KATravels

2009-01-23T08:50:00.001-08:00

Christmas, and Christening

Gosh I'd love to write, but time is not on my side these days. I've started teaching again, so until I get my workload under control, blogging will be treated as a luxury (though it's really a pleasureful necessity for me).

In the meantime, here are some photos from our Christmas holiday in Mérida. The babies got to meet and spend high quality time with their paternal grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors,... the list goes on and on.

Click on the slideshow to see it, with captions, in a larger format.

2008-12-01T13:25:00.000-08:00

Time Stolen

It's 1:30 p.m. and both babies are asleep. Both. And I haven't written in ages, so here I am, ready to blog my heart out for an unpredictable number of minutes.

When we're out in public with the twins, I get lots of questions from people who under normal circumstances wouldn't even make eye contact with me. (Put twins in the picture, and people suddenly realize they have a valid license to interact socially.)

What's interesting is that the questions have changed over time. When Sarah and Juan were newborns, strangers asked whether they were twins, whether they were identical, how much they weighed at birth. Now, since Sarah and Juan are obviously not identical and they're both chubby and thriving, the questions are mostly logistical: How do you feed them at the same time? What do you do when they're both crying? And my favorite: Are they on the same schedule?

It's 1:42, and they're both still asleep, though I occasionally hear someone touching a rattle every once in a while... shick-a-shick-a-shick. Then nothing. I hold my breath, then keep typing. Right now, at this very moment, they're on the same schedule. But truth be told, it's their schedule, not mine, and their schedule operates on a completely different time-dimension platform, largely undecipherable to me.

They're growing and changing. They work really hard during their awake hours, willing their little hands to reach toward and, yes!, make contact with the colorful things set within reach. They focus and ponder at the hanging things as they kick, kick, kick their core strength to a level they will eventually use to sit up.

Neither is much of a roller-over yet, but both are playing with and gnawing on their hands-- teeth will come soon. My linguist friend watches them gnawing and cooing simultaneously, and she tells me this is very good: the babies are using their hands to create sounds that their mouths can't produce alone yet. Which explains how it is that they really do, when overheard from the next room, seem to be talking sometimes.

Sarah is asleep in the Pack-n-Play, a hopped-up playpen with a changing table on top. This is new for her, for she is used to taking all of her daytime naps in the swing. Swing, swing, swinging for hours at a time since birth. I'm guessing she's grown tired of swinging, or maybe seasick, but whatever the reason, she's very suddenly able to take naps on her side lying still.

It's 1:50 and they're both still asleep. Now I don't want to stop writing, for fear that this keyboard is creating the white noise soundtrack of the perfect moment; for fear that if I stop, they will wake.

Juan is asleep in the bouncy chair, comatose after finishing a bottle. This, too, is new; I guess he got the memo from his sister that sleeping while motionless is now in fashion, while sleeping in the swing is so... yesterday.

All of this is good. We leave for Mexico in less than a month, and guess what? We'll have to live for two weeks without the swings. Granted, we'll have lots of loving hands to hold and cuddle our babies, but even the most loving hands eventually have to put them down.

It's 1:57 and I'm feeling nervous. Lately, Juanito has taken to screaming, especially upon waking up. And seeing as it's inevitable that he's going to wake up, it's just a matter of time before I hear his outraged scream. I know he's fine, but that scream... it's speaks of betrayal. And what have I done? With two babies, it's easy to criticize oneself, for it's an inescapable fact of logic that when you attend to one, you're not attending to the other.

That doesn't mean they can't both be happy at the same time, as indeed they often are. You just have to remember that behind the scenes, the Wheel Of Needs is spinning, and where it will stop is hardly a mystery: Hunger, Diaper Change, Sleepiness, or Mysterious Discomfort (including the need to burp). And if they're on the same schedule, crying ensues.

It's 2:08, and I'm no longer nervous, for however they wake up, they've been asleep for 38 minutes, both in motionless states, and both in the same room at the same time. This is pretty monumental. And so I keep writing so as to extend the magic of the moment, this perfect wave of quiet.

I'm hearing a sound. A waking-up sound. And the doorbell rings...

It's now 4:20, and for the last two hours, we've been hosting our semi-weekly mother-baby group. The timing was perfect. My kids were perfect. And why? Because Other People were here to bring out the best in them. When Other People are here, suddenly we're all superheros, and smiles are passed out liberally.

Today we were four mothers and five babies. The baby names on display today are both singularly and collectively lovely: Clementine (19 wks), Olivia (14 wks), Sarah (18 wks), Juan (18 wks) and Quinley (3 wks). They're too young to really interact at this point, but what's important is that their mothers like one another and find some sanity in coming together. After just two hours, I feel better about Juanito's angry cries, knowing now that Christy went through the same thing with her 3-year-old son.

It's 4:35, and Sarah and Juan are once again asleep, on the same schedule, and... in their swings.

2008-11-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

Oh, Happy Day

This one will be short and unpolished, but suffice it to say I'm just plain happy with the results of our presidential election. I spent the morning listening, alternatively, to Obama's victory speech from last night and enjoying the "Yes We Can" video made by Will.i.am last year. You can view the latter here:

I then came across this very funny and light-hearted video posted by, I imagine, a gang of dancers with a sense of humor and a wicked good knowledge of video editing.

The first video sings a song of hope, and the second just makes me smile. And seeing me hope and smile, my kids seem to be doing the same on this quiet autumn day, cooing and flirting shamelessly with me.

2008-11-03T01:00:00.000-08:00

Election Day

The year I spent in Merida (2006) coincided with the Mexican presidential election, and Juan's first year here coincides with the US elections. Hey, it's a theme to work with.

Here, Juan and baby Sarah pose with John McCain and Tina Fey... or is that Sarah Palin? Anyway, we came across this formidable duo in Union Station, and though they seemed a bit stiff, we agreed to taking a photo with them. (Juanito would have none of it-- apart from the fact that he was sound asleep in the stroller, he considers himself non-partisan and doesn't want any incriminating evidence that might come back to haunt him were he to run for office some day.)

So, you might be wondering what it's like here in DC, what with the tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue moving out soon and all. I, for one, can't wait to see what they put out on the curb when they move out; I've heard there's some really good furniture in there, and when you've got so many rooms and are inevitably moving to a place that has not so many rooms, you've got to dispose of all that excellent furniture somehow, don't you?

Well, don't ask me. I'm busy with babies, and what little attention I have left over is devoted to watching the entire first season of Gilmore Girls on DVD (hence the rapid-fire banter I'm having here with.. myself). So, while Obama and McCain are frantically fishing for critical votes, mine, already securely hooked, is anxiously watching to see whether Rory and Dean get back together. (And yes, they should.)

I think it's interesting that the Obama and Biden were dressed up in t-shirts and Mardi Gras beads-- like they're ready to celebrate or something. Not wanting to play favorites, we posed with them, too. As you can see, Biden looked a bit pale. I told him to go home and get some rest, but you know how these politicians can be-- he insisted on sticking around.

2008-10-27T17:04:00.001-07:00

A Longitudinal Look

Sarah and Juan are now three months old. This morning, Juanito woke up looking older than when he went to sleep last night. Sometimes we can almost see them growing before our very eyes. But for the most part, the changes are subtle and noticeable only through a longitudinal gaze, as shown here. (Click on each photo strip to see a bigger version if you wish.)

The twins' most recent development is that they now really engage with us, with friends, and, increasingly, with each other. Tonight they exchanged gazes and cooed at each other while holding hands. We parents played key roles of course, holding them up next to each other, but we still feel lucky just to have been there.

2008-10-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

Chef Juan

Move to a new country, get married, and have twins, and you just might discover the urge to bake.

After almost one year of life in el norte, Juan really misses the food of his homeland. It started with a simple yearning one morning: "I want real meringues", he said. "Meringue meringues." Apparently, we have no decent meringues here in the US, a logical conclusion if all you've found are those crunchy bite-sized meringues at Whole Foods that cost an arm and a leg.

You see, real meringues, which here means Yucatecan meringues, are delicately crispy on the outside and perfectly gooey on the inside. They neither cloy the palate nor stick to your teeth. Juan had hoped to find something like this here in the Latino wonderland of Langley Park, but alas: apparently, meringues are not that popular in El Salvador. And so it is that Juan's quest yielded a meringue-spackled kitchen, a pan of freshly baked meringues and, why of course!: a huge tres leches cake.

Appreciating how the simple inspiration to bake meringues prompted the large-scale production of baking a cake is something like understanding how hanging a picture on the wall in the living room inspires the addition of a new wing to the house. There's a connection, yes, but it involves a leap of some proportion.

Tres leches is well worth the leap. True to its name, it consists of three milk-based components: a custard-like filling, a sweet milky sauce in which the cake is soaked, and... well, I'll have to get back to you on the third "milk," but suffice it to say that this cake is not for the lactose intolerant among us.* Made Juan's way, the cake is ultimately frosted with meringue. Make more than enough meringue for the cake, and you've got yourself the makings for meringue meringues.

Put like that, Juan's tres leches journey is more akin to adding a new wing to the house as a means of finding a nail with which to hang that picture in the living room-- make tres leches, and you'll have left over meringue. No matter, all three iterations of the meringues and the cake have been deemed delicious by his focus group, which mainly consists of... me. Sigh. I of all people so don't need to have baked goods sitting around the house in need of a tester.

But now very much on a roll, Juan recently decided that a good cake deserved some equally good pork. (Naturally.) Another call home later, and he knew how to go about preparing what is traditionally a Monday dish in Yucatan, frijol con puerco. No stranger to frijol con puerco myself (see my earlier blog entries about this here and here), I'm thrilled that Juan's passion has taken a more substantial turn, something to balance the sugar rush of the meringues.

All of this makes for the good life that we have: two beautiful babies and a husband that keeps me fed, all with inspiration to spare.

*I've since learned that the three 'milks' are sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and plain old milk. These are included in both the custard type filling and the sweet milky syrup in which the cake is soaked. There's also an obscene number of eggs in a tres leches cake, but I imagine calling it a ocho huevos cake wouldn't go over as well as tres leches.)

2008-10-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

10.5 weeks old and cooing

Both kids are now making the miraculous little sounds that endear them to our hearts and reward us for enduring the occasional crying and, yes, screaming that come with being alive.

It's time for a Developmental Update, since this blog may be the closest thing these kids will be getting to the satin beribboned how-much-she-weighed-and-when baby book cultivated by so many good mothers.

Sarah: Overall, she's a quiet, happy kid. Nothing seems to surprise her-- be it a loud sound or a sudden bump in the road. She smiles lovely closed-mouth smiles has been perfecting her tongue calisthenics routine (in - out - side - curl - again!). She continues to squeak ever so cutely, and we're thankful that the source is vocal and not, say, her elbows. Her cooing inventory includes close-lipped vowels, the "r" sound and an almost "b" sound. She loves doing baby yoga and hates getting into the car seat.

Juanito, meanwhile, is busy coordinating his lung capacity with his vocal range, focusing on the higher registers. In other words, he's something of a screamer. Lucky for us, he uses this skill only a lot (as opposed to always). He's got a killer smile (see previous post) and coos with sincerity. Juanito loves looking at himself in the mirror and hates being naked (unless it's while taking a bath-- or in front of a mirror). His an expert brow furrower, often giving him an air of pensiveness. He's a responder, opening his eyes and mouth in complete wonder when he hears a sudden noise.

Both kids are starting to hold on to things other than fingers, such as blanket edges, but neither holds on to (or even notices) toys yet. They track things with their eyes but are not yet turning to see what causes a given noise. Both are close to holding their heads steady, and both love to stretch out their limbs after a good night of sleep. And they're great sleepers, we're happy to report-- let's hope it stays that way.

Despite the good sleeping, waking up several times a night means that Papa Juan and I have become caretaker zombies-- filled with love and utterly void of rested thought. Thank god for the friends and family who visit often from near and far; each pair of hands helps exponentially both in terms of my sanity and baby happiness.

2008-10-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

Hombrecito

There are moments when these little beings seem to know exactly what they want to do on this earth. They arrive inspired and need only collect the skills to act.
Juanito looks positively visionary here. When he's 80 years old and still being acknowledged for his good works, this is the photo they'll use when saying he was destined for great things.
In the meantime, he's destined for another diaper change and some 'tummy time' on the play mat, followed by a session in the swing set with the flying fish that he so loves to watch.

2008-09-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

When they're not sleeping...

They're eating, eating, and eating. (And, yes, pooping, but we'll save that for another time.) I'm here today to give you a glimpse of the good, the bad, and the exhausted with respect to feeding.

The good: It's so easy to look like a good parent when you're awake and in public. Note the individualized attention I'm able to give Juanito here, the bottle tilted at just the right angle, the child held in the most comfortable position.

But look again. Do you see how fragile this scenario is? It all hinges, really, on Sarita. As long as she's quiet, the scenario is intact, but the moment she decides to scream her Wail of Hunger, I move into doubletime child care, and instead of one child being held, no child is being held, because the parent's hands are busy holding bottles for the two children lying on the blanket/the bed/what have you. (That's why you don't see single parents at the park with their twins-- this shot was taken by Juan during our visit to the Iwo Jima Memorial.)

One might suggest that I stagger the feeding times so that each child has his/her own turn. Nice idea, except that one feeding event can take up to an hour, and with feedings taking place every 3 hours or so,... well, you do the math.

The bad: That's when you're alone and the babies are both, suddenly, famished or otherwise unhappy. They scream like cats and cry unnegotiably. All of this is designed, physiologically, to break my heart.

Sometimes it's not really hunger that's at the root of discontent, but it takes a while to figure this out, bottles flying, spit-up flowing. When all else fails, I turn to the one sure thing that will calm them. I call it "My One Sure Thing," but it's really TWO sure things, if you get my drift. When we're at home, I whip out the EZ2-Nurse Double Breastfeeding Pillow, and voila! I feel like on of those Hopi Storyteller dolls, her children attached to her like Velcro, always wanting more. (If only there were such a Velcro... think of the many uses!)

Equipment aside, part of dealing with crying has been not to let it make me crazy. In the hospital, someone gave me a very useful piece of advice: when the babies cry, just imagine that they're singing to you-- and that crying is the only song they know. This works. When they cry in tandem, I listen for harmonies and try to add the third voice.

Even so, I do become a bit crazy on occasion-- just ask Juan. Luckily, he is able to board the runaway Crazy Train and slow it waaaaay down.

The exhausted: Here, Dad has fallen victim to what I call Baby Bottle Narcolepsy, whereby the feeder loses consciousness within seconds of inserting the bottle into the baby's mouth.

Notice the unfinished bottle in one hand, the TV remotes in the lap, the three-way sleepfest going on. This is our life.

2008-09-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

It's not very often that I actually hold both babies at once. It's a safety thing. Papa Juan took this photo and then de-babied me after the love in. I adore Juanito's expression here.

2008-09-04T22:26:00.000-07:00

Family Time at Iwo Jima Memorial

I know, I know... going to the Iwo Jima Memorial is not foremost in the minds of most new parents, but after finishing our first infant massage class (more on this later), we found ourselves craving some monument time.

The plan was to find a parking spot near the Lincoln Memorial, but... Right turn here, left turn there, and surprise!-- we're on Memorial Bridge crossing the Potomac. Going with the flow, we found a nice parking spot close to the Iwo Jima Memorial instead. Enter the Double Snap-n-Go stroller, a miracle of engineering that allows us to make our two infant car seats function as a double stroller of sorts.

We happened to arrive as a tour group of WWII veterans were posing for a picture in front of the memorial. I struck up a conversation with one man and learned that they and their families get together in Arlington every year, coming from all over the country. I asked the man where he'd traveled from, and guess what? He's from my home town of Bakersfield, California. Suddenly, I was talking with his friends from Tehachapi and other friends from nearby. Small world.

Then we, the Caballero-Taylors, became the sight to see. Twins! A boy and a girl!

A pair of twins in the group, grown women in their 50's, were alerted to our presence, and suddenly we were having our picture taken with the twin ladies in their matching hats AND their mother (with whom I felt a special instant bond). Lovely.

The weather was lovely, so we took a rest in the shade under some nearby trees. Sarita and Juanito slept soundly on their blanket while their parents marveled at how simple it can be, if only for a matter of an hour or two: these two new people can really go places so long as you've got a well-equipped diaper bag.

2008-08-26T10:35:00.000-07:00

Beauty and Progress

Baby Sarah was born at a healthy 6 lb 3 oz, but when we found her having lost more than 10% of her body weight within the first few days, we were advised (by doctor and lactation consultant alike) to try bottle feeding so that we could monitor exactly what she was taking in. It turns out her sucking reflex was weak, so for all of her work, she wasn't getting much at the breast.

Sarah quickly mastered bottles, and it shows! The picture on the left was taken at two weeks of age, and the one on the right at 4 weeks. I think she's gorgeous in both shots, of course, but the change from porcelain doll to thriving baby is striking. (Click on the picture to see a larger version of it-- notice her emerging chubby cheeks!)

2008-08-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

Who's who? (Diaper checks are for sissies!)

There's something gratifying about being able to tell your children apart from one another. It helps, of course, that they're not identical and that they have different anatomies, but apart from what is revealed by a quick diaper check, they do resemble one another, don't you think?

Some of the first differences we noticed and still go by include Sarah's heart-shaped face vs. Juan's round face; Sarah's darker, more plentiful hair vs. Juan's lighter hair; Sarah's long, elegant fingers and toes vs. Juan's shorter, stockier deditos; Sarah's vertical frown line on her forehead vs. Juan's horizontal frown line on the bridge of his nose.

But Sarah and Juan are most mutually self-differentiating when they're in motion. Juanito's stock posture gives him an air of Captain Kirk on the control deck: hands out to his side, low and relaxed. He will be a confident, if skeptical leader.

Sarah, meanwhile, is more Adrian Monk (from the TV show, Monk, which I watched a lot of while pregnant), her hands and feet crossing slowly, flourishing and weaving as she takes in the scene before her. She might solve a crime! Swaddle Sarah as tightly as you can, and her escape-artist hands will free themselves-- and awaken their owner-- within the hour.

But what I love most these days are the things Sarah and Juan happen to have in common, due probably more to their developmental stage (remember: primitive creatures) than their personalities.

Rooting: Both kids are charming rooters; this is what they do when they're hungry. Like baby birds, they open their mouths, and with eyes closed (or, extra hungry, wide eyed and wild) they shake their heads back and forth as if saying "no" when in fact they're all about YES: feed me, feed me. The idea being that if they move their mouths back and forth, sooner or later they'll find something nourishing to latch on to. There's this wonderful moment when they find contact with the nipple, but they're still in the throes of "no" wagging, so that for a few seconds before the latch, they're furiously avoiding exactly what they're seeking. I'll miss this when they grow out of it, but I guess it's a good thing to grow out of, no? I mean, I can't really see an adult endearing himself to others with this wild-eyed, open-mouthed, wagging-head dance. Unless you're Mick Jagger.

Startle reflex: Stop a minute and listen to all of the noises that make up the white noise in your environment. Now, pick the most unlikely of the member noises, like clicking your mouse, and imagine being utterly surprised by that sound-- so surprised, in fact that you just have to throw out your arms and legs as if you were riding a big ol' Harley. That's the startle reflex, also called the Moro reflex. Both Juan and Sarah are masters of startle, resembling mad little orchestra conductors getting after the second violins for missing a cue. Be ready! Here we go! Now, PLAY!

Squeaking: Both kids do it, but Sarah's especially fond of squeaking. I think it goes with stretching, which both babies now do with gusto, as well as yawning. Oddly, none of the sounds generated by Juan or Sarah-- including outright screaming-- startles the other in the least. No, that would require a terrible sound, like the sound of a Post-it being removed from its dispenser in the next room.

2008-08-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

Blode to the Night Nurse

If I could write a poetic ode, I would, but a blog ode, or blode, will have to suffice: after weeks of sleep deprivation, we hired a night nurse to care for the babies so that we could sleep like them. With 7 hours of sleep behind me, I already feel more human, and the babies seem to have fared well. Nurse Brigge (pronounced like "Bridget") will become a recurring character in our new life sitcom, which for now we'll call The Beautiful Primitive Creatures of Lancaster Road.

2008-08-15T17:48:00.000-07:00

3 Weeks Old

Our children, these lovely primitive creatures (as our pediatrician describes them at this stage) are twenty-one days old. The living room is Base Camp here at Casa Caballero-Taylor, and the Olympic Games are the backdrop to our own emerging world records: first time reaching out to touch daddy's face, most ounces consumed, weight gained, and the greatest number of poopy diapers produced in a day.

Will you be shocked to know that Mommy has *not* been writing down sweet little details for the creatures' baby books? Time is cruel that way... when we're not feeding one child or the other, we're changing said diapers, and I'm pumping and monitoring milk and formula supply, washing bottles and dishes from our hastily eaten meals, and doing paperwork (babies' social security cards arrived yesterday!). Email is a wonderful treat, and every friend who writes even the shortest message of encouragement and connection with the world beyond is much appreciated.

As I write this, things seem manageable. My lovely husband was up all night con la niña Sarita, who's been congested (docs say it's probably just vernix working its way out of the lungs, but wow can this girl snort and sneeze with the best of 'em). So Juan's now sleeping for a couple of hours by himself and I've got both kids, fed and changed. The niña is sleeping in a donut-shaped "boppy" pillow, the only way she'll sleep today unless she's on your chest, and el niño Juanito is swaddled on me in a sling, first time I've used it, and he seems to really like it. He's the more alert/active of the two at this stage, and I think he gets fussy after after a while of staring into middle space when he's not sleeping or eating. But being in the mommy sling listening to Macy Gray and Talking Heads and REM... I think that's more his style.

Today is the twins' thee-week birthday and, incidentally, the day Nature intended them to be born. Twenty one days since the c-section, and I'm dancing around the house a little bit each morning now; the doc did a good job, I'll say, despite my ongoing disappointment that the birth went such a surgical route. At least the healing has been speedy and most of all, thank goodness the babies are healthy despite their choreographed early arrival.

So here's the birth story, which I'm writing as a form of therapy in an effort to be somewhat done with it. From the start of the pregnancy, my docs insisted that the twins shouldn't stay in utero longer than 37 weeks (full term is 40 weeks), so when the time rolled around and I still hadn't given birth, they recommended induction. By this point, I was physically really miserable (gaining 70 pounds over 6 months will do that to you) and I'd been having heavy contractions for 3 nights in a row, feeling like I was going to go into labor on my own any moment, but also fearing that I wouldn't... that I was in for 3 more weeks of this... so I consented to the induction with the proviso that I'd have one of the docs that was really open to helping me give birth vaginally.

Little did I know that inductions can fail. After 9 hours on a pitocin IV drip (to induce contractions and, by extention, dilation of the cervix), I was contracting every 2 minutes yet had exactly Zero change in my cervix. Imagine. I'd been given an epidural (pain management installed in the spinal cavity) about four hours into the pitocin drip because the physical exams were so excruciating and my anxiety level so high... so by the time the induction was determined to have failed (what a word!), I had two choices: go home pregnant and try again another day (I'm not kidding... this was a stated option) or have a c-section. Well. I was in a state. But I just wasn't prepared to go home having already faced the pitocin and the epidural (the insertion procedure for which was truly hellish) and knowing that I'd face more nights of utter misery and contractions at home. I felt trapped. So there we were, with a c-section.

For the record, the procedure went without a hitch. Babies' heart rates were stellar throughout, as was mine. Juan had a view of the whole process: the layered incisions, the retrieval of Baby A (Sarah) followed by Baby B (Juan), and the methodical suturing, moving up layer by layer until all that showed was a 5-inch incision below my belly. I felt nothing and everything: the anesthesiologist works a kind of magic that lets you feel movement (e.g. someone pressing down on your abdomen) but not pain. Such medical advances remind me that we humans are very advanced creatures in some respects.

So why the long face? The delivery of my healthy babies is of course a gigantic consolation, but then again their health was never in question. So I'm grappling with anger about this medicalized chain of events that seemed so avoidable and yet so inevitable. I'd spent MONTHS working to avoid precisely this scenario, yet in the end, surgery was used to deliver two perfectly healthy babies who were showing no signs of stress, who were entirely capable of being delivered vaginally from a mother who also was fine (though freaked out). For my doctor, for the medical practice to which she belonged, and for the medical system of which they are a part, it was simply efficient and, from a risk management (read: insurance) perspective, low risk to move ahead with a c-section.

Well, let them try being on the receiving end. The birth experience left me reeling, especially for the first week when the incisions were painful enough to inspire taking heavy doses of oxycontin-- ooh, I could fly! The residual hormones floating around made me prone to crying jags. Husband, parents and friends have been sympathetic and understanding, lucky for me, but these thoughts are enduring enough that I feel the need to write them down.

Crying jags aside, I haven't suffered signs of postpartum depression. I'm enjoying my babies, even when they're screaming simultaneously... I just think of their wailing as their own special kind of singing, since wailing is all they can do, acoustically speaking. And maybe it *is* singing, for all we know. So I sing back at them and I dance. Fifty of those 70 pounds I gained have magically disappeared, allowing me to move like I haven't moved since last April (go breast feeding diet). And wonder of wonders, my hands are working again, the carpal-tunnel symptoms having retreated, which means I have almost full sensation in my fingertips.

That said, these fingers are ready to take a rest, so I'll stop here.

2008-08-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

They're here!

(To see this slide show in a larger format, click anywhere on the slideshow.)

A lot of growing has happened since my last posting in April, needless to say. I grew and grew and grew until I couldn't grow anymore, and then ta-DA!!!

Oh, if only it were that easy. Let me just say that I have developed enormous respect for motherhood and the people who help women become part of the "club"-- doulas, midwives, lactation specialists, and, yes, doctors. For me, this group also includes the neighbors and friends who came to my house bearing roses, gelatto and People Magazine during my final weeks of pregnancy and most of all my parents, who drove here from New Mexico to help us be prepared for this huge change-- CHANGE.

Juan and I are proud to announce that Sarah Caroline Caballero-Taylor and Juan Ricardo Caballero-Taylor were born on July 25, 2008, weighing in at 6 lb 2 oz. and 6 lb 1 oz, respectively.

We all came home from the hospital on July 29 in good shape, and these two beautiful babies are keeping us busy, sleep deprived and struck with awe and love.

I'll write more when I can, but meanwhile here are some photos of Sarita, Juanito, and their proud parents and maternal grandparents. We'll be going to Mérida in December to share our joys with the Caballero side of the family.

2008-04-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

How to be Pregnant Like Me

Last week, I managed to engage in email dialogue with a few fellow alumni about a project we're working on. (I say "managed" because my brain has been mushy for weeks now, unable to focus on a good book, an unanswered email, you name it.)

Somewhere in there, I mentioned that my activity would be limited in coming months due to, um, the anticipated arrival of two new human beings in this world who will need all of my attention.

What follows is a copy of the email reply I got from my friend Mike, followed by my reply to him, in which I explain what he would need to consider if he wanted to be Pregnant Like Me.

-----------------------------
Mike's response to my news:
No kidding, she just throws it in there, among the alumni council, Manolo’s perspective, a glossy postcard and attending meetings in Montezuma.
;-)

Pregnant, with twins, no less. That is friggin' monumental, Karen. You win the prize for Person I Know Whose Life Most Drastically Changed in Six Months (without actually dying or contracting some horrible disease).

Congratulations! Bravo!! That is amazing.

It’s odd. I see people (. . . well, women, actually) around me getting pregnant, and it’s beautiful, hopeful, blah, blah, blah. It really is, but it doesn’t penetrate. Somehow it’s different with you. Perhaps it’s the result of too many conversations, late at night, sharing perspectives. I know it’s been many years since we’ve actually spent any meaningful time together, but you’re as close as it comes. If I stand on my tippy-tippy-toes, and turn my head just right, and if squint my eyes in just the right way, it feels like I’m pregnant, too. Like I have hope, and not just duty, or fear to act for the future. And like there’s some little f***er kicking me in the side, and I’m actually happy about it.

----------------------------
Here's my reply, posted here because I've got to learn how to make double use of my efforts, so now is a good time to start:

Hi, M,

Well, now I know what I'd like inscribed on my trophy!

Juan will need a trophy, too, of course-- perhaps with an added wing-ed figure on top... for after all, my changes are in the context of my culture, whereas his... oh, my... his are like having moved to Saturn (if it were life-sustaining) on top of everything else. He's really taking it all in stride, not freaking out, being a total grown-up about it, and helping me all the while (like helping me put on my socks, since reaching my feet is becoming a... feat), and until recently not being allowed to work. He's an amazing, gentle man, true to his surname.

Ah, but you get a trophy too! That's the one for Most Creative Response to Having Received News of a Friend's Pregnancy. If I stand on my tippy-tippy toes, I can imagine YOU pregnant!

But if you're going to continue imagining my state of affairs, here's what you'll need to know to really empathize. In short, here's How to be Pregnant Like Me.

1) Rearrange your organs -- like where your internal organs are now? Well, forget that-- now it's time to stick them in the corners-- between ribs, next to your lungs, down in your left jeans pocket-- wherever you can find room for them so that the expanding water balloon in your belly can keep growing.

2) Crush your organs -- now, turn on your left side to sleep. Stay there for a couple of hours, and then wake up with a vague sense that you've not been using your (fill in the blank: stomach, liver, pancreas, left kidney, epiglottis) for quite some time, that said organ has fallen asleep just like your leg does on occasion. Sit up, and feel the weird sensation of blood returning to that deflated organ, relief, nausea, tingling and general 'discomfort'. Now repeat, this time on your right side.

3) Start weeping... and don't stop! -- this is more of a first-trimester thing, but very much worth experiencing to get the whole hormonal effect. It's not enough to cry, no... you must WEEP. In PUBLIC. And for any reason-- anything that moves you in the least. Gratitude is what really did it to me--- I'd try to thank someone for something simple and then I'd be weeping, to their bemused horror. Say things like "don't worry, it's just hormones that are making me weep uncontrollably right now"-- or try to say this, but know that you'll get so choked up, trying to explain it just makes you cry more. The person's eyes get really wide, and they smile sympathetically as they start looking for an out...

4) Make eating your duty -- don't want to eat another steak? Tough luck-- those babies need protein. Lots of it. And 3,500 calories per day (the recommended intake when you're carrying twins). Suddenly, you need to eat as though you were scaling Mt. Everest. (And don't forget, Mr. Stomach is tucked away under Mr. Sternum right now, which makes eating a "challenge".) That's why ice cream is good (not tons of protein, but lots of calcium!), as it's soft and cool.

5) Live in the present -- it's about the best you can do when your short-to-medium term memory has been crowded out by your repositioned organs. Following through on emails? Forget about it. Putting together a linear chain of actions to complete a task? hahahaahahaha. Just turn on the DVD and give in to your reality: your brain is, and may well continue to be, mush.

By the way, the little f***ers (as you so colorfully refer to yours) have started kicking, and through that magic thing called the sonogram, we get to WATCH each one kicking and yawning and generally having a good time.

At our last visit, we also got to see (well, have interpreted for us by the angel who was our sonogram technician) the genitalia of these little people, so we now know! Worth mentioning here that it's not just a "penis" or "no penis" diagnosis-- it's more like "See those two parallel lines? That's the labia." and, "See that out-pointing triangle? That's the penis." So we're getting the best of both worlds with this pregnancy: a girl, and a boy. We couldn't be more fortunate.

2008-03-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

A soon-to-be Working Man

Last week, Juan received his Employment Authorization Card from Homeland Security. With that, we went to the Social Security Administration and applied for his SSN. The card arrived today!

It's an understatement to say that he's eager to start working. He's already got a job lined up close to home, full-time, with benefits. He'll start actually working sometime in the coming week! Life is good.

Work Update:

Juan's now working full time at our local organic cooperative market. He's finding it a good way to get accustomed to using English on a daily basis, and it's central location in Takoma Park means he sees local friends on a regular basis.

2008-03-07T10:46:00.000-08:00

A Poem, and a Puzzle

Life is a puzzle
Around which we revolve
To savor the pieces
As we aim to resolve
Life's ultimate questions:
Am I? Are we?
Is it X, or Y?
A? B?

If hints in the last posting didn't already give it away, this certainly will. Click on the link below to complete the jigsaw puzzle that says it all.

Share Our Surprise with this Jigsaw Puzzle

Enjoy!

2008-03-02T16:43:00.000-08:00

It's already March, and I find myself paying attention to time like never before. Here are some Harper's Magazine-like statistics, as of March 3, 2008:

*123: days that Juan has lived in the U.S.
* 14: friends we had over to celebrate Thanksgiving, just 3 weeks after Juan's arrival
* 5: pies eaten at Thanksgiving (and for several days thereafter)
* 3: parlor games, including charades, played by some and endured by others between dinner and dessert on Thanksgiving
* 57: days that we've been married
* 24: days we had after the wedding to submit Juan's applications for residency, work authorization and 'parole' (permission to travel outside the US)
* 1: lawyer hired to help us navigate the overwhelming amount of paperwork required to submit said applications
* 4: snow and/or ice storms Juan has seen since arriving in the US.
* 75: times (estimated) Juan has taken public transportation, including Metrorail.
* 3: observations Juan has made about people on the Metro: A) people don't talk to each other; B) people seem obsessed with their iPods and cell phones; C) there seems to be an unspoken rule that men should not sit next to other men; that is, when the only seats open are those next to men, any man boarding the train will choose to stand rather than sit down.
* 5: vaccinations Juan had to get in order to apply for permanent residency
* 3: actual injections received (some vaccinations combined, thankfully)
*4-8: weeks that we expect to wait for Juan's work authorization to come through
* 9: days after arriving that Juan found an ESL theater group looking for someone to play "a Mexican man". He said "sure, why not?"
* 14: cast members who participated in the project
*130: hours of rehearsal required in the final weeks leading up to performance
*500: people who attended "Beyond the Simple Present," a play featuring an all-immigrant cast portraying the lives of newcomers in the U.S. Juan played a starring role as "Luis".
* 1: white squirrels spotted by Juan (and no one else) in our neighborhood
* 0: people who believed that what Juan had seen was a squirrel and not, say, a rat
* 1: photos Juan took of the white squirrel (seen at right), proving us all wrong
* 10: friends' parties we've attended, none of which have included dancing. Juan wonders why these are called parties at all.
* 4: times we went Contra dancing at Glen Echo Park before I started getting too dizzy and nauseous to do all of those turns
* 5: days after our last Contra dance that we suspected there was a reason...
* 1: mysterious blog postings you'll have to endure before more news is provided

Meanwhile, I've posted some highlights from the wedding, below. Enjoy.

2008-03-02T16:39:00.001-08:00

You may need to click your "refresh" button to re-start the slide show...

2008-02-10T07:27:00.000-08:00

Oh, I am remiss. So many things-- good things (except for the speeding ticket I got via camera speed trap on North Capital last week... for going 46 mph in a 35 mph zone... a scam, I say!)-- have been happening, and they're all worth sharing and reflecting on, but one at a time. One at a time.

Juan and I married on January 5 in the loving company of family and friends in beautiful New Mexico. A family friend officiated the ceremony and a dear friend from my high school days in Montezuma served as co-officiant and Spanish interpreter.

The Loretto Chapel looked as miraculous as its staircase, still decorated for the holidays and filled as it was with good energy. Friends came from all over: Mexico, South Africa, Maryland, California.

Mom and Dad surprised us with a mariachi band which escorted everyone down the streets of Santa Fe, from the chapel to the reception. There, we sang and danced and dined and played music together, celebrating our union, our families, and our friendships.

A couple of days later, it snowed-- big, fat flakes swirling against adobe backdrops transformed Santa Fe into the little heaven that it we already knew it was. Juan's parents padded around and laughed at the wonder of their first snow as my brother and his wife made angels, lying on their backs and swishing their arms above and below, still children at heart.

2007-12-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

Mr.Caballero goes to Washington

Juan entered the US on Halloween, October 31st, and look at him now!

It was a bit of a journey-- two full days in Ciudad Juarez taking care of details (medical exam, interview at the Consulate) and two full hours crossing the border at El Paso (the US Border police were humorless but efficient). All in all, the whole thing went VERY smoothly.

My parents met us in El Paso and we drove to Santa Fe for a couple of days of R&R. This included a lovely day of lunch (a men's lunch and a women's lunch!) with friends who helped us celebrate Juan's arrival and our upcoming wedding.

We returned to DC on November 4, and after just four weeks, Juan is already singing in a choir, learning his parts for a theater project called the "ESL Living Collage" (more on that later), and gaining mastery of the DC Metro system. Oh-- and he's become a master Raker of Leaves, it being fall and all. More soon!

2007-09-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

Heading to El Paso

Time's been flying like a Concord. Visa papers are trotting down the paper trail, and we're looking forward to the Big Day, namely: The Day Juan and I Live In The Same Country. Come October 31, El Paso will be living up to its name, big time.

Some background: After submitting our papers for Juan's K1 Visa back in April, we received our NOA2 (second Notice of Approval) from USCIS on July 11, giving Juan until November 11 (a 4-month window) to complete his (open appointment) interview in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Oddly, Ciudad Juarez is where ALL Mexican K-1 Visas are processed nowadays-- as in the ONLY place in Mexico. So very convenient for someone living, oh, in The Rest Of Mexico. (For those of us in the US, going to Juarez for a visa is like having to fly to Newark to get your passport renewed... even if you live in, say, Modesto, California.)

Juarez is far away from Merida in every way, so we're going to combine it all into one big step: visa approval (at the US Consulate) and visa activation (at the border). The plan goes something like this:

Oct 29- Juan flies to Ciudad Juarez, and I fly to El Paso TX (just across the Rio Grande from Juarez). I cross the border to meet up with him.
Oct 30- We dedicate our day to the requisite medical exam for Juan. For some reason, they call this part of the process "biometrics". The US Consulate lists exactly two approved medical offices in Juarez where the exam must take place, and you must have the exam (and get a certificate) *before* going to the interview at the Consulate. From what I've read, it's definitely a two-day process.
Oct 31- we dedicate our day to Juan's K1 interview at the US Consulate. He'll wait in the consulate (possibly all day) and I'll wait outside. I hear they rent chairs across the street (sunblock, anyone?!), but I've also read that there are several close-by restaurants where you can camp while you wait. I wonder: What are my chances are of finding free wireless internet while I wait? Assuming all goes well, Juan will walk out of the Consulate with his K-1 Visa in hand sometime before 5 p.m.
Oct 31- under a Halloween moon, we'll activate Juan's visa at the Point of Entry (POE), probably at the Cordova bridge between Juarez and El Paso. In spite of the date, we're hoping the border agent won't be scary.

2007-04-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

Let the K1 Visa process begin...

As a process, getting married to someone who lives in another country is a bit intricate. That is, if you want this person to be able to live and work in the US.

I've talked to friends and friends of friends who have gone through the process, and the words I keep hearing are "patience" and "contact your Congressman's office" (the latter coming from those who've seen fiance visa applications disappear into the bureaucratic ether).

In Yucatan, you can't help but notice a certain anxiety associated with applying for a visa (even a tourist visa) to the US, largely because it involves completing a face-to-face interview, the perceived directness and intensity of which quickly highlights profound cultural differences between Yucatecan culture and US culture. Add to that a political climate that puts all but the richest Mexicans under scrutiny, plus the MN$1,000 peso fee (US $100 is a lot of money in Mexico) and you've got a good recipe for fear and loathing.

My observation is that Yucatecan culture places a high value on gestures of respect, discretion in how one communicates and, particularly, harmony between people. I know this because on two separate occasions last year, I brought Yucatecans to tears when it wasn't my intent to do so. Slowly, I've learned to be a bit more gentle in my negotiations (though by December, I had still managed to earn the nickname "La Mandona", The Demander... but that's another story). Juan is careful to make me aware of moments when I could have greeted someone before jumping straight to my reason for talking with them. I'm learning.

Since deciding to marry and live in the US, both Juan and I have received all kinds of advice from friends and acquaintances, both in Merida and in the US. Honestly, the best "advice" we've gotten has been the simple gesture of encouragement-- this from the folks who know that the matter of visas is a process and that this takes time, careful attention to details, and patience. Least helpful have been the doomsayers-- those who doubt out loud that Juan will ever be allowed into the US, those who say we're going about it the wrong way (e.g. that we should marry in Mexico and *then* apply for a visa - it is one option, but not the one we've chosen, thank you), and those who share their favorite immigration horror stories as if this is somehow helpful to us.

Being a realist-optimist, I'm taking this one step at a time. And for me, this blog has renewed its usefulness to me in that I can come here to document this process that so many are so quick to characterize.

So it seems a good time to start with the basics: I'm a US Citizen, Juan is Mexican, and we submitted the 129-F Petition for K1 Fiance Visa on Monday, April 16, 2007. Applying from Maryland, where I live, I've sent our petition to the Vermont Service Center (United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, Department of Homeland Security).

I prepared the petition myself, without the help of an attorney, though it took a lot of careful reading and research to feel comfortable with the forms and required documentation. We'll see if that decision comes back to bite us. :)

Through USPS delivery confirmation, I know the packet was signed for by someone in Vermont on Wednesday, April 18, 2007.

The rush of mailing in this petition left me feeling... impatient. So I looked around online and I found this lovely K1 Visa flowchart from a very helpful site, VisaJourney.com. It is here that I learned the lingo of the fiance visa application process.

The first word in my new lingo is "NOA", which means "Notice of Action." This is the first notice you receive that tells you your paperwork is now in the System.

I received my first NOA today, April 25. Next step: "NOA 2", which will be sent when the petition is approved by the kind folks in Vermont. (Hi, kind folks in Vermont!)

Please stay tuned. Meanwhile, keep your fingers crossed for speedy processing.

2007-04-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

Can't walk away...

Within days of returning to the US, I knew I wouldn't be able to mark my year in Merida simply as "that year I spent in Mexico." Not at all.

I don't expect you to understand-- not, at least, based on what you see in this blog. I stopped writing sometime in August 2006 when everything came to a crashing halt. It wasn't just my computer's hard drive and my health (a catch-your-attention case of pneumonia), as those would have been mere bumps. Rather, it was the demise and death of a friend in Merida followed quickly by the serious illnesses of two more close friends there that had me looking at life differently. Suddenly, I was living in a Merida that was entirely distinct and more three dimensional than what I had found up to that point. With so much death and recovery, I took to living.

And dancing. That's when I got to know Juan, a lovely Yucateco whom I'd met at the Merida English Library months earlier, and who had made a point of greeting me whenever we ran into each other. We took to dancing on a regular basis, and by the end of September, we had grown fond of one another.

There's a story behind all of that, and at some point, I'll post excerpts from that story. Which is to say that it has not only been written down, but it's been printed and sent in as part of the K1 Fiance Visa petition that we recently submitted to the US Government.

Yeah, Juan and I are getting married. :)

2007-03-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

Images of Merida

2006-08-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

Danger and Fun

My friend W took me to the "Fiesta del Toro" in San Sebastian on Sunday-- much like neighborhood festivals back home, only with the Virgin Mary and a wooden bull figuring prominently. Oh, and little wieners.

It had rained cats and dogs earlier in the evening, but that did nothing to dampen the turnout. It could have been the ice cream or the ferris wheel, but I suspect it actually had something to do with the deep-fried Vienna sausages.

Hey, they're more fun than you might imagine: each wiener is cut length-wise about 3/4 of the way so that the deep fryer can work its magic, curling back each mini-panel of the sausage... well, before long, you've got your very own plate of delicate, pseudo-meaty flowerettes. They go great with fries.

But back to the Virgin Mary. There's not much to say, actually. She was there in the church, surrounded by the draped material that typically connotes a religious celebration. Folks drifted in and out to pray and pay their respects-- this, by the way, often involves a modestly-dressed grandmother acompanied by her middrift-baring grandaughters, who reverently take cell-phone pictures, right close up, of the Virgin in her resplendentness. (I, meanwhile, worry about somehow appearing disrespectful just because I'm the only foreigner in the room. Different rules apply, of this I am sure.)

So you've got a mental picture now, right? Church in the center, food stands outside, along with carnival games, tables selling pirated DVDs, and a few carnival rides. And lots of electrical cables on the ground. I paid them no mind, but W, himself a Yucateco, found them worrisome given all of the standing water.

Knowing what we had come for, we carefully made our way to the baseball field and staked out our seats on the bleachers, which quickly filled up. W had told me about the locally famous "fuegos articifiales" (fireworks) that included a fiery "corrida de toro." Hmm... M-80's, cherry bombs *and* frightened livestock, combined! Now this I wanted to see, verily.

It started off calmly enough, with as many people wandering around in on the baseball field as everywhere else-- no crowd control, no Jersey barriers... and alas, no bulls that I could see.

But before long, I came to understand why we were here-- a man started setting off fistfulls of M-80s that whizzed across and over the field, through the meandering crowd and sometimes into the bleachers, sending everyone running, squeeling and screaming with a kind of unfettered glee that you just don't see in the US. I can assure you that no one was thinking about how this could put an eye out, and they certainly weren't thinking about liability. They were just trying to get as close to the action as possible without actually getting maimed.

Which brings us back to the corrida. Once the M-80 man had gotten things properly stirred up, a bull emerged on the scene. Constructed from wood and set on two rear wheels, this bull was freakishly adorned with every type of firework you can imagine. Wasting no time on drum rolls or safety measures, they lit the main fuse, at which point two brave souls took that bull by the horns, and ran it all over the field-- and, yes, straight into the crowd-- explosives flying out at every angle. We of the bleachers got our share of flaming firework detritus, but you know what? We had a great time.

The corrida was repeated three times, each time with the same bull. Between rounds, the M-80 man took shots at the crowd, and by the end of the third round, people were pretty whipped up. A couple of fights broke out on the field, but that didn't keep us from visiting the (now thorougly spent) bull after the show.

Days later, I'm still thinking about the roles of risk and danger in the construction of fun. Maybe it comes down to the extent to which that danger is real vs. perceived... maybe it comes down to available resources: after all, allowing opportunities for real danger is much cheaper than creating illusions of perceived danger. Or maybe it's not so much about money; the chaotic corrida produced moments of real lights-in-the-sky marvelousness, made all the more beautiful by the foil of fear. One depends on the other.

Anyway, if you've got any thoughts on the fun-dangerous moments in your life, or about carnival food that would qualify as disgusting in any other context, feel free to share and opine.

2006-08-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, folks, I'm back, and with no shortage of good excuses: My resolution to get blogging again was thwarted by a second bout of parasites followed by the dramatic death of my (still-in-the-shop) laptop, punctuated, finally, by a knockout virus that took me to fevered heights and landed me in the lowly pastures of pneumonia.

After a well-timed trip to New Mexico, my loving parents, and, godblessit, US healthcare, I'm well on the mend and now back in Merida. Summer vacation has one week to go, and my attempts to visit my office at the university have proved fruitless; it seems that Merida is determined to make sure I take my vacation time. (I find this only slightly annoying.)

Sadly, I lost all of my photos in the Might Laptop Crash, such that this blog is the only surviving photographic record of my first seven months in Merida. (The well-learned lesson here is, of course, Back Up Your Computer, folks.) I have you to thank for inspiring and encouraging me to share share share.

So, today I'm sharing this shot of my mannequin friend who is a permanent fixture on my walk home from work. Let's call him Toby. I like to imagine that he lost his left arm in an unfortunate incident involving a stolen guitar and a tad too much Crazy-Glue. Whatever the story, I figure Toby deserves a photo.

I guess we´re not so different, Toby and me... I've been taken down a bit by recent events, but I'm by no means out. And I'm happy to be back online, courtesy of university-imposed holidays and air-conditioned cyber cafes. Hasta pronto.

2006-06-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

Alive and Kicking

Honestly, I post to my blog every day... um... in my head. It's just not been getting relayed to my keyboard, that's all. So let's see if I can play catsup... um, I mean ketchup... doh!... I mean catch-up.

If we were playing the game show Jeopardy, you'd be presented with the following categories:

1) Heat
2) Relief
3) Parasites

But this ain't Jeopardy, so you don't have to phrase the answers as questions, and you don't have to choose just one category. That's right, you get all three! So, let's get started...

Heat (early May)
While the Yucatan Peninsula was still hotter than HellitSelf, my adventurous Aunt Sue came for a visit from California. This is the same Aunt Sue with whom I drove to Alaska in 2003. Here, HEAT was the adventure: along with eight other hearty souls, and one knowledgeable, multilingual tour guide/van driver, we spent a sunny afternoon in Uxmal. I've honestly never been so hot in all my life; it was nearly religious, that heat.

Call it an authentic context for a visit to the most baroque of the Mayan ruins. We survived the afternoon and took in an evening of "Luz y Sonido," the light-and-sound show that helps you imagine the soap-opera version of what might have happened at Uxmal hundreds of years ago: power, love, jealousy, revenge, murder... like that. The lighting made for particularly cool photos. (See more Uxmal photos here.)

Relief (mid-May)
The terrible heat I described in my last posting soon gave way to the rains, by the way. So now it's hot, for sure, but much less overwhelming than it was in May. Even so, sweat running down your back is a daily experience.

But I think I'm just a lucky person. And so it is that I met J. She's Belgian, she's Californian, she's an ESL teacher, and she's a passionate citizen of the world. We get along swimmingly, and not just because J happens to have a pool.

Typically, I come over for a swim while J is tutoring her students-- sometimes she's teaching French, other times English, occasionally Spanish. Many of her students are Korean, as there's a sizeable Korean community here-- both Koreans from Korea and what I will call YuKoreans-- Yucatecans of Korean ethnicity whose great-grandparents immigrated from Korea to the Yucatan Peninsula in the early 1900's. (More on this in a future posting.)

English as a Second Language has never been so interesting as at J's house-- when I come up for breath, I hear two, three and sometimes four languages being tossed about like juggling pins. J's students adore her, such that they often bring her breakfast, the newspaper, or some other kind of goody. Generosity is contagious.

Meanwhile, I'm in charge of swimming and petting the cat-- usually not at the same time. Everyone wins! The friendship and the daily exercise have brought me a fair dose of that elusive "Merida magic" that so many rave about. Which is a good thing, given that I've also encountered...

Parasites
Parasaites are effective. And rather than choosing a photo that illustrates this fact (er... thanks KAT), I've chosen to share this one of me drinking from a communal cup at a market in Oaxaca. That was back in April.

Now, I'm not saying that this was the source of my parasites, but I will posit that these kinds of activities-- eating and drinking in the open markets-- just may have played a role. Perhaps. My doctor, however, says it was more likely due to the much grosser possibility that it's um... in the air. He explained that rural Yucatan still exhibits high rates of open-air defecation, and May is the driest, windiest month, and so... you get the picture.

I guess what impresses me most about those parasites was how they brought me down slowly before moving in for the Big Party Downstairs. I haven't experienced that kind of lethargy since my first year of highschool, when I got mono. I should have noticed the symptoms, but somehow it seemed entirely reasonable to head home at 2 p.m. and sleep for the rest of the day. I thought only vaguely about how lazy I was becoming, and I felt a little bad about that, but only a little. This lasted for about a week.

Then I woke up one day and... party time! Thank god for Dr. Sanchez, who lives right around the corner and works out of his house. No annoying paperwork, no insurance questions, no delay. Dr. Sanchez sat me right down and asked me a series of very detailed questions (in Spanish, thank goodness... I don't even want to imagine that conversation in English!). Before long, I was walking out the door with a couple of prescriptions, and by the next morning, I was a new woman ready to conquer the world.

So that's about it for this posting. I've got tons more to share, but then finding material has never been a problem... computer problems, work, and an emerging social life have conspired to make me less of a blogger lately, but I aim to be more attentive. Thanks for checking in. Come again.

2006-05-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

The Yucatan Peninsula in May

is all about heat. And dryness. And fire.

A friend explained to me that last year's hurricanes are to blame for the abundant supply of downed vegetation that is now feeding the wildfires that rage across the Peninsula. Several fires are burning just outside of Mérida, such that the air here is filled with ashes.

Part of my morning routine now consists of sweeping the ashes-- which find their way through the screened doors and settle on the dining room floor-- into the back yard. The air quality seems okay until you walk around without glasses on... it seems there's always something getting in my eyes, and there is.

But we can't blame it all on the hurricanes, no. All that downed vegetation, it doesn't just spontaneously combust-- no. No, for that, we turn to the farmers and the heat. Farmers: in short, farmers set fires to enrich the soil and clear the land. The fires get out of control, and there you have it: literally thousands of wild fires burning as I write this.

Then you've got the heat. That would be the heat that even Yucatecans are complaining bitterly about, the heat that reaches 43 and 44 degrees centigrade (that's 109-111 degrees Farenheit). Newspaper photos depict Yucatecan firefighters battling the incendios, and many of these guys are outfitted in standard firefighter garb... in this heat... and I can't imagine how they do it.

Here's your surprising irony for the day (Hm... I guess all ironies are surprising, by definition...): When the heat is at it's worst, there's not a cold shower to be found. That's because your water is stored in a tinaco (water tank) that's located on your roof (to create water pressure). By 3 and 4 p.m., your standard 'cold shower' is anything but refreshing.

But it actually rained yesterday (yay!!!), and this is a great source of relief to all. The air has been washed clean for the moment, and the temperature is down a bit. The firefighters have gained some adavantage, and human beings can walk around without running as much a risk of dehydration.

They say the rains will start in June, and until recently, I had the impression that this meant everything would be better. Now I'm being told it's just different: the rain will bring increased humidity, something like pouring water on the hot coals in a sauna. And the mosquitos will come in full force. So much to look forward to!

So here's what's good right now: low mosquito population, lots of solidarity among humans regarding the heat (ay, qué calor! is a standard small talk starter), and... air conditioning. Yes, I now have access to an air conditioner, and this is quite literally a life saver. I use it mostly in the afternoon when I get home from work at 3 or 4 p.m., when temps are at their highest.

Also good: friends who have pools. I've got several generous friends who let me cool off regularly, and they will justifyably be written into my will, just as soon as I write one.

2006-04-16T23:00:00.000-07:00

Life in the Places of Scattering

Have I mentioned how incredibly safe I feel in Mérida? I won't say there's no crime, but I can honestly say that I've seen none-- neither pickpocketer nor robber nor crazy person threatening to hurt you. (Perhaps this last one belies my long-time residence in the Washington DC Area...)

Anyway, I'm safe in Mérida, and as it turns out, I'm safe here in Oaxaca as well. This I know because the pamphlet tells me so.

This would be the pamphlet that the police handed me as I was walking toward the Zocalo (main square). The pamphlet contains Spanish, French and English versions of the same message, with the latter two almost certainly produced by Google Translator (I checked)... a useful tool in a pinch, but utterly clumsy with full sentences, I'm sad to say.

Well, only a little sad... because the outcome is hilarious. I've included it here for your enjoyment.

Go ahead and read it out loud...

Oaxaca is a Sure State, for this reason, the Direction of the Auxiliary Bank, Industrial and Commercial Police invites to the local, national and international tourism to bear in mind the following Councils:
Do not lose of sight your belongings (properties).
Monitor your purse or your portfolio in the agglomerations.
When it goes to the beach or swimming pool, take the strictly necessary thing.
Protect your video camera or photography in the places of scattering.
Avoid the games of random in the street. They are a fraud.
I distrusted suspicious persons.
Elude the easy business. They might be a swindle.
If some vehicle uses, do not leave any object of value at sight.
If you work through the key mistranslations, it's really quite clear. A 'portfolio' is a wallet and 'agglomerations' are crowds. 'The places of scattering' are those places where you might relax, say, on a park bench or at an outdoor café.

But this last phrase is endearing. It has captured my imagination. I'm tempted to take it on as my new phrase, as in Sorry I'm late, but I got lost in the places of scattering. Or Hey, I'll meet you in the places of scattering, you know, next to the games of random, in the street.

And so it is that I'm safely scattered in the agglomerations of Oaxaca. I'm loving it here-- the mountains, the winding roads, the verticality of Oaxaca that is, I'll admit, a welcome change from flat-as-a-pancake Merida. Then there's the food-- the chocolate, the moles (come on, now, and say it in Spanish: MO-le).

Oh, and yes, the mescal-- which you can find mixed with cream in a variety of flavors, including espresso. (Who needs Starbucks when you can drink espresso-infused mescal?)

This last shot was my first shot of the day-- at 11 a.m., on a bus tour, this gal served up multiple samples of mescal.

ON A BUS. Just like that.

Needless to say, the resulting sales were swift, and by the end of the tour, she had unloaded many bottles of the stuff.

Wow... I thought I was just taking a simple tour of town, but before we knew it, it was already noon and we were knee high in the places of scattering.

Well, you get the idea.

2006-04-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

You know your Spanish is functional when...

you can call your landlady out of the blue and have this conversation (written in English that approximates my Spanish, unknown errors omitted, of course):

Landlady (LL): Hello?

KT: Hi, Rosi. This is Karen.

LL: Oh hi. Is everything okay?

KT: Um, yes. Maybe.

LL: What happened?

KT: Well, there were noises last night. Cats were fighting, but I was sleeping...

LL: Yes...

KT: Well (Pues), there's a dead cat in the garden. (un gatito muerto)

LL: Oh, my God. Poor thing. (ay, pobrecito)

KT: Sí, probrecito.

LL: Pobrecito.

KT: Pues, I put the cat in a bag... well, in three bags...

LL: That's good.

KT: Yes... But it's a problem. The garbage [pick up] won't come until Monday, of course [because it was Good Friday and everything except the church is shut down]...

LL: Oh, I see...

KT: Yes... and I'm on my way to the airport, and I don't want to leave this dead cat in front of the house for all of Easter weekend... It's not good.

LL: Yes, I understand...

KT: Pues, I also have friends who will arrive tomorrow to stay at my house. I won't be there. So I left a note for them about the dead cat. To put it out on the sidewalk for Monday [trash removal].

LL: That's good.

KT: Yes. But... I really don't want them to find this dead cat in a bag, you understand.

LL: Yes, I understand.

KT: What a horror (que horror) to find a dead cat in a bag... when they arrive.

LL: Sí. Que horror.

KT: So, if it's possible, can you take the cat? Can you... take it and include it with your trash on Monday? I don't want to shock my friends with the dead cat.

LL: Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

KT: Okay... so if you take the cat, please also take the note that I left on the table. I wrote a note to my friends... about the cat... and if you take the cat...

LL: Yes yes, I understand. If I take the cat, also take the note.

KT: Yes, that's right. Take the note.

LL: Okay, no problem. Take care.

KT: Thank you. A million thanks. Take care. Um... Happy Easter.

LL: And to you, Happy Easter. Pobrecito.

KT: Sí, pobrecito.

Ah, life is never dull in Mexico.

I arrived in Oaxaca last night, and just talked to my house guests in Mérida. To my relief and theirs, my landlady removed the cat and all is well there.

Here, it's the Saturday before Easter, and I'm about to head out for my first daytime glimpse of Oaxaca. I'll be here for the next ten days, studying Spanish and visiting friends.

You'll forgive me for not including photos with this posting.

Pobrecito.

---------------
NB: Sorry I've been away from my blog for a while. I'm back now, and look forward to posting regularly. I've got plenty of material to work with, that's for sure. Thanks for checking in and not giving up!

2006-04-02T21:45:00.000-07:00

Kidnapped by a Trio

Finally! If you'd talked to me two days ago, I'd have lamented that I *still* haven't made a meaningful contact in Merida's very rich world of music.

Sure, they're everywhere, playing every night, singing Trova, playing for Danzon (see my previous posting on Danzon here). But somehow, I've not been able to talk at length with the musicians I've seen; chalk it up to shyness (don't laugh-- I'm shy on occasion!), though I did muster up the courage to chat with the Trio Montejo (right) after a wonderful performance last week.

(As the show ended, the audience learned that the Trio Montejo was the last of the original trios that started the Thursday night serenata performances 45 years ago. I was moved to thanked them, and that was that... still no closer to making music with others.)

But that all changed on Friday night, and like so many of the good things in life, it happened when I least expected it.

So, it's 8 p.m. and I'm on my way to dinner at a friend's house. For this, I need to find a taxi, and rather than calling a taxi, I decide to walk down to the plaza and simply catch one there.

Approaching the plaza, this is what I see: a parade of strolling 'trio' musicians and horse-drawn carts, the men dressed in their finest guayaberas and the women adorned with flowers to match their gorgeously embroidered ternos.

I take some pictures, smile at the folks passing by, and follow the parade with the understanding that I won't be finding a taxi any time soon.

Soon, I'm chatting with three men in the procession. They're sitting up in a horse-drawn cart which is rolling along at the same speed that I'm walking, giving me a perfect opportunity to ask what the parade is all about. Before I know it, they've got me up in the cart, occupying the fourth seat-- lucky me, this is a parade celebrating trios and not quartets.

Actually, this is a parade celebrating Trova, a ballad-centered style of music sung by trios or soloists backed by delicious harmonies and Latin, jazz-like rhythms.

In fact, the entire month of March has been dedicated to Trova, though I've been only vaguely aware of this. (As I explained to my new-found friends, "Oh, I thought every month was Trova month in Merida." They liked this.) So, this parade is the closing ceremony for a month celebrating all things Trova, and I'm starting to understand why I've seen so much superb music in the past several weeks.

There are no pictures of this spontaneous horse-drawn cart ride among the stars, I'm happy to say. I briefly consider whipping out my camera, but realize just as quickly that doing so would instantly and irreversibly transform me from participant back into mere observer. Instead, we talk.

Arturo, Carlos and Jorge, all in their mid-70's, have known Trova all their lives. Arturo's father, Arturo Alcocer Escamilla, was a famous trovador in the 1940's and 50's, known as "el artistócrata de los trovadores". Carlos Gilm, sitting next to me, is a soloist and, I'm thrilled to learn, a teacher of Trova.

At this point, the parade comes to an end, the buggy stops, and we disembark. I should be going. I'm due at my friends' house, oh, right now, and I'm nowhere close to a taxi. My new friends offer to take me, but only if I join them for a coffee first, and so we're off to a close-by cafe for more Trova and a dose of caffeine.

This is when I know I have arrived. There is a young trio playing when we walk in-- a soprano guitarist, an alto guitarist, and a bass player, each with voices to mix and match on the harmonies. As we sit, the young trovadors acknowledge my new friends, the old-timers, and it is clear that I am in the company of much-admired musicians. Almost instantly, Carlos is invited up to sing a tune with his once-students. Now it's safe to take out my camera.

Carlos sang beautifully, we drank coffee, we all exchanged numbers, and I'm pretty sure I snagged myself a top of the line Trova teacher. When I finally arrived my other friends' dinner party, I apologized for being late, telling only the truth: I was kidnapped by a trio.

2006-03-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

Goodbye, Buck.

It's a sad day in Bakersfield, California. Buck Owens died yesterday at the age of 76. (Read more about him here.)

I pretty much grew up in Bakersfield, but it wasn't until much later that I learned about "The Bakersfield Sound" that Buck pretty much invented with Don Rich in the 1950's and 60's.

Instead, my early (y)ears were filled with Styx, Steely Dan, and The Police (all thanks to my brother), and Duran Duran (which I blame on no one but myself). It was the early 80's, and Buck Owens was just a sequined country singer on a TV show called Hee Haw.

Even so, the Country side of Bakersfield was there throughout my childhood, close enough that I didn't have a name for it. My friend Beth competed in rodeo and spent her weekends out at the stables; many of my classmates were ranching kids who would show prize-winning cattle at the Kern County Fair. While the rich kids were skiing in Tahoe, the local kids were castrating sheep with the 4H Club.

By middle school, my male friends were using chewing tobacco just like their brothers and fathers were, giving plenty of product placement to Copenhagen and Skoal. They'd hold court in the back of the school bus holding small brass spitoons, cussing, laughing and posturing. When we had fog delays*, it was not unusual for the posse to crawl onto the bus having shared a flask of Jack Daniels or Southern Comfort. As impressive as they were in their giant belt buckles and boot-cut Wrangler jeans, they were still fairly new to drinking, and the results were not pretty.

(*If you've never spent a winter in the San Joaquin Valley, it's difficult to appreciate the central role that Fog plays in daily life, both as cause of terrible car accidents and, alternatively, boredom. From November to March, schools are routinely affected by 3-hour "fog delays" and all-day "fog cancellations".)

When enough of us were old enough to drive, a bigger Bakersfield was revealed: one whose main pasttime involved cruising down Chester Avenue, driving out into the fields (cotton, oranges, almonds-- take your pick), and drinking.

A typical Saturday night started with the cruising, and here, I was all set: my boyfriend, Dickie, had a '56 Chevy pickup truck with all the original parts. Primered in white, the Chevy was a perpetual work in progress; Dickie would save up money from his job at the garage to get "the next piece" chromed: the front bumper, the back bumper, the grill. (Our relationship lasted until the rear-view mirror, at which point the brake lights came on.)

Still in the front-bumper stage of our courtship, though, we found cruising a perfect way to while away the earlier part of the night. See and be seen. Drive slowly, check out your friends and foes in each oncoming vehicle, all the while tuned in to KUZZ. Listen to Merle Haggard, Hank Williams Jr., the Charlie Daniels Band, Dwight Yoakam. I suppose Buck was in the mix as well (knowing as I do now that he owned KUZZ), but his sound was nothing I was specifically aware of.

After cruising, we'd head to The Couch.

Now in any other city, The Couch might be a seedy lounge or a bohemian nightclub, but in Bakersfield, it was... a couch. In the middle of nowhere. In a field.

The older kids had inherited a partying routine that entailed buying beer in town, grabbing two or three old tires, and driving out to the Couch. Pop open a beer, set fire to the tires, take a seat, and there you have it: instant fireplace, long-burning, no clean-up required. (Mom and Dad, take heart: all told, I went out to The Couch only once or twice; chalk it up to the stench of burning rubber and the unspecified fear that something terrible was likely to happen out there.)

Enter the rear-view mirror: at the age of 16, I left Bakersfield to attend school in New Mexico., where I discovered Pink Floyd, the Dire Straits, and Bob Marley. Meanwhile, back in Bakersfield, Dwight Yoakam was busy convincing Buck Owens to join him on a remake of "Streets of Bakersfield," a move that launched Buck Owens back into country music stardom and appropriately rewrote his Hee Haw years as a mere footnote of his musical career.

Buck opened the Crystal Palace in 1996, the same year he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. With a new generation of Buckaroos to back him, he took to playing two shows every Friday and Saturday night at the Crystal Palace, a pace he maintained almost until the end of his life.

In 1997, I stopped through Bako on my way home from Namibia. My friend Michelle and I wandered through the museum and took turns posing in front of a bigger-than-life Buck, all bronze and magnificence. For us, it was a just wacky little excursion, but it was also my first real introduction to the music of Buck Owens.

Since then, his music has come to mean something very special to me, for reasons I've largely failed to describe here. Suffice it to say that I'm sad at the passing of Buck Owens.

It's a quiet and mercifully cool Sunday afternoon, and I've got Buck singing "Above and Beyond," turned up real high, so that he can be heard by a good number of my neighbors here in Merida. I'm singing the harmonies, taking pleasure in the almost visual brilliance of his music. That's the best I can do for now.

2006-03-21T10:30:00.000-08:00

Cancun at its best

I may have boasted that I was going to stop through Cancun on the way home from Tampa. Silly me, for being so literal.

Let me just say that Cancun is fabulous from the air. Especially when you have a window seat. And you've been drinking. Since before noon.

Which, of course, is a function of having changed planes in Miami, so infamous among travelers that there's a webpage dedicated to Killing Time at Miami International Airport, not to mention a pee-your-pants funny article by Dave Barry, who includes this unbiased review of MIA:

MIAMI AIRPORT: Sucks
Perhaps you think I'm being harsh on MIA. Well, perhaps this is because you do not have to use it a lot. I do. Almost every week, I get on a plane there, and, if all goes according to plan, the plane lands in some other city. I am almost always struck by the fact that the other city's airport, big or small, is a WHOLE lot less hostile to travelers than MIA, the airport that proudly proclaims to visitors from all over the world: ``Welcome! You Are In A Hellhole!'' I have ranted before about the bad design, the confusion and the insanely overcrowded, last-chopper-out-of-Saigon ambience at MIA, so I'm not going to dwell on it here. Nor am I going to mention the Soviet-style monopoly food service, which, in some of the grimmer parts of the airport, offers a bill of fare consisting entirely of hot dogs that I believe were originally placed on the grill by Ponce de Leon. (Dave Barry, Maimi Herald, Sunday, August 2, 1998.)

It therefore makes perfect sense that there was a bar next to my boarding gate, and that it opens at 6 a.m.

Now, I've never been much of a drinker (except when I was in college, and whenever I attend TESOL conferences, as per my previous posting), but Miami International Airport actually inspired me to think the thought (man, I need a drink!) and drink the drink (no mojitos available, so I opted for a rum and ginger ale), all so that I could walk the walk of a now de-stressed traveler and actually enjoy the flight to Cancun.

And I was rewarded. If you've never flown over the Florida Keys, oh... my... god. It's spectacular (and that's not just the liquor talking). If you can't afford to charter a private plane, it may just be worth the chaos of MIA so that you can take in the seascape between Miami and Cancun.

If only we didn't have to land...

Okay, you do the math, since I clearly didn't.

It's mid-March. In Cancun. Where the vernal equinox is observed as it has been for centuries, with loud, newly braided co-eds flip-flopping their way to everlasting sun damage.

With nary a hotel room to be found, my choices consisted of sleeping on the beach (um... no) or catching the next bus home, to Merida.

This is where the act of traveling becomes a destination in and of itself. The taxi becomes the journey, the plane becomes the destination, and the destination becomes... another point of departure. This is where I am, because to wish it were any other way would be to deny reality.

And so I found myself talking to yet another taxi driver, this time en route to the bus terminal.

More and more, I'm convinced that taxi drivers are some of the wisest people on earth, transporting, as they do, over time, thousands of people of every stripe imaginable for the myriad reasons that prompt us to leave our homes for this thing called travel.

This driver, who indulged my request to take photographs "of the beautiful highway" through his windshield, was a real pro, fully protected from mishap by a dashboard St. Christopher, (color-coordinated!*) patron saint of taxi drivers. I can't say that I minded.

* Don't forget that you can click on any photo to see an enlarged version of it. Enjoy.

2006-03-18T20:50:00.000-08:00

TESOL... what's there to talk about?

As you know, I'm in the field of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Those of us who work directly with ELL's (English Language Learners) teach ESL (English as a Second Langauge) or EFL (English as a Foreign Language)-- a distinction that rides on whether we're teaching in an English speaking country like the USA (where it's ESL) or in a country where English is not widely spoken in everyday life (where it's EFL), like Mexico, Thailand, France, Chile, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and... you get the idea.

Every year, ESL and EFL teachers, teacher educators (that's me), and administrators from all over the world come together for the International TESOL Convention. This past weekend, some 4,000 teachers from about 180 different countries attended up to seven days of workshops, presentations and social-professional events in Tampa, Florida.

(Social-professional events would include the excellent breakfast I had with colleagues on Friday morning. We caught up on each others' lives and then talked at length about plagiarism and the teaching of writing-- as valuable or better than many of the formal presentations I attended. Same goes for the afternoon I spent drinking mojitos, but I digress...)

Anyway, I arrived in Tampa on Wednesday night ready to dig in. On the way from the airport to my hotel, I chatted with my cab driver, himself an adult ELL studying toward his MBA. Having already ferried several other TESOL folks to the convention center and surrounding hotels, his curiousity finally got the better of him as he asked:

What do you talk about, anyway... I mean... besides English?

I think this is a perfectly reasonable question. In fact, imagining that some of my own readership might be wondering the same thing, I thought I'd share with you a few representative topics-- keeping mind these are but a smattering of the 500+ presentations that took place this year. Here's goes:

The Basics:

Tips and Techniques for Developing Better Readers
Improving Speaking and Listening Through Audio Journals
Effective Student-Centered Vocabulary Activities

Hold on... no, wait... you did not just mumble the word "boring" to yourself, did you? Seriously, this stuff is exciting to us!

But lest you think that we're only about the two of the R's (readin' and [w]ritin'), we've also got:

The Language-Math Connection
Teaching ESOL through Science Fair Projects
Leading Best Practice in Business English

In other words, we're practical people; we like to make connections between language and what one does with it.

Hmm... but maybe we sound a bit too practical. We're plenty capable of sounding super-academic, too:

Expert and Novice Processes in Revision Tasks
The Sociopolitical Genesis of EFL Attitudes and Motivation
Building Legal English Corpora for Classroom Purposes

Indeed, the use of corpora and the application of corpus linguistics in language teaching continue to be hot topics in TESOL. (For more info on corpus linguistics, read this article.)

Then there's the tech-related stuff, which we call CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), with such topics as:

Using Wikis to Advance Narrative Writing Fluency
Automating Distribution of Listening lessons via Podcasting
Using the Webcam for Pronunciation Practice

...not to mention a gaggle of presentations on the use of weblogs for teaching writing.

Finally, just in case you haven't yet formed a clear idea of what we talk about at a TESOL conference, we have these to offer:

Second Language Learning is Not Doomed To Failure
Am I Just Teaching English?

and my personal favorite:

There Was Deviations But There Was Rules!

Are you still here? Let's play!

If you've read this far, I think you deserve to have some fun. Therefore, I'll wrap things up with a brain teaser:

Each year, TESOL identifies a theme for our conference. Presenters often allude to the theme by weaving key words of the theme into their presentation titles. So-- Based on the titles below, what do you think the theme was for this year's conference?

Daring to use Corpus Activities in Classrooms
Leading Best Practice in Business English
Daring to Enter the Blogosphere
Leading With Action Research for Content Teachers
Dare to Moodle
Leading with Persuasive Speech

Hint: The theme consists of three words, at least one of which appears in each of the six titles listed above.

That should be enough for you to make a decent guess or a wild fabrication. Post your guess in the "comments" section under this posting, then check back in a few days to see the results. Prizes will be awarded for the most imaginative answer and the most humorous answer, as well as for the right answer.

(Note: No cheating! TESOL people who already know the answer are not eligible-- though you're welcome to post creative answers. The rest of you can have at it, but no Googling allowed.)

2006-03-17T04:49:00.000-08:00

Candy from a friend

I'm on the road these days, and don't have a chance to write today... but my friends at Yucatecan Living have written a lovely piece on the Yucatecan sugar addiction. Read this posting and enjoy! And then send my friends a comment on their blog. :)

2006-03-16T05:37:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it's them...

Don't fly away! This entry is about technology, but read it anyway...

One of the big themes I touch on in my work (technology training) is the pitfall of failure coupled with self-blame; whether it's the DVD player, our cell phone or a website, when something doesn't work, we often assume that we just didn't do it right.

Such has been the case with my first attempt at audioblogging (two postings earlier). I'd had a wonderful, easy time uploading my audio file and transferring it to my blog on Sunday night. I tested it on my testing blog, it worked, and I had every reason to believe that you'd be able to listen to my song on Monday morning.

Not so. One report after another dribbled in (for your entertainment, see the "comments" under that blog entry), and the message was the same every time... it was a no go. No sound, no "play" arrow, freezing computers, frustration. Sigh.

My response was to visit five internet cafes in three hours so that I could test the connection and see if it was a bandwidth issue. By Monday afternoon, my success rate in playing my audio file was zero; my failure was as profound as had been my victory just 24 hours ealier.

But here's the clincher: I couldn't access the website of the company that supports my audioblog, either. That's when I started to suspect it wasn't me, and that it wasn't you. Maybe it was them.

And so it was; after visiting a few online discussion groups, I learned that my audioblog company, CastPost, had found themselves overwhelmed with traffic on their little server. Coincidentally, this happened sometime early on Monday morning. They solved the problem last night (Wednesday), and voila! My audioblog is working!

The thing about technology coupled with failure and self-doubt is that it's self-defeating. Do your best not to go there. If you're frustrated with a gadget like your DVD player, ask a friend to give it a try, read the manual, sleep on it, and try again.

If it's website-related, it's a bit more complex, since you've got a lot of actors on the stage here: the web designer, the server that hosts the website, your browser, your internet service provider, even your own computer. Any one of these can have a bad day, and the results are borne out on your screen. Sometimes, the only solution is to walk away from the computer, go have yourself an espresso (or other drug of choice), and give it another try later.

So-- I want to thank those readers who struggled to make it work the first time, then returned to give it another try this morning. Thanks for not giving up, and thanks for adding your comments. And thanks to CastPost, a little start-up company in California, for offering their services for free-- it's exciting to be involved with such a new (free!) product, even though that means going through a few ups and downs.

If this is your first time hearing about the whole affair, fear not! Scroll down two entries, and you'll find a "play" arrow...

Meanwhile, I'm here in Tampa for the week, attending our annual TESOL conference (Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages). There are about 6,000 of us here from all over the world, including a bunch of tech-heads whose brains I plan to pick.

Oh, and about the butterfly (at top), it was just a lure for you visual types. I found this pretty little guy at the university, sitting peacefully on a plant outside my office. He flew away moments after I took this shot.

I'm off! More on Mexico in my next entry.

2006-03-13T20:53:00.000-08:00

Outside In

I've been here just shy of two very different months. My first month was all about what I could see outside... and from the outside. My second month, by contrast, has taken me inside: inside the university, inside neighbors' homes, inside the worlds of those I now call friends. Progress of a kind, but if I'm not careful, it could be just... like...

Life in Washington DC, where months can pass without my going to a Smithsonian museum or the Kennedy Center. Maybe that was part of it: my Inside Washington and my Outside Washington had grown too distinct. So I've taken it as my personal challenge in Merida to cultivate both of my Meridas, Outside and Inside, in the months ahead.

Danzon (pronounced "dan-ZON") figures prominently in my Outside Merida. A descendant of late 19th century ballroom dance in Cuba, Danzon has it all: live music with a horn section, men in white fedoras, and everyday people who aren't looking to impress anyone. Danzon is a welcome contrast to the many cultural demonstration-performances sponsored in Merida, which while beautiful, are as much spectacle as spectacular.

In short, what I like about Danzon is that more people do it than watch it.

If you head to the Parque de Santiago on a Tuesday night, you'll see Danzon in full swing: hundreds of couples dancing a mix of cha-cha and salsa to Latin big-band tunes from the 1930's and 40's. There's not a lot of smiling or talking going on: no showing off, no period costumes, just couples, some elegant in their movements, others not.

In fact, on first glance they seem almost joyless, but time tells me there's something special going on here; I see many of the same couples on Sundays when the same band plays at the Parque Santa Lucia. Daylight lends a different mood to the affair, with folks greeting one another and talking between dances. Even so, dancing, the couples move like their Tuesday night selves, with the same, seemingly stoic commitment to enjoyment.

And me? When I go to Danzon, I dance some and gawk more, and this pays off: I find if you watch people long enough, they will eventually disprove what you think you first noticed about them.

After weeks of going to Danzon, I find myself at the Plaza Santa Lucia on a cloudy Sunday morning just before noon. The turnout is low, maybe because it's cold by Merida standards. Then I see this man, and he is exuding joy, letting it shine outward, from the inside. He sees me and waves.

Could it be that others are feeling the same joy? It's actually a beautiful day for dancing, the music is good and rhythmic and romantic, and yet the dancers' faces are unreadable. Are they keeping their joy to themselves, on the inside, where they can savor it? Or is joy just not a necessary part of the equation? I suspect I'm missing the point with my concerns about joy; perhaps there's something else.

I have no idea, of course. This is a place where people don't always smile for pictures, where dignity and composure might be more important than happiness, where happiness might be alive and well Inside Merida.

2006-03-12T21:16:00.000-08:00

And now, for a song...

That's right, it's time to try something new, so here we are: audioblogging! Just click on the "play" button and you'll hear my first attempt.

Note: if you're accessing this page from a wireless internet connection, it might not play so smoothly. If you've got DSL or cable internet that's not wireless, you should have no trouble listening to the song.

Anyway, give it a try and let me know how it comes out on your end. :)

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2006-03-10T19:00:00.000-08:00

Serenity now!

Who knew I'd return to Merida and find... politics. Suddenly I seem to be everyone's idea of palanca (leverage), and if I play my cards right, I just might be...

With all of these words and ideas floating around in the air, you can understand my wanting to harken back to my peaceful day last weekend when it was los monarchas who were floating and flitting to and fro. (Come on, what better time to pull out to and fro than with butterflies?).

We're talking here about the great state of Michoacan, due west of Mexico City. We'd heard that getting there takes a while, about three hours. Fellow Fulbrighter Stephany and her husband Victor, still recovering from weeks of overactivity from various conferences, decided they were up for the drive, so we dragged our butterfly-motivated selves out of bed and were on the road by 7:30.

Let me say here that the drive from Mexico City to El Roasario, Michoacan, is no fewer than 4.5 hours. Victor deserves several trophies for his excellent, tireless driving. We made good use of our time together, though: we're all talkers, so when we weren't grooving to Stephany's eclectic mix of CDs, we were placticando. (My dictionary tells me that the verb placticar (to chat or to talk over) is uniquely Mexican-- I'd be curious to know where else this verb is used. It took me a while after arriving to realize folks weren't saying practicar, to practice.)

Anyway, we made it to El Rosario by noon, a photographer's least favorite time of day but the perfect time to see a sky full of monarchs-- by noon, the air is warm enough for butterflies to fly around without losing body heat. Imagine us with our cameras photographing the, er, sky... at high noon, trying to capture the uncapturable.

Neeless to say, I have no convincing pictures of our butterfly sky, but I did manage to catch a couple of monarchs in this picture of Victor and Stephany, walking sticks in hand.

The first portion of the path leading to the butterfly sanctuary is lined with souvenir shops and kitchens, tempting on the way up and irresistable on the way back down. (Eating hot-off-the-griddle blue corn tlacollos made for a heavenly reward after our hike.) Here, still pre-hike, we bought our walking sticks before turning our attentions to the sometimes-steep 2K loop ahead of us.

Ahead of us was... the essential, nourishing familiar. Soon after you pass the last shop on the way up, the noise of commerce dies away and you realize you're no longer in El Rosario, or Michoacan, or even Mexico. You're in Nature. Some things are universal, and I think the smell of pine trees and dirt kicked up by hikers is one of them. Breathe it in, and you're transported the first forest you ever hiked in. (For me, that's the San Bernardino mountains surrounding Idyllwild, California.)

But this sight of monarchs, hibernating here in this little spot of forest in Michoacan, is unique. Describing what we took in that afternoon is a little bit like photographying the butterfly sky at high noon... fleeting.

Hopefully, this shot captures something of the wonder-- the dark clumps you see weighing down the branches are monarchs, huddled together by the thousands to conserve body heat so that they might survive their upcoming travels to North America, Canada and elsewhere. (Click on the photo to see an enlarged version.)

It's still pretty much a mystery as to how the descendants of these monarchs, still to be born abroad, will undoubtedly find their way back to their ancestral tree in Michoacan. One article I found suggests that the mountains of Michoacan are uniquely magnetic as a result of volcanic activity, and that this serves as a beacon for the returning monarchs. One of the signs we encountered during our hike posited that the thousands of dead butterflies left behind in Michoacan descompose to provide the returnees with the scent of homecoming. I imagine it's a combination of these and many more factors.

It seems we humans are so attracted to singularity-- the reason we feel sad or happy today, the solution to a problem, the best way to teach... the monarchs are here to remind us that the world is complex and mysterious, a confluence of interdependent factors.

But I'm getting philosophical again. Suffice it to say those butterflies were damn pretty, we had a awesome time finding them, and by the end of the day, Victor still at the wheel, we were absolutely pleased that we'd dragged ourselves out of bed that morning.

2006-03-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

My little piece of Carnival

involved standing on a corner vying for a place to stand and a view to photograph. I wasn't the only one.

Though the desfile infantil is one of the smaller parades featured during Carnival week, it still drew a cast of hundreds to Merida's sidewalks: mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, all here to see their tiny family representatives float down the street, resplendant in their satin, felt, and tule.

We waited together in the afternoon heat, anticipating sweet smiles and beauty pageant waves. And then it came-- a parade of the children, eyes wide and full of... JOY...LEss...ness. That's right, joylessness.

This should be of no surprise to any of us. I mean, come on-- whether we're talking about the Disneyland Parade that my school's marching band played in when I was thirteen, the Halloween parade that my friend's kids were in last October, or this desfile infantil in Merida two weeks ago, the reality is the same: marching in a parade is not nearly as fun as it's cracked up to be.

Sure, costumes are fun!-- until you have to stand in line, in the heat, waiting for your group's turn to walk down the street. For me at the age of thirteen, it involved a wool uniform with fake epaulets and a big, wooly hat that evoked images of the London Guard run amok in Southern California. For these five year olds, it was sticky combination of lamé, humidity, and mermaid pasties. Cute, yes. Sweaty and irritable, definitely.

But enough about me. The fact remains that parades are best carried out by adults-- preferably adults who have access to beer so that they can withstand the wait time and the heat, so they can trade in their daytime work masks for their nighttime Carnival costumes and take joy in the freedom of outrageous anonymity.

All said and done, the best view I got was after I'd left the parade route, when I came upon this post-parade mini harem waiting for their parents to pick them up. No longer under the public eye, they eyed each other, perhaps getting a glimpse of what it means to be grown up with make-up and sparkles.

I think I'm starting to understand. Sure, the kids probably had more fun anticipating the parade than being the parade, but they also got to be a part of something much larger, something they will need when they are older: a chance to escape.

2006-03-05T20:44:00.000-08:00

KATravels... subscribe via email!

Thanks to my friends at Yucatecan Living, I found a tool that enables you to subscribe to my blog via email.

What does it mean to subscribe? Simple-- whenever I post a new entry, you'll receive an email of that entry. No more having to check in to see if I've posted something new.

If you want to subscribe to KATravels, simply

enter your email address into the little white box in my sidebar (on the right, just below my profile);
click "subscribe".

The subscription company, Bloglet, will send you a confirmation email, which you should keep. That's it. Simple and free.

On a separate note,

we *did* get up early enough this morning, and we made it out to Michoacan. The monarchs were out in full force, filling the air, awe inspiring. More on this in my next posting. Meanwhile, get signed up and drop me a comment or two. :)

2006-03-04T18:38:00.000-08:00

Blur of color in motion

This pretty much sums up my time in elegant Mexico City, unless you want to get into the the other senses (which I'll hold off on for now).

I've been here in DF for almost a week, and just wrapped up two days of exchange (ideas, energy, experience) with the other 50-some Fulbright scholars who are here in Mexico for the year. It's been hugely enriching to learn what everyone is doing. I plan to share some of my colleages' stories here in KATravels in the weeks and months ahead, so keep checking in.

Anyway, the Fulbright cat herders, knowing how to kick things off right, treated us to a night at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where we got to see Mexico's famous Balet Folklorico in action. After changing seats twice in the nose-bleed section, I got the shot above from a lovely box seat.

This, however, may well be the sexiest thing I've ever seen on stage-- a man walks out alone, holding a rope. He slips it into a lasso, and for the next 5 minutes, he dances alone with his lasso, which jumps overhead, underfoot, to the side, always in tact, spinning.

The woman enters, and she's as transfixed as the rest of us. She flirts with him and he flirts back, but the lasso never stops. He's got it whirling around himself like a hurricane; the rope rises and falls, creating a funnel around the man. He is the calm eye, and she is being blown... away... until... she... jumps into the eye. She wraps her arms around the man, he grabs her waist with his free hand, and for the next 10 minutes, they kiss and dance and embrace. The other dancers join them, the music in crecendo, until the whole stage is whirling around the lasso, the man and the woman.

And that's Mexico City, too, in some sense: it's the center of a wheel, with each road running along its own spoke. Our conference now concluded, we're all heading back out to our respective sites, many of us by bus, some by plane, to places like Hermosillo, Oaxaca, Puebla, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Morelia. Twirling and spinning out into Mexico beyond DF.

Me, I'm enjoying two more nights here with friends before I twirl myself back over to Merida. If we manage to drag ourselves out of bed early tomorrow morning, we'll drive to Michoacan, where millions of monarch butterflies are hibernating for a few more weeks before they stretch their wings and head north.

2006-02-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-22T21:44:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-21T20:26:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-20T20:48:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-17T21:53:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-17T06:37:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-02-16T14:30:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-15T08:14:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-02-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-10T21:35:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-10T04:57:00.000-08:00

" 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.

2006-02-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-07T16:19:00.000-08:00

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).

2006-02-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-02-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

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.