Mexico - 2012

Arrived in Guanajuato on a Wed night after flying into Leon. It’s fun watching the difference of the place penetrate the girls’ consciousness. Absence of side walks. Men in straw hats walking on the side of the road. Adobe, crumbling brick, poured concrete. All the houses square or rectangular. Weird and wonderful cactus. Stray dogs. I don’t know what they were expecting – but they’d been pretty blasé until the car ride from Leon.

Our rental house is on a steep hill. It’s a beautifully crafted gringo fantasy of Mexico, with bold, bright colors, elaborate carved furniture, interesting tiles on every possible surface, a vaulted brick ceiling. The only thing I can’t figure out is why Mexicans seem to believe that every tread on a staircase should be a different size. It’s not just the incredibly steep and treacherous walk up to the road (“La Panoramica”) or down to the town (on a narrow twisting alleyway more like the Casbah of Algiers than anything I’ve seen in the new world). Even inside the house one feels the urge to cross oneself going from one floor to another. Since most of the doorways are arched and there are numerous places for me to smash my head, I’m always moving slowly in any case. I worry a little about the kids, however.

Vera had her first day of summer school the day after we arrived. She started crying almost as soon as we entered the courtyard. We assumed it must because no one spoke English or simply that she was scared of being left on her own in a new town. It couldn’t have helped that Eve, Nicole, and I would all be attending the same fancy (by Mexican standards) language school across town.  It turned out, however, that Vera was upset by the pictures of Disney princesses stenciled on to the courtyard wall. She thought we’d brought her to a place “for babies.”

Once that was cleared up, she was fine, and had a great day. Turned out that were two kids from Oregon who were totally bilingual, and her new best friend translated for her when things got hairy.

As far we can tell (and, admittedly, the teachers speak really really fast), the primary educational goal at Vera’s school is to introduce the kids to as many varieties of candy as possible, ideally while watching Disney movies in translation. Ironically, the art activities at the school seemed depressingly  babyish to me, but Vera didn’t seem bothered at all. She proudly presented us with a chicken pre-drawn (or printed) on construction paper upon which she had glued a few pieces of yarn to represent feathers. Another day she brought a tiny clay animal of some kind (again, pre-cast) that she’d painted. Preparation for Harvard, it ain’t, but I guess I shouldn’t be so snobbish.

Eve’s classes are very different. She gets 1 ½ hours of Spanish grammar with other American kids, and 2 hours of art class with a larger group that includes local Mexican kids studying English. Enrollment at the school is way down thanks to American anxiety about the violence in Mexico. There are only two other kids in her grammar class, both boys, both nerdy and chatty and very into boy stuff. Generally they tolerate Eve, but she’s clearly the third wheel. The Mexican kids, according to Eve, are “not friendly,” though this could be because they speak hardly any English (which is generally true of people in Guanajuato – even true of adults in the tourist trade), and Eve is ridiculously hesitant to speak Spanish. She likes her teachers, though, and has done some nice art.

Nicole takes a more or less full day of language classes. Her classes too are small, and she’s enjoying the advantage she gets over the other students from having already learned Italian.

I’m getting tutored once a day for 50 minutes. In general, all we do is talk, which is fine with me. Sometimes, moreover, it’s just my teacher talking in 20 minute bursts with me nodding sympathetically and throwing in the occasional “mm…hmmm,” rather like a sitcom psycho-analyst. In fact, our sessions have a lot in common with therapy, since I hear about personal pain and travails, family conflicts, aspirations blocked and fulfilled,  and I thought more than once that I should probably be charging HER for our sessions rather than vice-versa. On the other hand, my teacher gave me a fascinating and rich glimpse into Mexican life. She has the excruciating honesty of a great story-teller, and she’s often quite funny. And then her life is just plain interesting.

Has my Spanish improved? Who cares?