lunch a la universidad. lunch is fairly good (well, sometimes) at the university, although my roomie won´t eat here. i go into the cafeteria (small orange and yellow circular building with probably twenty tables, differnt sizes, wooden, clean, fairly empty when i usually arrive) and order whatever the lunch specail is for the day. i almost always am surprised by what i get. i know the main words for types of food, but the variations throw me. today i had what were essentially taquitos, some sort of green soup, noodles with an almost parmesean sauce, tortillas on the side and fresh watermellon juice. 23 pesos. 2.3o u.s. dollars. great price, not bad taste, although green soups disturb me. something about a soup that looks like algae.

i sit with los profesores, today only one, and wait to see how long it takes for them to get tired of talking to me. it normally takes about 5 minutes but the adventurous will continue to try througut the meal. i have met everyone, but all at the same time in the span of oh, about 20 minues, so there are thirty or forty names which completely escape me. that, as you might guess, is the least of my worries. so they prod me with questions: where am i from, why am i here, where have i lived, when have i been to mexico, aren´t i hot. if it only takes the person two or three times repeating the same question before i get it, i feel great. everyone now and then the interlocutor will simply look at another profesor with a smile and a shrug and in my mind i hear the bell for the next round. i turn to the next contestant and ask my own question, which normally comes out jumbled.

a point of clarification here. when i jumble words it sounds silly. when a native jumbles whole sentences, it is supposed to be normal communication. it is like ventriliquism in a way, sometimes the speaker does not ever seem to open his mouth (i use the masculine pronoun because there are only a few female profesores, and they do not sit with us).

the men can be jocular and use many hand jestures and strange noises to get their points across. exactly. my kind of communicators. it´s like they know perfectly what i need. you are talking about how big something is compared to something else? sure, move your hands around and mimic something else. talking about the past? hell ya, point over your shoulder to really get the point of the preterite tense home to my sensitive anglo ears. i love it. eventually, however, they tire of repeating themselves as a group and move into what must be conversation but sounds like a tape recorder stuck at scan forward.

and then, silence. once a person finishes eating, he sits there and looks around. ten minutes later, the whole table is fairly silent (we all order separately so the food is staggered when it comes out of the cocina). right again. time for me strike. i jump in with a few questions about the weather around here or something like that, and suddenly, lunch is over. they are all very nice about it, but i can tell that the bout is over. i have not won their respect but i have extracted some amount of patience out of them. i feel strange because i have sat there with a smile on my face for about 30 minutes. were they laughing at me? who cares! how would i know?

i dread lunch a little bit because most prof´s leave campus to eat. i don´t feel like spending more money on a bus back into town to spend more on food, so i stay put. today a few of my standby contestants bailed out and sat at a table of six made into eight. feeling snubbed that they seemed to have purposely made it so that i could not squeeze in at all? no way, i found the odd man out and harassed him for awhile.

lunch is an adventure. then again, so is going to the main offices to get more water (as i say this i have not been really sick yet, please please please don´t let this jinx me).

¿mi officina? ¿el centro de idiomas? ya, i am the only one in it. well, the computer people have the office next to me, but they bought an a.c. unit and so keep their door shut. i leave my door open yet have had no visitors. my boss works 30 miles away along with the other english speakers. here i sit in a brand new campus less than three years old. everything is just constructed or under construction (they are digging a well because my building has baños but no agua), and sort of empty in way. or maybe it is just my building. i will try to bring my camera next week and take some picks for you to see this place. nearly surrounded by green, lush mountains that no one at this school ever goes into for fear the critters living there. but, they grow coffee up there somewhere, so i hope to go in the next month or so.