Why do we write?

Why do we write? I write to remember. Shakespeare said that there are only 2 ways to achieve immortality: producing children and producing words. Our text and blood live on after us. So I’m trying to imprint my life on the page, for my own benefit; I’m so prone to forget anything and everything. But with stories I can remember the jokes, the lessons, the places and the people. I know they’ll all be lost unless I can store them somewhere. Today its on the internet.

So here are some stories, 1 new and 2 old.

I hate Pioneers

When I was in middle school, I never gave much thought to who graded my standardized tests. As it turns out, those tests are graded by an army of “scorers”, a mass of individuals who are drained of their will to live by being placed in front of computers and mindlessly click away at thousands of tests for hours upon end. Guess what my new day job is?

Imagine a sweatshop type of environment, but instead of sewing machines we have laptops. I would compare it to slave labor, but it pays pretty well, so I sacrificed my humanity in order to pay the bills. I’m currently grading a 5th grade reading response question about pioneers traveling west to California, and I’m learning that 5th graders are, on average, pretty stupid. I’m sure I was too, but I’ve noticed that even my lowest level ESL students generally have a better grasp of the English language than these elementary kids. So based on a grading rubric, that has been so ingrained in my mind that it is more natural to me now than breathing, I give these kids a score from 0 to 3. There are a lot of 0′s.

I’m learning all about these kids’ recent family camping trips, how the pioneers should have had cars, and the childrens’ related struggles to the pioneers (eg. “I know how the pioneers felt when they were starving in the desert for weeks because one time my Mom didn’t give me lunch money and I almost DIED!!). Sometimes the kids just draw a picture for their answer or describe a recent movie they watched that may or may not have anything to do with the pioneers’ journey.

As scorers we can’t listen to music, we’re prohibited from using cell phones or talking to each other while scoring, and they’ve stripped the computers of every program but the scoring one. The boredom is devastating and the silence is eerie. Yesterday, my biggest social interaction came when I asked the guy next to me in little more than a whisper, “You want a starburst?” He responded in a matched tone, “Yeah, thanks.” It was a thrilling conversation. I tried to have an equally enjoyable social mingle with the guy on my other side by asking him the same question, but he’s mostly deaf so my whisper didn’t even phase him from his mindless clicking.

Every so often, someone will disrupt the entire dynamic of the eerily silent setting and momentarily remind us that we are in fact surrounded by other human beings, not voiceless robots. This usually happens when someone sneezes. The hum of the air conditioner and the quiet but constant “click, click, click” of the mouse is suddenly and without warning interrupted by a forceful and sloppy “AH-CHOOO!” At this moment everyone snaps out of their comas for a second and tries to decide what to do. We’ve all forgotten how to speak through the silence, but no one wants to be rude. We still possess some semblance of the polite code of conduct, that we once had as human beings, in our atrophied brains. So everyone timidly looks around at each other between their steady clicks until someone finally releases a faint, almost inaudible, “bless you”. In an equally quiet reply comes a murmured “thank you.” And we all release a small sigh and resume our trances.

Aforementioned deaf guy really shakes things up in the there. He has trouble regulating his volume based on his surroundings so occasionally he’ll raise his hand and ask our supervisor “IF THE KID SAYS THE PIONEERS ARE TIRED CAN I SCORE IT 2?” My God. What is he doing? I almost feel like we’re all going to get fired as his question echos across the walls and rings in our ears. Madness.

So from 9-5, 5 days a week, I get to be a scoring drone. From 5:30 to 10 I teach my night classes at the international school. My days are currently pretty long. The problem is that scoring is so boring that I have to drink my weight in caffeine if I don’t want to slam my head on the keyboard. So by the time I get to my first class at night I’m so twitchy and jittery from so much coffee and so many energy drinks that my writing on the board resembles one of those seismographs that measure the magnitude of earthquakes, violently jerking up and down to convey all the verb tenses.

I’m usually so starved for human contact by 5:30, that I’m about ready to grab hold of my students and force them to converse with me. I guess that’s one teaching method for English language learners. I’m teaching advanced writing and grammar classes right now and I’ve never been so excited to read a batch of essays. Anything that is even remotely interesting is a treat after reading thousands of the same 5th grade responses all day. I have my students write about all kinds of topics and most of them are developing into really good writers. I generally look forward to reading their papers as long as they don’t dare, for the love of God, write anything about Pioneers.

Iguazu

Argentina, November 2010

For our final days in Argentina, Mom and I headed north to visit Iguazu Falls. While they don’t technically hold the title, they are certainly one of the wonders of the world. In order to reach the “Garganta del Diablo”, the main attraction, we had to cross over a lake by way of a series of constructed walkways. We finally passed through a little cluster of trees and on the other side the lake disappeared. By disappeared I mean it looked like what the old explorers must have imagined the edge of the world to look like. A huge chunk of the lake had been swallowed up by the earth and the torrential waters followed down into the abyss. Supposedly Niagara falls is only a dripping faucet compared to Iguazu.

It’s the kind of sight that requires you to close your eyes and process, to imprint into your memory while you’re standing in front of it because you won’t have the luxury later of opening your eyes and seeing it in front of you. When you close your eyelids before going to sleep you’ll still hear the rushing water and see the current flowing over the edge of the world. Thankfully as we head back home the image is still fresh, its crisp and clear and one that I know I’ll revisit for years in my memory.

As I close my eyes there is a fresh harvest of pictures, places and events from the last few weeks. My earplugs don’t seem to help muffle the fiery “Puto!” screamed at me, or one of the other volunteers, everyday from little Mateo while forcefully extending his tiny middle finger. But with equal strength is the voice of little Juli, “Opa, Opa! Quero cocochitos!” begging to be picked up and carried on your shoulders for every second of every minute of every hour of every day. There are a host of faces and places that pictures can’t do justice. I’ve also been able to remember Argentina through countless drinks in countless cafes and bars with countless conversations with Mom. Some of which will stand out for years when I close my eyes before sleep.

This morning, as my eyes were still firmly closed, Mom ventured out to get a coffee. She has the ability to sleep for an hour a week and still function better than I do with 8 a night. Downstairs in the hostel she told me she met a woman who had returned to Iguazu for the second time in her life. In her limited English she said that it had been 25 years since the last time she had seen the falls and she wanted to go one last time while she could still walk. Maybe when she closes her eyes the image has started to fade. I understand wanting to return. It’s an image you can’t help but covet. The falls are so strong that you almost want to jump into them, just to be a part of something so powerful. Every other waterfall you’ve ever seen is just a trickle. So maybe one day, while we can still walk, Mom and I will have to come back and refresh our memories with the deep, rushing falls of Iguazu.

Family Day

Buenos Aires, October 2010

Most days at the orphanage I’ve been taking little 5-year-old Rodrigo to school in the afternoons. He is one of the notorious “3 brothers” that take great joy in making life hell for all of  the volunteers. I finally learned a part of their story from my friend Johanna. Supposedly they are only 3 of 10 siblings who were born on the streets. Their mother is currently pregnant again and it’s unclear to me where she stays or if the boys ever get to see her. But these boys were brought into this world with about as close to nothing as can be imagined.

Their lack of family stability obviously plays a large part in their current demeanor. Rodrigo, though, is much sweeter in many cases when he’s not in the company of his brothers. Not always, but sometimes when it’s just the two of us walking to school he is much less prone to hit me in the groin or start screaming obscenities while extending his tiny middle finger. As long as I let him ride on my shoulders he’s actually quite talkative. We often engage in deep conversations about our favorite sports or superheros.

One day the Tias asked me if I could take Rodrigo to the park instead of the school, because his class was having some event or function. When we arrived I realized after talking to one of his teachers that it was family day. Most of the kids were there with either their mothers or fathers and Rodrigo was stuck with me. It’s hard to say what goes on in his head but I got the impression he was a little uncomfortable at first. At the home he knows all the kids and adults, as well as what he can and can’t get away with. Here he was in a different environment, and with me. He kept wanting to wander from the group, and not really knowing the protocol, I threw him back on my shoulders and bought him a coke. After finishing the coke, taking 2 trips to the bathroom, and walking around the football field we finally went to join the group again in a scavenger hunt that we’d missed the start of. I knew Rodrigo was on the red team, only because some of the red ink from his team bracelet had faded onto his wrist before it was destroyed by water, coke and who knows what other liquid in the bathroom.

So we followed the screaming group of children known as the red team, pretending to know what we were looking for. After the hunt, the teachers told all the kids to stand in a big circle next to their mommies and daddies. After looking at me for a minute she added “…or uncles or friends.” So we stood in a big circle and sang some song similar to head and shoulders knees and toes for a few rounds.

After the songs and games came the big finale: The raffle. There was a big table full of wrapped presents with numbers on them. For a few pesos you could get a number and get the corresponding prize when your number is called. A lot of the parents were buying up handfuls of numbers for their kids so I bought Rodrigo a couple of numbers too. So we waited with anticipation for our precious numbers to be called. The results were a little disappointing. Rodrigo wound up with a can of perfume and a bag of pasta. He did better than the kid next to us, though, who tore off his wrapping paper to find a tin of green beans. I guess the school couldn’t afford action figures.

All in all it was a fun little day. Rodrigo and I got to be each other’s family for a few hours. The sad part is that I got to swoop in and be his big brother or uncle or dad for an afternoon, but now its over. I’m leaving for Atlanta and he’s still at the home. Working with these kids was a great experience for me because I got to hop in and hop out. Good deed completed, and now its back to my regular life. But these kids need much more stability. That’s why I have so much respect for all the Tias and volunteers who are there every single day, for more than just 4 weeks. I can pretend to step in and help for a split second, but these are the people who the kids depend on. The people they see, and touch and talk to as they grow up. Their family.

The Pizza Diaries

The New Year has arrived and brought with it, for me, a mountain of debt and bills. So for a little while, I’m sitting tight and trying to save a few bucks before figuring out what’s next. I’ve been enjoying the last few weeks with Stephen finally home from the desert and Kristina temporarily free from school. We’ve been having a blast catching up and hanging out in the cramped little apartment. But 2011 is here now and life is getting real again.

I’ve been applying for teaching positions and looking for some writing gigs, but in the mean time I’ve thrown my college degree out the window again and returned to the menial jobs to pay the bills. So for 40 plus hours a week I put on my blue shirt, hop in the car, and recite the phrase stitched across my hat: “Open the door, it’s Dominos!” Yes, I’m a certified teacher delivering pizzas. While it’s initially annoying to go from teaching overseas to taking people some cooked dough covered in pepperoni, it ain’t all bad. It certainly keeps life interesting. If there is one job that allows you to sample all the flavors of humanity in a given day, its pizza delivery.

First stop, the crack head apartments off of Peachtree Street where several drivers have had their cars robbed in the 5 minutes that it takes to deliver a pizza. “We’ll rob your car in 30 minutes or less!” Then I get to swing over to the mansions in castle land, where I have to pass through a coded gate and a moat just to get to the front door. Then I’ll stop by the little Mexico trailer park and practice my Spanish for a minute. Everybody loves pizza.

You never know quite what to expect when that door opens. Usually I’m greeted by a cloud of marijuana smoke or someone unashamedly standing there in their underwear. Sometimes you get attacked by a dog or two or three, sometimes you’re greeted by a small child holding a wad of cash from Mommy or Daddy, or maybe it’s a drunk football enthusiast wearing his jersey and beer coozy hat. I’ve been tipped anywhere from 40 cents to 40 bucks. They always keep you guessing.

The holidays really brought out the best in the pizza eaters too. The Christmas cheer was more potent than the constant smell of old cheese and sausage that won’t leave my car.

“How are you today? I’ve got 3 pizzas for you,  that’ll be 20.57.”

“20.57?! How much was each one?!!”

“Well sir, it shows the price right here and you donated one dollar to the kids at St. Jude’s hospital…”

“Hang on,…” he angrily stomps to the stairs and shouts down to his son that placed the order. “What the hell did you order?!”

“I ordered some pizzas, dad.”

“I can see that, what’s this dollar extra charge!?”

“I gave a dollar for the kids at the hospital, dad.”

“I am sick and tired of you always spending MY money on things!”

“Its just a dollar dad, I’ll give you the dollar.”

Dad lets out a humph of outrage and returns to the door where I’m still standing outside in the cold holding his stupid pizzas.

“Well sir, its 20.57…”

“No, it’s 19.57. I didn’t buy that hospital thing.”

He puts the money in my hand, takes the pizza and closes the door. I guess my tip gets to go to the kids at the hospital since Scroogy McGrinch is too cheap to help sick children. Tis’ the season.

I’m not sure what the first few months of 2011 hold for me. There is a certain freedom that comes in working a very easily quitable job. I’ll probably be heading back to Alaska this summer to pay off some of my travel debts. Maybe next fall I’ll hit up another teaching gig in some distant country, depending on how much I’m itching to move at that point. Perhaps I’ll land a teaching job here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. and stay put for a while. There is no telling what the calendar has in store. But as far as tomorrow goes, I’ll put on my pizza costume and let my hopes and dreams fester for a bit like the lingering pepperoni odor that has found its way on to the fabrics of all my clothes.

Believing that age, distance or colour will not be a barrier to love

I had high hopes of teaching a bit while I was here, so I put up a few posts up on Craigslist Buenos Aires and a handful of other sites, offering cheap classes and flexible hours. But because of my limited time here, and the nature of craigslist-type websites, I didn’t have much response. At least not exactly in the way I expected. My first reply went as follows:

 

“I am Miss Marika (24yrs), i saw your e-mail address in this website  so i decided to reach you through it, I would like to know more about you that if you permit it, please mail me so that we could exchange pictures and other information about each other. I expect to hear from you. (Believing that age,distance or colour will not be a barrier to love ), take care. Yours in love, marika.”

 

I guess Ms. Marika confused “English teacher” with “American lover”. I largely gave up on the whole prospect of teaching any classes here until I finally received another email that seemed a bit more legitimate. An Argentine English teacher contacted me, not for love this time, but to see if I would be interested in coming as a guest speaker for her Saturday class. Their class meets in the city of La Plata, about an hour an a half outside of Buenos Aires, but she offered to pay for my transport and for the 3 hours of class. Since I don’t really have a pressing schedule I couldn’t help but oblige.

 

So on Saturday morning I navigated through the bus terminal, bought my ticket, and headed out to La Plata; unsure of what to expect. I didn’t know if I was teaching this class for 3 hours or simply taking part in it, so I prepared a few activities and brought some interesting texts I’d used before for intermediate/advanced classes. After I arrived, I was quickly picked up by the teacher, as well as one of he students and taken to the local university where they meet for their regular Saturday classes. The car ride over, as well as the initial few minutes of class were a bit uncertain for both parties. I wasn’t exactly sure what they were expecting, and they weren’t exactly sure what to expect from me. But I quickly found myself, as did the 4 them, in a very comfortable setting and the next 3 hours went by in the blink of an eye.

 

The 3 students were men in their late 20′s who all work in the IT and computer design fields at the university. Their teacher, Carolina, is a translator and interpreter but teaches the English class through the college every Saturday. We began with a very basic “get to know you” type of exchange, sharing little tidbits about ourselves and our lives. But as the class progressed, and we all became more comfortable with each other, the questions got a little deeper. Carolina confessed halfway through class, that she had warned the students not to address “touchy topics” like politics or religion, since they didn’t know where I was coming from. But after an hour of drinking Mate tea, eating pastries, and exchanging jokes, we all became much more comfortable. I told them that they were free to ask me anything about the U.S. that they wanted, but to understand that one perspective isn’t representative of an entire country. So we went on to talk about 9/11, the Bible Belt, Bush and Obama, the East coast and West coast, Bob Dylan, education, Mexico, Spain and Argentina. It was one of the most open and enjoyable classes I’ve ever been a part of and we quickly realized that we had all been talking for over 3 and a half hours.

 

A bit reluctantly we had to call an end to the session and two of the students went home to attend to some other engagements. But Carolina and one of the students said they could give me a quick tour of Plata on the way back to the bus station. So we drove around the plazas, markets, and government buildings. They parked for a minute and took me inside one of the biggest cathedrals I’d ever seen, rivaling some of the biggest I’d seen in Madrid and Paris. I almost felt bad accepting money for the class, because I would have gladly done it for free. They invited me back next weekend to a cook out and said I was welcome in La Plata anytime. You never know what you’re going to find on Craigslist. Maybe a friendly class of great people or maybe a potential stalker/lover. I guess you just have to roll the dice.

Lifeguarding didn’t prepare me for this

After being here for a few days I realized that I had a lot of free time on my hands, something I haven’t been used to in a while. Drinking a cafe con leche with my newspaper and wandering through the city everyday is nice, but I decided I needed a little more structure to my days. So based on the recommendation of a few people, I pursued a volunteer organization located in the city. One Monday afternoon I entered the Voluntario Global office in the center of Buenos Aires to ask them if them if they had any need for another volunteer in any capacity. I was expecting to help teach in some of their English centers but they told me they had the most need right now in one of the local orphanages. So I agreed and blindly stumbled into an environment that I was completely unfamiliar with. I quickly came to a very important realization: dealing with children is not like dealing with adults. Mainly because kids are crazy. When you have a problem with an adult you usually have the advantage of reason and social etiquette to help guide you to a resolution. Kids, however, scream and fight and poop themselves with no regard whatsoever for your desire to help or control the situation.

I’m working a few days a week at one of the orphanages that are supported by this organization. Mine consists of about 15 kids ranging in age from 2 to 15 from various different backgrounds. Many of them come from abuse or from non-existent families; whether it be from prison, drugs, or other situations. The children are taken care of by a group of women affectionately reffered to as “Tias” (Aunts) as well as a series of volunteers that come and go. More than anything else, we’re there to help take some of the load off of the Tias, who work with the kids 12 hours a day. So we take them to the park, play games, help the little ones eat their meals, take them to and from school, and so on. Some of them are affectionate and adorable. One little girl jumps immediately into my arms when I come in and doesn’t let go until my arms cease to function. There are also the little hellions, whose only apparent goal is to wear me down so that they can continue their rampage of destruction without interruption. These kids are called the three brothers.

They are approximately 3, 5, and 6 years old. I could be way off with the ages, but they’re all little kids. Now if you’re stupid like me, you assume that “little” would mean easy to control. That lesson was quickly learned. Yesterday one of them was stomping on a girl’s sand castle, while another was punching another kid in the face, and the youngest had removed his pants and diaper and was filling the latter with sand (probably to throw at someone). I don’t have much experience with kids, except maybe lifeguarding, and at least then I had a whistle. Shouting doesn’t do any good with the brothers, so the most I could think to do was carry the little Rocky Balboa to the other corner of the ring and tell him to sit with me until he could stop punching and be nice. So then he tried with all his might to punch and kick me in the groin. While I was trying to keep him, and my manhood, safe the others had engaged in a sand fight that resulted in one girl running off crying from a pile of sand in her eye. We finally left the park and headed back to the house. Eventually the other volunteers and I just decided we had to pick our battles.

“Well I guess climbing up on the book shelf isn’t as bad as climbing into the old oven in the garage.”

After a particularly bad tantrum one day, one of the brothers had knocked all the books off the bookshelf, thrown all the clothes in the closet onto the floor and was threatening to throw a toy truck at my face. He finally went to take his nap and I was talking with one of the Tias for a few minutes. I casually said that the brothers “have a lot of energy.” She agreed and said they can get out of control a lot of the time. But then she said that its important to remember that neither one of us can  understand where they’ve come from. And that’s very true. One of the things they seem to stress at the home is love and support for everyone. Making sure the kids feel appreciated, even the ones that are rough around the edges. I’ve found that even the brothers aren’t all bad all the time. They always want me to carry them around and one of them gave me a big, saucy kiss on the cheek after he finished his spaghetti.

It’s a good experience albeit an exhausting one. I have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone that deals with kids everyday. I can’t even imagine. I’m definitely getting a good opportunity to practice all the command forms of the verbs in Spanish. “Sit!” “Let’s go!”"Shut up!”  I just wish they’d issued me a whistle and some crotch protection.

Jesus Land

On Saturday, Mom and I took a little trip to the Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires to do a little exploring. A girl I met mentioned in passing that there was a place worth checking out in the area that was some sort of Jerusalem themed exhibit. Based on her brief description, I was expecting a  museum dedicated to the religions, history and cultures of ancient Jerusalem. What we found instead was the Jesus-Land Theme Park.

The place is called Tierra Santa (Holy Land). Imagine Disney World, but instead of getting your picture taken with a costumed Mickey or Minnie Mouse you can pay to be photographed next to a Virgin Mary or John the Baptist. Don’t forget to buy your cotton candy before waiting in line to see  “The Nativity” light show, complete with animatronic shepherds and wise men that rattle and shake while giving baby Jesus his gifts, as if they had been borrowed from Chucky Cheese’s. Be sure to get your seat early for “The Resurrection” where a 30 foot tall Jesus robot arises from behind a mountain with a triumphant chorus of “Halleluia” blasting in the background. After witnessing this I couldn’t remember if Jesus died for our sins or in a battle with Godzilla.

We couldn’t figure out who the target audience for this park was. Even the family in the picture on the entrance pamphlet to the park seem confused. Little Jimmy is ecstatic about an enormous robot Jesus, Dad seems to be trying to remember just how tall Jesus was supposed to be in the Bible, little Sally would much rather be at the water park next door, and Mom is dumbfounded that such a park could even exist in this world.

Then, just to be PC, the park also includes a little mosque, a small Jewish temple, and a tribute to Gandhi. Now everyone can enjoy Jesus-Land! I was waiting to find the roller coaster that catapults you through Heaven and Earth powered by giant robots of the Apostle Paul, Mohammed, and Moses holding hands and singing. I can only imagine who thought up the idea for this ridiculous park and how that conversation must have gone.

“Tom, I had just had one hell of an idea!”

“What’s that Bill?”

“Why don’t we build quite possibly the most sacrilegious theme park in the world and use it to take money from all the God-fearing Argentines and tourists in Buenos Aires?”

“That’s genius! We could use a bunch of discount, barely functioning robots and build the thing next to the water park!”

“Yeah, and we could call it Jesus Adventure Land!”

“No, no, calm down Bill. We don’t want to offend anyone. We’ll call it “Holy Land” and put a picture of Gandhi up next to the Godzilla Jesus so that everyone will be happy.”

“Let’s draw up some blue prints and get this holy ship sailing!”

————-

I think I’m going to apply for a job there, I’ve got so many ideas. There could be a “Leap of Faith” bungee jump, “Noah’s Wild Ride” rafting adventure, or a “Forbidden Fruit” apple bobbing contest. I just hope they’re hiring.

Marcelo T. de Alvear Street: side effects may include insomnia and deafness

Mom and I found our way from Atlanta to Buenos Aires without much difficulty. We´ve settled into our cozy little loft located on Marcelo T de Alvear street in Recoleta, the loudest street on earth. At night, every passing bus sounds like a roaring train that delivers, with screaming brakes, its load of noisy passengers directly through our window. One early morning, the road crew decided to start repairing some pot holes, thus proceeding to shove their jack hammers directily into our ear drums. On Saturday night a group of borrachos congregated outside with screams and songs for hours. I guess this is finally my payback for partying loudly until dawn on so many occasions. Unfortunately, Mom has to pay my penance too.

After hours of restless tossing and turning, and a failed attempt to watch Batman in Spanish, I finally wrapped my pillow around my head after shoving two cotton balls down my ear canals and managed to fall asleep. The next day, we went to buy some ear plugs from the pharmacy and the nights have been much easier since. Fun fact: Ear plugs roughly translates from Spanish into ¨Tampons for the ears.¨

Aside from the noise, Buenos Aires has been a very enjoyable city so far. We spent the first few days exploring the many different neighborhoods and taking many stops for a cafe con leche or a cerveza. We found Evita´s grave in the Recoleta cemetary, pushed our way through the busseling streets of Santa Fe and Corrientes, ate empenadas in the Palermo park, and explored the massive street markets on Florida street and in San Telmo. Buenos Aires reminds me a lot of Madrid, with the same grocery stores on every corner, similar archetecture on many streets, and a constant supply of cafes and bars on nearly every block.

Mom started her EBC certification course and she´s quickly discovering, as I´m remembering, just how intensive it is. Thankfully her teacher is the same one I had, and he´s one of the best teachers I´ve ever had. But it doesn´t change the fact that she´s going to have to teach 8 one-hour classes, prepare an individualized 6 week course outline for one student, write a detailed motiviation essay about teaching English, and go to class from 9 to 5 every day for the next few weeks. Conversely, I´m finding myself with a lot of free time for once, so I´m just aimlessly wandering through the city everyday. I´m attempting to find some teaching work, but since I´ll only be here for a few weeks it looks like it will be hard to get any commiters. So my new plan is to just meet some folks at bars that want to learn English and have them pay me in beer once a week or something. I figure that just saves a step since its what I´ll be using the money for anyway.

So Mom will continue to learn and teach, I´ll continue to wander aimlessly, and hopefully we´ll meet some good people as well as manage to get some sleep along the way. As long as our ear tampons hold out.

The Faces of Chiapas

Mom and I have our tickets booked for Buenos Aires, Argentina for October. She’s going to get her TEFL certification, as I did, and possibly even train with the same teacher I had in Madrid who is currently working in Buenos Aires. So while she gets certified and teaches Argentine students English for a month, I’m going to tag along as translator and site seer.

In preparation for a return to Latin America for a short stint, I started thinking back to my trip to Chiapas, Mexico a few years ago. I find myself always looking forward to the next trip, the next job, the next paycheck; so for now I’ve decided to take a look back at my first trip south of the U.S. border.

In retrospect I always find that I remember faces better than places. As incredible as Mayan and Aztec ruins are, after visiting several in Mexico they start to merge together in my memory. The same thing often occurs with the names of places as well as people. But my brain tends to hold on tighter to the voices, expressions and actions of individuals even if their names have escaped me. This holds true for my summer study abroad trip to Chiapas. So here are a few little snapshots from my brain’s photo album over those weeks.

Orange girl

Every morning I would sit at the same cafe in the Zocolo with friends before class and the same group of indigenous women would generally approach us trying to sell various items while their children would beg for a peso. One little girl came up asking, with the most pitiful expression she could muster, “un peso, por favor.” It didn’t matter how much they were laughing and playing with their friends minutes before, when they see a gringo tourist they become incredible, solemn actors. With those enormous puppy dog eyes looking up at you and the most pitiful voice stretching out the “o” on peso in little more than a whimper you can’t help but feel sympathetic. I was about as poor in Mexico as I was in the states, but I did usually have a handful of oranges from my host family so I offered her one. She wasn’t interested and took off to find the next gringo. For the next few days I saw the same girl every morning and she always asked with the same pitiful, doe-eyed expression “un pesooooh porrr favoorrrrrr.” And I would keep offering her an orange. After a few days of this little exchange she finally snapped out of her pitiful act into a stern and determined 6 year old shouting, “Siempre comes naranjas!” (You always eat oranges!). I told her I liked oranges. From then on every time I saw her I would just offer her an orange before she opened her mouth and she would generally just smile and continue her peso quest elsewhere.

Gabriel’s Spicy Questions

I had class every day with one of the best teachers that I’ve ever had. His name was Gabriel and he was caught every morning teaching Spanish to 4, generally hung-over, Americans. He always had a good attitude with us, though, and when we were having a rough morning he would confide to us that he had had a few tequila shots the night before as well. One day when we were all particularly despondent he stopped teaching. We were all paying as much attention as we could, but he kept catching us staring off blankly out the window. So he put down his book and said we were going to play “Preguntas Picantes” (Spicy Questions). It was basically a game of “Never have I ever” where he would ask us questions like if we had ever dated more than one person at the same time, or to recount some party story that another classmate would have to top. Within minutes we were all laughing and speaking Spanish with more intensity than we had had all week. I’ve incorporated some form of this game into several of my English classes since.

The Zapatista Revolutionaries

One day after class, a small group of us went to visit the Zapatista revolutionary’s commune that was less than an hour from Chiapas. The Zapatistas staged an armed revolt many years ago after NAFTA went into effect and they have committed themselves to supporting the rights of the indigenous people who are largely ignored by the government and people of Mexico. They’re known for always wearing ski masks, modeling after their leader Marcos, a man famously recognized for wearing a ski mask with a green military cap while smoking a pipe. They are a controversial group, but they like to spread their message so they will often allow foreigners to visit the communes. We were dropped off at barb wired gate and immediately surrounded by several men in ski masks who took our id’s and passports back to a little shack. Just as we were trying to figure out just what we had gotten ourselves into, they returned our things and opened the gate. We were led into a little house of some kind where three Zapatista elders were sitting at a table waiting for us. They proceeded to tell us about their history and goals and I only caught a few words of the whole thing. We then toured their facility and briefly visited the school, living areas, and communal buildings that made up this small village. They are largely self supported, and hoped to provide similar support for more of the indigenous people throughout Mexico that don’t have access to schools or healthcare. These days they appear to be trying to achieve their goals politically instead of with guns as they had in the past. Overall these masked revolutionaries seemed pretty friendly to me.

The Santiago Family

As awkward and invasive as it was at times, the stay with my host family was one of the most memorable experiences of the trip. For some small stipend our academy had an arrangement with local families to open up their homes to students for weeks a time. So I got off the bus in Chiapas and quickly found myself in the home of the Santiago family. They treated me like a son, albeit a 20 year old son with the language competence of a small child. Therefore I got along very well with their 5 year old daughter, Areli. We could color and play with toys and largely ignore the Spanish grammar I was trying to learn in class. There were 4 children in the house ranging from 5 to 16 years old. I got the two youngest kids’ room, complete with racecar bed sheets and toy chests, while they went to bunk with their siblings during my visit. But if they ever wanted their toys they had to come see me, which happened quite often. Dinners were awkward. I would spend all day trying to think of engaging topics of conversation (with my limited vocabulary) that were generally met with blank stares. So we would usually just play bingo after dinner instead because that caused less confusion on everyone’s part.

On one of my last nights in Chiapas, after several hours out drinking with my classmates, I headed home on the bicycle that my Mexican family had let me borrow. I learned so many Spanish words involving bicycle parts during that month because I kept breaking the thing. The roads were pretty rough and I was sharing them with a host of cars and people every day. I was a pretty regular fixture at the bike shop with my dictionary and assorted pictures to describe which piece I had broken today. Regardless, I headed home that evening through the rain, a bit drunk and probably in no condition to drive anything, even a bike. I made it to their street and took a turn too fast through a puddle and completely fell off my bike and rolled right into someone’s door with a thud. I hopped back on as fast as I could hoping I hadn’t woken anyone up and taking note of which bicycle part I would have to describe to the shop the next day.

I quietly entered their house, soaking wet and a little scraped up, trying to avoid waking anyone as I crept to my racecar bed. But, to my surprise, the whole family was still up singing and dancing in the living room. I think they wanted to see me before I left and they had some coffee and cookies waiting for me on the table. So I stayed up for a while and they tried to teach me to dance and sing some songs. There was still a good bit of beer running through me and I was feeling a little sentimental and I wanted to express my gratitude for all they had done for me with as much linguistic tact as I could muster. I looked at my Mexican mother, Consuelo, and all I could come up with was “Muchas gracias por todo” (Thank you very much for everything). It wasn’t much but I think she could tell I meant a little more than just the words. She looked right into my eyes and with the only English I had ever heard her speak she said “Peter, my house is your house.” And I know she meant a little more than just the words too. Her eyes told me that I was welcome in their house any time. Her eyes said that despite the fact that I always sounded like a fool, her family would be full of patience and kindness. Her eyes told me that she would miss me. I think that was what I was trying to express to her in my Spanish too.

I hope one day I can visit Chiapas again and see the Santiagos. I’ve been very fortunate in the fact that everywhere I go I seem to continually meet kind, fascinating, and lasting friends. As Mom and I make our way to Buenos Aires I hope that we will also find ourselves surrounded by incredible people. And I hope that we’ll return with pockets full of memories because I know for a fact that they won’t be filled with any money.