Mexico (Draft)

I lived in Mexico for almost two years, off and on, with trips out of the country to renew visas and to make developed world wages so I could better travel and live.

Those first days, I was a sponge and a set of eyeballs. I just stared and absorbed the sounds, smells, colors, and energy of a people hustling to make a living. The sidewalks were packed with people, alive with vendors selling fresh -squeezed orange juice, small stacks of limes or tomatoes or trinkets. A card table was a livelihood.I had to learn to politely decline offers to buy whatever they were selling, but still their eyes sought mine out -- "Here comes a sale, a gringo. Money is nothing to them." 

I trailed streamers of student identity from Madison: baggy jeans, funky baseball cap, worn t-shirt, beat-up sneakers. None of this impressed anyone. Dressing down was not stylish or much appreciated. 

I had studied Spanish most of my high-school and college life, and had a pretty solid grasp on grammar, but not on pronunciation. I must have sounded to them like some Spanish aristocrat dropped out of the sky from the 19th century. My formal address and stilted, whole word elocution made people smile, if not outright laugh. 

While Mexico City, the Distrito Federal, was a humming, cosmopolitan urban monster of a city with much to offer, I wanted something quieter, so went to Cuernavaca to find a language school. They called it the City of Eternal Springtime, and it lived up to that title. There were blooming plants coming up out of cracks in the sidewalk, on the sides of buildings, and sprawled across the countryside. In the distance were the volcanoes, Ixta and Popo. 

I found a guesthouse, a casa de huespedes, and rented a room with the intent to stay for a while. It was not a tourist spot ans catered more to young Mexican workers. There was a teacher, some receptionists, a crazy guy who traveled to pick up eyeglass lenses that needed to be ground to fit prescriptions, sales people, students, and oil workers in Cuernavaca on leave from the derricks out in the Gulf of Mexico. 

We cooked in a communal kitchen so got ro know each other. The kitchen looked over a narrow but busy street frequented by vendors pushing carts and singing their services. Buses and cars were few but took up the whole street, so people had to hug the walls to avoid collisions. It all worked somehow, if not chaotically. 

I enrolled in a language school that catered to Europeans mainly who were on leave from jobs or on holiday and wanted to engage with the locals. Language and culture and field-trips and romance made for energetic community. 

I preferred the working locals to the well-heeled backpacker language school folks, but the latter were a nice break from the overwhelm of trying to acculturate. 

(To be Continued...)