Arrival and first week in Parras
31 de Mayo, 2006
I’ve been meaning to write for a while now, but have been constantly distracted by the fact that I’m in a totally different place where everyone speaks a foreign language, and when I’ve tried to write, a number of factors have conspired against me, including computers that blink off with random power failures, an internet connection whose lack of reliability requires me to ask ¨¿el internet esta hacienda?¨ every time before I sit down at a terminal. Plus, of what I have written, for the most part a rambling series of unsynthesized impressions, I haven’t been terrifically pleased with the result.
So here’s where I am at. It´s taken about a week to get oriented and feel my feet really solidly on the ground here in Parras. In terms of a challenge different from what I have faced before, I have got exactly what I wanted. Here’s the way my bus arrival in Parras at the Plaza del Reloj (Clock plaza) went: I was immediately introduced to my host family, who speaks very little English, definitely less than my insignificant Spanish. That night I slept in my new bed in my new house after some (I feel) pretty successful effort to overcome the language barrier — smiling and gesturing a lot, of course, and basically just going for it with whatever Spanish words I could remember. The next day I was showed around Parras which was pretty cool of them, but they were speaking to me constantly. After a while it was really exhausting and even mentally agitating, because it seemed like the more duration I spent trying to decipher Spanish, and spending about 900% more effort than I am accustomed to spending to try to understand each individual word and sentence to understand only about 3.5% of what was actually being said, the more my Spanish ability and frustration tolerance decreased to the point where I must have seemed barely mentally functional. I gave up even uttering one word replies and just resorted to exhausted facial expressions. Less than 24 hours into the experience and I desperately needed to be with other English speakers, so much so that I ventured to see if any of them might be at the large pool at one of the more elevated regions of the town where the hills start, “Estanque de la Luz” (Pool of light), a pool I had been shown by my family but wasn’t sure I could locate.
Estanque de la Luz is beautiful and as large as a football field. I’m not sure it is chlorinated at all, but in any case it feels like you are swimming in lake water. So anyway, after relishing the opportunity to speak English and swim, and getting a little bit sidetracked, I headed off for home around Sunset. Only having about 2 pesos, I got lost, at night, quite hungry, in barrios I didn’t know, in a city of over 30,000, where I didn’t speak the language, and where people seem to be consistently poor at giving directions. It was kind of scary, but I managed, and found my way home after a little over an hour. It ended up being a good challenge to overcome, boost my confidence, and start off my time in Mexico.
The hardest thing for me in the email is to try to describe the town I’m living in. I guess I should have tried harder to describe Parras while it was still totally unexpected and alien to me. It’s traditional and kind-of wild at the same time. As far as tradition, I’ve gotten a good look at that by visiting other students at their homes with their host families. Many of these houses consist of rooms that are accessed by a central tiled courtyard with fruit trees and flowers and caged birds. In many of these traditional homes housecleaners or maids are employed by the families. My family is more modern, living off of the father’s salary as a professional instead of inheritance, which seems to be a main source of income for these older families who are living in their parents´ and grandparents´ houses.
At the same time, the streets are a little crazy sometime with incredibly loud music (sometimes at inconveniently disturbing hours) and Coca-cola, and cars and the like.
Here´s something from my journal of several days ago: I have nothing to say. Speechless. I find the world I am in utterly different from anything which I could have imagined. I am at the Plaza de Ames. It is after 11:30am and music has been blaring from loudspeakers set up on the gazebo for well over an hour, I´m pretty sure. Very small children were dancing to some south of the border hip-hop with some pretty explicit English lyrics. And business is carrying on, extremely loud music with explicit lyrics and all. The music doesn´t really seem to attract much attention even though it can be heard for several blocks. Is this the world pre-iPod? [end journal excerpt]
I´ve gotten really used to the music and like a lot of the popular music I hear blaring all the time though. (But not the Christian Mexican music that woke me up at about 5am some mornings ago, though.)
With the whole music thing I´m just trying to illustrate in some way the craziness, the abundance of noise pollution, even though it´s not fair to call it that.
I´ll write more about other topics, particularly the appropriate tech work we´re starting on, which has really gotten me looking forward to the next 8.5 weeks. I´ll be making a presentation on transportation to some UTC students and Parras community members at some point, in addition to designing and building a solar hot water heater either for the school or a local hotel. You can check out more about what we´re up to by vising the Parras category page at Appropedia, which is a website I helped start.
And my Spanish is coming along. Sure, I’ve got a long, long way to go until I’m fluent, but on a daily basis I’m amazed at how my conversations keep lasting longer, how I am getting more vocabulary and grammar down, and mostly how I positively enjoy speaking Spanish and am talkative with my family and folks at the small school where we have classes. This learning another language thing is a really cool process.
Hasta luego,
Aaron
aaron :: Jun.19.2006 :: México :: No Comments »