Strangeness

One of the great things about living in a different country is that all manners of things happen that are very different from home and they would probably seem normal to people here, but are very strange to me.

For example:

Recently I went with some of the Spanish and English teachers out for Karaoke (safe in the promise that I did not have to sing). What was strange about Karaoke here is that it was not one person singing and everyone else making fun of them like at home. Instead the song lyrics were scrolling across a TV screen and everyone (except us three foreigners) was singing along heartily fueled no doubt by cerveza and tequila. Had I known the melodies and had I more energy, I would have actually sung as everyone was singing badly and no one would have even been able to pick my voice out.

While checking out new apartments (more on that below), a clean cut young man in board shorts (rare here outside of my apartment) stopped the landlady and they began an involved discussion about the outside wall of the potential suite. Since the wall was covered in graffiti, and they were talking about painting over it (as far as I could tell), I thought the young man was going to repaint the exterior. As we were leaving, he took out about six colours of spraypaint and proceeded to paint his own new design over all the others. (When I get around to taking a picture of the wall, I will repost this.)

One of the odd things about Mexico is seeing shops that are new businesses that have opened, but haven't received any of the products they are going to sell. The business is open and the employee is faithfully sitting in the desk surrounded by walls with bare shelves. Occasionally they have a small fridge with soft drinks and that is all they have to offer even though the business is meant to sell cel phones or shoes or whatnot else. Yet they are open anyway. When I asked someone why a shop would open with nothing to sell, he looked at me in surprise. Apparently it is self-evident why the shop would open.

A recent strange experience took place yesterday as I walked past the airport in Col. Teran (an area next to where I live). Looking out over the airstrip, I realized that it is the airport I first spotted on Google Earth when I checked out Tuxtla Gutierrez for the first time. It was strange to look at a real life example of something I only saw as a virtual image before (though at the time I knew it was real). This is not unlike the weird feeling I had when I first located my home in Cairo on Google Earth and could identify individual trees that I remember on the Ramses College property.

It turns out that Tuxtla, a relatively obscure state capital, actually has three airports, more than any other city in Mexico.


* By the way, I have not posted much as I am spending almost all of my spare time searching for a new place to live. My beautiful apartment with its lovely pool not only has very high rent, but we found out after a month or two that it has absurdly high costs for pool maintenance, security, water, electricty, gas and other services. Perhaps I will blog about the excitement of trying to find a decent place to live in a language that I am not exactly proficient in yet.

Things I Have Learned in Chiapas

These are some of the things I have learned about living here.

1. All definite plans are tentative (unless it's a deadline I am facing).
2. Start times are similarly indefinite.
3. Read the label of food you are buying.*
4. If it can be put into a blender it can be turned into a refreshing drink.**
5. If edible, it comes with tortillas (even soup).
6. Similarly, if edible, it can be served with chiles (even popsicles).
7. If a vehicle can go faster, it will.***

* I thought I was buying marinated vegetables at Exporganicos. It turned out that I bought pickled quail eggs with vegetables (they looked like mushrooms). All's well that ends well. They were quite delicious even if it was weird to think that I was eating eggs from the strangest birds in the Blenkinsop Valley.
** See previous post about strange beverages: Strange Things I Have Eaten III
*** You would rather not know the details of this revelation (or series thereof).

Exporgánicos

As you may be aware, I have a slight interest in food, particularly Mexican food. Exporgánicos took place in Tuxtla this weekend. As you may guess from the title, it was an exposition of organic products (or non traditional products as the official name went). Thirty states in Mexico were represented. Some examples of products are coffee, cheese, quail eggs, produce, venison, sweets, liqueurs and much more. Of course, I tried samples of almost everything. Having purchased tens of thousands of dollars of food in Latin countries when I worked on the SALTS boats, my vocabulary for food is the most developed, so I was able to understand most of what was going on around me. Although I did use my (lack of ) Spanish as an excuse to get out of a few sales pitches.



Note that the 'dried flowers' are actually dried fruit arranged as flowers. Some people have too much time on their hands.

Strange Things I Have Eaten So Far IV

This time I didn't eat something strange because I was trying to be polite or because eating it would be so strange I'd have to try it. I tried barbecued cactus because it was offered in a restaurant owned by some people from the school. They said I had to try it and that was all the encouragement I needed. The dish is a combination of barbecued nopal (cactus), queso panela (a kind of cheese), carne asada (BBQed beef), jalapeño and cebollas fritas (fried onions). To say that this dish is delicious would be a profound understatement. The taste of the cactus is the perfect complement to the cheese and the beef. They are improved further by roasted jalapeño, fried onions and their own salsa habanera (which is easily the spiciest thing I have eaten outside of Thailand). Of course, all of this goes on hot corn tortillas. By the way, this is a traditional dish found in the state of Aguascalientes. When I eventually come home, I may have to have fresh nopal airlifted into Victoria.

In other news, tomorrow I am going to an expo of foods from thirty different states in Mexico. Tomorrow I will probably be 30 pounds heavier, a few hundred pesos poorer, but very happy. I will keep you posted

Nietzsche Family Circus!

OK, I realize that I am departing from my normal (as much as the word can ever be applied to something I do) routine of writing about life in Chiapas. However I live here and this is something I experienced here. Anyway, it is my blog so I have made up my mind.

I have found a website through Digg.com (http://www.digg.com/view/all) that combines Nietzsche quotes randomly with Family Circus cartoons and the result is unbelieveable. The odd combination of the normally banal Family Circus cartoons with Nietzsche's profound writings is both shocking and ironic, not to mention highly entertaining.

Here is a link to the website if you want to randomly create your own. Don't forget to go to bed tonight! The link: http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/

Enjoy!

Mystery solved!

One of the joys of living in another country is finding things out the hard way. For example - shoelaces. First of all to know where to find shoelaces, you should first look up the word in a dictionary. But of course you didn't think of that before you left home and now you have to make an idiot of yourself by pointing to shoelaces in a shoe store and asking "What is this?" Then when you have acquired the word (agujetas - pronounced a - goo KHET us), you need to ask them if they sell agujetas. Of course they don't because if they did you would wake up to the alarm clock or you would be back at home and thus not having a riveting, multicultural adventure. In fact after a few weeks, you begin to think that no one in this city of one million people seems to sell agujetas. When you point out that seeing as everyone wears shoes, it seems logical that shoelaces would be sold somewhere the employees in the shoe stores smile sympathetically and wonder how many hours until they get to go home. Eventually you find out that shoelaces are sold in "Centro" (downtown). Now in case you think that means in a shoe store down, you would be sorely mistaken. In fact if you ask for shoelaces in a shoe store downtown, they will look at you as if you have asked for muffin cups or enriched uranium. They will politely point you in the general direction of agujetas and when you continue to not find them, you will begin to suspect that the entire city is in on the conspiracy to prevent the Canadian from purchasing agujetas. The idea that an article appeared in the paper about the extrajero (foreigner) who has spent three weeks looking for agujetas and still hasn't found them starts to seem reasonable after circling a few blocks in centro looking for them. In one store that sold string and related items (except of course, agujetas), I had the impression I was close as the lady told me they were just outside the door of the shop. Although suspecting the grand agujetas conspiracy once again, I tried to look convinced and walked out to see a veritable WALL OF SHOELACES! A street vendor happened to be selling belts and agujetas and I think that the look of joy on my face at so many kinds of the much sought after item probably called to mind pilgrims finally reaching Mecca after a harrowing journey. No doubt he wrote off my eccentric behaviour as that of a typical foreigner. Perhaps one who comes from a country lacking shoelaces, I will never know. Well, the mystery is solved and I must be off as I am now looking for enriched uranium. (enriched with 22 vitamins and minerals)

¡Muy Delicioso!

Try this. Go out and buy corn tortillas. Cut them into rectangular strips. Fry them in corn oil until they are crispy, but be careful not to let them get too dark. Drain the the chips on paper. Do not just buy tortilla chips. If you do, I will hunt you down and . . . (I'll leave the rest to your imagination).

Make guacamole. Here is the best recipe I know. It is not a Chiapanecan recipe, as the following recipe is much better than any guacamole I have had here in Chiapas.

2 large ripe avocados
1 large tomato
3-4 tbsp. onion diced very small
1 serrano chile chopped fine (if you dare)
1-2 garlic cloves chopped very fine *
2 tbsp. olive oil
2-3 tsp. fresh lime juice
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
salt

Peel and mash avocados, but keep the pit. Add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and salt to taste. Serve immediately. (Put the pit in the guacamole to keep it from turning brown.)

* The garlic is my own addition to an otherwise authentic Mexican recipe. I strongly believe it improves the taste of the guacamole. Perhaps they use garlic somewhere in Mexico, so maybe it is still authentic.

Tutoring

For those of (the three of) you that don't know, I have begun to tutor four students after school. I work with them on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for an hour. It is a combination of ESL and helping the kids with their homework (I am required to give homework). We do a combination of fun, language-intensive games and some exercises that would resemble work if I didn't give away stickers and such. I will also start to tutor four other children two days a week. In case you think I am going to burn myself out (as I did) by doing too much, I actually find the tutoring to be very rewarding because I am not required to teach the school's curriculum. I can teach what I want in the way that I want to. I find that I look forward to tutoring, even after a day of teaching.

¡Los Niños!

Some of you have been asking me in emails about the kids I wrote about that were not going to school because they could not afford to. Shelly and Heather had more than enough donations to pay for their schooling, their uniforms and supplies. There are many more details (than I have time to write about) on Shelly's new blog specifically about the kids. Here is a link to it and I will add a link to this blog on my homepage as well.

http://bellasninos.blogspot.com/

Stay tuned. If there are other needs or other children who cannot afford to go to school, we would like to help them.

In other news, I am starting to work on translating my science shows into Spanish. When I am ready to do the shows completely in Spanish, I will go to some of the orphanages around here. I have heard that some are very poorly funded. If you want to help them out, I will let you know how you can do that.

Technical difficulties are over!

As you may know, my blog was wiped out by a well meaning helper. We thought all was lost until I got an email from an intrepid staffer at Eblogger who goes by the unlikely name of "Danish". I suspect that Danish works in a cubicle somewhere and this moniker is a nickname representing his or her favorite food item. In honor of Danish's brave rescue of my blog, I encourage all of you (that is all three of you) to go out to a local restaurant and order a danish. I will too, but I doubt I will see one on the menu anytime soon.


In other news I have been working like mad this week to mark all the exams and prepare all the marks for our MONTHLY exam period and report cards. Oh and I have been sick with the nastiest head cold ever. Of course I continue to work, tutor and to study Spanish.

In other, other news I will be adding photos to my flickr page as well since it is now October.