mexico on 10 besos a day: a few days and a lot of pictures

This first photo is just a funny (to me) picture of cars getting stuck. The view is of the main road (the “highway”) in Marfil and the white truck is pulling out of the cobblestone/dirt road that the kids’ summer camp is on. I am at the bus stop and cars are backed up in my direction just as far as they are in the visible direction. Basically, cars are trying to go both ways on the side road, but there is only room for one lane to go through. When I walked past, 20 minutes earlier, there were so many cars on the side road in both directions that no one could back up, so no one could get out of the way to let one side past. The even more hilarious part was that it spilled out onto the highway – so cars in both directions were wanting to turn onto the side road, but they just had to wait on the highway because nothing was moving, causing the huge back up. No one moved for literally 20 minutes, and everyone just sits in their car waiting for something to magically change. Everyone on the highway was honking, especially the buses. For a while at least the cars wanting to turn onto the side road kind of pulled over as far as they could (see the other white truck and minivan to the right) and there was a gap big enough for cars to get through. So each side would let about 20-30 cars through and then someone from the other side would make a run for it, and then they’d get 20-30 cars through, etc. But THEN, the black car in the middle of the picture was waiting way back by me, and she thought, “what the heck is going on here, I just want to turn down this side road so I don’t know why I have to wait in this huge back up!” so she just cruised down the empty oncoming lane and then realized there was no way to GET down the side road because that’s where the problem was – oops! She turned part way down, and then had to back up to let the white truck out, and ended up blocking the one spot that highway cars who truly had nothing to do with the back up were using to get by! Clearly real road rage is not an issue here or there would have been bloodshed everywhere.

I know that was a lot of explanation for a silly little traffic backup, but it never ceases to amaze me how people get themselves stuck on the road here. I just emailed my friend Kim about our bus ride the other day: A few days ago we were on a bus that had just passed one open parking spot, so we got about 10 feet ahead of it, and then came upon a car. So the bus backed up 10 feet, let the car pull into the spot, passed the car and went 20 feet until running into another car. Backed up 20 feet, let the car pull into the spot, then went forward about 30 feet until running up against another car. I am not kidding we did this about 6 times before we actually made it all the way through the narrow section of roadway without a car arriving. It was hilarious! And we were lucky a delivery truck or other bus didn't come the other way because they never would have fit into that spot!

Ok, I’m done with the traffic stories.

I have had a lot of fun this week getting lost and walking very different parts of Guanajuato. I’ve also taken my little point and shoot with me and just set it on the sill of the bus window and taken shots without even looking at the screen. So it’s not the greatest photography, but it was fun and captured a bit of what we see everyday:

gas and water delivery to the nearby businesses

a large group of school kids waiting at one of the largest bus stops at the most commercial area of town

folks waiting for buses and street vendors selling all kinds of produce, much of which i don't recognize

mostly this is just to show how narrow some of the streets are and how close up to the buildings the buses get

i just liked the tree in the middle of the cobblestone road

the bull fighting ring - seems abandoned

coming into marfil, where the kids' camp is

the only plaza in marfil

I am normally pretty comfortable getting lost because I can always just go up or down and know which direction I’m heading in. I like writing down the street names and then sitting down later with the map and seeing where I went. Yesterday, however, I got trapped, which wasn’t nearly as fun. I ended up on this road that just kept climbing and kept climbing. Normally, there are always little alleyways that you can take any direction, but I wanted to go back down and there was just solid stone wall on my down side. I don’t like walking the same way back anywhere, so I just had to keep going. I finally got to a point where I had some options, but they were a switchback continuing up onto another layered ridge, and I didn’t think I had time to go that far, or taking a tunnel down. A tunnel. I hadn’t walked in any tunnels here – they are a little creepy. Fortunately, I could see the end of this one, so I decided it was my best option. I survived…

tunnel #1

Unfortunately, my options when I got out were two more tunnel entrances or a very narrow, steep hill (where I really wanted to go!) that was completely blocked by a huge delivery truck looking very precariously parked on the slope. I didn’t feel comfortable trying to get past it, so I took another (longer) tunnel. I could feel my heartbeat as I cruised through. Why? I don’t know. Dark, damp = scary? Out at the other end, I was on a bridge with two options. More tunnel, and this one I couldn’t see to the end of, or stairs that led to the road underneath the bridge. So I took the stairs, because I could see that the road let down and eventually I would get back to el centro. When I got down to that road, I recognized the buildings and realized that I had literally gone in a complete circle!

I also ventured to buy a gordita lunch from a street vendor finally. I was tempted to get the cow brains because she didn’t have my favorite meat filling, but decided I should maybe save that for a (perhaps?) more reliable establishment.

The kids also have been complaining of being hungry when we’re getting off the bus at the club at 9 am. Cereal just isn’t doing much for them, despite eating 2-3 bowls. So there is a birreria at our bus stop and this week we started buying 4 tortillas right off the griddle. Zeiva has to wait because she can’t even hold them right away. They have the entire “kitchen” set up out on the sidewalk, and by today the folks there had our tortillas ready for us when we walked by, and they suggested that the kids put salt on them. Even better! I might have to start getting 2 for myself. So it’s a pretty cute ritual and the kids like talking with the very friendly woman making the tortillas and the man manning the giant birria pot.

Random tidbit: Lucas and Zeiva had 10 minutes before bedtime the other night so they went outside to play “tennis”. Given we only have one racket, this consists of one kid throwing the ball to the other kid with the racket, and the racket kid trying to hit the ball. Zeiva managed to hit the ball at one point, and not surprisingly, given the game set up, Zeiva yelled, “HOME RUN!” and took off on a tear around the garden, singing, “I’m running the bases!” Poor Lucas yelled, “There’s NO running the bases in tennis! You’re wasting our 10 minutes!!”

Last week the kids were really hating swim class for some reason, which made me really sad because they normally LOVE swimming. As I’ve mentioned to a couple of you, I have struggled with just letting things go regarding this summer camp. It’s really not very organized, in some ways it’s not very safe, some days it sounds like it’s just supervised free play despite there supposedly being this very elaborate schedule. But they are surrounded by kids speaking Spanish, which was my main priority, it’s crazy cheap, and there is a part of me that recognizes that every moment of their lives doesn’t have to be fabulous. It’s actually probably good for them to deal with doing stuff that isn’t so fun every once in a while. So I keep telling them and the teachers that they have to do everything that’s offered and they don’t get to sit out or opt to play soccer all day. BUT, it really was sad to hear them hating something that the have absolutely loved all their little lives. So we talked about it at length, and it turned out that Lucas was nervous because, since he’s a strong swimmer, he was put with very old kids (the camp has up to 13-yr-olds) in the deep end, which just has walls that go straight up to the ceiling, so he’s in water over his head and there’s no “side” of the pool to really grab onto. So we talked to the teacher and had him moved to the shallower end that has real pool edges that you can grab onto. He’s probably not being challenged as much, but I really don’t care, and once we sorted that out, he came home the next day and said that swimming was the best part of the day, because “he was in the shallow end where he could grab the side and (this is the part I was so excited about) it was also where his best friends were.” It was so great to hear! I asked him who they were, and he listed about 5 kids, none of which were the other English-speaking kid, which was a double bonus.

As for Zeiva, she hated swimming because there is one woman trying to teach a class of 16 four-to-six year olds, half of which are afraid to put their face in the water. So, not surprisingly, she sits them all up on the edge and has them kick their feet in the water for 45 minutes while she takes each kid off the wall for 1 minute to zoom them around the pool and then plop them up back on the wall. Zeiva said, “the kids just splash the whole time and I don’t like it.” So she refused to go this week unless I came with her. So since I was sitting there, when the teacher took Zeiva off the wall for her turn she asked me, “she can swim already, can’t she?” (The first week of class there were three people helping in the pool so the kids actually got broken up into appropriate skill levels.) I confirmed, and so she put Zeiva and one other kid on the other side of the pool and just told them to swim across, or kick across or whatever, as she was giving the other kids their 1-minute turns in the water. About 10 minutes before class was over, Zeiva asked to go to the bathroom, so I told her we’d just grab her stuff and head in to change after she peed. She said, “No, I can hold it! I don’t want to get out if I can’t come back for the rest of class!” Needless to say, swimming is her favorite again, too. Phew! Today was a pool party and both kids spent most of the day playing in the water.

The kids’ favorite teacher, Ivan, is in high school and starts school again next week, so he won’t be around for the last week of camp. Zeiva wanted to get a picture with him, up until the moment it was time to take the photo of course. Then she got all pouty and grouchy and didn’t want to smile or hug him. He also has stayed after to camp to play soccer with just Lucas and Zeiva, which is nice and has been super fun for them. He will be part of a soccer class in the evenings later in August that we may try to sign up for, especially since Zeiva is more likely to engage in a soccer class with someone she already adores.

Zeiva (being grouchy) and her favorite teacher, Ivan

Lucas with Ivan

I decided I wanted to do something fun tonight because we survived another week. I’d seen that there was supposed to be some dancing at a plaza in el centro at 6 pm. Lucas was tired and didn’t want to go. Zeiva really wanted to see dancing. So I tempted Lucas with the offer of ice cream, of course! He was immediately game! We ate early and cruised down to the plaza and waited until about 6:40 pm. No sign of dancers….oh well. Let’s wander around. Lucas, in a panic, “Do we still get ice cream even though there were no dancers?!” :)

We wandered into a church, which I think is the first one the kids have ever been in. We’ve never really discussed religion because honestly I don’t know what to say. So we talked about God and gods in general, how different people believe in different gods. How some people build churches and other similar buildings as places to talk to their gods and get together with other people who believed in the same god. He asked if I believed in a god, and when I told him no he asked if that was ok. We talked about how it was ok to believe in any god or no god, as long as we didn’t fight with each other about who believed what. We did tell the Hanukkah story this last December, so that provided Lucas with some context for how people fight about different beliefs. He was quiet for a while, processing, as usual. I think it was an ok introduction, given I know next to nothing about religion and I was completely unprepared for the conversation!

We came across the street performers that are often in front of one of the fancy theaters right in the heart of el centro and had fun watching them for a while. We wandered around some, enjoying the gorgeous evening, had ice cream and then before we could discuss buses or taxis, we just started the climb back home.

Lucas and Zeiva are tucked into the first row, a little left of center, watching a street performer in front of Teatro Juarez, which is adorned with large statues of greek muses

L & Z father to the right watching the street perfomer

the regular volume of people in el centro on a weekend evening (when there is no festival and it's not peak season)

offering a few pesos to the street performer

the evening bribe, of course! that's all it took for a thoroughly wonderful evening, despite both kids being exhausted...

A few more snapshots of life:

riding on the bus - zeiva is either climbing around looking at everyone, standing up in the aisle even when there are empty seats because it's more fun, or dead asleep sprawled out across the seats