Continued at: http://veranomexicano.blogspot.com/
Wednesday 1 August 2007
Tuesday 20 February 2007
Letter 3 - Zacha to Kelly and Keira, 10/01/07
Dear Both,
(PS I forgot to send you both the link to a photo of Pilar on flickr, which was and still is the only photo I have to hand of her. http://www.flickr.com/photos/zacha/352230417/ (Anahí is said Ana-ih, like Anaïs.) My photos are on a CD in the house where I live, while I use the net here at James and Karla's or at Pilar's.
So it goes like this: I'm living with Gabo (Gabriel Millan), another friend via James and Karla. He lives up the hill a few blocks, and a big hill, from J & K and in a little block of units above another friend called Pales (from Palestina. His name is said like Palace) who is a lot like Tully or Owen. Pilar lives downtown 45 minutes by bus or taxi. All of Cuernavaca is built on a hill - we're a little south of Mexico City (D.F. "District Federal" - the country of Mexico is named after the city, which was originally named after the Aztecs (the Mexica) who were first called Aztecs in the 1800s, to distinguish them from the newly-named country. So, Mexico is really the name of the city. But we call it D.F.), and the city is built on a grid plan with huge avenues. It's like a plaid skirt has been laid down the side of a mountain. To make things more bizarrely planned, downhill is south and uphill is north - just like you always knew was right when you were a child. Tonight I'm going to the movies to see Night at the Museum with James in english, even further down the hill.)
So it goes like this: I'm living with Gabo (Gabriel Millan), another friend via James and Karla. He lives up the hill a few blocks, and a big hill, from J & K and in a little block of units above another friend called Pales (from Palestina. His name is said like Palace) who is a lot like Tully or Owen. Pilar lives downtown 45 minutes by bus or taxi. All of Cuernavaca is built on a hill - we're a little south of Mexico City (D.F. "District Federal" - the country of Mexico is named after the city, which was originally named after the Aztecs (the Mexica) who were first called Aztecs in the 1800s, to distinguish them from the newly-named country. So, Mexico is really the name of the city. But we call it D.F.), and the city is built on a grid plan with huge avenues. It's like a plaid skirt has been laid down the side of a mountain. To make things more bizarrely planned, downhill is south and uphill is north - just like you always knew was right when you were a child. Tonight I'm going to the movies to see Night at the Museum with James in english, even further down the hill.)
...
Mexico is very cool. It's the country most like Italy that I've ever been to. There are lots of bad things here, poverty especially, but to a tourist they're more annoying than anything else. The food is fantastic. The people are really friendly. You'd need to ... go out with a Mexican to really see any of the conservative parts of the culture here. Unless the men whistle at tourists, too. It's a good country not to be blond in. (Unless you want a longer visa, JV tells me.)
...
Money will be tight for me for Australian scale things, like planes, but not for Mexican scale things, like living. If you can only get as close as Yucutan (places like the island of Cozumel, Playa [beach] del Carmen or Cancun) try to get to Tulum - the beautiful Mayan ruins where you can also go to the beach. ( http://www.differentworld.com/mexico/places/tulum/tulum.htm ) Veracruz is the port most likely if you come near Mexico City.
...
Money will be tight for me for Australian scale things, like planes, but not for Mexican scale things, like living. If you can only get as close as Yucutan (places like the island of Cozumel, Playa [beach] del Carmen or Cancun) try to get to Tulum - the beautiful Mayan ruins where you can also go to the beach. ( http://www.differentworld.com/mexico/places/tulum/tulum.htm ) Veracruz is the port most likely if you come near Mexico City.
Visas are fine, and renewable-ish, if you don't work. If you work over the net, like James, from another country that's fine too. To work here, you need to work in a language school, teaching english - and the school sorts you out a visa for this.* Visas to work here normally are hard. And, unless you want to settle here for good, bad - because the money's not enough to leave the country again. ("It would take me 2 years to save enough money to fly to Australia." Pilar told me, in one of her first letters. ...)
Thanks for congratulations. Had always wanted not to be at my graduation ceremony, but hadn't realised that I was this organised in arranging it. Hope that Anna's drinks were a good peda. (Mexican way to talk about a good evening of getting drunk with one's good friends - as opposed to the other sort of drunk. It means "fart" literally, but it's best not to think about that. Like the scorpions. (Try to avoid coming in May.))
...
Will post many more photos soon, and should be able to arrange an Australian Skype number you can call me on (or, more often, leave voicemail on) soon too.
* In theory. I had it later explained to me that what happens is that the school tells you that it's sorted out your visa for you.
Saturday 17 February 2007
Letter 2 - Zacha to Parents, 19/02/06
Will blog again when I have time. At the moment I want to write to my friends in Australia and tell them that I'm not coming back for a while, first.
This is the season of Posadas here - which means that there's a christmas party every day with family and friends (usually both at the same time). I've been to Pilar's giant family Posada on Saturday. They were very cool, and it reminded me of Raquel to watch her play with the children. I seem to be getting along with Anahí (her daughter) better and better - and her father talks to me a lot in Spanish to explain the origins of many things. He has a little of the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding - because he knows the origins of everything - but at home he potters around with satsifaction a lot like [our family friend] Gerald.
After the Posada was the wedding reception (we had to miss the ceremony for the Posada). Very late in the night we had a Taco stand deliver itself to the wedding, after which Pilar and I went home (Anahí had stayed for the end of the Posada, so that she could get all the lollies out of the Piñatas). We had drunk and danced all night. Chinelos played for an hour and half - musicians who sound like wild gypsies venting high-pitched trumpets and clarinets. You dance by bouncing with your arms laterally above your chest, and at the right point in the music you jump three times until you shout. The music never really stops. It just stops for a bare moment to breathe in. The reception was outdoors, in a park opposite the church. In the park were big round tables like an Australian wedding. But at the back was a covered concrete area with the drinks and some food and the dancing - the salsa: the Chinelos played in the field, with four men dressed like dancing kings in paper-mache masks with rosy cheeks and tall and colourful paper crowns. I ran into a few people who didn't know I was back in Mexico. Carlos and Itzel found me in a queue to dance with Sara and Fernando (Sarita and Fer - my friends getting married). Erna - Karla's Mum - asked me what I was doing back in Mexico. It was easier not to explain with my spanish - so I kissed Pilar. Unfortunately Erna didn't understand at all, and I had to explain it anyway. I had a great conversation with her and Karla's grandma later on.
The next day - Sunday - we returned to the camping-site (by then any number of people had stayed overnight there in tents) and had a mini-Posada to finish off the food and smash Piñatas. The most popular Piñatas are round in the middle, with many conical, carboard points like a star. The round part is a big pottery jar - all the lollies and fruit wait inside until it's smashed. Then everyone - everyone - scrabbles in to seize, and more often than not sit on, the lollies until everyone calms down. Anahí is particularly good at this, although Karla kicks ass as well. James is the most enthusiastic, and broke the first Piñata in the first turn of the night.
We went to another Posada tonight, but Pilar and I arrived a little later and missed most of the evening. Anahí has now been to three Posadas for three nights running. I asked her on the second night how many sweets she'd collected during the night in her plastic bag, she told me:
"Enough for a year."
Tomorrow I don't think there are any Posadas tomorrow. But it's the season, so I wouldn't be surprised. I'll probably come back here to James and Karla's house in the evening, so I can check my email. Sara and Fernando have decided to move in here when James and Karla come to Australia. Which fantastic, because this is a great house, and the centre of the community and it would be a shame if that left here for a year. I'm staying here for Christmas night - which is the whole event here. We have an epiphany under the name of Los Reyes here, like in Spoleto, where the kids get presents at midnight. Midnight on Christmas night, they "rock the baby Jesus" occaisionally, but nothing else much happens. Around New Year's we should be going up to Morelia to spend it with one of Pilar's aunts. I might go down to Mexico City ("D.F." = deh-effeh = "district federal") if I can't find Pilar & Anahí's presents here in Cuernavaca. (Pilar's birthday is on the 5th of January - giving us the progression of Dad, Linda, Pilar in January. She'll be 29. Anahí's birthday is on September 6, so she'll stay 11 for a while yet.)
Talk to you both soon, love Zacha.
Love to Tully and Grandma.
This is the season of Posadas here - which means that there's a christmas party every day with family and friends (usually both at the same time). I've been to Pilar's giant family Posada on Saturday. They were very cool, and it reminded me of Raquel to watch her play with the children. I seem to be getting along with Anahí (her daughter) better and better - and her father talks to me a lot in Spanish to explain the origins of many things. He has a little of the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding - because he knows the origins of everything - but at home he potters around with satsifaction a lot like [our family friend] Gerald.
After the Posada was the wedding reception (we had to miss the ceremony for the Posada). Very late in the night we had a Taco stand deliver itself to the wedding, after which Pilar and I went home (Anahí had stayed for the end of the Posada, so that she could get all the lollies out of the Piñatas). We had drunk and danced all night. Chinelos played for an hour and half - musicians who sound like wild gypsies venting high-pitched trumpets and clarinets. You dance by bouncing with your arms laterally above your chest, and at the right point in the music you jump three times until you shout. The music never really stops. It just stops for a bare moment to breathe in. The reception was outdoors, in a park opposite the church. In the park were big round tables like an Australian wedding. But at the back was a covered concrete area with the drinks and some food and the dancing - the salsa: the Chinelos played in the field, with four men dressed like dancing kings in paper-mache masks with rosy cheeks and tall and colourful paper crowns. I ran into a few people who didn't know I was back in Mexico. Carlos and Itzel found me in a queue to dance with Sara and Fernando (Sarita and Fer - my friends getting married). Erna - Karla's Mum - asked me what I was doing back in Mexico. It was easier not to explain with my spanish - so I kissed Pilar. Unfortunately Erna didn't understand at all, and I had to explain it anyway. I had a great conversation with her and Karla's grandma later on.
The next day - Sunday - we returned to the camping-site (by then any number of people had stayed overnight there in tents) and had a mini-Posada to finish off the food and smash Piñatas. The most popular Piñatas are round in the middle, with many conical, carboard points like a star. The round part is a big pottery jar - all the lollies and fruit wait inside until it's smashed. Then everyone - everyone - scrabbles in to seize, and more often than not sit on, the lollies until everyone calms down. Anahí is particularly good at this, although Karla kicks ass as well. James is the most enthusiastic, and broke the first Piñata in the first turn of the night.
We went to another Posada tonight, but Pilar and I arrived a little later and missed most of the evening. Anahí has now been to three Posadas for three nights running. I asked her on the second night how many sweets she'd collected during the night in her plastic bag, she told me:
"Enough for a year."
Tomorrow I don't think there are any Posadas tomorrow. But it's the season, so I wouldn't be surprised. I'll probably come back here to James and Karla's house in the evening, so I can check my email. Sara and Fernando have decided to move in here when James and Karla come to Australia. Which fantastic, because this is a great house, and the centre of the community and it would be a shame if that left here for a year. I'm staying here for Christmas night - which is the whole event here. We have an epiphany under the name of Los Reyes here, like in Spoleto, where the kids get presents at midnight. Midnight on Christmas night, they "rock the baby Jesus" occaisionally, but nothing else much happens. Around New Year's we should be going up to Morelia to spend it with one of Pilar's aunts. I might go down to Mexico City ("D.F." = deh-effeh = "district federal") if I can't find Pilar & Anahí's presents here in Cuernavaca. (Pilar's birthday is on the 5th of January - giving us the progression of Dad, Linda, Pilar in January. She'll be 29. Anahí's birthday is on September 6, so she'll stay 11 for a while yet.)
Talk to you both soon, love Zacha.
Love to Tully and Grandma.
Tuesday 9 January 2007
Letter 1 - Zacha to Keira and Kelly 09/10/07
Hi Keira.
I'd written exactly this last time you wrote to me, before I was pulled out the door to the bus station in Mexico, and my life hasn't slowed down since:
"I think you meant tailors. But I like the image very much. I've eaten far too many types of food to list, mostly because I don't remember all the names. It's very good here.
We're off to see the Cervantino Festival (International Festival of Don Quixote) in half an hour. 8 hours of buses should give me enough time to read. (Buses are the trains of Mexico.) It's in the town of Guanajuato, about which I know nothing. Cuernavaca is built on a hill. Karla and James are both trai"
The story goes as follows: After three weeks in Mexico I took a plane to the UK, visited my godmother and visited Jack. From there I took a plane to Barcelona, and a train north over the border to Montpellier in France, with no idea how to find Agustina. Late that night, having come halfway around the world to search for her, I found her new mobile phone number by accident with a simple internet search. The next day I talked to her on the phone. She had gone back to Spain in June, during the student riots in France, not having been able to find any work there. (Unemployment had been part of the reasons for the previous riots, in 2005.) We talked for half an hour - where she was very impressed with my new Spanish, and when she told me that there is someone else in her life since we last saw each other in February. I went straight back to my godmother's place in the UK to be miserable for a week.
I talked to James and Karla over the internet, and decided to use my frequent fliers to go back to Mexico, and hang out in a latin country for a couple months. Which I really needed. Waiting for my flight to come around, I finished the last of my uni assignments. So I've finally finished Uni, which I found out via the net two weeks later. But this story has a big meanwhile..
Meanwhile, all the way through Europe and after my sad adventure in Montpellier, I'd been corresponding with a friend of Karla (James Pearce's wife) in Mexico, who I'd met while I was there. Pilar Angón. We both lost a lot of sleep using MSN, and after I came back to Cuernavaca from a weekend in Miami (my Dad flew me there to meet him, and the Rabbi who did my Bamitzvah a few days after I landed in Mexico City) we started going out. She's very cool, is 29, writes stories, is an anthropologist, knows capoiera, dances brilliantly and has an 11-year old daughter called Anahí who also writes stories. The first day we met, in October, she told me that she wrote stories..
"My daughter also writes stories." she said.
"Are they good?" I asked, in Spanish.
"Yes." she said, and grinned really broadly "But, I'm her mother." And her grin happily said otherwise, and that it didn't matter how much she was prejudiced in her favour - her daughter still wrote really well. Which is true. I'm trying to translate one of her stories for you called Testén. (Especially for Kelly, who'll love it.)
Since then, I've been shuttled from one family event to the next. The lead up to christmas is really big here, then christmas is really big, then new year's is really big and you go stay with family in another city for a week and a half, then Pilar's birthday was the 5th, then Epiphany on the 6th (Los Reyes - "the (3) kings") is the day that the children get their presents like in Italy. So, it's the 9th and I have some time again.
...
So, for the moment I'm here in Mexico.
love to you both (Kelly's been copied into this letter), and please tell Anna, if I'm not to late, that I'm sorry I'm not at her 30thy, because I'll be in Mexico and the buses here are crap after 9.
Talk to you soon, love Zacha.
I'd written exactly this last time you wrote to me, before I was pulled out the door to the bus station in Mexico, and my life hasn't slowed down since:
"I think you meant tailors. But I like the image very much. I've eaten far too many types of food to list, mostly because I don't remember all the names. It's very good here.
We're off to see the Cervantino Festival (International Festival of Don Quixote) in half an hour. 8 hours of buses should give me enough time to read. (Buses are the trains of Mexico.) It's in the town of Guanajuato, about which I know nothing. Cuernavaca is built on a hill. Karla and James are both trai"
The story goes as follows: After three weeks in Mexico I took a plane to the UK, visited my godmother and visited Jack. From there I took a plane to Barcelona, and a train north over the border to Montpellier in France, with no idea how to find Agustina. Late that night, having come halfway around the world to search for her, I found her new mobile phone number by accident with a simple internet search. The next day I talked to her on the phone. She had gone back to Spain in June, during the student riots in France, not having been able to find any work there. (Unemployment had been part of the reasons for the previous riots, in 2005.) We talked for half an hour - where she was very impressed with my new Spanish, and when she told me that there is someone else in her life since we last saw each other in February. I went straight back to my godmother's place in the UK to be miserable for a week.
I talked to James and Karla over the internet, and decided to use my frequent fliers to go back to Mexico, and hang out in a latin country for a couple months. Which I really needed. Waiting for my flight to come around, I finished the last of my uni assignments. So I've finally finished Uni, which I found out via the net two weeks later. But this story has a big meanwhile..
Meanwhile, all the way through Europe and after my sad adventure in Montpellier, I'd been corresponding with a friend of Karla (James Pearce's wife) in Mexico, who I'd met while I was there. Pilar Angón. We both lost a lot of sleep using MSN, and after I came back to Cuernavaca from a weekend in Miami (my Dad flew me there to meet him, and the Rabbi who did my Bamitzvah a few days after I landed in Mexico City) we started going out. She's very cool, is 29, writes stories, is an anthropologist, knows capoiera, dances brilliantly and has an 11-year old daughter called Anahí who also writes stories. The first day we met, in October, she told me that she wrote stories..
"My daughter also writes stories." she said.
"Are they good?" I asked, in Spanish.
"Yes." she said, and grinned really broadly "But, I'm her mother." And her grin happily said otherwise, and that it didn't matter how much she was prejudiced in her favour - her daughter still wrote really well. Which is true. I'm trying to translate one of her stories for you called Testén. (Especially for Kelly, who'll love it.)
Since then, I've been shuttled from one family event to the next. The lead up to christmas is really big here, then christmas is really big, then new year's is really big and you go stay with family in another city for a week and a half, then Pilar's birthday was the 5th, then Epiphany on the 6th (Los Reyes - "the (3) kings") is the day that the children get their presents like in Italy. So, it's the 9th and I have some time again.
...
So, for the moment I'm here in Mexico.
love to you both (Kelly's been copied into this letter), and please tell Anna, if I'm not to late, that I'm sorry I'm not at her 30thy, because I'll be in Mexico and the buses here are crap after 9.
Talk to you soon, love Zacha.
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