the ¨true cross¨, veracruz, proved to be quite an interesting place. it is about 7hrs by bus from here, and is located on the gulf coast of mexico in the state of, you guessed it, veracruz. it is a port town, so west coasters, think of a smaller oakland, and east coasters, think of a port around the size of norfolk, or nawfuk, for those in the know. thus, it is pretty dirty because pemex, the nationalized oil industrustry, has large holds here. plus, it is the prinicipal recipient of most imports that come from overseas (is that redundant? i mean, import implies coming from somewhere foreign, and if the city is a port, it comes from the water, so thus it is overseas, right?).

anyway, the bus ride was faster than we anticipitated, so we arrived in the city around 3:45am. sweet. we had only slept a few hours on the bus, which was super comfy but really, how easily can you sleep on a bus? so we found a cheap hotel that miraculously allowed us to only pay for one night since essentially we would be checking out in just over 28 hours. super sweet. we payed less than 100 pesos each for a bed, clean towels and sheets and a location in theheart of downtown. could not be more perfect. thank you lonely planet for your sound advice on where to sleep on the cheap. and, as we have established over and over, i am cheap. the best part is, for the first time in over three months, i had hot water when i took a shower. wow. i thought i could stay in there forever. as old roomates or my sisters will remember, i like to stay in the shower for long periods of time. some claim i may have once, or twice,fallen asleep in the shower at home in virginia. my representatives and i continue to deny such allegations and steadfastly affirm that i merely was resting my eyes.

we slept until about 8:45am, at which time i thought is was 11am, so i woke up my friends, viridiana and the brit, and informed them that their lazy butts were costing us precious time. they rebuked me with venemous words which i shall not include here and concluded by telling me the actual time and that they would be ready when they pleased. women. who really can understand them except other women?

in any event after what seemed like days, they had showered and were ready to explore. we went to the zócolo, which is the main center plaza, or plaza de armas, where the tourists, and thus watch sellers, hang out. we drank coffee and then hit the tourist office. they were quite helpful and gave us maps, which i love, we were on our way. as i like tooting horns, especially my own, my direction finding was stellar the entire weekend. viri nicknamed me the brújula, or compass, because i miraculously found my way around nearly everywhere. nearly.

we went to a fortress that was an island very close to the mainlain, until they filled in the water with dirt and rocks, think financial district downtown s.f., and made a connection. it was almost 500 years and looked. it was used as a prison and stronghold to defend the port town from the french and of course, the usa, twice. it was fun reading the history as they bashed the usa for invading, twice, andpretty much running roughshod over the whole place. the funny part was that there were many mexican tourists giving me funny looks. pics of this place will follow.

after some interesting exchanges with cab drivers, one in particular who offered to take us to our next destination for the, in his opinion, incredibly low price of 400 pesos. and he would be our guide for the afternoon! woohoo. no thanks. i was quite happy though because i actually understood 85% of this negotiation process and he neither slowed down nor used textbook spanish. sweet action.

so we got a cab back to town, headed to the bus station for a second class bus to antigua (the first or second villa established in mexico by the spaniards. 14 pesos each way. 28 round trip. quite a bit less than the roughly 133pesos per person we would have paid mr cabbie who swore his deal was the best in town. did i mention that since we are professors that all ruins, museums, etc are either highly discounted or absolutely free? yahtzee. i just keep winning.

antigua was wild. there is what the people claim is the house of cortéz, the evil spaniard who conquered mexico and enslaved or killed thousands while destroying temples, icons and anythin non-christian in his path. the house is amazing because it is just walls now. there are trees covering the entrance and growing over doorways and windows. it is like the jungle wants to hide what happened. the land is slowly removing traces of the violent and horrible past and the people are accomplices in many ways. i ask people what their opinions of cortéz are, and they say he is bad but have no real emotion tied to it. i think i am more frustrated with the destruction than they are. people the spaniards pro-created and the people adopted christianity, many just accept the history and go on their way. i like that the jungle is erasing, in some ways, the mark of cortéz. something remembers. it could also be seen as a way of accepting the history as well though because as the trees take over the buildings, they are merely covering up what once was, not truly erasing it completely. but the fundamental elements of the building came from the land, so only the design of the structure is foreign. as the roots rip apart the architecture, the pieces return to the soil and the moss welcomes back the stone. the wind and water erode the markings and leave natural colors. in one hundred years the forest could easily consume the site. the place reminds me of a garcía marquez novel, 100 yrs of solitude, because in the end, the dust and wind consume the town and wipe it from the earth. it could happen in la antigua (the ancient).

but then there is banamex, a large mexi bank. they have dedicated themselves to restoring the site. the keeper of the coffers of gold plundered from the native people of mexico, clear descendants of the spanish legacy, want to reestablish the magnificence of the site. i think nature is taking care of that already.

once again, cortéz will win, and the people of mexico will be the ones who carry out the orders and do the brute work.

ok. lots more to say and lots more adventures, but i have to do some work. i will work on pics tomorrow.

and since you are all wondering, yes, i did catch the score of the hokies dismantling of the lowly tarhoos. i like that combination. tarheels, wahoos, tarhoos.

i had a killer time in veracruz this weekend. i will write all about it and show pictures later this week, but i am dead tired right now (we got back to juchitan at 4:45am and back to ole ixtepec after 5:15, so i had about an hour of sleep after a fairly restless night on the bus and i am zoning out).

but i want to share a little story. this country is full of construction. everywhere you look there is a new building going up, while one right beside it is taken over by weeds and the roaming packs of dogs. the same is true on our uni campus. they are constantly building something, even though there are four buildings that as of now have absolutely no use whatsoever. the big thing is making concrete and brick sidewalks. they start a new one every two weeks or so (keep in mind the uni is less than 4 years old so everything is still in progress) and about a month or so later they finish one. that´s right, they start more before they finish one.

so as i have a little experience with concrete, i started chatting with the workers today after my class. in broken conversation i explained i had worked with concrete and we discussed drying times in the usa and here in mex. at some point in the conversation i said something which gave them the impression that i really liked working with concrete. they handed me a sledge hammer.

you see, in their haste, this is a joke really, nothing is done quickly, they forgot to leave an opening for one sidewalk to join another. so they were working with sledge hammer and sometimes a little chisel to wear away the concrete and expose the rebar (they make very neat and tight boxes, no slop in the reinforcement department, and i must say take great care in this part of their work). so as i watched them slowly tear down what they had spent weeks digging by hand, measuring over and over, painstakingly mixing concrete in a barrel and carrying 150 yards, i realized something about this university in general.

no one thinks too far in advance here. teachers get 6 months contracts and then dont know if they will get another one until one month or so before the next semester begins. there is so much pressure to produce that no one really pays attention to where previous funds have been directed. blatantly attempting to create some image of perfection, truly, the campus is immaculate (people spend afternoons picking little tiny weeds from between the tiles in walkways) and spending little time on the maintenance, other than the plants, of its investments, the school spends two months replacing a roof on the bathrooms that they built just two years ago because the tejas (these are the little curved orange colored stone tiles you seen in many houses in florida and of the ¨southwest style,¨ and as someone recently exlpained to me, this is also the origin of the state texas. on a tangent apart: nevada means snowfall; colorado, means redish earth, arizona means arid zone, all coming from spanish words. interesting? maybe not, but i thought so) were shoddy and leaked. then you have the nice bathrooms in my building that have never been used because the building has no water. more to the point, they built this prison of a university in a place with absolutely no water supply. had they done more testing, they could have found a much better spot just a few miles from here....

i could go on nipping at the foibles of the uni, but it is pointless. i imagine that wherever one works there are these kind of problems, but anywhere that makes a professor buy a book for the library because she underlined three words, is ridiculous. my friend accidently highlighted the three words, nervously returned it (where the boy meticulously scans each page) and then was summoned into the warden´s office. though there is not a bookstore for 200kilometers, she was forced to find and purchase a new book. they gave her two weeks. freaks.

anyway, read and feel good about where you work. it could be worse for me, it could be a lot worse for you. this example is why my blog title has not changed. just when you think you can begin expecting more, you glimpse the larger monster hidden behind the blinds in the climate controled cockpit of a flying disaster. yeehaw. enjoy your ride.

now i will acknowledge that i do not know exactly who this nacho person is, but i completely agree. go hokies go. unfortunately, we have a few games to go, so i will not get too excited yet. that and the fact that i never even get to see them play. anyway, i heard that some particularly industrious hokies broke into the stadium at uva and painteda large ¨T¨ next to the V at midfield. i will not attempt to contain my mirth. that is too funny. did anyone paint T´s next to the V´s all along university ave this year as well? probably not. hopefully the hokies showed up in force and once again had a great time in the uva hangouts all over c-ville. i remember 1999 well when vt won and at every bar i went to, it felt like being in blacksburg with a hokie or ten every where i turned.

and all the hoos in hooville turned in for an early night

so, happy turkey day. yes, i am going home in ten minutes to enjoy a grilled cheese, cantelope(how do you spell that?) and maybe something else. not too exciting.

but i will write to you what is exciting. in a negative way. i have been an avid fan of dying my hair. in fact, i have not had a natural hair color without any color, save one occasion in 2000, for over 10 years. wow. i know. this will not become a forum for those who want to recount the three inch roots i would regularly sport, those do not count.

but as most women, and clearly some men, know, dying your hair has interesting benefits. thus, not dying your hair has some equally evil side-effects. for example, i was large unaware of the amount of grey hair produced by my hair folicles (again i cannot spell). looking in the mirror now is a little disheartening. i mean, they are everywhere. top, sides, ok, i don´t know about the back but i have my speculations, all over the place there are these white flags telling me i never should have stopped dying my hair. i should have continued to live in the dream world of blonde hair, or the many other colors i once sported, again, we will not discuss, merely mention, the botched blonde and red highlight fiasco of spring 2004 when my hair ended up being pink. and i had a rather large black beard. yes, i was a teacher at this point as well. out west you can get away with a lot more than you can on the east coast or in the south. a lot more.

so my hair is grey. this does not really make me sad it just makes me wonder how long my hair has been gray. i mean how many years have i been lying to myself? how many more could i have continued doing so is the real question, but again, we will ignore that one.

happy turkey day all! go cowboys! go hokies!

the address thing, totally forgot. i dont recommend using fed-ex, etc. because it is super expensive. i am cheap, so that is something to keep in mind. did i mention after haggling, my hamaca was only 220 pesos. yep, about 20bucks to be reminded of the days at my grandmother´s house when we had a green one with yellow rope that my sisters (i am sure there were others as well) and i would play in. i remember wrapping up in the hammock and then having someone spin me around over and over. kind of like the gravitron only a different kind of spinning. do you remember that cline and big a? how about that funky cave where the gravitron was at the old kings dominion?

ok. addy. William J Davis III (they have no idea about nicknames so just give them the whole thing)
Ciudad Universitaria S/N
Cd. Ixtepec, Oaxaca
C.P. 70110
México

do that and it should be fine. as for making me have to sign for it to receive it, i am not sure how that would work. i truly appreciate any gifts you may want to send me, but i must warn that there is the possibility that it will not arrive or will be tampered with before it does if the regular mail is used. not likely, but possible. just a heads up. i don´t really trust the mail down here. dhl is the worldwide carrier down here, but i am sure it is pricey. if you want to send something that way, i suggest dhl. or the regular mail would be ok too. cline sent me a package and i received it relatively quickly. but, try not to send anything after dec 1st or so because vacation starts the 16th and around the holidays the mail will be uber-slow. sweet.

the good news is that i bought a hamaca this weekend. it is perfect for sleeping, nice and cool. i now wish i had chosen different colors, i went for black and blue because the other combinations were fairly ugly, but really the color does not matter. it is so incredibly comfortable for napping. i have yet to spend an entire night in it, but that will change soon. i am going camping on the beach in afew weeks and the restaurant that is letting us sleep under their make-shift outdoor roof, has plenty of room for hamacas (hammocks if you had not guessed by now). also, it will be quite useful when the weather gets hot again. for now, things have definitely cooled off and i am very very happy about that.

not having hot water to shower with has tempered my good humor about the cooler weather, but i am adapting to the night shower because the water (it is stored on the roof tops down here in huge containers) is still slightly warm from the sun in the daytime.

i have acquired a new respect for anyone who has and who continues to wash their clothes by hand. going the cheap route, i have elected not to send my clothes out (or pimp my clothes out as i like to condescendingly say to my friends) to a washer lady. thus, i have begun the inglorious task of scrubbin the dirt out by hand. as i did not want to once again appear totally helpless (my spanish has really picked up so i can catch the gist of most things now,thus i rarely feel helpless because of my language inadequecies-i also cannot spell-), i only vaguely observed another woman who was washing her clothes in the outdoor sink-washbasin (long, with ridges in it and a drain at one end where the hose for the water is). thus the question, how do you really know your clothes are clean? i then began thinking about washing machines.

what is really going in there when you shut the top? i mean, you have the swisher thing that spins the clothes around, but what else? really, the clothes fill up with half soapy, half sweaty-dirty water and then marinate for a spell. sounds gross, no? true, there is that rinse cycle but that just sucks up whatever dirt was in the water back into the clothes even more. then that spin cycle really gets the dirt deep into the pores of the fabric. as the clothes whip around at 50kmh, i can just imagine the little dirt particles smiles stretching wide, like in the gravitron at kings dominion (or whatever the spinny ride is called at your local fair where the chamber spins around super fast and then floor drops out and you before you throw up, which is a bad description because that vomit ain´t goin nowhere but right back in your face, you think, ¨wow, cool, i am stuck to the wall¨).

so i ask you, ¨are my clothes cleaner than yours?¨ the obvious answer is of course not. why? because i do a half-ass job when i wash my own clothes. but i scrub and use soap and rinse and rinse and rinse again. then, i have a bucket with softener and water and i dip my clothes in there for that oh-so-soft feeling. still sure that my clothes are not as clean as yours?

this is my first softener experience down here. before, i did not use it because the washer at psycho´s house you had to fill with water from a hose, then there was a little plate at the bottom which aggitated the water and spun around(think the little plate in microwaves that turns) the clothes ever so slightly. then, when the cycle ended you had to dip into the visibly dirty water and rinse and rinse your clothes out before hanging them on the line. by that time, i said screw the softener. now that it is all manual, somehow i have come back to softener. donwy. love the malinchistas.

did you think i could spend this much time writing about clothes washing? sadly i could go on, but i will refrain. however, the next time you toss your clothes into the washer and-or drier, think of wilis in the third-world. then shut the top, turn the dial and forget about what goes on in the little tank when the lights go off. everything is better when you cannot see it. it is like eating in a restaurant in the states. normally the kitchen is hidden. often for good reason. the food tastes good right? then stop asking questions. nothing is behind closed doors down here. that is good but often bad. i will let you use your imagination on that one.

did you think i forgot? go hokies go!! what a crushing defeat! blanked at halftime? barely put the game to within 38 points? ok. enough gloating, we have two more games to play- assuming we beat the evil tarheels. then the title game against fsu. then, hopefully a big bowl game. gooooo, hokies go!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Rest in Peace Arrested Development. This is a sad day.

i am not sure how to take the advertisement that i read on my blogger homepage this morning. it tells me that i can begin making money on my blog. really? this seems like the crappy spam that bdutch alluded to in a previous comment. do i truly want to collect cents every time someone views my blog? the answer, sadly, is no. i guess i just dont conform to the usa (formerly known as ¨american¨) dream.

this week has been tedious. i have had to write reports for all of my classes explaining what i have done each week, including activities and such. for those of you who have taught with me before, i am not too big on writing detailed lesson plans. i actually normally come up with ideas for what to do, then test them out. most are bound to fail so i waste little time writing down numerous activities. i actually did create an entire syllabus for my level 5, and that seemed quite productive, but then it has been difficult to follow because really i had no idea what level my students would achieve (they have come slightly under my expectations but it is allgood, i mean really, what did i have to base those expectations on? that´s right, nothing )

so i am sick of typing mindless drivel aimed at helping those who replace me when i leave, or am asked to leave, you know, whichever comes first. did i mention no one has been told whether they have another appointment for february? yep, not even the spanish speaking teachers. also, so glad that my boss did not make any of predecessors do this kind of crap. hey, then i might actually have known what to expect? ok. no more bitching.

when i was in boarding school my advisor, the hilarious frank anderson (who owned one of the largest bumper sticker collections i had seen at that point, including that fantastic ¨i may be fat but you´re ugly, and i can lose weight) in one of our numerous impromptu counseling sessions where i was, what else, complaining about something, told me about a pact he made with his buddies when he was working a shitty job. they each decided not to ever complain about the work again because it was too easy and there were far too many other good things to discuss in the world. i have to remind myself of that story every now and then.

so i am ancy to do some traveling. i might try to get out of here this weekend. maybe head down to chiapas. i think i will again go it alone, like oaxaca. i am a great person to travel with, in my opinion, so why share the wealth? and i am extremely funny.

ok, i will try to write tomorrow, but if not, i hope the hokies do the hokie pokie all over c-ville saturday night. that´s what it´s all about.

front- viridiana, am�rica, rashy-rash, donaji, jorge(canela, which means cinnamon, so we call him canelita, which is little cinnamon!), then two people i dont know. back- sergio(hidden, kind of), me (duh), nieto, paco.  

arash and am�rica (his girlie) and his cake, which was awesome 

bday boy in hat, oscar nieto in stripes 

yes, papa-dough, get your hurricane digs in now. the horrible storm that wrecked blacksburg just may be around later this month when some other boys from virginia head to south florida. be forewarned. thank you letting me know about the trial. i am glad that you can finally relax. i am disappointed that you have to wait until jan 6, but that is the way things go. life seems like a lot waiting sometimes. i guess the key is not to spend any time waiting, to fill all your days with little adventures so that when what you were waiting for finally arrives, you can be happy no matter what the news because you have enjoyed every day up until that one. ok, that is all the dr. phil i have in me this morning.

because today is friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

woohoooooooo. the weekend. i move on sunday, exciting, exciting. my friend arash´s birthday is today (he is another eng prof) and his fiancé planned a surprise party for him. then she told him about it. so all the profs were trying to be super stealth about it and then yesterday he asked me if i was coming to dinner tonight at his house. doh.

i have been here for just over 11 weeks. wow. life is good still and i cannot really complain. i get into arguments every now and then (finally, i can better express my thoughts) with the boys because they use the word gringo, which i hate, to describe me sometimes. my name is will. i have about 20 horribly racist names i could use instead of their names, but i do not. why? respect. i freaked out on one of my friends last friday night (in english, i cussed him because he called me gringo on the bus in front of all my students and other faculty) at dinner. i did not cuss him on the bus. i waited until it was just adults.

bascially, here is my problem. gringo is derived from around the 1840`s when the usa troops were marching into mexico (this is where my picture book learning really evinces itself) toward d.f. to occupy and later force the mexican govt into signing the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo around 1848 which essentially sold to the usa new mex, cali and other other areas (does this all sound right timmay?).

anyhoo, the people of mexico would yell at the usa troops, in english, green go home. green go home was shortened into gringo. i realize that most people in this country and the states do not understand the significance or history of this phrase, but i do. i do not like it. it is offensive and i have told my friends this about, oh, fifteen times. thus, when they use this phrase i ignore them or respond by callin them impudent, sometimes ignorant, little boys. the effect is nowhere near the same in my opinion, although it does succeed to some extent in making them feel foolish.

so i freaked out on the guy. he deserves it because he knows damn well it makes me mad and he is smart enough to know not to say it. he is just an arrogant little jerk. but hey, there are those in every country, right? either way, i have once again begun to slice and select; i am working on trimming some of the fat and finding the friends i really like and the ones that no longer serve or were never really my friends to begin with (i.e. victor). it is an ongoing process, and i hope to fill the vacant roster spots with new recruits as my language improves and i can meet more people outside of the profs. i know it sounds weird, but this is my process. thus once again, here we are.

take it easy my northern bretherin and sisterin (that is neither spelled correctly nor am i sure that the second one is even a real word) and keep posting comments! cuba, i love that you used that quote in class. i am going to try it today as well (my students still love to ask questions solely in spanish and they no longer believe me when i respond to them, in spanish, that i do not speak or understand spanish). and remember: you want your belt to buckle, not your chair.

not really sure why i included this one because you cannot really see me, but here i am! 

this is the snapper. and caroline. the snapper is the fish, it is huge (the thing in the tinfoil). the grub at this place is incredible. that is caroline�s super comfy hammock in the background. i am definitely getting one, they are great to sleep in! and, you can take them to the beach and all the restaurants have places for you to hang your own. 

this just seems like a postcard. or a corona commerical. either way, this is playa azul, 15 minutes from the evil oil town of salina cruz (salinas is off the left, i did not take a photo of it because you can see the oil containers on the hill tops) 

playa azul last sunday. beautiful. that is me and caroline. the little girl is the daughter of caroline�s friends, they own a great restaurant in salina cruz 

flagstaff friends, and possibly cali peeps, i need your help. i am going to put some current pics on my little blog profile, but i want them to be like before and after shots. so, if you or anyone you know (this sounds like america´s most wanted, ¨if you or anyone you know has any clue as to the whereabouts of william j davis iii, please call us at....) has any pics of me with beard or with the handlebars, pause for applause, please send them to my email addy will_i_m@hotmail.com . preesh.

and cuba, i will see you at the race track. the porcupine race track that is. ¨well i know that i´m a sinner, but i really need a winner, or the orphanage will cloooooosssee. so god if you´re above, and it´s ORPHANS that you love, please help the porc-ee-pine i choooosee.¨

again, who that has seen the state, does not love the state?

what is the most important thing? breakfast. no, family.

ok, sorry, i was checking out cuban´s arrested development quote page again, and had to add it.

so i was eating cereal this morning, my general mills (insert registered trademark here) product, and noticed (it was difficult not to) the large yellow star in the top left corner that screamed at me: ¨this product made specially for foreign export¨! ok. wow. made just for me.

but why was it made just for us living in a foreign land. my sis caroline suggested that it allows them to bypass the fda. this is kind of scary, i mean, what am i eating? does general mills (reg trade) really want to pass off their waste product to foreigners? do they realize i live here? should i send them a letter reminding them that god fearing, stars and stripes waving, nascar watching, fast food consuming children of the free market economy also suck this product down in the morning? would they recall it all right away? nafta, what do you have to say about this? was this what you were created for initially? to allow usa companies to export all the rat droppings and save the rat parts for the good ole us of a? i mean, i like rat meat.

i must admit that i have had this cereal in the states and there is one ingredient in my bowl this morning that was never in it at home. it seems odd to me, but then again, i ate cow head and liked it. who knows.

made specially for foreign consumption. it almost sounds like a treat. ¨now with three times the sugar as before!¨but i know that is not true because sugar is expensive. ¨now loaded with all sorts of chemicals that won´t pass usa govt regulations but we just wanted to test on foreigners first before giving them to our lab rats¨ might be the more appropriate slogan.

either way, i just wanted you all to know that i am getting more in my bowl of cereal than you are. nyea nyaah. i get something special, you get plain old cereal. thank you general mills. and thank you easter bunny. bwok bwok.

evicted is such a harsh word. i guess i prefer ¨asked to leave¨ if i had to choose one. in either case, i have a new place that i am moving into on sunday. my old roomate victor has some serious issues he needs to deal with, like the incredibly large stick stuck up his butt. thus, i am actually pleased that he asked paco and i to leave on saturday. we had been talking about it for over a month but had done nothing. the impetus, of course, is not one i would choose, but as a catalyst, it works.

so the details are really rather benign. last friday night myself and six other proferssors decided to eat dinner and then go back to my apartment and drink a few beers. we bought some beers (probably enough for about five for each person) and headed back to the then empty pad around 8pm. well, about four hours later, some of the folks wanted to go dancing (something which i normally do not like to participate in, but i was severely outnumbered), so we walked on over to a place that has live music on friday nights. live music, in this case, is a guy who plays guitar and takes requests (he is actually really good, but i am not sure what kind of picture you were getting). the ¨stage¨ is not a stage really and the ¨dance floor¨ is just an area where the owners move tables out of the way when people actually show up and request for them to do so.

fortunately, gustavo, the trovador who plays on friday nights, was having girl problems, so he did not show up. i thought we would get to go home and not dance. i was wrong. my friends asked the owners to play some salsa music. i was forced to try salsa dancing. i gave it a go once, and then sat out the rest so i could ¨observe¨ and learn that way. i give myself credit for trying it. those of you who can know how difficult it is, those of you who don´t, take my word for it.

after about an hour we decided to head back to the apartment. we bought six beers from the bar (you can do this there) which was one for each person (we had lost one prof along the way because he was tired) and walked home (no one has a car so driving is never an option, which i like). i guess it was about 1:15am when we arrived home and i noticed that the light in ole victor´s room was on. rather than knock on the door and bother him (incidently, we had only been speaking when there was no option, i.e. good morning, hello, etc. i have not had a conversation with him in over a month) i decided to just go into the other room with my friends. we have two chairs in the house, so most of us were sitting on plastic bags on the floor or standing. i had cleaned up before we left the first time so there was no mess anywhere, just a full trash can. as for a stereo, i have a laptop computer and it serves the purpose. needless to say, it is not and could not be, very loud. but, out of respect, i purposefully turned the music down quite low. as his light was on in his room, i assumed it was not a big deal and if we made too much noise he would tell us and that would be that.

about three minutes after we arrived, he abruptly opens his door and stomps out in his usual weekend attire of a ratty green robe and flip flops, hair still greased (most every guy here puts that gunk in their hair and it still creeps me out) from whatever he had been doing all night and his ¨my first beard¨ beard bristling in the dim light (i had even left the main light off using only the kitchen light). he made some rude comment about being responsible and then turned to me and said basically the same thing. i said ok, and he stalked back into his lair to cry himself to sleep or do whatever his nightly ritual is. the other profs stayed for maybe another 20 minutes, felt awkward, and left.

the next afternoon paco and i swept and mopped the entire apt (something that had not been done for what seemed like over 6 months). as soon as we were finishing, vic, who had apparently been sitting in his room in silence for over an hour while we cleaned his accrued filth, decides to make his entrance. i was walking into my room and so said hello and kept going. he apparently said something to me, which i did not hear, because a moment later he almost yelled (we are about seven feet away even with a wall in between) for me to come back.

he takes up an extremely awkward seated-standing position in this window sill (about 3 feet off the ground and indoor, strange in general) and with cheeks aflame, lays into us. i won´t bother to translate the whole tirade, but basically he was very offended that we would drink and bring people back to our apt (keep in mind there have been 30 empty beer bottles lying on the floor of the patio area where we wash and dry clothes since i moved in over two months ago). he made clear that did not feel comfortable with us or this lifestyle (he apparently stopped drinking the in august) and that since we work together it would be better if found another place to live. he also said that the apartment was not a cantina (bar) but a place to live.

the smirk on my face i made no attempt to hide as he turned to me and i openly laughed as i said ok and walked back to my room. he made some comment which was muffled by the door that slammed in his face.

had paco and i often gone out drinking and bringing people back to the apt late at night, i could understand the problem. this was the very first time that we had ever even invited people over to the apt. first time ever. we have both lived there for about 6 weeks. first time. kiss my ass.

it is clear that vic has issues with us, evidenced by his refusal to speak to us, and nearly everyone else in the world, shown by his complete lack of friends save one, and the general feeling of distaste that everyone else on campus feels toward him. a sad, bitter, overly cologned little man who may or may not one day realize that the closet door is already open and everyone sees him standing in it. come on vic, step on out. the whole world knows, you are the only one still denying it, and this may be what is causing your unpleasant, snooty, bitchy and generally holier-than-thou attitude.

while i am not happy to be evicted, i am happy to be leaving. cut the tie. the bridge is burned (sorry to all those who feel this is a bad idea in general, bridge burning, in this case, it was a necessity).

our new place has a balcony, is across the hall from two other profs who are really cool and is 200 pesos cheaper each month. score. there is only one bathroom, but that is the only real drawback.

it is funny because everyone who found out who i was living with initially warned me he would be weird. i thought they were wrong or just put off by his arrogance. no, he is a loser. they were right. i am quite happy to admit that now that i am finally leaving.

this is the end of book 1. please turn the tape over to begin begin book 2.

now this one, sally swears, shows paco trying to get away from her. it does kind of look like he is a bit cagey and might bolt from the seat at any time. funny either way  

the crackers with their bags of orange water (it�s called agua preparada and it is really really good- just agua and fruit juice (or whatever else) and maybe sugar, hey i only drink it, i don�t make it) 

willbilly and paco looking reticent (probably a girl walking by him) 

happy birthday doughman! hopefully you are out having a great day. how old are you now, 70? the years pile up, much like the wins of the hokies.

so i finally got around to bringing in two entries that i wrote about a week or so ago. i think they are kind of funny, you may or may not agree.

all is well down here. the dead have returned to the graves and we wait another year to celebrate with them. james, i agree that people in the usa have some issues with outsourcing nearly everything, which in this case includes some of our emotions. we give the tast to someone else and end up losing a piece of what might be necessary for the healing process (see amy davis for a further and more complete analysis of this idea!).

all i know is that watching the people grieve was an experience in itself. there are so many emotions tied into that using the word grieve really does not describe it.

my friend stayed at a friend´s (this is a stretch considering she barely knows the girl, but whatever) house on monday night when they were mourning/celebrating the death of a young child. she said that all night she would wake up every hour to hear the aunts and family members drinking and weeping. they would pass out, wake up and cry, drink some, then go back to sleep. she said this literally went on all night long.

i went to the graveyard for a spell on tuesday night, but felt pretty out of place. it is one thing to take part of a celebration, but as i had no ties to any of the dead down here, i felt a bit strange. oh well, it was something to see, that is for sure. all rules are tossed out the window and the emotions flow. seems like a great way to purge.

ok, have a great day and if i do not get a chance to post tomorrow, have a great weekend. do not forget to root for the hokies against the evil hurricanes.

Of the hundreds of words that are quite difficult to translate from one language to another, the English word “mean” ranks up there in my opinion. A month ago my colleague (and yes, using this word is more than a stretch in this case), expounding upon some of his difficulties teaching (I think he just sucks, but, those dwelling in wheat thin houses shouldn’t throw cans of easy-cheese) reflected that the word ‘mean’ was going to give me some trouble if I tried to teach it during my ‘personality words’ unit. Well, I think the word is often used in English, and often used to imply countless things, so I scoffed at the fool and continued what I was doing.

I am not about to retract my statement about the other teacher, but I will acknowledge that the word is not as easy to teach as I thought. You see, the word ‘malo’ in Spanish has multiple meanings as well, but it does not really cover the same thing. The same can be said for about five other words in Spanish (those of you looking for one of those words in English that other language speakers proudly tout as untranslatable, certain ‘feeling’ words for example, look further), none of which really cover this definition.

Anyhoo, I will digress from the digression and return to the point. Shortly. But before that, consider the lexis level or vocabulary level of the typical college student. High? Consider again. My own is quite low compared to many people, my sisters for example probably have broader and richer vocabularies than I do, but even mine is an Everest among Appalachians compared to the average college student. Now change countries. I know, well, let’s be generous and say 500 words in Spanish. My vocabulary is quite low and I certainly won’t win any contests down here, but I still assume most people to know much more than I do. I mean, this is their language, not mine, I am just a gringo in for my accent and knowledge of the language.

So this morning as I am writing on the white board 4 words which I think are roughly equivalent of the English word ‘mean.’ two hands shoot up from the group of students.
-Weel (will in Spanish) do you mean ‘travieso’? (this one means, basically, ‘bad-boy’ or ¨delinquent,¨ again, basically not exactly, mainly because if I extend this definition any more by the time you get to the end of this sentence you will have forgotten what I was originally writing about)
-where?
-next to ‘mean.’
Here I had written the word ‘avieso’, which admittedly came directly from my little dictionary (so my original premise is a lie because until this day I did not know the word avieso either). So I assumed that once again I copied the word wrong or something, so I went to look it up. No, on the page next to ‘mean’ is the word ‘avieso’. I related this to the class. They responded by telling me my dictionary was wrong. Well now, that is possible, but doubtful, so I decided to look up ‘avieso’ in the Spanish section. Sure enough it means ‘perverse’ or ‘evil-minded,’ not the best translation for ‘mean’ but one I am certainly willing to accept.

None of my students had even heard of this word. There are lots of words I may not know the definition of, but have heard before or seen once or twice. These kids? Zero. Ok, not a big deal, surely all my prof friends knew the word. Nope. 2 in 5 is about the ratio, with at least one of those three negatives denying its existence. Too funny. Or not, depending on whether stories about vocabulary excite you. Either way I find it interesting because there are many words that I have come across down here that I cannot find in my dictionary. Thus, I presumed that my dictionary really only has basic words. Imagine my surprise, and secret joy, when I was able to teach my Spanish speakers a word in Spanish. I know: perverse, evil-minded; hey, you can even call me mean. Yes, I wrote this whole story just so I could work that stupid little broma (joke).

If you had not noticed, I have time on my hands. ‘Witness the power of a fully-operational Death Star.’

Around the time she unwrapped the razor blade, I realized all my fears were well-founded and perhaps twenty minutes was not that long of a wait. (,) after all it was a sunny day and I really only pretend that I have a schedule so I can feel like I do something with my time other than wander around and appear out of place. So the glint of steel caught my eye as she removed the paper; I had been wondering why she had put lotion on my neck (I thought perhaps she thought I had a skin problem or I smelled, which I did).

Upon entering the door, I noticed that in the window were tennis shoes, cleats, jeans, a few dresses, beauty products and a t.v. playing the cruz azul game (“la machina” as they are affectionately referred to, are a favorite down here as there are really no pro futbol teams in the state). But in the corner were two chairs, some mirrors and in the “waiting area,” which really only consisted of three chairs against the wall near some more clothes, I noticed an old woman dozing from the warmth of the afternoon, or from the overall paucity of clientele in the store, take your pick. At no time did she ever get up, speak or show signs of life other than abruptly snoring once quite loudly and readjusting in her upright bed of a chair.

As usual I had a pre-game chat with my friend so I could test out the phrases I wanted to use. I am fairly consistent with this practice because it offers me an opportunity to make mistakes with people I know who will correct my mistakes, not stare blankly at me as though I had been talking to someone else. It is odd how I am willing to make myself look like a dolt in front of my friends but then not in front of other people who it is quite likely I will never see again in my life or who if I do see them again will have little to no impact on me.

When I sat down I became extremely nervous. This would be my first experience in a foreign country and so I had the jitters one feels when one is unfamiliar with what might happen. More importantly, there is that feeling of a complete lack of control because should something go wrong, I would be relatively helpless to alter the outcome. She could do all sorts of bad things to me that would make the next month or more absolutely horrible. Or she could improve upon something that had grown unbecoming about three weeks prior.

I sucked it up and sat down. The initial exchange went normal: I made my intentions clear and failed to understand the reaction. Keep in mind this is how I go through life down here. I make statements that sum up what I want. I know people are going to tell me something or offer suggestions or attempt to change my mind, but as I rarely understand their accents, I usually smile and wait for them to begin doing what I asked or I find some way to repeat what I said differently. In books each conversant responds clearly and often using similar vocabulary. In life this never happens. Learning colloquial phrases is like talking to a dog. The dog understands your intonations at times, but the words have no real significance. I can understand the words in the sense that I know their basic definitions, but once these words have been spliced together in phrases so foreign it might as well be mandarin, I am left hoping dumbly that the person will repeat her last sentence or say it another way.

Once she began I initially wanted to jump in and offer my ideas. I quickly realized that whatever broken attempt I made at explaining would only hinder the operation and possibly precipitate the aforementioned nightmare of having to explain to people what in the world had happened to me and had this been something I actually paid someone to do to me.

Five minutes in I was disappointed. Things could not be going worse. I was ready to say something to put a stop to all of this, but something told me to wait. Really it was someone, my friend, who had been watching my reaction and finding great amusement in something that must have been me. Thus I began thinking how awful the woman must feel. She would surely have seen the same expressions I had made and think me a buffoon or just an asshole. I get the asshole thing a lot but still it is not one I look for and I try not to bring upon myself.

So we have come to the beginning, when the razor blade catches the well-after-noon light filtering through what could be a window or a dusty mug of beer; yes, it was that amber in there. I have often wondered what people do with razor blades, other than remove those inspection and state and county stickers from car windshields, install them in an archaic shaving system, and, of course, spill their own, or, and I am praying it is not this one, someone else’s, blood. There were no windshields around; I saw no shaving device of an sort, but there was plenty of blood coursing, quite rapidly at this point, through my veins.

Seeing a reflection of yourself takes away a degree of reality. Maybe this is why men are able to place an object so incredibly sharp against their skin, and drag it over their jugular. Each day. Sane beings would observe this practice as slightly idiotic; you mean you know you might cut yourself yet you do it anyway?

Thus I observed myself observing a woman wield a ridiculously sharp object and bring it down toward my neck.

But then it was the back of my neck, not the front, and she had already had the opportunity to poke my eyes out with her scissors and she had not done that either, so I conferred a bit of trust upon this shop-keeper/shoe saleswoman/clothes pusher/stylist. Clearly she could hold down a few jobs all at once, so I guess I should have given her more credit from the beginning.

I must admit looking back that my first inclination was correct. Stores that serve five different functions may not be the best at any individual service they perform. I have options in the future and I will certainly exercise this right to choose. Do something and do it well. Or do five things and be decent at them. I might choose the former. I mean really, you don’t see me selling vacuums, waiting tables, working construction or driving a tractor do you? No, but you did. Perhaps that is why I sold no vacuums in two weeks, made 2.15 per hour waiting tables, got fired by my own father’s construction company, and caused copious damage to multiple pieces of farm equipment. “Maybe [I] should try taking some of [my] own advice” (when you can reference The State, I say do it).