My Name is Anne, and I’m a Travelholic

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I’m house sitting again, this time for a friend who has a huge apartment and two cats who need minding.  My friend is Peruvian and collects art and artifacts every time she goes home.  Here are some of my favorites:

Maria y MuertoMariaTrabajo

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My last post about the road trip, and my anxieties around it, brought to mind the only other Big Road Trip of my life.  I’ve driven to Chicago a half dozen times but that’s nothing compared to the trip where I never once got behind the wheel.

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My friend Rebecca and I met at an Alanon meeting in Oxford.  AA and Alanon meetings vary greatly from one culture and location to another.  In St. Paul meetings, people go around at the beginning, say their names, and the crowd responds, “Hi Anne!”  The meetings are pretty squirrely.  There’s lots of laughter and disorder.

Not so in Oxford.  The meeting was in an 18th Century church.  The ceilings were low and building was cold, cramped, and crooked.  The chairs were hardwood with no cushions and the backs were a 90 degree angle from the seat, making for maximum discomfort, especially since the tilted floors meant your chair teetered to one side.  I regret I never brought a marble to set in the middle of the table so I could see which direction it would roll off.

At my first meeting, the introductions started and the first person said slowly and with perfect enunciation, “Hello, my name is Roger”—or “rwah-jah” as he pronounced it.  I exclaimed, “Hi Roger!”  Just me.  No one else.  Everyone stared at their hands, neatly folded in their laps.  I’m sure they were thinking, “Bloody Americans, they’re so enthusiastic about everything!”

I heard a barely-stifled guffaw and a snort on the other end of the table just as a woman introduced herself, “Hello, my name is Rebecca.”  She looked straight at me and laughed.  The rest of the group carried on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  It took a while, but Rebecca and I would become good friends.

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A year later my work visa had expired and I was back in St. Paul.  I job hunted for seven months, taking the bus everywhere because I had sold my car when I moved to England.  It was a painful stretch.  As soon as I landed a job I bought a Mini Cooper.  Maybe it was a foolish thing to do, since I hadn’t even started the job yet, but I thought of my Mini as sort of like the greatest souvenir / consolation prize I could have from my time in England.

And did you know?  There are Mini events going on all the time all over the world.  I learned that there would be a “Mini Festival” in England the following spring.  It was as good an excuse as any to go back and visit.  So I Skyped with Rebecca and she was in.

“Let’s go to Wales though, too, okay?” she proposed.  “We can visit my brother the sheep farmer and camp on the cliffs overlooking the sea.”

Was that okay with me?  Was it!  Oh boy!  I bought my ticket and started looking at maps.    

We would drive from Oxford to Wales, then slingshot back to Silverstone racetrack for the festival.  It doesn’t look that far on a map but … I’ll get to that.

Map

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If you’ve read this blog from the beginning, you know I started my adult life on welfare, in subsidized housing, with no car.

Here’s how I afford trips—my two indulgences—on a nonprofit salary: I live below my means.  I make do with small living spaces.  I have a dozen pairs of shoes—which is nothing for an American female.  I shop at thrift stores and get my haircuts at Cost Cutters with coupons.  I make my own coffee and cook from scratch instead of going to coffee shops and restaurants.

I hope I don’t sound smug.  My intention is to encourage you—if you love travel but don’t have a lot of money—to consider offbeat adventures like the volunteering, language immersion, and medical missions I’ve described in the last few months.  Or even just every day adventures like house sitting for a friend.

A Case of the What Ifs

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In three weeks I will be on my big road trip to New Orleans.  My friend Lynn arrives on Saturday afternoon from Scotland and we’ll head out the next morning.

Here’s the itinerary I’ve mapped out:

Sunday, April 3: 8-hour drive from St. Paul to Chicago with a stop for lunch with cousins and a niece in Madison, Wisconsin.  I am told we must see the protest singers at the state capital.  I have no idea who or what they are.

Monday, April 4: A full day in Chicago—Millennium Park, architectural boat tour, another niece

Tuesday, April 5: 8-hour drive from Chicago to Memphis, check out Beale Street and Sun Studio or the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum.

Wed, April 6: Visit the National Civil Rights Museum which is in the Memphis motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated, then hit the road for the 7-hour drive to New Orleans

Wed-Sun, April 6-10: In New Orleans for 5 days!  French Quarter Festival will be on, and there are so many other things to do, like an alligator swamp boat ride, plantation tours, and fabulous architecture, gardens, and cemeteries.

Monday, April 11: 6-hour drive from New Orleans to Oxford, Mississippi.  The University of Mississippi at Oxford is where America’s university system was forcefully integrated.  I also wanted to stay in at least one sort-of-small city.  Oxford’s population is 20,000, although I don’t know if that accounts for university students.

Tuesday, April 12: 6-hour drive from Oxford to St. Louis.  Dinner with a friend from grad school, preferably in The Hill neighborhood renowned for its Italian food.  At least eight people have told me we must—must! visit the City Museum.  They say it’s lots of fun, that you can play around on the art like a kid, but it’s really for adults.  I’m not that good at fun, but it is something I’m working on.  I wonder if Lynn, being English, will find it fun.  I’m not at all clear on what it is, but we’re going to find out.

Wednesday, April 13: 8.5-hour drive from St. Louis to St. Paul to get Lynn to the airport in time for her late evening flight.

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Whew.  I admit I am anxious about how it will all play out.  What if the route times on Google maps don’t allow time for bathroom breaks or lunches?  That would mean all my times are off.  What if the routes aren’t scenic?  What if Lynn thinks all Americans are racist yahoos?  What if every city is just a mass of Walmarts, Star Bucks, and strip malls?  What if my GPS breaks and we get lost?  What if one of us is mugged?  What if the museums aren’t open on the day we’re there?  What if my back hurts from so much driving?  What if we get into a fight over what to do in New Orleans?  What if we arrive after dark in one of these big cities and the hotel has no record of our registration?  What if a meteorite hits the car?  What if the car breaks down in a bayou and we hear banjo music?

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My anxiety is nothing like it used to be, but it’s interesting to notice it.  I’ve learned a lot of tricks for dealing with anxiety over the years.  Some of the ones that work best for me are to:

– bring myself out of my head to focus on my surroundings.  Notice that I am not currently in my car surrounded by alligator-filled swamps or muggers, but in a chair in my dining room writing this post.  This usually helps bring me back to reality.

– remember that nothing lasts.  I may feel anxious right now, but it will pass if I don’t latch on to it.  It’ll probably come back, but then it will pass again.  So it’s not permanent.  If it did get to be constant and lasted for a week, I would call a professional.

– know that, if I do end up surrounded by hillbillies, I will deal with it then.  For now, I only need to do the next indicated thing—finish this post and post it.  And so I will.

Updates Part II

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In the prison good news / bad news” category, I’ve got some doozies.

First, I was highly amused to read about a brilliant project in which prisoners create portraits of people they think should be in prison. This was in The Guardian—a liberal British newspaper that reliably reports on the most embarrassing elements of American life:

“To find the artists, the activists approached art rehabilitation programs in prisons, but those groups were not interested in being involved with something political. So the pair turned to eBay, where there is a section devoted to art made by prisoners and sold by family members. They found similar prison art networks on Facebook and began conversations with the families of people whose worked they liked. From there, word spread around prisoners and other artists began sending them work.”

No surprise, they’ve captured (ha ha) the usual suspects (ha ha ha) in art: the Koch brothers, Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein, BP’s former boss Tony Hayward. But then there was the CEO of one of my favorite companies, along with Pillow King and Bob Barker Inc. (that’s sarcastic, in case you can’t tell): JPay.

I was disappointed to see that the guy’s name is Ryan Shapiro. He must have a Catholic mom and a Jewish dad. I hate to see stories that reinforce the stereotype that Jews are better at making money than most people. Exploiting—oops, I mean “providing services” to prisoners and their families is very, very lucrative.

JPay Prez

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Speaking of Jews and prison, a local organization called Jewish Community Action (JCA) has taken up two prison-related issues:

“Jewish Community Action is currently working on two campaigns related to criminal justice reform and the impact of mass incarceration: One addressing the for-profit private prison system and seeking to push back on the building and opening of private prisons in Minnesota, and one demanding the restoration of voting rights to felons who have completed incarceration and are living and working in their communities.”

I wrote to the executive director and shared the link to this blog. I can’t remember exactly what I wrote; I share the blog with a lot of similar organizations and usually hear nothing back. I mentioned that we’re Jewish and that we’d be happy to support their efforts if we were able. The executive director and two staff members replied—first, to assure me that ours is not the only Jewish family that’s had a run-in with the law or the prison system and second, to ask if Vince and I would come in and meet with them. That will be in a couple weeks and I’ll write more after we meet.

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I am not a big fan of Oprah; I have nothing against her but she tends to promote books like The Book Thief, which I regard as one of the most poorly-written books I’ve ever read. But she is currently promoting a book written by an ex offender, Shaka Senghor, called Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison. Next week, Oprah will air an interview with Senghor on her network, OWN TV. I haven’t read the book; I’m only mentioning it because it’s written by an ex offender.

I’ve only ever read one prison memoir, and I can highly recommend it: Willow in a Storm, by James Peter Taylor. The writing is just okay, but the story is harrowing and heart breaking and he tells it real.

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Finally, there is this (in the end) uplifting story about Albert Woodfox, who spent FORTY YEARS in solitary for the murder of a prison guard at Angola prison in Louisiana.  He maintained his innocence all these years.  He was released on his 69th birthday.

Updates

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Travel, addiction, prison … sometimes I feel I have to justify why I write about these seemingly unrelated topics. How about this: they all fall under the meta theme of “feeling trapped, or just bored, and wanting to escape.” There—does that explain it?

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I was at a big work meeting and we were discussing human rights in the countries where we operate in the Middle East and Africa. Someone said, “What about solitary confinement? Shouldn’t we be advocating against it?” Everyone clamored in agreement. As far as I know, I am the only employee with a family member who has actually been in solitary. I was tempted to raise my hand and make a speech about how, if we decided to advocate against solitary confinement, we’d damn well better include the United States. But I didn’t feel like being a spokesperson for prison reform that morning.

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Vince is off lockdown, after a month of confinement to the house except for work and AA meetings. It may not sound that bad—after all he had Facebook and phone to communicate with friends. He could binge-watch movies and cook real food and look out windows and take a shower without 50 other guys around. He had a pretty good attitude toward it, but I know he was really chaffing toward the end. He had steadily been earning freedoms after his release, then they were all taken away. The offense was so petty compared to the consequence. Most of all, he just had no power or choice about his comings and goings.

Regardless, it’s over now, and today we are doing a make-up birthday outing for me—going to hear the Minnesota Orchestra play the entire score of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, accompanied by some Finnish choir. I expect it will be either fantastic or dreadful.

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Nothing has happened with the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 in the five weeks since I wrote about it and about how Republicans are using its bipartisan popularity to shove in language making it harder to prosecute corporate criminals.

Then there’s the controversy swirling around The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which is being blamed for creating mass incarceration. Bernie Sanders says he only signed it because of the good stuff in it, even though he disagreed with the sentencing parts. Hillary has been confronted by Black Lives Matter activists about ruining millions of Black people’s lives because she voted for it. Bill Clinton has disavowed it—his own law. I give him credit for that, even though it may only be a political tactic. Ugh. I would have to write five more posts to get to the bottom of that one, if I ever could.

Anyway, a poll from Pew Charitable Trusts shows that all Americans—Democrats, Republicans, Independents, men, women, Latinos, African Americans, seniors, young voters, and even law enforcement households agree we need to fix our broken federal prisons system. If you’re an American and you agree, please sign this petition urging Congress to pass the Act now. These are all the celebs who are endorsing the call for reform.

new_Cut50_Celebs-04_REVISED-900px

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A lot of what I do in my job involves raising funding from foundations. I was happy to see that 42 foundations have banned the box on their employment applications that asks, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” This is really only symbolic, since foundations have abysmal records of hiring people of color or even just people who aren’t wealthy and well connected. But they are calling on all philanthropic institutions to follow suit, so maybe it’ll catch on.

Anytime anyone speaks out in support of ex offenders I am thrilled. The president of the Rosenberg Foundation, in announcing the foundations’ move, said, “It is time to end the pervasive discrimination against people with past criminal records. The era of mass incarceration and the war on drugs have done severe damage to families and communities, with an enormously disproportionate impact on people of color. Everyone deserves a second chance and the opportunity to compete for a job.”

The Grey Lady Stumbles

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This is the seventh post in a series that started here.

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I left Cuernavaca having learned a lot of Spanish and with a new vocation.  Off and on since then, I have worked in international development.  That doesn’t mean I don’t care about causes here at home.  I just think that, as a mission driven person, I do better work if I’m passionate about a cause.  And for many reasons, I am passionate about trying to end poverty and suffering in the developing world.

Before I left Cuernavaca, I booked six more weeks of Spanish immersion through Amerispan.  This time I would go to Morelia, a beautiful colonial city that is no longer an Amerispan choice.  I’m guessing this is due to Morelia’s unfortunate #1 ranking as the city most caught in the drug war that has erupted in Mexico since I was there.

And that’s my transition back to one of my favorite subjects, addiction.

The New York Times published an article a few weeks ago about an alternative treatment approach to addiction.   I read it, cut it out, and was saving it to write a post about.  My initial reaction to it was, “Why not?  Why wouldn’t you try both traditional treatment and AA and this thing, if you could afford the time and money.”  But now I’m having second thoughts.

In a nutshell, the article profiles a psychiatrist who has opened a new addiction clinic that approaches addiction as a chronic disease and treats it with drugs, in place of the Twelve Steps and AA.

At least three people have brought the article up to me in conversation, so it’s causing a stir.

When I revisited it for this post, I noticed it was in the Science section, which implies that the content is scientifically valid.  Plus it’s the New York Times, right?  It’s got to be true.

When I searched the NYT website for “addiction,” I found that all the other articles about addiction are either in the Opinion or the News sections.  So you’ve got news about a big drug bust in upstate New York, for example, and then people ringing in with their opinions on what should be done about the drug crisis and the related problem of mass incarceration.

I scrolled to the bottom to read the comments.  There must be hundreds, I thought, and I wondered how many commenters would hail this as a godsend or criticize it as irresponsible.  But there was no comments, and no way to make comments.  That’s strange, I think.

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Among other things, Dr. Mark Willenbring states that 60 percent of addiction is attributable to a person’s genetic makeup.  The NYT adds that this is “scientifically unassailable” but offers no evidence.

Dr. Willinbring, a psychiatrist, is no slacker.  For five years he headed the federal agency that studies addiction.  Coincidentally, he’s a Minnesotan and he opened a private clinic called Alltyr in 2012.  It’s within walking distance from my house.

Alltyr treats addiction as a chronic medical condition.  Its treatment plans include drugs used to treat depression, anxiety, ADHD, or chronic pain; family “training,” and cognitive behavioral therapy—which, as I’ve written, was a worked miracles for me.  Alltyr also uses anti-relapse drugs, and I wondered what that meant.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

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A friend and her husband have been struggling with his drinking.  He was on a wait list for Hazelden Betty Ford, one of the world’s premier rehab centers, also within walking distance of my house.  Then he read the New York Times article.  Alltyr got him in the next day, and after pooh-poohing Hazelden, he cancelled his reservation there.   (Despite Alltyr dismissing traditional treatment, I can’t find any evidence in the article that its method works.)

Alltyr put him on two anti-relapse drugs.  I spoke with my friend the next day.  “He must have still had alcohol in his system,” she said, “because he was so sick he couldn’t get out of bed—much less go to work—for two days.  He said it was like all the worst anxiety he’s ever had in his life rolled into one giant ball and stuffed into his chest.”

The Awakening

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This is the seventh post in a series that started here.

I wrote in the first post in this series, “Wrestling with Restless,” that I would eventually make a point about my question: “Why would I want to leave Minnesota, one of the cleanest, healthiest, most progressive states in the U.S.—a state with great microbreweries—to go study/work/volunteer in a developing country?”

I’m finally at the point of making the point.

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I was on a bus in central Mexico with 50 other mostly American Spanish-immersion students, and we had just been directed to gaze upon a garbage dump a big as a mountain.  It was beautiful—from afar.  Trash is colorful.  Flocks of seagulls soared and reeled above it and the sun glinted off the metal and glass it contained.  Our guide had called it a garbage dump city.  Why would anyone live in a garbage dump?  The stench would be overpowering!  Think of the filth and the disgusting things you would see!

To my relief, we didn’t stop but kept going until we arrived at Nuetros Pequeños Hermanos, or Our Little Brothers and Sisters.  As I mentioned previously, the Spanish school we attended specialized in Spanish for social workers, health care professionals, and teachers.  I wasn’t any of those; I just had just liked the school so much the first time that I wanted to return for more.   Now here I was, about to tour an orphanage.

We piled out of the bus and someone walked us around.  This is how I know I was having a Yerkes-Dodson moment, because I cannot remember whether it was a man or a woman or a priest or one of the older kids or a volunteer.

“We have 550 children here, from toddlers to teenagers,” the guide informed us.  “Most of them aren’t orphans; their parents are just too poor to feed them.  Or they’re alcoholics, or unwed mothers, or mentally ill, or in prison.”  The guide talked as we walked.  We passed a half dozen teenage boys shaving the heads of little boys.  We stood and listened in a dorm with rows of bunk beds and cartoon murals on the walls.

“Then there are the children from the garbage dump city,” the guide said.  I was transfixed.  “Hundreds of families make their living by picking through the rubbish and salvaging anything that can be sold.  Mostly it’s metals like copper but also appliances, furniture, shoes ….  We send buses every morning to pick up about 250 children.  We bring them here, give them showers, delouse them and put them in clean clothes, and they spend the day in school here.  Then we bring them home at the end of the day.”

Home.  To the garbage dump city.

We kept walking; we saw the dark little volunteer quarters and the kitchen garden tended by the older children.  A teenage girl and boy were flirting over a fence.  Since it was a Catholic home, I assumed there was no sex education or birth control.  How many babies were born here, to children like them?

The census of children is lower now than when I was there, but at that time, as I did the math, they were in charge of feeding, educating, housing, clothing, and providing health care to about 800 children.

“We have a dozen homes in nine countries,” the guide stated.  This is the moment when I had my “international awakening,” for lack of a better term.  I don’t know if there are homes like this any more in the U.S.  There are thousands of children are in the foster care system.

But the scale of this … for every adorable, doe-eyed two year old there were a dozen or a hundred more who needed someone to care for them.

I felt like I was in one of those videos where the camera pulls back from the earth so you feel lifted off the ground. You look down on the tree tops, then you can see rivers and highways, then shorelines of countries.  You zoom out farther until you are looking down on the blue marble we called Earth, and then out, out, out until you can see the Milky Way.

The Mountain

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This is the sixth post in a series on studying Spanish in Mexico that starts here.

I returned from my inaugural week of Spanish immersion and started graduate school. A few months later, I returned for three more weeks.

It was on this was the trip that I had my “international awakening”—the experience that committed me to working in international development. Years before, I had worked for the American Refugee Committee for two years on contract, writing their newsletters and annual reports. I read a lot of background materials and interviewed employees to get material. I already knew that terrible things were happening in Sudan; this work required me to know the gory details. However, nothing compares to being there.

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I returned to the same school and requested a home stay with Mirta. I couldn’t wait to see her again and bask in the warmth of her household. Since I was in grad school, I could take all the classes I wanted in addition to those in my program, so I already had a semester of Spanish under my belt and I was excited to be able to talk to her more. Things had been falling into place: The maid’s name wasn’t Ella. “Ella,” meant “she” in Spanish. If you know Spanish you may be shaking your head that I didn’t know this sooner, but it was one of many light-bulb moments in learning a language I found thrilling.

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Since I was staying for three weeks, I would be more involved in the life of the school. Cemanahuac specializes in Spanish for teachers, social workers, and heath care professionals. They asked me to bring donations of vitamins if I could, so I took up a collection and filled a suitcase.

Lisa n Alex

This is my former housemate and her son. I financed this trip, and many to come, with funds from my part-time student job, student loans, and rent from people who shared my space or rented the whole place when I went for extended periods.

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Mirta had no recollection of me. I felt wounded. That first week in Cuernavaca had been so vivid to me. I attempted to jog her memory, “I’m from Minn-eh-sota, near Can-a-da, where it’s very cold, remember?” I said in Spanish.

She gave me a kindly but blank look. She nodded and smiled but it was obvious I was a blank slate to her. I knew Mirta was married to an elderly, retired doctor she had to care for and support. She had this big compound too, and she worked as hard as the maid to keep it up. Mirta needed students to pay the bills. She was saintly, listening to our stammering, canned Spanish 101 attempts at conversation. She was genuinely warm. We weren’t all white 22 year olds. But as soon as one student left another arrived, and we probably all blurred together.

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There’s a phenomenon where people go on tours of slums in the developing world and snap photos of the residents like they’re zoo animals. I hope I wasn’t like that, but my mouth may have gaped open a few times.

I was really into my Spanish studies and hadn’t paid much attention to where we were going for a “field trip” on Saturday. About 50 of us traipsed onto a bus and we drove for an hour. My head was swiveling back and forth from whatever conversation I was having with the student in the seat next to me—she was an African American woman who worked for the U.S. State Department as some kind of administrator and lived in Washington, D.C.—and the scenery out the window.

I was looking at her when I saw her eyes lock on to something in the distance over my shoulder. “What is that?” she wondered.

I turned to look and my first thought was, “A mountain?”

“But look how colorful it is. And why are there so many seagulls?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

Then one of our teachers stood up, pointed to the mountain, and announced, “Welcome to Miacatlán garbage dump city.”

Garbage City GullsG Dump City

Zizzybalooba

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This is the fifth post in a series on studying Spanish in Mexico that starts here.

Zoe managed to get her footing over the course of the week but she couldn’t wait to get home. She was from Salinas, California. Her mother was from Spain, her father was Portuguese, and they had chosen to not expose her to either of their native tongues. They wanted her to be American.

“It’s funny what people think an ‘American’ is”, I said.

“And I’m a social worker, in California!” She laughed at the absurdity. “All my clients speak Spanish. They start speaking Spanish to me because they assume I speak it. Then when they realize I don’t, they have their kids interpret. All they have to do, if they want to hide anything from me, is to speak Spanish—right in front of my face.” It was clearly humiliating for her.

The next morning Zoe put her hair in a ponytail and after a breakfast of tortillas and beans with white crumbly cheese and pastries we ventured out to the street, caught the combi, and found our way to the school.

Mine was the Spanish for Dummies class. It wasn’t called that, of course. The school’s philosophy was pure immersion. The instructor spoke in Spanish and had us repeat after her. There were lots of written handouts with kindergartenish illustrations which helped. If she explained any rules of grammar or defined any words, that was lost on me.

This was a great learning method for me because I over think things. If there had been any opportunity to discuss things in English, I would have spent half the class asking questions about sentence construction and verb conjugation. That would have been fascinating and I would have gained a lot on an intellectual level but I wouldn’t have learned how to ask for a bottle of milk in a store.

Immersion is amazing—it works, and it works fast. I attended classes five hours a day and spent hours on my homework in the evening. Zoe and I spoke English together occasionally but we were on different schedules so it didn’t interfere with our learning.

The only other time I heard English was as I left the school each evening. Cemanahuac has English classes for Mexican business professionals in the evenings, taught by a young English woman. I could hear them chanting, “My name is Richard. I am a solicitor. I go to the cinema at the week-end.” Funny that they were learning British English, I thought. But maybe having an English accent would give them a leg up if they wanted to work in the U.S. We’re so dazzled by English accents.

On Day Four I passed an important milestone. I was able to walk into a store after school and ask for a six-pack of beer. I had read that women in Mexico don’t drink, but that American women weren’t really considered women, so it was okay for us. Yay! I bought a six-pack of Negra Modelo, sat in the garden by the pool, and had a couple brewskis while I did my homework.

On my last day I was able to ask my teacher what English sounded like to her. I could now understand about 70 percent of what she and Mirta said. Of course they talked very slowly and clearly and didn’t use big words. But when I arrived, Spanish had only sounded like a babbling brook, lifting, and dropping, and splashing like watery music.

“Zshuh zshah zshuh sha sha,” was her musical interpretation of English. It wasn’t nearly as bouncy as Spanish and sounded suspiciously like Russian. I did my version of how Spanish sounded to me and we laughed.

I was in love—with Mexico, sunshine and warmth, my teacher, the birds of paradise, Spanish, Negra Modelo, Mirta, and most of all, feeling good about myself for beginning to master a new language at 40.

I had been fired from my job and was about to start graduate school. I would have a part time grad assistantship with totally flexible hours. Before I left Cuernavaca I signed up to return for three more weeks.

Two Birds in Paradise

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This is the fourth post in a series on studying Spanish in Mexico that starts here.

My host mother and I had been tossed around in the back of the mini bus for 20 minutes when she jumped up and exclaimed what I could only guess meant, “We’re here!”

The combi slowed to a roll but didn’t actually stop as we stepped off in front of an office.

Patologia

Mirta led me to the locked gate to the right—the one with graffiti scrawled on it, handed me a key, and showed me how to use it.

Now that we were here—now that I had made it from the airport to the hotel, taken a bus to Cuernavaca, seen the school, and successfully managed to keep up with Mirta, my tension drained away and I suddenly “got” a word: llave—key.

I felt joy.  I could do this!  I could get around in a foreign country, meet exciting new people, and learn a foreign language!  I only had to memorize about 10,000 more words and learn how to conjugate 500 verbs.

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If you live in Los Angeles or Miami, Mirta’s house would be unremarkable.  It was a walled compound with a main house, another smaller house, and a garden with a pool.

Cuerna Home

Mirta walked me into the kitchen of the main house, wagging her finger to indicate that the rest of the place was off limits.  Darn, I wouldn’t be able to relax on that plastic-covered couch under the oil painting of The Last Supper I caught a glimpse of from the kitchen.

She also made clear that the fridge was off limits.  She demonstrated how to use the five-gallon water bottle which was to be my only source of water.  She laid down the times for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It was amazing how much she could communicate with charades-like gestures.

A young woman entered with a toddler.  I assumed this was Mirta’s daughter and grandson until she picked up a mop and started swabbing the floor.  From what I could gather, her name was Ella.

I followed Mirta like a duckling to the smaller house where I would spend the week.  Everything was covered in green tile except the ceiling.  It would have felt like an asylum except that the window looked out on the garden full of Birds of Paradise.  Those are run-of-the-mill in Mexico—like daisies in Minnesota—but to me they were spectacular and I would later amuse Mirta by taking endless photos of them.

Bird of Paradise

Mirta pointed to the bare bulb in the middle of the sitting room ceiling and made clear that I was not to waste electricity.  She oriented me to the bathroom, showing me eight fingers to indicate how many minutes of hot water were available to shower each day.  There was a drain in the floor with a plate over it and a brick on top of the plate.  Do not remove, I was warned, with some scary faces.  In Minnesota, we get rats coming up from the river through the sewers into people’s basement toilets.  I wondered if that was the foe here, or something else?

Mirta opened the bedroom door to reveal two twin beds.  A young woman was hunched over on one of them, holding a blow dryer and looking dejected.

“Hi, I’m Zoe,” she said, in a North American accent.  I had known I would share my quarters with another student, and this was her.  Mirta showcased the one-drawer night stand next to my bed, then exited with a reminder about meal times.

“My blow dryer won’t work!”  Zoe exclaimed.  She started to whimper quietly.  “I forgot to bring an adapter.  Do you have one?”

When I said no she wondered out loud, “I wonder if Mirta has a blow dryer she would let me use?”  I thought that was highly unlikely, given we weren’t allowed beyond the kitchen or even to open the refrigerator.   Zoe really started to cry.  “And I can’t call my parents!  My cell doesn’t work and Mirta won’t let me make a long-distance call on her phone!”

I was afraid Zoe was destined to be an example of a Yerkes-Dodson Law fail.

Losing My Words

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This is the third post in a series about studying Spanish in Mexico that starts here.

And so I arrived in Cuernavaca, Mexico, to drench myself in Spanish language and culture for a week.

Through this company, Amerispan, I had bought a cheap package that included my classes and a homestay. I had splurged and spent an extra $40 or something for someone to meet me at the bus station and take me to the school. I made that call after seeing that the school was called Cemanahuac. What?! That didn’t sound Spanish, and I had no idea how to pronounce it. Now I see that they’ve added a helpful transliteration to their website: sem-ah-NOW-ock, and I can tell you that was the name used by the Aztecs to refer to their world.

For the umpteenth time I apologize for my lousy photos:

Cemanahuac PoolCemanahuac Hut

If you live in Indonesia or El Salvador or anywhere else that is tropical, you won’t think anything of this place. But to me, coming from a cold, drab grey Minnesota winter, it was paradise. I could hardly believe that I was going to spend a week studying here. I would have been happy to skip the studying and spend the week lying by the pool with a book.

Amerispan no longer lists Cemanahuac as a language school choice on its website. That’s sad, and I wonder if it’s due to all the drug gang violence, or something else?

—

I wandered around the school, probably with a dazed smile on my face, until someone called my name: “Anna Mah-eeeertz?” I don’t know how long they had been calling it before I realized it was me.

I knew from studying up on the Amerispan website that someone from my host family would come to take me to the home, but now I had left English behind—completely. That was their philosophy, total immersion.

But it wasn’t too hard to figure out that the secretary of the school was introducing me to a woman whose name was apparently Mierda. I could see the other office employees behind her, laughing up their sleeves. I would learn eventually that Mirta was Cuban, and that Mirta was a Cuban name. But she pronounced it Mierda and in Mexico and elsewhere Mierda means shit.

Mirta seemed oblivious to this, and as I got to know her better over the course of the week I found she was one of those happy, smiling people who just ignore bad things. Mirta was about 60. She was plump in a matronly way, with dark red hair, and she was dressed like my grandma used to dress in the 70s—in polyester elastic waist pants and a button up shirt—both in pastel colors, and sturdy black shoes.

She pointed toward the exit and said what sounded like, “Yabba da dabba da blabba de doo.”

All I could do was smile and nod; I didn’t even know to ask, “Que?” and even if I had I couldn’t have understood the answer. I followed her out into the street.

She walked so fast I had to hop skip to keep up with her. We reached a corner and she pointed to a bread store and said something. Then we turned, turned again at the next corner, walked about three more blocks, and while she talked and pointed to things along the way. We came to a crazily busy intersection where she stood for a while talking and gesticulating some more, until a mini bus arrived. She pointed to above the windshield, and I could make out a number and what I assumed was the month of Noviembre. Why would a bus route be named a date? I followed her on to the combi and she showed me the coins I had to pay, which meant nothing to me.

This was my introduction to the wonders of combi décor. There were several small statues of the Virgin Mary glued to the dashboard, the rest of the surface was covered in orange fake fur, and there were holy cards suspended above the driver’s head. We needed all the good-luck juju, for sure, as the bus lurched out into the stream of traffic.