It was an unforgettable experience on which I promise to report as soon as I've had time to transcribe some notes and choose a few telling photos. Please stay tuned...
Showing posts with label Veracruz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Veracruz. Show all posts
Monday, November 2, 2009
Veracruz - Mon. 11/2 '09
For those of you following my adventures here in Veracruz, I'm sorry to have been out of touch for the past few days. I took off on my own to a lovely little town about four hours north of here known for two things: its more than 2oo shoe shops—most of them owned by the cobblers who make the shoes—and its treasured traditions for celebrating Day of the Dead.
It was an unforgettable experience on which I promise to report as soon as I've had time to transcribe some notes and choose a few telling photos. Please stay tuned...
It was an unforgettable experience on which I promise to report as soon as I've had time to transcribe some notes and choose a few telling photos. Please stay tuned...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Veracruz - Wed., 10/28 '09
It's late. I've just gotten back from a very pleasant night with a few of my compadres, so I'll try to make today's post a quick one. (We'll see...)
As my classes— and especially my informal conversations with my teachers, charlantes and fellow students— continue, I'm getting flashes of the realization that I'm well on my way to my goal of becoming fluent (whatever that means) in Spanish.
For this morning's outing after class teacher/charlante Margot (I have to remember that here it's pronounced Mar-goat') took a couple of us once again to the central historic district. We climbed up into the Baluarte Santiago, which we've driven by nearly every day. There are historical exhibits inside, but we decided it wasn't worth the admission price and opted to just walk around the perimiter and see the dozen or so cannon poking through the parapet. As we passed a non-descript doorway we noticed a couple of young men inside working on a Day of the Dead altar. Margot struck up a conversation and the next thing we knew, we were inside the little room getting a very generous description from one of the young men of some of the traditions of this intriguing holiday.
Our next stop was the IBEC, a college-level school of the arts. The place was alive with students dancing here, singing there, strumming guitars in the hallways and, in the distance someone was playing the piano, the music seeming to create its own space . We were invited into one room full of music students learning the basics of rhythm, clapping and stomping their feet to the direction of their maestra. There was a small art gallery with some very nice work. We also ran into a man whom Margot introduced as the teacher of the classes in Afro-Carribean dance she takes there three evenings a week.
We ventured out into the school's inviting central courtyard, filled with lush vegitation, a fountain and echos of all the sounds I've described. In one corner was a table with three
indigenous women preparing the traditional ceremonial tamales for the school's Day of the Dead altar. They explained what they were doing and its significance. The tamales were huge, with the corn masa (dough) spread over several broad leaves (not the usual platano leaf, but one from a plant they could only describe in their main 
language, Náhuatl). When it came time to add the chicken— usually sprinkled rather sparcely in a tamale— , they reached in, with bare hands, to a large metal pot and placed whole- chicken- sized piles of the pieces onto each bed of masa, along with the thick dark red sauce in which it had been cooked. I was especially enamored of the lovely face of one of the middle-aged women, whose generous smile and gentle manners made us feel like family.
Afternoon class and after-class time were pretty uneventful, but tonight six of us, including staffer Rebeca, took the bus south for a few miles to Giro's, a restaurant well known for its tacos. They did not disappoint. Of the ten or twelve varieties, I tried the local specialty, tacos al pastor (shepherd's tacos), another style and a little tequila to wash them down. The food was wonderful, the company was great and the staff was very attentive and nice. (It was interesting and timely that the cooks and some of the waiters were wearing surgical masks and each waiter offered his customers a squirt of hand sanitizer before they received their food.)
After dinner, we headed for a hall where there was to be a performance of works by famous Veracruzano composer and pianist Augustín Lara. When we got there, the door was locked and the only people to be seen were a local TV cameraman with big camera and another man. As we tried the door and waited for a while, we struck up a conversation with both men and discovered the latter is a poet. He and I discussed a bit of philosophy (his view of the world and life is a cosmic one in which everything is related and everything exists within everything else—much like my Querétaro painter friend Fernando Garrido's outlook). Finally, the cameraman knocked on the door and the person who answered told us the performance had been postponed until tomorrow night.
Before we left, I asked the poet if he had any of his work on paper that he could share with us. He said no, but, with a little pressure, he recited a poem in which the wisdom of the ages comes down to the poet from the cosmos, enters his head, flows down his arm like golden honey and spills onto the paper as his poetry. It was one of those moments that seldom happen when everything goes the way you'd planned.
A few of us were able to ease the disappointment of missing the concert by buying a sixpack of Modelo and drinking it on the school's outdoor patio, where we had a great conversation (much of it in Spanish, but not all) and learned a bit more about each other. For example, I found out the Mike is a retired therapist and that Laurie once was an Alaskan bush pilot!
I have not done as I said I would; this is too long. But if you've born with me this far, thanks for your interest and patience!
As my classes— and especially my informal conversations with my teachers, charlantes and fellow students— continue, I'm getting flashes of the realization that I'm well on my way to my goal of becoming fluent (whatever that means) in Spanish.For this morning's outing after class teacher/charlante Margot (I have to remember that here it's pronounced Mar-goat') took a couple of us once again to the central historic district. We climbed up into the Baluarte Santiago, which we've driven by nearly every day. There are historical exhibits inside, but we decided it wasn't worth the admission price and opted to just walk around the perimiter and see the dozen or so cannon poking through the parapet. As we passed a non-descript doorway we noticed a couple of young men inside working on a Day of the Dead altar. Margot struck up a conversation and the next thing we knew, we were inside the little room getting a very generous description from one of the young men of some of the traditions of this intriguing holiday.
Our next stop was the IBEC, a college-level school of the arts. The place was alive with students dancing here, singing there, strumming guitars in the hallways and, in the distance someone was playing the piano, the music seeming to create its own space . We were invited into one room full of music students learning the basics of rhythm, clapping and stomping their feet to the direction of their maestra. There was a small art gallery with some very nice work. We also ran into a man whom Margot introduced as the teacher of the classes in Afro-Carribean dance she takes there three evenings a week.We ventured out into the school's inviting central courtyard, filled with lush vegitation, a fountain and echos of all the sounds I've described. In one corner was a table with three
indigenous women preparing the traditional ceremonial tamales for the school's Day of the Dead altar. They explained what they were doing and its significance. The tamales were huge, with the corn masa (dough) spread over several broad leaves (not the usual platano leaf, but one from a plant they could only describe in their main 
language, Náhuatl). When it came time to add the chicken— usually sprinkled rather sparcely in a tamale— , they reached in, with bare hands, to a large metal pot and placed whole- chicken- sized piles of the pieces onto each bed of masa, along with the thick dark red sauce in which it had been cooked. I was especially enamored of the lovely face of one of the middle-aged women, whose generous smile and gentle manners made us feel like family.Afternoon class and after-class time were pretty uneventful, but tonight six of us, including staffer Rebeca, took the bus south for a few miles to Giro's, a restaurant well known for its tacos. They did not disappoint. Of the ten or twelve varieties, I tried the local specialty, tacos al pastor (shepherd's tacos), another style and a little tequila to wash them down. The food was wonderful, the company was great and the staff was very attentive and nice. (It was interesting and timely that the cooks and some of the waiters were wearing surgical masks and each waiter offered his customers a squirt of hand sanitizer before they received their food.)
After dinner, we headed for a hall where there was to be a performance of works by famous Veracruzano composer and pianist Augustín Lara. When we got there, the door was locked and the only people to be seen were a local TV cameraman with big camera and another man. As we tried the door and waited for a while, we struck up a conversation with both men and discovered the latter is a poet. He and I discussed a bit of philosophy (his view of the world and life is a cosmic one in which everything is related and everything exists within everything else—much like my Querétaro painter friend Fernando Garrido's outlook). Finally, the cameraman knocked on the door and the person who answered told us the performance had been postponed until tomorrow night.
Before we left, I asked the poet if he had any of his work on paper that he could share with us. He said no, but, with a little pressure, he recited a poem in which the wisdom of the ages comes down to the poet from the cosmos, enters his head, flows down his arm like golden honey and spills onto the paper as his poetry. It was one of those moments that seldom happen when everything goes the way you'd planned.
A few of us were able to ease the disappointment of missing the concert by buying a sixpack of Modelo and drinking it on the school's outdoor patio, where we had a great conversation (much of it in Spanish, but not all) and learned a bit more about each other. For example, I found out the Mike is a retired therapist and that Laurie once was an Alaskan bush pilot!
I have not done as I said I would; this is too long. But if you've born with me this far, thanks for your interest and patience!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Veracruz-Mon. 10/26 '09
You'll notice that I've been able to add some photos to my Sunday post and a few today. Many thanks to our host, Eric for the use of his cable, which fits my needs just fine. Yeah-h-h!
I was up in time for a simple breakfast of rolls, fruit, coffee and the peach yogurt I'd bought yesterday to help keep my digestive system in shape. We students were joined in the open-roofed courtyard by about the same number of teachers—all young women.
Weekday morning classes begin at 8:15 and run until about 10:00 when the daily "out & about lab" (i.e field trip) heads out. (Actually, it's many field trips since each student chooses his/her area of interest for their stay and the program tries to accommodate them as much as possible. Like everything else at the school, the groups seldom comprise more than two students each, along with a charlante—roughly translated as "someone who chats a lot.") Then lunch, afternoon classes from 1:15 to 3:15 and free time the rest of the day to seek out further help from the charlantes, venture out exploring or just unwind. We students tend to spend a fair bit of late afternoon time in our air-conditioned rooms because they're the only refuge, inside or out, from the cloying heat and humidity.
My one-on-one teacher this morning was Anna, who spent the first half hour or so trying to size up my skills so she could plan what we'd work on. Most helpful of all was just getting to talk with her about the language, her family and whatever else came up.
For the field trip, fellow student Nancy (from Prescott AZ) joined me and charlante Margot for a blue-bus ride downtown to el centro, where we headed for the central market. It's the usual huge building packed with hundreds of puestos, or little booths, selling everything from cheap trinkets to medicinal herbs to cow stomachs. A seasonal touch was the smattering of masks, costumes and decorations for Day of the Dead, starting this weekend. I'd heard that some of the U.S.'s Halloween customs have been infiltrating the centuries-old Dia de los Muertos traditions, and this appeared to be the case here.
After lunch, Nancy and I shared a teacher, Rebeca, for our afternoon class. She did a nice job of finding a middle ground between our respective abilities and injecting fun into the exercises— including barking out very big numbers very fast to see if we could write them on our little 10"x12" dry-marker boards. Nancy did a great job of drawing on her obviously good, but out of practice, skills.
Tonight, having missed a few students who'd already left for dinner by 6:45, I again headed out on my own, hailing a taxi for el centro and the zocalo. On the way I had another of my by- now- expected wonderful chats with the driver— this hombre coaching me, rather surprisingly, on the finer points of departure between marked and unmarked (which he called prosaic) accents.
The zocalo was beginning to hum with its nightly activities. Even an hour after dark, the air was thick and still. People of all stripes were sitting here and there on stone and wrought iron benches. The open-air restaurants' pitch people (mostly attractive young women) started collaring passers-by. And about a dozen musical groups were warming up on side streets just off of the plaza. In some places they were so close together that their competing tones and rhythms clashed raucously.
I picked the restaurant of the Hotel Imperial and enjoyed a seafood-stuffed fish dish and a cheap glass of wine. Between one bite and the next, I experimented with different ways of showing my disinterest in the nearly-unbroken column of vendors and beggars that wove its way among the tables.
I'd have loved to stay later and experience the even- greater array of bands and people that supposedly shows up later some nights. But, wanting to finish this entry and get a better night's sleep than last night's on my jury- rigged bed, I headed home for my cozy, cool room.
I was up in time for a simple breakfast of rolls, fruit, coffee and the peach yogurt I'd bought yesterday to help keep my digestive system in shape. We students were joined in the open-roofed courtyard by about the same number of teachers—all young women.
Weekday morning classes begin at 8:15 and run until about 10:00 when the daily "out & about lab" (i.e field trip) heads out. (Actually, it's many field trips since each student chooses his/her area of interest for their stay and the program tries to accommodate them as much as possible. Like everything else at the school, the groups seldom comprise more than two students each, along with a charlante—roughly translated as "someone who chats a lot.") Then lunch, afternoon classes from 1:15 to 3:15 and free time the rest of the day to seek out further help from the charlantes, venture out exploring or just unwind. We students tend to spend a fair bit of late afternoon time in our air-conditioned rooms because they're the only refuge, inside or out, from the cloying heat and humidity.
My one-on-one teacher this morning was Anna, who spent the first half hour or so trying to size up my skills so she could plan what we'd work on. Most helpful of all was just getting to talk with her about the language, her family and whatever else came up.
For the field trip, fellow student Nancy (from Prescott AZ) joined me and charlante Margot for a blue-bus ride downtown to el centro, where we headed for the central market. It's the usual huge building packed with hundreds of puestos, or little booths, selling everything from cheap trinkets to medicinal herbs to cow stomachs. A seasonal touch was the smattering of masks, costumes and decorations for Day of the Dead, starting this weekend. I'd heard that some of the U.S.'s Halloween customs have been infiltrating the centuries-old Dia de los Muertos traditions, and this appeared to be the case here.
After lunch, Nancy and I shared a teacher, Rebeca, for our afternoon class. She did a nice job of finding a middle ground between our respective abilities and injecting fun into the exercises— including barking out very big numbers very fast to see if we could write them on our little 10"x12" dry-marker boards. Nancy did a great job of drawing on her obviously good, but out of practice, skills.Tonight, having missed a few students who'd already left for dinner by 6:45, I again headed out on my own, hailing a taxi for el centro and the zocalo. On the way I had another of my by- now- expected wonderful chats with the driver— this hombre coaching me, rather surprisingly, on the finer points of departure between marked and unmarked (which he called prosaic) accents.
The zocalo was beginning to hum with its nightly activities. Even an hour after dark, the air was thick and still. People of all stripes were sitting here and there on stone and wrought iron benches. The open-air restaurants' pitch people (mostly attractive young women) started collaring passers-by. And about a dozen musical groups were warming up on side streets just off of the plaza. In some places they were so close together that their competing tones and rhythms clashed raucously.
I picked the restaurant of the Hotel Imperial and enjoyed a seafood-stuffed fish dish and a cheap glass of wine. Between one bite and the next, I experimented with different ways of showing my disinterest in the nearly-unbroken column of vendors and beggars that wove its way among the tables.
I'd have loved to stay later and experience the even- greater array of bands and people that supposedly shows up later some nights. But, wanting to finish this entry and get a better night's sleep than last night's on my jury- rigged bed, I headed home for my cozy, cool room.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Veracruz-Sat. 10/24 '09
NOTE: The one thing I seem to have forgotten to pack is the little cord which allows me to download my photos from camera to computer. Unless I can find one that fits my camera, I guess I'll just have to make my writing that much more descriptive. I hope you get the picture!
After an uneventful trip via Houston in planes with only three rows of seats and too small for me to stand up in, we landed at about midnight through staccato lightning and one of the heavy downpours Mexicans call chubascos. I was met at the plane's exit door with a warm washcloth of sultry, southern-Gulf air, and dodged the continuing rain as I found my way to Customs & Immigration. Luck was with me as I got the green light (literally) from the Mexican "every nth person" baggage inspection lottery.
Linda and Eric Ladner -- owners of the Language Immersion School of Veracruz -- were there to meet me, as promised, with a little 3x5 card saying Jeff. We hailed a cab and got to know each other a little during the half-hour ride to the school, where I, along with the other eight or so students here this weekend, would have my room and two meals a day for the next two weeks.
We pulled up to an inconspicuous, completely unmarked building on a side street about half a block from the malecon along the Gulf of Mexico. My hosts gave me a quick tour of the spacious facility and then showed me to my room overlooking an alley. The room is simple, but big enough, apparently, to accommodate three students if necessary—in one single and one bunk bed. There's a small couch, a bureau, a table and an ample bathroom with shower. And thank God it's air conditioned!
As I've found so many places in Mexico, my bed is about four inches too short for a six-footer. So once more I engineered an extension using one of the drawers from my bureau and the pillows from the bunk beds. I was glad to learn that daylight savings time ends here tonight, so I'd have an unexpected extra hour of sleep. And, after the confused, mournful cries of the drunk staggering in the street outside subsided, I conked out.
After an uneventful trip via Houston in planes with only three rows of seats and too small for me to stand up in, we landed at about midnight through staccato lightning and one of the heavy downpours Mexicans call chubascos. I was met at the plane's exit door with a warm washcloth of sultry, southern-Gulf air, and dodged the continuing rain as I found my way to Customs & Immigration. Luck was with me as I got the green light (literally) from the Mexican "every nth person" baggage inspection lottery.
Linda and Eric Ladner -- owners of the Language Immersion School of Veracruz -- were there to meet me, as promised, with a little 3x5 card saying Jeff. We hailed a cab and got to know each other a little during the half-hour ride to the school, where I, along with the other eight or so students here this weekend, would have my room and two meals a day for the next two weeks.
We pulled up to an inconspicuous, completely unmarked building on a side street about half a block from the malecon along the Gulf of Mexico. My hosts gave me a quick tour of the spacious facility and then showed me to my room overlooking an alley. The room is simple, but big enough, apparently, to accommodate three students if necessary—in one single and one bunk bed. There's a small couch, a bureau, a table and an ample bathroom with shower. And thank God it's air conditioned!
As I've found so many places in Mexico, my bed is about four inches too short for a six-footer. So once more I engineered an extension using one of the drawers from my bureau and the pillows from the bunk beds. I was glad to learn that daylight savings time ends here tonight, so I'd have an unexpected extra hour of sleep. And, after the confused, mournful cries of the drunk staggering in the street outside subsided, I conked out.
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