Goodbyes

Tonight is my last night in Mexico. Trying to get everything ready for the move back to the states as well as complete work down here (I spent this last week in the field) has been hectic enough that I've failed to update this blog for a month. Fortunately (or not?), I have a stash of stories yet and will continue to make updates for a while. Who knows -- maybe I'll even change the "Life in Mexico" part of the title and keep writing. We'll see.

This past spring while in Cancun, my friend Jackie asked me what I missed most about the US. My mom was sitting with us and chimed in with "Her dog!" While I miss my puppy wildly (thank you again Mom and Dad for taking care of him!!!), that was not the answer that was springing to my lips. Family and friends, while greatly missed, weren't my top item either. The number one thing I miss the most about the US: flushing toilet paper. It is so nice when it just goes away after you use it instead of letting it collect for a few days and then having to empty the trash. Unfortunately, Mexican plumbing (like that in much of the world) is unprepared to handle flushed paper. I think that flushing some TP might be my first act back in the US, shortly after crossing through Customs and Immigration. I don't care if I don't need to use the facilities; I will simply walk into a stall, rip off a square of toilet paper, and merrily flush it away. It will be good.

In honor of leaving Mexico, I wanted to make a quick list of things I've missed about the US and things that I will miss about my temporary homeland, Mexico. In no particular order:

Missing the US:

1) Flushing TP. Yup... still number one.

2) Friends/family/dog.

3) The freedom of having my own car again.

4) The stars. The light and air pollution here is such that you can't see them in Mexico City.

5) Road berries. My mom gagged when I mentioned this one to her, but it' snot nearly as revolting as it sounds. When I was visiting Michigan in July, I had a wonderful time picking and eating wild raspberries along the side of the road while I walked my dog. There were at least 3 varieties, and they were all delicious.

6) Really good desserts/chocolate. Most of the desserts/chocolate down here are very bland and end up tasting a lot like processed sugar. I have not seen a single fudgy/gooey/caramel-y/decadent dessert down here.

7) Buffalo wings! Watch out Duffs! I'm coming back!

Missing Mexico:

1) Friends down here. They've been great. The people as a whole have made the entire experience worthwhile.

2) Public transportation. It can be scary at times and quirky at others, but it can also be a lot of fun. At the very least, it's pretty empowering knowing that you can competently maneuver around this city on public transit. It's like, "If I can do this, I can handle anything. Bring it!" And then I wave my jazz hands.

3) The food. Oh, tortilla soup, pozole, tacos al pastor, pambazos, elote, esquite, etc, what will I do now that you won't be a food cart away???

4) That amazing sense of (self-indulgent) coolness that comes from living in a foreign country. It's pretty darn cool. This alone is enough to get me past the occasional melt-down day when I just wish everyone down here spoke English. It feels great to do something that feels so different, and to be doing it in a foreign language.

5) My garden. It is scary-easy to grow plants down here, and my lilies, impatiens, ivy, mums, bougainvillea, etc. are absolutely thriving under my diligent neglect. I actually feel like an accomplished gardener!

6) The complete surreality that exists down here. I can round a corner and find myself facing a 6 foot tall bush molded into the form of a duck. Or my bus might stop in the middle of a 5 lane road and all of the passengers have to do a Chinese fire drill and board the bus behind us. Or accidentally finding a tarantula in the wild. Every single day has some hidden gem down here.

7) Looking up on clear days and being surrounded by majestic volcanoes.

While I'm moving back to the US for a new job, I will always have a part of me in Mexico. I've got a conference down here in November, continuing field work in March, and every intention to continue to work with Mexican volcanoes in the future. They certainly haven't seen the last of me here! For now, though, I'm tired and ready to see Keating again. He's been in the US for the last couple of weeks sorting out our new apartment, job hunting, etc. This time tomorrow, I'll be asleep in our new place, catching a few hours rest between my midnight arrival and my 8 am job start. Nothing like cutting it down to the wire, huh? That said, I'm off now to catch a couple of hours of sleep before my early flight.

Hasta pronto.

Notes from the field 2: advising

Dear Future Self,

As promised, I will now remind you of the awesome joys of advising. I know, it hasn't always gone well. There was that time that you kept catching your undergraduate advisee drinking out of a ditch. Or that time when you couldn't take their energy any more and challenged two advisees (including the ditch-drinker) to push the pickup truck down the dirt road and see if they could get above a specific speed. Or how about the time you asked a different undergrad advisee to make a graph that would illustrate results in a data set he had been working on, and he gave up and wrote an ode to dirt instead?

Never fear, Future Shazta! We are learning!

For the record, this advisement activity went well. Your student was bright, motivated, friendly, and enthusiastic. You handled it like a pro when the equipment broke and didn't even curse in front of her too much. Great job! Now, here are a couple of things to keep in your pocket for the future:

1) No matter how wonderful a student is, she will have her breaking point just like anyone else. Done with style, it can be fairly (sadistically) amusing to find this point. Consider it helping her to establish her own boundaries for the future. If she manages to get through pulling 7 ticks off of herself in a 5 minute period with only a minor freak-out, break out the big guns: without batting an eye, translate for her (without lying) that the muddy pond she is about to row onto with you in an inflatable children's raft is actually infested with alligators. The poor girl will be too terrified to bother looking terrified. Watch for all of the blood to instantaneously drain from her face. With any luck, Future Shazta, you will also be offered the use of a larger and sturdier boat that must be driven in by the ranch manager since he's worried you might get eaten in the inflatable. This will sooth the assistant considerably, making you feel like less of a jerk for accidentally terrifying her. I'm just bummed that we didn't get to see any alligators in the end.

2) There is some inherent humor in taking a Mormon field assistant to Mexico. She was wonderfully chill with the tobacco (we were working in a major tobacco producing area that even exports to Cuba) and alcohol ('cause your Mexican colleagues don't think lunch in the field is quite right without a beer). It was the coffee that did her in. Apparently, Mormons can't drink coffee or tea for religious reasons. This only became awkward when we were being hosted by a family whose children we had stolen for the field (more on that another time) and who wanted to show us their hospitality by serving us boiled milk from on of their own cows, mixed with Nescafe. Rule of politeness dictate that we consume whatever our hosts graciously provide, so we settled in on wooden benches to drink our milk-cafe and watch the final minutes of the Mexico-France World Cup game on a 6 inch black and white TV that was the only indication of electricity in the area. I am not a milk drinker since I don't really like the taste and it tends to cause phlegm problems (I know you wanted to hear that!) and I'm not a coffee drinker due to mild caffeine intolerance (I'm assuming the rest of the world doesn't drink coffee because they like the feeling of their heart racing and their stomach churning, but I could be wrong. Is that what it's supposed to do??), but I manned up and drank my mug. I had totally forgotten about the Mormon coffee thing, and while I sincerely doubt that Nescafe can actually be classified as coffee it was causing an issue for my poor, sweet assistant. Whispering through clenched teeth and a smile, she told me that she couldn't do it. Being the awesome person that I am, I casually switched mugs with her and told her to keep sipping out of the now-empty mug in her hand. Two mugs of the stuff later, I felt mildly ill but very proud of myself for watching out for my assistant. Then we got back in the Jeep to drive back down one of the worst dirt roads in Mexico. I am proud to report that I did not actually vomit.

3) Being responsible for an undergraduate field assistant means making sure that they are reasonably safe. Even from those alligators. While it was a bit crowded when we wedged 5 adults into a Jeep Wrangler to travel hideous dirt roads, at least everyone had a seatbelt. My assistant was further stabilized and padded/protected when we stole those two Mexican boys, ages 8 and 10, and managed to fit all 7 of us into the Wrangler. One of them was even sitting on her lap, helping to prevent her from flying up and cracking her head on the ceiling during bad bumps. See? Safety first!

We didn't once have to pull her out of a ditch and explain that the green chunky stuff in the water she was drinking did not count towards her vegetables for the day. Nor did we have to worry about her chasing bears or accidentally destroying 20% of the data set by writing the numbers in the wrong order. These accomplishments may have had more to do with her general awesomeness and less to do with our magical advances in advising skills, but we will take what we can get.

In my next letter to you, Future Shazta, I will remind you of the proper way to kidnap children in the field, eating wild berries, and creative accounting.

Cheers,

Shazta (June 2010)

Wonderful weekend

Sometimes, it doesn't take much to make a weekend wonderful. Such was the case with the weekend when Keating and I finally found cheddar cheese down here. This weekend was similarly low-key but wonderful.

For one of the first times since we moved here in December, I got to go shopping by myself. I'm not much of a shopper, so roughly 95% of my Mexican shopping experiences have been confined to grocery stores... as was this trip. For those of you concerned that I may have lost my mind to be so excited about going grocery shopping alone, let me explain. Keating is wonderful, but we are never more stressed with each other than when we are in a grocery store. You can actually watch Keating twitch just walking past a grocery store. It's amazing! While that should normally be enough for us to happily leave him out of the food shopping, we are stuck. Without a car, we have to carry all of our food for the half-mile hike home. It helps to have two of us along.

Without Keating along, I was able to read moisturizer labels (mine from the states was running out and the store doesn't carry my brand), find a yoga mat, and even pick up some exfoliating body scrub and a replacement lipstick. When I got home I had a wonderful time pampering myself and feeling incredibly indulgent. Spoiling me further, Keating decided to cook dinner so that he could work out a Buffalo Wing Pasta recipe he'd been thinking about. Pampering and Anchor Bar wing sauce? Amazing!

The next day, Keating and I made the long walk to the town's central plaza where we enjoyed amazing Mexican food. If you haven't tried tacos al pastor, you need to find yourself a legit Mexican restaurant. Get a side order of grilled baby onions and guacamole, and finish it off with a cold Victoria beer (Keating) or horchata (me). We wandered the local markets and visited a book store to buy Spanish translations of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Narnia: The Magician's Nephew to help us with our learning. The weekend reached dizzyingly perfect heights when we got to play with 2-month old chihuahua puppies in the plaza. Cuteness overload!

For dinner, we ate candy and read in bed. Come to think of it, Keating had eaten ice cream for breakfast (we were having a power outage and didn't want to see the ice cream go to waste). Isn't that one of the advantages of being a grown up: getting to eat junk when you want to? That, and staying up late.

Anyway, we had a wonderful weekend. (Even though I didn't get to steal one of the puppies.)