quick reply, she replied with pages of text, I didn’t reply and then she wrote back: “We are SO fighting right now….” Gave me a very good laugh.

Here’s some of her long email. Nicely catches us all up on what she’s up to.

Good job! I very much appreciate the email back!!!

Things are going really well. I’m feeling a lot more settled — that first week just felt really weird, not knowing how to get places and feeling weird because of the altitude, and having all the students know each other a little bit from Earlham (it’s an Earlham program, so I’m all alone as the non-Earlhamite!). But I feel a lot better. The classes are unbelievably easy — I have class around 4 hours a day 3 days a week, and 2 hours a day twice a week. The days with less classes are days when I volunteer at this veruraria (vegetable stand) in the mercado (market). The family is really nice, and they’ll be teaching me the names of the veggies and how to weigh them in kilos and all that good stuff. I haven’t taken any pictures yet, really, but I want to start — my house, my veggie stand, my “school”, my family, etc.

I’m getting to know the other students a lot better. I obviously like some a lot and… well, some are less than wonderful. I’m the only one here interested in agriculture and the environment, which is too bad. Remember that book I was reading (which was not uplifting) about indigenous cultures of Mexico (the one with the Wal Mart statistic)? Well, the whole thing was about indigenous cultures from this area taking back their heritage and caring for the earth. And the day that we talked about the book, people only had negative things to say about it. One girl was like “Gosh, I can’t believe this guy took his kids to such a dangerous place in Honduras to visit his other daughter! That’s so irresponsible!” (The author was living in Mexico, but his daughter was in Honduras doing volunteer work and he happened to go to visit her with his kids when it was dangerous.) Finally Howard, who runs the program, saw that I hadn’t said anything, and he was like “Hilary, you look like you’re DYING to say something!” And I was like “Well, yes. I mean, I was really enjoying watching the Earlham dynamic, but I just have a lot of different thoughts. I mean, first of all, I think we need to recognize that this man did something that none of us could ever dream of doing, which is giving back to a community and being pretty selfless about it. And secondly, I really enjoyed the descriptions of the care of the earth, etc, etc.” Up til that point no one had talked about the agriculture or environmental concerns of these communities. Anyways, oh well.

(This same girl who said the thing about Honduras also asked yesterday what free trade is. I mean, I know not everyone has the same interests as me, but you can’t fucking come to Mexico without understanding free trade, US pressure on Mexico to have free trade, and NAFTA, since it’s ruining the country. I’m trying to take deep breaths but I really just want to be like “WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HERE?!” She also mentioned that she thinks history is stupid since people aren’t actually going to repeat the same mistakes and I wanted to say but didn’t “Well, did you hear there was a genocide in Turkey in 1918, and then surprise surprise another one in Germany in the ’40s, and then Kosovo, and Rwanda, and Darfur, just to mention a few?!”)

But really, I mostly like the people on my program. And I really like my family. I’m still unclear on some things, like how much I should be helping in the home, and how to do that. Last night I asked if someone from the program could come over, and my mom said yes. We got back literally maybe 5 minutes later, around 3:05, for the comida (which is at 3) and she seemed kind of put out and pissy. Then when I was pouring someone juice she made a joke about how I felt bad about being late. I mean, I don’t think she was actually pissed off, but maybe she was just expecting me home earlier than I had said. It’s totally fine, but just learning about what expectations there are will take some time.

Meanwhile, it’s hard since I don’t actually have a good way to make friends with people from Cuautla (my town in Morelos, the state). Like, some people have families that are really social and go out a lot, but my sisters who are 19 and 20 don’t really do that. Gabby, who lives at home and goes to Uni here, is really religious and doesn’t drink or go to bars really. Her sister Idania goes to school in D.F. (the capital 2 hours away) and comes home on the weekends. I think she might be more interested in going out with me, but I don’t know yet really. Tonight I’m going over to the house of one of the girls on the program, since it’s her bday and her family is throwing a party for us all. Tomorrow during the day the whole group is going on an excursion to Huayapan, which is a traditionally indigenous town, and also going to a couple other interesting places. At night I think a bunch of us will go out, for the birthday of ANOTHER girl on the program. So hopefully we’ll find someplace fun to go. I think we’re looking into good discoteques.

Anyways, I miss you and Matt like crazy, of course. I read the blog and the journal, both of which make me feel extremely connected and yet completely foreign and far at the same time. I keep wishing I could be home for October 25th, but I obviously can’t. I still don’t know when I’m going to be home, but I really do want to be here for more time. I want to explore this country some more, which I can’t really do during the program since we’re pretty booked. I would honestly love for you to come. I know you can’t come during Christmas, but my program ends on the 13th — you could come before Christmas for a week, or after Christmas for a week! I’ll go anywhere with you — take out a travel guide for Mexico from the library! Chiapas is supposed to be totally beautiful. I want to check out the cloud forests and the selva (rainforest) and the campo (fields). And remember, I found a place that gives SCOOTER TOURS?! I LOVE SCOOTERS. (My mom Gabby here has a moto, which is a scooter/motorcycle thing, which she sometimes takes me to school on. I loooove it.) So really, think about it. I’m going to wait until probably October or maybe November until I make definite plans about what to do. I miss you all a ton, but at the same time this feels like a good opportunity to explore, although I’d much prefer to do it with people who I know and like. I’m feeling my way around the Earlham students — there are one or two I could imagine traveling with at this point, but we’ll see. I think most of them have tickets for home, which I totally understand.

Anyways, you need to get Skype. It’s so easy. And that way you can just have it on when you’re sitting at your computer, and sometime we’ll catch one another! And when people come over you can leave voicemail messages for me with Adam or Dan or someone if I’m not on! So much fun!

Love you so much . Hugs and kisses. Come visit me.
Mwah,

Hilary, your surrogate daughter

Blogmeister’s note: I didn’t ask for permission to post this, I hope she doesn’t mind.