I think I´m in love...

with mountain-laced, smog-covered, thriving, humming, creative, passionate, Mexico City. I´m staying with friends in Roma Norte for the first few days, close to the metro, close to the Centro Historico and the Zocalo, the biggest public square in the world next to Red Square, I´ve heard. Yeah, the air is visible, and yeah I can feel it in my lungs, and yeah, the traffic is intense... but so much makes this place worth it. There´s a city joy here that I haven´t seen in a long time, and a liberating anonymity that I didn´t realize I had missed since leaving DC.

Not that I´ve forgotten lovely, intimate Merida. In fact, it´s by leaving Merida that I get to enjoy 'coming home' next week.

I´m off to another day of an interdisciplinary conference on immigration, beautifully organized by a fellow Fulbrighter. My mind is swimming and spinning and...well, we´ll see.

More soon, and with photos.

Rothko in Merida

If you're a fan of Mark Rothko's paintings, this is your house, your site-specific sculpture whose layers of paint battle heat, moisture and the unrelenting creep of mildew that would cover all of Merida's structures if given the opportunity. In this case, the effect is utterly lovely, and I feel lucky to pass by this house almost every day.

One day last month, my Rothko house went up for sale.

Merida being a city that prefers inner courtyards to outer front yards, your average north American "Century 21" real estate agent would be at a loss to find a place to pound her for-sale sign into the ground; with the house I live in as the only exception for blocks around, there's not a patch of dirt to be found in Merida's historical district-- not until you enter someone's home, at which point the world opens up to lush gardens, fully grown palm trees, bouganvellia. Merida is a city of inside spaces.

But out here on the sidewalk, there's only cement. What's a realtor to do? Buy some paint, of course.

And so it was that I happened upon a man putting the final touches on a new, horrifying layer on my Rothko house: a bright yellow rectangle with black lettering: Se Vende, and telephone numbers. A loud bumblebee of a sign. I gasped.

I actually tried to go into the house at that moment, thinking I could somehow save it from the evil yellow paint that doesn't go with the pinks and blues and greens of my personal Rothko. I found myself shushed away from the house by another man who'd been supervising from across the street. He said... something. And the man with the yellow paint said... something back. In sudden reversal, Yellow Paint Man started painting over the black "For Sale" letters he had just finished. Maybe, I thought to myself, I had somehow convinced them to stop.

When I passed by the next morning, the yellow rectangle had been painted over yet again, this time in pink.

I used to hate pink. But in my personal 21st century Crayola box, this New Pink, this Pediatrician's Pink (before doctors' offices took to hiring interior decorators), this Pretty Pink... is a Plausible Pink. I'm sure I had nothing to do with this, in the end, but I like knowing that I'm not the only one who loves this house.

Carnival is here,

which means people are out in droves buying costumes or costume parts. The Children's Parade is tomorrow, so these folks are down to the wire.

I love not knowing what to expect with Carnival in Merida, and yet I find myself playing the endless game of "it's like": it's like Halloween, with the costumes and the candy, only it lasts a week; it's like Mardi Gras, only I've never had the pleasure of going to Mardi Gras, so what do I know?; it's like New Mexico's Zozobra with its "burning of bad moods," except that they don't actually burn anything.

It's like... a visitor's least curious state of mind, to compare each new experience to those preceding it. So I slap myself on the wrist and turn back to the moment, and the moment rewards me. It's like... totally unique.

I made some new friends tonight, all West Coast expats living here in Merida, each one interesting. With perfect café seating on the Plaza, we drank beer and learned about one other while keeping an eye on the Burning of Bad Moods. And you know what? It worked! There's not a bad mood to be found anywhere.

here is

the ear that

no longer can

hear

You can't miss it-- it's the... um... the EAR-SHAPED piece you see on the left side of the bowl. Click on the picture for a nice close-up.

Tonight's posting will be brief, consisting of a few tips (ha!) I left out of my previous frijol con puerco posting:

• First of all, that's only about 1/5 of the whole ear. In recipe lingo, that would mean: Cut the ear into several smaller (but still recognizable) pieces. (Of course, the texture is a dead givaway, too.)


• Gloria (my teacher) tossed into the stew a plain old table spoon, which remained there througout cooking and beyond. My Spanish is improving, but alas, I wasn't able to understand the role of the spoon. I fished it out today, but decided that this batch was so good, it's got to remain in the list of ingredients. Therefore: 1 spoon... of nothing.


• While I started out drinking lots of horchata upon arrival in Merida, I've grown fond of jamaica, a drink made from boiled jamaica leaves (though they may be petals, for all I know). Anyway, we made our own batch on Saturday: Boil jamaica leaves for 10 minutes, strain, cool, and serve over ice.

On a related note

This evening, I enjoyed an amazing walk through Merida's cavernous, blocks-long, old-style central market, Lucas de Galvez.

Language teachers, I have found my i + 1: my goal is to apply the shopping skills I acquired at Santiago market to the much bigger and profoundly sense-ational Lucas de Galvez market.

Tonight I did what I've often told my ESL students to do: I went into the market and asked questions. What is this? Is it spicy? What do you use it for?, over and over. The answers were largely the same, but the phrases varied, and I've got to believe that this is good for my Spanish-- it certainly feels right. Plus, the folks I talked to were very kind and interested in helping me understand which spices go into which dishes.

More on Lucas de Galvez in another posting. What a place.

Culture shock, or...

is my frijol con puerco just thoroughly, absurdly delicious?

It's both, I'm sure of it.

A few postings back, I invited readers to suggest topics for future postings, and being the good blog participants that you are, you contributed all kinds of good ideas. It was Nina, though, who suggested I look at the elephant doing cartwheels to and fro: culture shock.

This bowl of frijol con puerco is not just good... it is medicinal. This stew is saving me. It's a strong word, save, but it's the right one. It is nourishing me, boosting my confidence, telling me I am part of something bigger. This stew is saving me from isolation.

The word I have trouble with is "shock," because I'm not feeling so much shocked as... periodically covered. Covered in a haze or a gauze, unable to fully trust my senses at times, unable to see others fully (with passing thoughts that contain that unfortunate nounless pronoun, They), under-able to communicate who I am (though that may have something to do with the dark sunglasses I've taken to wearing lately).

But this stew, this frijol con puerco, cuts through it all. Speaking from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, this stew fortifies me from my physiological toes all the way up to my (self-)actualizing head.

Let's start with Physiological Needs

Those would be food, water, air, shelter, clothing and basic health and hygiene. Here, it's important to remember that I made my frijol con puerco here in my own dwelling, so I've clearly got the need for shelter and food taken care of. Though I'm still drinking water from 1.5 liter bottles, I will graduate to water-cooler style water, delivered, in the coming days. I've got a place to bathe that is now pretty much free of the various vermin that were living in it back when I first moved in. (More on that when I talk about safety.)

Some things remain difficult. Noise pollution is my greatest affliction; those of you who have Skyped with me have heard the roar of mufferless vehicles that barrell down my narrow little street. I mutter bad words to myelf about these drivers, these otherwise nice people who are tranformed into speeding, honking misanthropes when they find themselves behind a steering wheel. I haven't had to buy an alarm clock because the traffic reaches a critical frequency right around 6:30 a.m. There, a silver lining.

I have long found Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs relevant in one way or another to most topics, but it was only this morning that I thought of it as paradigm useful in understanding culture shock. This connection was motivated, I'll admit, by a not-entirely-logical dislike for the too-cute "stages of culture shock" paradigm. Not surprisingly, I'm not the first to have made this connection. I found this very smart piece on the Sociolinguistic aspects of culture shock and concluded once again that Dutch intellectuals are a special gift to this world. (Update: It seems I'm predisposed to give the Dutch more credit than they have earned in this case-- this article was actually written by Alla V. Yeliseyeva.)

My bowl is now empty, my stomach full, my sense of well-being humming. I'm keenly aware that my frijol con puerco is more than food-- it is a manifestation of well-being: being in a safe space, cooking with someone who weaves my name into her songs, knowing that I've made a good choice in asking her to teach me how to cook, and realizing I can do this for myself in the future. In upcoming posts, I'll explore the remaining layers of my culture shock and Maslow's Hierarchy, namely: Safety, Love/Belonging, Self-Esteem and, at the top, Actualization.

For now, though, I am sated.

Floors and Comfort Food

My friends J & R are having a baby right now, as I write these very words, up north in Baltimore. Since I'm not exactly close by, I'm going to cheer them on from here by talking about good cookin'.

But first, a bit about floors in Merida... (but of course!)

This being a tropical city, you don't find carpets or rugs in Merida, since they'd just biodegrade within a matter of months. Instead, floors are almost always tile, and here in the the historical part of Merida, you find beautiful and durable pasta tiles that withtand merciless washing.

Yes, I digress... and yes, I'm here today to talk about comfort food. The point is that the floors get dirty and need to be cleaned. And while I'm hardly fearful of cleaning, the task of floor cleaning is just not something I wanted to tackle on my own-- the fact that it involves a spigot that is located in the living room suggests that the process is oh-so-different from what I know with respect to hard-wood floors in Washington DC (and even that is limited, I'll admit). Here, there is a lot of water involved, and a floor squeegy, and... so I hired someone to, um, show me, er... how to do it. Again and again. Okay, so the upshot is that Gloria now comes every other week to clean the house and wash my floors.

Gloria is lovely. Gloria sings songs to me, loves "los bijis" (the Bee-Gees) and generally fusses over me. It seemed only natural that I ask her to teach me how to cook la comida yucateca. First lesson: frijol con puerco, a standard Yucatecan dish often served on Mondays.

We agreed that my lesson would start with a trip to the market. We walked down to Santiago, one of Merida's older markets, to made our first stop at the carnicería, where the butcher, framed here by chorizo and choice cuts of beef, cut for us a nice, lean piece of pork, along with una oreja (an ear) y un rabo (a pig's tail) for taste. That ear was as big as a pot holder, I tell you! I decided to think of the ear and the tail as the the Yucatecan equivalent of a bay leaf in gringo cooking.

It was nice having Gloria there to show me the ropes; in the lingo of language teaching, this was pure schema building with more than a touch of scaffolding involved. In other words: having gone through the motions with Gloria, I now know what to expect when I next visit the carnicero, and for that, I feel a bit braver than I was before.

Once laden with plenty of pork and port parts, we visited the fruit and vegetable stand. We picked up some black beans, rice, red onion, garlic, cilantro, and epazote-- a leafy herb that is, well, let's just say "helpful" to those who will later eat the black beans. (Note to self: look for epazote upon returning to Maryland... I'll turn our local vegetarians on to something better than Beano!) After making a final stop at the tortillería we made our way home.

Here, you're looking at the basic components of frijol con puerco: a bot of black beans boiling away on the back burner, the pork on the left front burner, and tomatoes that, once roasted and crushed, will make up the salsa. In the end, it's all pretty sencillo: brown the pork, stick it the pot to stew with the beans, and make some rice. Spoon the beans over the rice and serve it with radish, chopped onion, cilantro and the roasted tomato salsa, don't forget the tortillas, and buen provecho. In all, it took about 2 hours to prepare. But of course, the leftovers are the best part: after sitting another day in the fridge, it will be at it's best on Monday, the traditional day for this dish to be served.


Welcome to the world, Deacon! When you've grown some teeth, I'll make some frijol con puerco for you and your proud, loving parents.

Calle 64, Mérida

Last week's unusually cool temps seemed to bring out particularly blue skies and fluffy clouds. This view, rare because it's nearly impossible to photograph a house without embracing the visual caucauphony of electricity/phone/cable wires, caught my eye.

Fun on the Radio--

Well, it all comes around... while serving up my veggie chili at last weekend's chili cookoff, I met Michael Sourial, host of a local radio show, Now Just Listen. Targeted at learners and teachers of English, Now Just Listen is featured live on Thursdays from 9:30-10:30 p.m. CST (10:30-11:30 p.m. EST), both on local radio and live on the internet (this link will automatically launch RealPlayer).

Michael's got a great radio voice-- what timbre!-- and just the right touch for an English language show in a non-English speaking country: he speaks clearly and slowly, yet naturally. The show is structured for variety and features a number of returning guests, all area English teachers.

My favorite part of the show is the "English through music" segment, where Michael does a brief analysis of lyrics before playing the song. Last night's focus was "English through the music of The Ramones," featuring the cynic's favorite, "Blitzkrieg Bop". Something about Michael's delivery really brings out the poetry in song lyrics.

Anyway, I had the pleasure of being a guest on last night's show. I joined the "English Roundtable" discussion, where we talked about ways to approach tough classroom problems. In the photo above, Michael prepares his notes while Roundtable regular, Claudia, and sound technician Israel, look on.

Check in for next week's show-- looks like I'll be a regular on the "English Roundtable" portion of the show. Yay!

One month down... and up--

I arrived exactly a month ago in Mérida on a flight that landed at 2:30 a.m. after first sitting for many hours on the tarmack in Houston. Somewhere between Customs, an ATM and a taxi stand, I made my way to my hotel and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up, I walked across the street and snapped this photo. Only later did I realize I had entered the serene courtyard of my host institution, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, affectionately known as UADY (like "body" with a "w" instead of a "b"). My office is on the third floor, visible in the upper right corner of the photo. (Hint: Click on the photo to view an enlarged version.)

A month later, I figure it's about time I describe what I'm doing here in Mérida... After all, it's not just about finding a place to live, making new friends, quoting the Pope, and noting once again that I'm a bit odd :)

My original Fulbright proposal was sencillo (straightfoward): in short, I proposed to do what I've done in the US, only adapted for contexts in Mexico.

There.

Too vague, you say?

Okay, a bit more detail... I originally proposed to

• teach TESOL methodology courses to pre-service teachers at the undergraduate level;


• offer workshops to in-service language teachers; and


• advise schools and their teachers in making better use of their existing technology resources for the purposes of language teaching.

That was over a year ago. Once I heard the good news that I'd gotten the grant, the fine folks at Fulbright then sought a suitable placement for me, and though this took a while (and boy, were they patient with me and my need to check in regularly!), they did a super job of pairing me with UADY.

So, here's what I'm actually doing:

• I'm advising UADY in the design of a new institution-wide English language curriculum. Here, I'm working with a curriculum design committee, whose objective it is to unite UADY's various academic departments with a common English langauge program. The goal is to ensure that all students, whether studying business or science or education, walk away with a similar proficiency in English.


• A significant part of this new curriculum involves the use of centros de auto-acceso, or "self-access centers," which are very popular in Mexico. (Think of it as an independent-study language learning library where you have access to books, magazines, videos, and computers, all punctuated by regular meetings with a language tutor.) Here, I will advise UADY in their selection of langauge learning software and tools for internet-based language learning.


• I'm working with teachers at UADY's Faculty (School) of Education to increase the effective use of instructional technology for language teaching.

Though this third point sounds a bit cut-and-dry, it is actually very very exciting: I'm helping teachers identify specfic, individualized goals for professional growth in the area of technology-- for one teacher, it involves the use of digital cameras, while for another, it means learning enough HTML to create her own website. Everyone has different interests, and it's my job to help them develop these interests with lasting results.

Toward this end, I've created a second blog, this one for my UADY colleagues who want to "grow" their technology skills. I've named it The Instructional Technology Greenhouse, doing my best to hit everyone over the head with what I see as a perfect metaphor for technology development-- cultivating a set of skills that comprise your own unique technology garden.

Extranjera...

If you know me at all, you know that I am an intensely social person. One might therefore expect me to have no problem making new friends in a new country, and one would be partly correct: I've met some wonderful people indeed. Few of them are Mexican, however, and this is something I am trying to understand. But then I've been here only a month, so there's still plenty of time, right?

I do have one Mexican friend, M, who is lovely. She and her husband recently took me to Uxmal for the evening light show. I had envisioned something bizarre along the lines of "ancient ruins meet 70's rock-opera laser show," but it was actually much more tasteful than that. While a narrator tells the story of Uxmal, a spectrum of colored lights highlights various buildings within the Uxmal compound-- and so it is that the most modern story telling techniques bring these ancient structures to life. I look forward to returning to Uxmal during the day, but I'm happy my first view was by moonlight, and with new friends.

I'm still getting used to the fact that I am una extranjera here; the translation doesn't do the word justice, because more than being a "foreigner," I am, by etymological extension, extraña (strange). But of course, we already knew that...

What else would explain the strange woman who walks just for exercise, who rides her bike to work, who sits in the park and reads? I don't see locals doing these things. People walk to and from, men ride bikes, and people in the park sit idly (and if alone, only if they are men) or talk with others. In fact, you just don't see women out alone very often. So here I am, a stranger in a land that is by turns baffling and normal.

This one is for y'all who are currently buried up to your armpits in snow. Merida is actually suffering a bit of a cold spell these days, with night temps now in the 60's. (I'm not trying to rub it in, really-- folks here are bundled up, fighting off the chill that comes with low temperatures. I, of course, am thrilled.)
Forty-five minutes from Merida, Progreso is our closest beach. And since it's on the northern coast of the Yucatan Penninsula, Progreso boasts green water instead of the turquoise blue that's more the norm for Cancun and other resort cities east of here-- different currents and all that.

Progreso is a great place to sit on the beach, drink beer, and eat all the panuchos and salbutes you want. Yucatecans are very state-proud, and these signature dishes are offered a almost every turn. If you want to know more about Yucatecan cuisine, read this brief article featured in Yucatan Today.

That's all for this posting; just wanted my DC Area friends to know I'm thinking of them!

I entered my veggie chili in yesterday's big chili cook-off fundraiser for the Merida English Library (MEL). The event drew several hundred people, mostly Merida gringos, but also curious Meridianos. Here, I'm showing off my chili aside Lorna Gail, who has run the MEL for many of its ten years of existence. (My chili, one of about 15 vying for the coveted Chili Bowl, won many kind comments and second servings, but alas, no Bowl.)

In addition to its wonderful inventory of English language books, magazines and video, and its provision of a peaceful inner patio perfect for reading, the library is the nexus of gringo social networking here in Merida. It's just down the block from where I live, so I'm there often.

Networking in Merida is a very distant cousin to DC style networking. Thankfully gone is the requisite starter, "So, what do you do?" (hmm... well, I sleep and I play and I eat, sing, wonder, worry, and marvel... but I guess that's not what you want to know, is it...), traded in for the more humanistic, "So, what brought you to Merida?" Everyone has a different story.

On Monday nights, my friend Elsie runs a Spanish-English conversation group. Last week, there were about 40 of us-- Yucatecans and Canadians and Mexican transplants and Americans (though we're all Americans, of course. We estadounidenses really need to come up with a new adjective of nationality, but somehow it's harder in English... United Statesians just doesn't roll off the tounge). Sitting at 4 or 5 per table, we speak in English and Spanish with the objective of cultural-linguistic exchange. This, too, takes place at MEL.

You can find something creative happening every night of the week here in el centro de Mérida.

• Monday is traditional Yucatecan dance night.
• Tuesday is 1940's Latin big band dance night-- which I just love, as it attracts older couples who have obviously been dancing since the 1940's.
• Wednesday night is... hm... random night. I watched an 1950's French movie with Spanish subtitles at the local theater. But you can also easily find trova being played somewhere-- Yucatecan ballads.
• Last night, Thursday, was serenada night at Plaza Santa Lucia. They put on a pretty elaborate show featuring a full band, poets, singers, dancers, the works. The man in the picture above is cleaning the statues at Plaza Santa Lucia in preparation for the evening event; I just love how he makes full use of his bicycle.
• Friday, Saturday and Sunday are a whole blog entry in and of themselves. Lots going on, something like Adams Morgan Day (for you DC area readers), except every weekend.

But tomorrow is special-- the north American community is holding it's 10th annual Chili Cook-Off to raise money for the Merida English Library, an awesome resource for gringos and Yucatecans alike. I spent my Friday night making my chili non carne withe a friend who gave me access to her big kitchen, her good humor and a food processor. Cross your fingers, and we'll see which of the 15+ chili recipies brings in the most votes.

" Tierra...Tierra..."

Mérida is a place where vendors still come to your doorstep. This woman walks door do door selling dulce de pepita-- toasted squash seeds suspended in brown sugar, essentially. Very yummy.

Don't go thinking that the camera has somehow made this woman look short-- she is, like many Yucatecans, very small. I'm something of a giant here, towering at 5'4". I can only imagine the spectacle that my friend Eric would create with all 6 feet and 4 inches of his whole self walking around Mérida.

Each vendor has his/her own unique way of alerting you to their presence. The knife sharpening man plays a tune on his pan flute as he walks around, sharpening facilities welded to the top of a bicycle frame in a way that allows him to use the pedal to work the whetstone. Lucky for me he stopped by, as my one knife did, in fact, need sharpening.

Then man who sells dirt stops by about once a week, singing "tierra... tierra...", and there it is: bags of gardening soil in his horse-drawn cart. "Look at my horse," he might say. "He's very tired. Don't you want to buy some dirt?" He tugs at my sympathies, but I don't budge.

Since then, I've gone out to my garden and considered... yes, I'll be listening for his one-word song and the percussion of hooves on ashfalt. It's a small price to pay for the way things used to be.

Weaning myself (and you) from the notion that each entry begs a photo, I'll aim instead for a thousand words... okay, fewer.

My days are all about early and late. Had a 7 a.m. meeting at the university this morning and I've got another one at 6:30 tonight (though that's nothing new-- adult education is intrinsically tied to sunrise and sunset, it seems. Still, 7 a.m. is much earlier than I'm used to thinking, let alone speaking Spanish, um, during... (ah, syntax!). My friends who have lived in tropical countries say this is normal; meet before the heat beats you down. Not that it's so hot these days, but come April/May/June, 7 a.m. will seem entirely reasonable.

As it gets hotter, the insects are more noticeable. I saw my first scorpion today, right here in my house. The timing was superb; it made its appearance (very small, less than 1 inch long) in the dining room while I was enjoying a chat with my landlady-- just moments after she and the workman finished patching the hole in the bathroom.

That would be the hole in the ceiling... through which the ants were falling... onto the toilet... and onto whomever might be sitting on it at the moment. Well, I don't have a lot of visitors, so that someone would be, oh yeah, ME. Ants on my head, no thank you! And you can bet I'll start being more diligent about wearing my flip flops when I walk around the house...

I'll finish with an invitation: respond to this posting with a topic you'd like me to explore while I'm here in Mérida, lest I continue quoting the Pope.

Lost in translation...

This west-facing cathedral, the oldest one on the continent, saves me from the outside-- it's my point of reference in this entirely flat city that teases one's sense of direction despite the ultra-logical grid system (even numbered streets are north-south, odd numbered streets are east-west). After three weeks of walking in circles, I have my bearings.

Anyway, I walk by this cathedral daily, as it's on the Plaza Mayor, where everything happens-- music, vendors, flag raising (and lowering) ceremonies, park benches, hippie hacky-sack players, evangelists, news stands.

I read the Diario de Yucatán every day, as part of my independent study Spanish program (which, being rigourous, also involves lots of coffee). The Catholic Church gets its own page in the Editorial section-- ah, Mexico! A couple of weeks ago, there was a piece by Pope Benedict XVI on the press-- I quote this partly because I admire the clear prose and partly because the message is one I actually agree with:

"Iluminar las conciencias de los individuos y ayudar a formar su pensamiento nunca es tarea neutral. La comunicación auténtica demanda valor y decisión radicales y... la determinación de quienes trabajan en los medios."

If you want a rough but decent translation, copy and paste this text into Google Translator; then note that the last word means "media" (not "means" as mistranslated by Google; even so, it's a neat tool).

Aquí es mi casa. My cozy house is located in "Centro", one of the older parts of Merida, very close to the Gran Plaza and the cathedral (more on that later). I've got a hellish commute, I'll tell you: a 5-minute walk to the University and the plaza.

Here's what you see when you walk through the door: kind of a sitting room/entry, which leads to a dining room, which leads to the garden in back. There's another set of rooms adjoining each of these: bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. Hammock hooks are the standard in Yucatecan houses-- click to enlarge the photo and you'll see the hooks on either side of the double doors. Every room is a potential bedroom, which means there's room for you!

Jesus, meet Eminem...

This photo, taken in one of my new favorite joints, says a lot about Mexico as a land of contrast and creativity... where else could you find the Lord Himself and The Beatles side by side? Eminem and the Superheroes? Bikini-clad Lady and Sponge Bob Square Pants? (not visible, but just off to the right)

Another of my A-list eating joints offers musical equivalent of this poster-bedecked wall: Frank Sinatra, then A-Ha. Chicago, then a muzak version of I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas. Life Is Life (la LA la la la) merges into Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree.