Lessons Learned

Day 34 in Mexico

Two days ago, I had my one month anniversary in Mexico. I won’t claim that every day has flown by (though the weekends sure do), but looking back it’s hard to believe that I’ve been here that long already. I’m quickly falling into a routine, feeling surer of myself as I continue to learn the city, and my Spanish speaking skills are starting to come back to me after a long period of disuse after my study abroad time in Argentina. I thought it might be interesting to reflect on some of the things that I’ve learned so far in my time here. We (the YAGM group) were told at our Chicago orientation that we would almost certainly be taught more by the people we lived and worked with than we taught them, but some of these things I never expected to learn. I’ve already mentioned learning the difficulty in saying no, and that water usually isn’t really water, but that was just the beginning. So, in no particular order:

1. Vocabulary. I thought my Spanish was actually pretty good before I came, forgetting that the only time I was using it was in classes, writing essays and analyzing literature, not related at all to daily living. Some of the new words I’ve learned actually summarize my experience here pretty well, I think.

§ Órale and Ándale, pues – probably the most common phrases I’ve heard here. Órale translates to “cool” or “okay.” As in, “Look at this (insert cool object here).” “Órale.” But it’s a word that seems to pretty much fit any situation, person, greeting, or conversation. Ándale, I would say, translates to a more polite way of saying “Get out of here, you.” When I tell someone I have to go, this is almost always the response.

§ Mande? – also very common, Mexicans here use this phrase instead of como, meaning “Come again?” if you didn’t hear what someone said. It is a phrase I hear often, and a more literal translation as it relates to me is, “Good lord, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”

§ Me pica – what you say if something’s spicy (the verb picar means to bite); probably the next most commonly used phrase for me after the above phrases. Also formed as the question, Pica mucho? or, “Is it really spicy?”

§ Goteras – leaks, as in, “the roof over my bedroom has several goteras.”

§ Topes – speed bumps, a very common occurrence here. Particularly unpleasant to go over in a bus, they are even more common in some smaller towns, like Temixco, a small city close to Cuernavaca. There you can find them every 20-25 feet or so on virtually every road.

§ Zancudos – mosquitos.

§ Patas – Chicken feet, as in, “My friend Sara frequently has patas in her soup.” I have not yet had the pleasure of trying them.

§ Cinta – tape, learned from projects at the kinder.

§ Guajolote – turkey, and ardilla – squirrel, both learned from animal bingo at my job.

§ Internet inalámbrico – wireless Internet. Quite helpful.

§ Various new food words, such as chilaquiles, tunas, micheladas and nepales.

2. My bus routes. This is something I did expect to learn, but some things about them are rather unexpected. The buses here very widely, from glorified vans to luxury tour buses. I take two of the various rutas (another vocab word, simply meaning bus), the 1 and the 13. I have learned to expect good things from the 13 buses. Most of them are much more luxurious than average, with cushy cloth seats and less jarring transmissions, although there do exist the few exceptions. Other things I’ve come to expect from them include truly impressive, tricked-out sound systems, black lights both inside the bus and underneath it, and gleaming silver spikes on the hubcaps. I do love my number 13 buses, and I find my rides to and from work surprisingly relaxing, and some of the time I do my best thinking, planning, and reflecting.

3. To take my umbrella with me everywhere, no matter how pleasantly warm or sunny it is. The chances of it raining any given day are very high during this season.

4. That roosters are smart enough to start crowing every morning at 6:30 a.m. (pretty much on the dot) but are not smart enough to realize that morning is over, and thus keep crowing throughout the day. They have also not gotten the memo about weekends.

5. That, for young children learning English, yellow is across the board the easiest color to say, and usually their favorite.

6. That, every Monday, Mexican school children must wear white for Honores, a ceremony saluting the Mexican flag.

7. Traffic rules. I think it’s a very common experience for Americans to go abroad and be surprised, even shocked, at the lack of traffic control in different countries. That was my experience going to Spain, Guatemala, and Argentina, so I expected the same in kind from Mexico. Still, it’s always an adjustment period. I’ve learned that in Mexico, the right of way belongs to the one who muscles his way in. If you want to turn left across traffic, you pull out and force the oncoming cars to yield to you, and then continue. Same for roundabouts, same for merging onto highways. Pedestrians are not given right away, but there are traffic cops that prove helpful for this purpose. Seatbelts are almost never used by anyone besides the driver (even for young children, which I admit I have a hard time accepting).

8. Slowly but surely, some of the many cafés here. I now know, for example, which ones have wireless Internet, which ones are considered expensive, which one serves the best chicken sandwich ever (I would say equivalent or better to the turkey sandwich at Tucson’s Coffee Xchange, and that’s saying something), which one serves heavenly mango smoothies, and where you can get alfalfa sprouts. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to learn where I can get a truly reliable Skype connection (one of my big priorities right now).

9. That if my host parents eat something and think it’s really spicy, that I should not try to eat it myself. I have had two dangerous run-ins with spicy food – once I was told to try the beans in a soup to see if I liked it. Mistaking a floating chile (added only for flavor, not for actual eating) for a large bean, I ate the entire thing. Oops. I also tried adding a very small chile to my dinner one night, as it seemed like it could have benefited from a little spice. It didn’t seem that harmless when I tasted the tip, so I added the whole thing, seeds and all (it really was quite small). The smallest chiles, turns out, are often the spiciest. There was some serious crying, mouth fanning, and milk drinking that followed.

10. Some of the basic responses at mass; I do, after all, average two masses a weekend. It’s really quite similar to the Lutheran service, but unfortunately even when I recognize something from our service I don’t know how it translates into Spanish. I’m learning just enough, however, to become a more active participant.

11. Many of the injustices, corruption, inequalities, and difficulties that plague Mexico, as well as the stories of some of its people, related to me through my host parents over and after dinner. I’ve heard some of their stories from travels to poorer, more indigenous states, like Chiapas and Guerrero, as well as some from their conversations with the inmates at the jail they visit on Saturdays. Though the subject matter is not often easy to hear, they’ve already taught me a lot, and our conversations after the meal and before I head off to bed are some of my favorite times.

I’m sure there are many more lessons that I’m forgetting, but it’s a start. Next I’m searching, as I said, for reliable Skyping locales, as well as some lessons in Mexican cooking. Hasta luego!