Coach Trip: as colourful as Brendan's, channel 4's new offering

Many roads lead to Guanajuato: the prospect of the most beautiful colonial town in all of Mexico, the presence of Sarah (company and hospitality all in one delightful package) and what I thought was the country’s biggest beer festival. Most of these turned out to be accurate preconceptions.

The city was a painter’s palette of warm and vibrant hues which played with glee in the sunlight, running from cobbled passages to airy squares. Spilling down the surrounding hills, the town’s colours are evidence of Mexico’s status as a nation of colours. The Spanish-style buildings are a world away from the concrete cubes of Cosoleacaque and Minatitlan. I shocked myself by staring with amusement at all the ‘gueros’ ambling past me. I realised it had been weeks since I had physically seen a blonde, blue-eyed European/North American in the flesh. I suddenly found myself snarling at them with disdain, as if they were trespassing on my Mexican territory. The idea of transposing yourself into a country without compromising any of your rigid cultural ideas, without fully immersing yourself into the grinding routine of a place, now seems to me amateurish and misguided. I hated to think that I also looked like a tourist. I suppose however long I stay here I always will be. But I hope that by working like a demon on my Spanish and adapting my socks off, I can play down by ‘extranjero’ status.

Sarah oozed company and hospitality. She showed me her ‘locals’, her favourite hangouts and showed me ruddy bloody good time. As a past tenant of the city she knew it like a sister, but we still managed to make some memories, in the restaurants and bars, and on the salsa dance floor. We were joined in our shimmying by Anna, Alannah and Christine: ‘El Bar’ (original name) played host a spectacular display of British Council gyrating, booty-shaking and general attempts at moving with the rhythm.

The only disappointment was in myself. I had led myself to believe that ‘Cervantino’ was a massive beerfest. My pea-sized, lager-lout, uneducated brain, failed to make the obvious connection between the festival name and the highly-regarded Spanish writer, Cervantes. If I had, I would have realised that asking where the giant beer ten was ten times a day would never reap any further response than ‘what giant beer tent?’ I also would have prepared myself for the intimidating amounts of culture I found myself confronted with. Plays, improvisation, dance shows, comedians, circus acts, musical performances lay in wait on almost every inch of the city, it was impossible to avoid. Even when we sat in a chillaxalicious square for a quiet beer. We were treated to a nine-peice mariachi show, and a punk-goth street performance of a story of ‘two absolutely insane lovers’. It didn’t end happily. I still got my beer, but I also felt a little more educated for having visited Guanajuato when I did.

30-hours on a coach well-spent.

I hablo mexicano

A change has come. Anglo-French Claire, the same Claire that arrived in Mexico with an unhealthy amount of trepidation and borderline fear of the Spanish language, has been replaced by a Claire who is confident with trills, subjunctive conjugations and, more importantly, Mexican vulgarities.

Having spent two months in France, I was rightly worried about being able to communicate once I got here, especially when I was thrust into the monolingual bosom of Cosoleacaque and the Zuñiga family. Although able to string together sentences, my neck and ears began to feel the strain of trying to follow rapid conversations, like a fast-forward, foreign tennis match, but now it’s roughly 30-love to me. I even find myself having quite dense discussions about life and love and philosophy. I dread to think about how many mistakes I make in every stuttery, Anglicism-speckled sentence, but I seem to be understood, and for basic conversation I’m rarely at a loss. I still have a long way to go: thinking about it now, I couldn’t give you the word for pavement, or flannel, but at least I know how to say ‘you’ve got big testicles’ (you’re a lazy bum). The most difficult arena for airing my Spanish seems to be in the classroom, when giving instructions to the kids, or chastising them. My stern warnings have slightly less gravity when I stumble over words, or have to ask the culprit how to go about telling them off in Spanish.

The one worry gnawing at me is that as a consequence my French is being pushed further back into my cerebral linguistic recesses ( ‘linguistic recesses’ rings slightly naughty...I’m sure I could make it into a euphemism for something). Skype and phone conversations to French friends and family go some way to helping alleviate the language loss, but I’m having to work to keep all three balls in the air: English, French and Spanish, so that by this time next year I can easily switch between all three and have almost equal mastery.

I’ll leave you with this thought: in Mexican Spanish, all of these words mean the same thing: la Tortuga, la cucaracha, la rana, la cuca, la conhca, and are used with unfathomable regularity; have a guess.

Matt the Chat touches down in Cosolea Town

This weekend we Cosoleacaqueños were treated to a spontaneous visit by Matt the Chat, who usually resides in Fortín de las Flores. This visit lasted all of 40hrs, but we managed to give him a pretty good idea of what our end of Veracruz state has to offer, including drinking beer hanging off the back of a pick-up truck, swinging in lazy chairs on the terrace on a Sunday, and the beautiful oil refinery of Minatitlan. Now we need to get ourselves up north and see what life on the other side is like. Considering that he is 4-5 hours away by bus, this is nothing for Mexico, but in British terms saying they were the same place would be like equating Surrey to Liverpool. It was lovely having you Matt; and look, you get your very own blog post!

Let them eat cake

I have, unfortunately, more than once in my life been accused of attempting to have my cake and eat it. This week, the finger of blame points assuredly towards me, but the matter does not involve one cake, but approximately 15. There are some weeks when someone gets a year older, and then there are weeks when everyone seems to be celebrating their birthday. And we all know that birthdays mean cake. And if there’s cake, I’m not going to say no.

Cake number one got sploshed on the birthday girl’s face before being consumed. Jade’s birthday party was sprung on me much as her face was on to the cake: I got home from work, ready to receive a call, eat lunch and get ready for my evening classes, all with calm and a goal to work towards. These plans were blasted from the water by the words ‘party’, ‘mole’, and ‘ahorita’. Apparently I’d been told about it. Apparently I’d forgotten. I wasn’t going to complain, as mole is one of those chocolate, chilli and chicken concoctions which I would find as hard to turn down as a backrub from Mr Depp. And to accompany it, there was a rip-roaringly drunk Mama Callie,a live Mariachi band, and the aforementioned cake. Everybody else present knew without exception all of the mariachi songs, and the idea is to be able to request the songs of my choice and sing along to them by the end of the year. In the mean time I ate cake.

Then when Teresa’s birthday came around, I contributed personally to the cake provision. For lack of other ideas for a present, and as a vague attempt to live up to my family name, I baked a chocolate cake (chocolate cloud cake to be precise). I chose this cake carefully as I wanted to impress with an understated but astonishingly tasty sweet treat. Chedraui Supermarket, however, didn’t have the same idea. Thus my chocolate cake was made with a chocolate substitute, the wrong sort of cream, and lumpy sugar. The ‘hecho con amor’ comment seemed to do the trick though, and the ugliness and sickly texture of my sorry-looking cake were forgiven. The other 4 cakes at the table also helped to soften my failure and fill everyone present up with dangerous levels of sugar and cream.

The other 8 cakes were to be seen but not eaten: they were arranged in an artistic circular suspension installation at the wedding-like 15^th birthday party of a student from our school. The cakes were positioned next to the indoor canopy hanging over the high table, alongside the soft-focus photos of the birthday girl in various different outfits, lining the walls of the venue. These nicely complimented the 8 white plastic cherub plinths lining the entrance path, and the life-size cardboard cut-out of the birthday girl. As I said, they were to be seen, not enjoyed.

A is for Apple

Oficially, I am not a teacher. I’m a teaching assistant. Realistically, I shouldn’t be touched out of all proportions by small gestures. Usually, I don’t receive apples from my students.

Today, at the beginning of my second class of the day, in the centre-of-town primary school, a nine-year old girl called Valeria gave me an apple. It was a lightly bruised, green apple, which had probably been given to her by her vaguely health-conscious mother, and which she hadn’t had time to eat during the lunch break just before the lesson. And yet she considered that the best thing to do with this small piece of fruit was present it to the slightly ditzy, badly-spoken English teacher that visits them once a week. With this small, innocent gesture, that little girl made my day.

Routine clear-out (amended, post-photo retrieval)

My routine is now nicely established. The week gets eaten up by a soothing mix of timetabled classes and irregular private lessons, aimless conversations, meanderings, musings and consuming. The fact that this routine is now nicely established means that I need to steer clear of the ‘wasting time’ route. I’m miserably failing so far. With the weather being that bit cooler, it’s oh-so-tempting to stay in bed instead of cracking on with the day, and the constant presence of at least one person rocking in a cosy chair on the terrace with open ears means that there is always a reason to subscribe to the ‘mañana, mañana’/’ahorita’ attitude. All of my great intentions (scrub up on my Mexican history, make myself au fait with the Zapatista presence in the country, join a volunteering scheme in Minatitlan) all seem a little too much like hard work. In the long run, though, time is not something I appear to be lacking in.

The good of the week culminated on Friday night: Guy and I introduced Juanito to the joys of Ring of Fire (to the detriment of his sobriety and his stomach), we followed the usual crowd to a new crowd, a friendly mix of co-workers, friends of friends, friends of family, and many people who extended welcoming hands and future invitations, including a gay bar-owner, a deaf and mute football player and a generous drunk. The rain should really have put us off standing outside a shop for 7 hours, but we didn’t let it so much as dampen our spirits.
The bad of the week came from a couple of hangers-on, who took it upon themselves to cause some unnecessary trouble after-hours, which didn’t end well but could have turned out so much worse when you out a positive slant on it.
No photos of this night now exist (due to my inappropriate relationship with ‘delete’ buttons), nor of my Mexican’s grandmas’ birthday celebrations of last Sunday night, which leaves me only to rely on good old-fashioned memories, of the more ephemeral but nonetheless evocative sort. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
I do, however, have some photos of Aaron’s 15th birthday party, which we celebrated today. Being not only a member of the family but also one of my private English students, I got to take part in the age-old tradition whereby the birthday boy has to dance with every female in the joint. And I feel it necessary to point out that he looked just as uncomfortable when he did the waltz with every single girl, woman or old dodderer.

ps. Photos have now been retrieved, thanks to a nifty little program called recuva (I highly recommend looking into this if you happen to permanently delete any photos). This post now comes with even more pretty pictures.

‘“Heads, shoulders, knees and toes”: all places I currently feel like smacking you’

For my first group kids’ class this week I came into the class feeling highly satisfied with a great, fun-filled day of school, ready to kick some English-teaching ass, and totally carefree. I came out of the hour with the 3 pre-schoolers ready to teach the entire vicinity some very bad English words. I doubt they learnt anything from that class, but I learnt that trying to hold a class when the students are in their own home, surrounded by their toys, in the presence of a romantically involved pair of 5-year olds, with a teacher who is unwilling to discipline them for fear of being rejected as a sister-like co-resident, DOES NOT WORK. The teacher becomes the student.

Guy gets his disabled badge

This is my homage to Guy.
Guy saved me from some big scary men attacking me and trying to rape and pillage me for all I’m worth, and in trying to defend me he suffered an arm flesh wound. He is my hero. (That is what you told me to say, right Guy?)
(abridged): Guy was playing football with the 5-year olds, Eliot and Caleb, and he jumped onto a spiked gate, which helped itself to a substantial chunk of flesh from his right arm. He now has regular clinic visits and a life-long scar to look forward to, and is sporting a rather fetching Baby Disney blanket as an arm sling.

Beer-bellied pig

I have also this week discovered the Spanish for ‘beer belly’. I use the term ‘discovered’ in all senses of the word. My waistband, my wallet and my mental dictionary have all felt the strain of this new discovery. ‘Panza de Caguama’ equates your stomach to a giant bottle of beer, roughly 1litre, which the Mexican men have a firm fondness for. Mexicans refer to these as if they have deadly powers, as if the beer contained within its imposing glass will knock you down with a force almighty...to be honest, it’s just a slightly bigger bottle of beer, so you drink fewer bottles and you end up drinking warmer beer. But when I look down at my own personal fleshy ‘Caguama’ I consider it with the same fear and none of the fondness. The establishments in which I have been exposed to caguamas have their own special atmosphere: generally devoid of women, frills, and with a soupçon of the lewd. Enrique, the 2 Juans and Betho have guided us to the best ones in the area, one just down the road where we went this week. When I say I want to see as much of Mexico as I can, this is one such aspect of the country and culture that I relish – more raw, completely real, and it doesn’t feature in the guidebook.

The holiday continues

Thank God my clocking-in slip is only for show. If the SEP (Secretaria de Educacion Publica, the bigwigs that pay us our grant) actually checked this and paid us accordingly I would be dressed in rags and holding out a trembling hand for spare pesos under a bridge somewhere. As it is, we are still being paid our full amount despite only having completed one full week of work since getting here. This had mostly been down to classes being suspended because of flooding, and national celebrations (one of which is fun, the other not so much, I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself). On Monday I had one class: it’s a hard knock life. It happened to be in one of primary schools where I do a weekly lesson, so no more than literal fun and games. They even threw in breakfast and a chat afterwards as I had nowhere to get to in a rush. Tuesday and Wednesday school was called off. However much I love unplanned time off, when you’re stranded because of collapsed motorways and flooded towns, it becomes more of a bore than a fun break. At least I’ve got my regular private student, Carlos, who’s so keen on learning French he more than adequately gives me a vent for my teaching energy when there’s no other outlet.
This relative lack of teaching time was more than compensated for by Thursday. Alberto, the English teacher I usually work with (who is also my tutor), couldn’t get to the school form his family home in Xalapa, so ‘Clairrre’ became ‘Maestra’ for the day. I single-handedly delivered four improvised classes to the first years, and much to my surprise I loved it. Teresa scoffed at me when I confided that I used to be pretty shy, and I often have to fight these timid instincts in order to meet people and make the most of opportunities, but in front of these kids, all eyes on me, I delighted in the opportunity to act up, prance about like a clown and scout out my own individual teaching style, which at one point involved throwing a ball of paper at an incessant chatterbox; it worked, and I earned unbounded respect for the slightly daring move.
If I do happen to be given the boot from the school because of my teacing methods, I should now have no problem finding a Cosoleacaqueño to marry me and becoming a kept woman due to my newly acquired tortilla-making skills. The few restaurants which boast ‘tortillas hechas a mano’ (basically handmade tortillas, as opposed to machine- or tortilla-press –made) will always have the upper hand in the restaurant sector, and the same can be said for the marriage-able woman market. Teresa and I got down and dirty with the dough Saturday morning, and Enrique helped convert my surprisingly successful tortillas into tasty picadas, complete with cheese, onions, avocado and refried beans, for all the family. The men should be falling over each other to get to me any time soon.