On superficiality

I still really miss home (and it's a sort of amalgam of places that have been home to me, NY, LA, Boston) and while I am very glad to be here and my work is going well, there is a base longing that's hard to articulate. This is the longest I've been out of the country and on my own and I don't think that it's just that, it's also something about the things that I love about my "real life" that I don't have here which I think is more than just being in a foriegn country and instead about the specific place where I am (in the sense that I doubt I would have these exact longings living in Mexico City). But when I try to describe those longings, they are on the whole very superficial.

It's not that I don't miss my friends and my constructed families, I do intensely, but the joys of an internet phone mean that I can call them daily (or multiple times daily) for frivolous matters without having to think about it (the inability to send them snarky texts is unfortunate though). And I really miss my neighborhoods, in Brooklyn, Venice and Somerville which had a comfortable familiarity I haven't matched here (I snort at the people who tell me there's no community in the US like here). But on a base level when I enumerate what I miss, it's the things that are on the one hand entirely superficial: shopping and food.

I have Americans movies here and there's wonderful live music opportunities that I rarely take advantage of and it's not like this place is not a mecca for both food and shopping, it's just a bit one note after a while (which was another wonderful thing about being in Mexico City, the visual heterogeneity of people, class not so much, where I didn't feel like I stood out as an obvious outsider). So when people ask what I miss I answer, takeout chinese food (the one "really good" chinese restaurant that required L and I to ford a dry river to find it was abysmal), Indian food, baking (I can't figure out what the 1,2,3,4,5 dials correspond to in terms of temperature on my oven, nor have I found baking powder yet), shopping for clothes (because of the physical homogeneity of people here stuff just isn't cut big enough in the chest for me) and things to brighten my apt (I have great craft stuff, but it's not the same)-- all of the frivolous trappings of a particularly bougie life that I've crafted for myself. And then there's books, and I did bring some, but it's the access to new and varied ones that I miss.

But I want to think that these are more than just superficial things, that they are perhaps more the outward practices of building a life in a cosmopolitian city that are really different from those in a foreign provincial city. I mean, when I hang out with "the ladies" in some ways what we do illustrates those differences, we have dinner parties, rooftop cocktails and brunch-- familiar categories of activities. And, it's never been a secret to myself that I am someone who loves routine and nesting in familiar patterns, which is ironic given the demands of my profession (and it's not that I don't also love adventures, just contained and with home to come back to).

I'm still masticating on this and think that I could also just be being self-indulgent and when it comes down to it, what I really really really miss is water. This is the first time I've lived this far away from an ocean and even though after my accident I haven't been swimming very much, at least in NY I watched the river everyday as I went over it by subway and beach trips were an easy indulgence not requiring an overnight bus and someone to accompany me.

And, on a completely non-superficial yay me note, I just finished my first fieldnote book!!! I have several bigger notebooks that I leave at home and take notes in as I think and then also notes I've typed directly into my computer, but this is the little book I carry everywhere when I know that I'll be doing fieldwork and has all my "official" observations in it.

Lazy Lazy Blogging

In place of actually writing about all of the stuff percolating in my brain, here are random pictures from a wedding I went to last weekend (including picture #56 billion of folding chairs).

Things I have learned today

well, one is that I have been very lax in writing up my doings (which I mean to rectify, although I have been to Mexico City and then had a friend visiting lately). The more interesting ones are the ways that the whole city changes during Guelagetza season (currently ongoing) in ways that make me even more hermit-like.

The Guelagetza started today (the very very very thumbnail version is that it was originally a Zapotec festival, sort of, in which communities came together to exchange stuff that has morphed into a huge corporate event in which communities from every region are invited to present dances in this major amphitheater making it the major tourist, and economic, event of the season) and L and I decided to take our usual stair climb to see if we could see anything from up above. The stairs were seriously mobbed (although there was a traffic cop which was a welcome change) as were the areas all around the theater with puestos selling food, cheap plastic goods and pirated entertainment. But, this was also one time that it was good to be a busty guera as the state cops waved us into a second (no metal detectors for us!) where we could see the stage (or I could since I have inches on L). Unfortunately it was as I had expected, very beautiful but repetitive dance and music, so we left after a bit.

The other major thing I learned is that when they shoot off "american" fireworks (ie ones that you can see as well as hear), everything stops. They really sound different from the usual ones that go off with annoying ubiquity and we piled out into the street with our neighbors (we had perfect viewing spots). People came out of their cars as there was no where to go since people thronged to the intersection at the bottom of our street to watch. It was quite magical and made me happy that I haven't entirely missed fireworks as they lasted for probably 20 minutes-half an hour.

Meanwhile, until I make the time to write about my adventures wandering around Mexico City by myself (I can't recommend the subway, off peak hours, enough!), here are some pictures from wandering around pueblos during my visit with S.

These are all taken in Mitla (after a 6.5 hour bus ride that got in at 2:30 am) but not much of the ruins there (which are really interesting).





And these are from Teotitlan (on the same day, S is a total trooper!).

Off again

This time to Mexico City for the first time (excited, nervous, intimidated) to hang out with some friends from NY and then pick up a good friend to bring back via bus. I have a bunch of stuff waiting to be written up that I obviously haven't gotten to.

All I can say is that I now have new found empathy and respect for anthropologists who live in places with non-traditionally American kinds of food, as I have learned that Menudo is just not something that I can stomach... or mutton.... or most non-American cuts of meat. I've also learned that I can skate pretty much under the radar by dumping lots of "verduras" (lime, cilantro and cabbage) on top of the menudo and only eating broth and then employing the "tortilla dip" method where in I throw lots of cabbage over whatever meat I don't want to eat and then dip my tortilla in the sauce and eat just the cabbage (taking the rest of the meat home in a plastic bag as expected, unfortunately it would be rude to throw it out).

Is this a good or bad thing?

So apparently L's closest friend in Gelavia, who has been amazingly welcoming to me as well, has picked up on my mannerism of putting my hand to my upper chest when I'm being super sincere and is now imitating it as "my" thing.... is it good or bad when people pay enough attention to me to notice mannerisms? Yay anthropology as putting yourself out there to be made fun off as the foreign freak, ayyyyy!!!!!

post-shopping veggie wash

this is what my kitchen and dish drain looks like after a trip to the market... I plan to make albondigas con salsa verde and gazpacho tonight to eat for the week....

good things

So I've been feeling very glum and exhausted and unmotivated and overall bleah... which I think is largely having hit that place of being here for 3 months already and knowing that I'm not coming home until the end of Oct and really missing being home and missing being able to bake and my friends and and and. So... instead I decided to think about what I will really miss about here. And I'm sure that there are lots of other things, but right now it's that I can buy a big bag of Mexican limes for 10 pesos and I use them in everything (including super yummy humus I made last night)!