to the anonymous posting by the fan of an officer and a gentleman- touché. and indeed that is the problem that all men face. you never really know if the child is yours, without a paternity test that may or may not be correct. i wrote a paper on bastards in four of shakespeare´s plays a few years ago and this was the general fear that stoked many a heated rivalry and caused the death of others. my comment was meant to be playful, though caustic, yet i should have first about those who enjoyed the film. indeed. touché.

oh happy day. it is like when the audience finds out that peter´s little friend has not been eaten by the wolf, in ¨peter and the wolf¨. and there was much rejoicing. or, when the camera pans through the two lines of officers and on the third sweep zooms in on the mug of zachary mayo (richy gere). he did not quit after all! he is going to be a jet pilot (maybe, assuming he can cheat his way through more math classes)! he is going to marry the hussy from the paper factory who slept with every other guy that came through the officer´s candidacy school before him yet somehow managed to seem like this was her foray into the world of tawdry weekend affairs with would-be flyboys who somehow did not get her pregnant or give her a disease (we hope).

ok. the second was a slight stretch. but i think the feeling comes through.

of course you win a prize cuba. but let us also not forget my sleuthing skills (which i learned from two of the best in the business: hercule poirot and chief inspector morse) allowed me to deduce that you were probably still in the desert. the peyote, grand canyon and desert island parts were somewhat off, but i lay that down to not being able to interview anyone about your whereabouts.

so, we both win a prize. a first place tie actually. thus, your next trip to mexico we shall celebrate how well we both did. or my next trip to iowa. whichever comes first. i am hoping the former by the way as it means sooner rather than later.

first things first. where is my young cuban friend? if you have an clues to his whereabouts, please contact: me. via e-mail. crazed and derranged responses regarding someone other than the ¨b¨ will be accepted but not necessarily replied to. ok. yes they will.

here are my thoughts on the disappearance of the¨thomas magnum of the caribbean¨: i imagine one of six things(the first three have decidedly deserty themes and the reasons are either obvious or necessary): 1. headed out into the desert on a peyote run and have been tripping for two or more weeks. when you wake up, sweaty, emaciated, dehydrated and with little prickers stuck in your feet, flag down the nearest 4x4 and hitch a ride sho-low. 2. like cain, from ¨kung fu¨ you have decided to walk the earth vanquishing evil and helping the downtrodden in each town you come across (isn´t this kind of similar to bruce banner and few others?). 3. you went hiking in the grand canyon, and a) found a cuantity of beer, whiskey and food stashed, you thought, by steve, but really was left years ago and you fell ill only to be nursed back to health by wild goats, or b) met some hot nymph who lured you into a cave where you have been living as a love slave for the past 7 years (kind of like odysseus but different because the uncrossable sea is just hot-ass desert and she swiped your shoes) 4. finally took advantage of being the son of a pilot. you have been hopping planes for two weeks with no end in sight as the peanuts are free and the in-flight movies just keep getting better. 5. you tried to go back to chicago but were abducted somewhere near phx by the phoenix suns and have been travelling with the team ever since. your only hope is that they lose in the playoffs, otherwise, you may become the new gorilla maschot and all hopes of a phd program will either dashed or indefintely delayed. 6. this new roommate of yours has barracaded you into the ¨compound¨ and the only outside contact you have is the fratelli´s pizza delivery guy who also supplies sierra pale, and the occassional demand to the flag police department for 1 william dollars or ¨else.¨

i had an interview yesterday with puebla. it went well. i will know in a few weeks if i have the job. i am in line for an interview with a catholic boys school in san luis potosi. here is snippet of an email i received regarding the position: ¨I am Norma Dávila Iglesias and I work for Grupo Integer, Coordinación de Gestión Educativa which is affiliated with the Legionaries of Christ, a congregation of Roman Catholic priests. The Legionaries of Christ operate more than 125 catholic schools and colleges of excellence in 14 countries around the world....Centered upon the sound principles of the Catholic faith, the Legionary method of education seeks to educate the whole person, addressing all aspects of the person, and therefore providing an integral formation helping the student to fulfill the mission for which he was created.¨

so i got that going for me. i am also considering a position in DF(mex city) at a private language school. options, options.

my interview yesterday was the first interview i have had since this time i went to a place called millberry on parnassus ave in san fran, level i. there i was met by two sisters named hulia and katerina de wit(pronounced vit, like the skater) who showed me around until our meeting with wayne ¨not the flute player in the lobby, dammit¨ hiroshima. i remember being asked, ¨if i were an animal, what animal would i be?¨ i chose to be a fish. thus began two years of lifeguarding, love, and locker duties (combinations, clearing, renting, harassing calls). good times.

but really, that was my last interview. of course i interviewed tons of peeps with jules, but being on the other side of the table is different. actually, i think it made me a great interviewee. we shall see if puebla thinks the same.

i watched ¨an officer and a gentleman¨ for the first time last night. not sure if i ever mentioned this, but they show free movies on campus every thursday in this huge auditorium, which has a.c., that has, to my knowledge, only ever been used to show movies on thursday nights. normally the 350-400 person capacity auditorium holds about 6 people for the movies. all of them instructors. however, word got out that richard gere would be naked and about 30 people showed up last night. almost all them female, not surprisingly.

i wont offer my criticism of the movie, but i guess i knew what i was getting into.

in general, thursday is the most exciting night of my week because i get to see a movie. sometime they are horrible, angelina jolie and antonio banderas- dubbed into spanish- in ¨original sin¨, but some are great- ¨american beauty¨ which i had never seen, and another called ¨los amantes del circulo polar¨ it is from spain but i ihighly recommend it. actually, i really think you should try to find it at the video store if they have a foreign film section. it is kind of a romance but is fantastic nonetheless.

i cannot believe i am saying this, but go hoos! i hope dom starsia´s team kicks syracuse´s butt this weekend in the lacrosse semifinals. i am not going to discuss the duke thing, but i believe we should all wait until the trial ends before judging. and, no matter what the result, one team should not mar the reputation of an entire sport. lacrosse is the best team game i have ever played, and i hope its popularity continues to grow. dont disrespect the entire sport if a few idiots screwed up in an unforgivable and unpardonable way.

hope you all had a good weekend. doughman, indeed you are correct. wings would prevent a frog from bumping his ass.

i have two schools in mexico interested in me. one is in puebla, and i described it earlier. good school, decent pay, great location. the other is a junior high/high school position at a private boys school in san luis potosi, about 6hours north of the capital, mexico city. the pay is quite good, about 1500.00 dollars a month, but there are a few down sides. jacket and tie are required and there are a lot of teaching hours, about 5.5 each day.

the town of san luis potosi sounds quite nice. in the mountains, about 6500ft, and of a decent size, roughly 1,000,000 people.

i have an interview this week, by phone, with puebla and if i am offered the position i will take it and then continue to look around and check my options.

so to sum up, all is well and i will probably be leaving the isthmus of tehuantepec in early august for greener pastures. i am starting to feel happier just thinking about it.

in response to ames´ pregunta(question), within the last ten years, mexico has switched to daylight savings time. thus, when the usa changes time in the spring and fall, so does mexico. this was done partly in response to business concerns between the usa and mexico(keeping time the same between the two countries) and, according to the government of mexico, in order to save energy. of course, how this really saves energy is anyone´s guess, and according to my friends, this was a pretext that masked the true intent of the govt to simply mimic the usa.

thus, there is god´s time, and the govt´s time. many people in my pueblo(town) have agreed to ignore the govt and keep to god´s time. of course, not everyone follows this system, which leads to a lot of strangeness as most stores open later and stay open later than others. then there are those that change time. it is weird in that there is no system or set pattern. you dont know who follows which schedule until you either ask or see that they stay open later than others. and dont bother asking what time it is, bc it leads to a confusing coversation where people ask you which time you mean, then they try to figure out time it is based on what you are saying but invariably there is confusion as to what the original hour is (whatever original means) and then adding or subtracting an hour. seems simple, but it never ends up being so. strange.

today is my good friend oscar´s (from puebla, the one in the glamour shots pictures) last day. i am sad. no tengo ganas que hacer nada. i dont really feel like doing anything. just bummed out in general. plus it is painfully hot already.

if today were the first of august, i would say forget teaching abroad and come back to virginia.

if i came back to virginia, i would look for work teaching or just take the year off from teaching and work for anthony.

if i worked for anthony, i would try to buy some cows to help earn extra money (or talk to poppa dough man and see what he thinks about potential ways to make more money).

if i went back to virginia, i would try to do a lot of hiking and camping on the Appalachian Trail (j-felony, this means you would be involved). i would also look into getting a used kayak and start paddling again.

if i returned to the states, i would probably never again leave for such an extended period of time but would devote the next 3-4 years to paying off my student loans.

if i left spanish speaking countries, i would look for a way to keep practicing my spanish and possibly look into classes in another foreign language to further my education and to meet new people in area since the number of friends my age in the orange-madison-culpepper tri-county area equasl zero.

if the first of august had just rolled around, i might actually try to do a little travelling before i came home. maybe head down to costa rica, going through guatemala, el salvador, nicaragua.

if i relocated to the farm, i would be around for harvest time and hopefully learn more about that process. in my old age (i accept that 27 is not old, but try telling that to my students) i have a new respect for farming in general and find it amazing that there is a large working farm that has helped pay for many of the things i have done in my life.

if i returned home, i would once again try to learn welding from poppa dough man. i made one attempt in the fall of 2000, but i picked up teaching not long after and never really got anywhere. i find it fairly sad that i never took advantage of living with a person who taught welding. nor did i ever learn about farm work other than very basic operational duties. (now that i am writing all this down, i realize how ungrateful i was/am for all the opportunities i had. maybe since i left home to go to school when i was 13, i somehow got into my mind that the only way to learn was to leave home. that was foolish.)

if i swung back into the o.c. this week, i would get to see the leaves change color on the blue ridge mountains. i miss how beautiful that is.

if my time were up on my contract, i would only have lived outside of the states for one year. not a very long time. i might be disappointed in myself for giving up so quickly.

if i quit my job and bailed to return to a non-teaching job in the states, i might lose some momentum as far as returning to school for a phd. i might not ever go back to school.

if the states were in my near future, i would appreaciate many more of the advantages and little things that i took for granted for the first 26 years of my life. wearing a jacket, the olor (scent) of autumn and snow would be three things i would definitely look forward to intently.

if a one-way ticket home were to be bought, i am not sure how to go about doing that. i might just go the airport and fly standby to atlanta or dc. if atlanta were my destination, i would hang out with amy and master james for a spell, then catch a train home. i like trains.

if all the ifs in my life were to be tabulated, my future would seem bright and limitless. though they will not be, i still see mi porvenir(all time after today) as something quite interesting and slightly unstable.

if you have never read a poem entitled ¨if,¨ you should. there is also one in spanish, entitled, obviously, ¨si¨ without the accent on the letter i, which means, clearly, ¨if¨

if wishes were fishes....

today is the 15th of may, 2006, not the first of august. but if it were....

i think i want to start a new feature on the blog. i will call it, ¨you know you are thrifty(cheap) when....¨ based on the old ¨you might be a redneck if....¨ jokes of the 90´s. as self-mockery seems to be what i am good at, or at the very least what so many people find amusing, i will examples from my own life down here. of course, forget the fact that i make a paltry sum when you actually convert my pesos salary into dollars. if you think in your own daily life terms it will be much funnier. besides, does anyone know the conversion for pesos to dollars off the top of their heads besides me? it is roughly 10 to 1, which makes things really easy, but put that knowledge aside and enjoy my lack of spendthrift qualities.

i paid 4 dollars yesterday for a haircut and complained because last time i went to the same woman, seven months ago, i was only charged $3.50.

when the fare to juchitan (nearby city, or the closest actual city) went from 90 to cents to 1 dollar in january, i vowed to go to juchitan less.

i ask for a teacher´s discount when i buy just about anything- this includes the one time i bought a shirt (ok, another teacher asked for the discount, but i was all for it)- and i now ask for a discount when i take the bus.

on vacations, on all buses there is a 25% discount for teachers and 50% discount for students. i merely hand over my teacher i.d. to the clerk who normally looks at me, does not read the id where it plainly says ¨maestro¨ (which means teacher with a master´s degree) and gives me the 50% discount. if asked if i am student or maestro, i reply that i do not speak spanish very well and, ¨could you speak slower and more simply, please¨ to which i have never been answered but marked as student.

one day on the morning bus i gave 30 cents for the 25cent fare because i did not have proper change. when the woman did not give me my proper change, i approached her and asked for my 50 centavos (this is like a nickel).

i argue over the price of fuit and vegetables when it rises over 1 dollar.

at the supermarket (and really, there is a wealth of samples that i could tap into here) i buy a cheaper brand of milk to save 1.5 cents. yes. one penny and one half of a cent.

i have 4 pairs of pants. i have 7 collared shirts. i think that says a lot.

on the rare occasions that i do not make my own meal, i complain if we go to the restaurant that charges $3.00 and includes dessert over the usual restuarant that charges $2.00 and offers food of a poorer flavor and no dessert.

i was annoyed when my roommate did not buy more soap for washing dishes and i had to buy it twice in a row (we buy it once ever 2.5 months or so). the price of soap is 70 cents. this probably points to another issue of mine, but we are strictly dealing with my thriftiness at the moment.

part of the reason i walk home every night and do not take the bus is to save 25 cents each day. i do like the exercise and chatting with other profs, but i would be lying if saving the money were not a bonus i consciously considered from the start.

i despise wal-mart and what they stand for. when they first came to juchitan 5 months ago i vowed never to go there. i told my students how evil it was. i admonished my roommate and all my friends for shopping there. i downloaded articles off the internet to use in my english classes to instruct them on the destructive powers of wal-mart and all its subsidiaries. i shop at wal-mart once a week.

i could probably pay $3.00 to have my computer fixed. i am waiting on one of my students to do it for free.

after a long trip in march i arrived in juchitan at 3:30am. instead of taking a taxi back to my apt (8 dollars) i tried to sleep in plastic chairs for 3 hours until the buses (1 dollar) started running.

there are lots more, but as i usually do not think of this kind of behavior as strange, i have to think about the subject for a spell first. there will probably be more. enjoy your weekend!

Keep in mind I wrote the beginning of this last Sunday night.

There is a point where routine becomes soothing. Rather than progressing into monotony, the routine transforms into something relaxing. You think to yourself, “hey, I could do this with my eyes closed!” so you try it. and as you regain consciousness and watch your car untangled from the fifteen other cars, just before the morphine pumping into your bloodstream starts to take hold, you realize that there just might be a problem allowing routine to lull you into comfort.

A strange beginning to an otherwise normal week? Perhaps. But I have finally woken up. I am off the cold medicine and back on the coffee. nas my body slowly adjusts to life without a slight sedative, I realize that I have been napping(literally, considering last week) for far too long. What am I still doing in this hole of a region? The heat is just silly. My mexi friends are dropping like flies (two leave this week, including my best friend oscar and my one “potential” who was supposed to be a new good friend. The second “potential” I mentioned a few weeks ago? His wife and child just moved down here last week. Two strikes.) and only the white people are staying put. Indeed the world is turning upside down. This is the opposite of what should be happening, yet here we are. Rigodamndiculous.

I have resigned myself to life with no real friends in the immediate vicinity for the next, pause for effect, 8 weeks. 9 if you include this one, which I don’t. 61 days. actually 68 from right now, until summer vacation starts. A long time? Yes. And as the heat becomes more and more intolerable I can only see time begin to slow down. After my two week summer vaca? I am outta this piece. Not sure where. Not sure how. But good god, it is time. It took me 8.5 months to get my fill. And I am satiated. Supersaturated even. It is Sunday and for a town of 30,000, there is not a single grocery story open past 4pm. There are little markets, like pratts in Madison (is that even still there?), which have some food, but no real food variety.

Am I complaining about a very small issue? Of course. But I am somewhat mollified by the knowledge that people have gone crazy from more obscure problems.

So now I am on the offensive. I am so ready to bolt I cannot truly imagine the next 8 weeks, but I think this might also have to do with the lack of sedatives in my system. Another day or so and I will calm down, but I decided, no, you people should share in this feeling of, well, cabin fever for lack of a better term.

I just filled out a rather lengthy application for a high school job in puebla. High school? I know. I cannot really believe it either, but the attraction is, first, a city with an altitude over 8000 ft and thus a temperature that shan’t exceed 95 degrees. Art museums, a cinema, expositions, proximity to an even larger cosmopolitan area, df(mexico city) is about 1 hour away, a friend or two and, get ready for this one, the possibility to meet young professionals my age with, I cannot believe it either, similar interests. Wow. And, the school will pay for me to take graduate spanish literature classes at one of the universities in town (you read correctly, “one of the universities” implies there is indeed more than one, and thus I can teach private lessons quite easily to make more money). I wont have an office with free internet. I will have to actually teach 5 hours a day (as opposed to my current 2). I will not make as much money, but almost. I will probably have to pay more for my apt. the air will not be as clean. But my school day with be shorter. No more working from 8am until 7pm with a 3 hour siesta. No no. 7:45am to 2:45pm. Yahtzee. I can hardly imagine getting off work and having more than 4 or 5 hours before I need to go to bed.

There are positives and negatives. One negative: I don’t actually have the job yet. That slows me down a bit, but the jobs are out there. In cities with normal temperatures. Where it gets cold in the winter. I miss the cold. Another negative? High school kids. Don’t love em. Have not missed them since teaching in orange, but I am willing to give it another go. I am older, have more patience (I can say that, at least) and, amazingly, actually have teaching experience this time. Maybe I gave up on high school too early. Timmay does it. jen “faulkner’s mistress” smith used to do it for a while. Neither of them have gone, um, extremely crazy. Yet. That I know of. Perhaps it aint so bad.

And if I hate it, I quit. Simple. There are hundreds of other schools in the area, many universities, and the possibility of living solely off private lessons. Here? Not so much.

So why not leave? Good question. I have some screwed up loyalty thing that keeps me from walking out next week (which apparently is stopping just about no one else around here). I like my students a lot. I don’t think I have really bitched about them once this semester. The routine is easy. That scares me. I don’t want to get into a routine down here. Next thing you know I have been here for five years, own a vw bug, my wife has just turned 17, we have 3 kids (you do the math on that one) and I am starting to wear jackets in December and January. No no no no no no no.

No. hell no.

Routine. It freaks me out in that way. Close your eyes and where did life go? I am still (relatively) young. I only add that stipulation “relatively” bc my students now remind me that they in fact, are young. I am, well… not as young as they are. Relatively old in their eyes. But what do they know. Anyway, I am young enough, and a safe distance away from my cold medicine sedatives, to realize that this is no place to get into a routine. Time to get movin. Giddyup.

If not puebla, I have an application in chile. Of course, I could just move to chile, Santiago, and find a job relatively easy (private work mostly). But I still have lots to see in mexico and would not mind staying a bit longer.

In the end I am not an efl/esl teacher. I have learned that much. I don’t love this work like I probably should. I use it to travel and learn about new cultures and people and language. That makes me realize I need to be doing something else in the “relatively” near future so that I don’t fall into some loony routine and end up tied to a job I have slowly grown to hate. Or maybe I just need to get out of the istmo and I will learn to love what I do? Who knows.

There is also another option. It involves Virginia, tractors, energy-free watering systems and probably other things. That one is gaining momentum as each week passes, but I am not buying a ticket just yet. Plus, I have not discussed it with papa bill or the man in charge of the troughs, so without their consent and help (after all I would initially have no idea what I am doing), it is all just ideas anyway. But, that could be the relatively near future, if not this year, perhaps next. Would that also lead to routine? Time will tell.

Did you see that coming? Possibly. I have been thinking, and I think out loud, about it for a month now.

Not sure if I got the name of the book I just read correct. The all true travels and adventures of lidie Newton. One of the strangest parts of reading the book was that 3 hours into the story, I paused to get some water or something and realized that at first I did not know exactly where I was. Yes, I was on the cold medicine at the time, but the point is that I was really into the story. I am not sure I have truly had that feeling with a Spanish book yet. I blame it on the fact that there are lots of words I don’t understand (I don’t look up 100% of the words I don’t know bc I often have a good idea what they refer to and my vocabulary is already well beyond the avg person’s so there is no use learning more words that I will never hear or use in conversation. By that I simply mean that the authors’ diction is higher than the normal speaker’s common usage, not that I have some outstanding vocabulary, and thus learning some of these words is fairly futile. But it was truly relaxing to read in English again. Of course, I felt bad for doing so. Every time I don’t spend at least 1-2 hours a day reading something in Spanish, I feel as though I am letting myself down. I have no tv, but sometimes at night I play solitaire and listen to music. Sometimes the music is in English, so then that is bad.

As I write this, on Wednesday night at 11:30, there is a party coming down the main street. Fireworks have been bursting for the past 10 minutes and I can hear the drums and trumpets and horns getting louder. Also the probably 100 people dancing and drinking in the street. Pretty funny in the sense that traffic (ok so there is not much this late at night, or, really ,ever) stops. There is no going through so they wait or back up and go around.

I am truly tired of the stupid fireworks (cohetes) because there is no light display, just the piercing sound of a shotgun. Over and over and over. Well, first the whine as the rockets take off from the ground, but then 5 seconds later there is an explosion. There has not been a week that has gone by that I have not heard these stupid rockets. Sometimes at 4am, sometimes at midnight or 1am, on a Wednesday no less, there is no pattern that I can tell. I am not making an inaccurate generalization when I write that Mexicans truly do love fireworks. Loud noises in general that seem to announce: hey look at me, I am here!

Ya, I am over that. Still gotta love the 4 or 5am rockets though. It means that the bride was a virgin. The groom checks for blood and then launches the rockets. They even hang the bloody sheets up in front of the house for the day to show everyone that the bride was a virgin. Or that she was supplied with animal blood and smeared it on the sheets. Either way, quite a different ritual than I am used to.
They are now passing by our building and anyone who was sleeping is no longer. Kind of obnoxious if you ask me bc people do have to work, even though according to “god’s time” it is barely 11pm. Those of us on “new time” have to work earlier, however. It is weird. You ask someone what time it is and they ask you which time you want. old or new time? God or govt time? Hard to get used to really. Not quite as quaint and fun as you might expect either. All the bus schedules are different. Stores are open later at night but are not open in the morning. Stange.

Now I am just sounding bitter. Time to go.

updates from el centro de nada (the center of nothing)

it is hot. really hot. this is not really news but somehow everyone still talks about it. there are (as so many profs keep leaving) new teachers from other parts of mexico (the mountains mostly) who are having a hard time adjusting. surprise surprise.

i still have no new job for next fall but i am definitely out of here.

i wrote a long entry over the weekend and then never copied it off my computer at home. my compy at home is still jacked but it functions well enough some of the time. niether of these pieces of information are that shocking either.

my sister amy reminded me that i did not ever update my old roomie, victor. or viki as i later came to call him. he left about 1.5 months ago. not sure where he went but then i never cared to ask. he was crazy as the day is long and as there are enough weirdos down here, i let him drift. or cut him off. either way, he is on to bigger and better things. or not. but he is gone. one less person to ignore as i walk by them on a tiny campus where people you dont like you still have to see everyday (ah boarding school memories). a lesson is patience perhaps. he was an odd one, clearly, but there are odd people everywhere, right? i am sure you know a few. or are odd yourself (peaches, i am thinking of you here).

actually that last shot was only a hope that peaches would throw out another hint as to his or her identity. could you give me a gender to go from at least?

there are lots of clicks on campus. students, of course, have their own, but the prof clicks are funnier. there is a group of female profs we call the viejas (this literally means old women but has a much stronger negative connotation in spanish- you would never actually say that to a woman where calling a man viejo is not only not offensive but kind of like saying, ¨dude¨ or or something similar- especially as none of them are really old). actually, we add a qualifier to that noun but i shall not give it here. let´s just say it is not flattering. they are weird, shocker, and i avoid them like the plague. other smaller groups, including my current roomie who i see twice a day but rarely pass more than a gretting with now. works out better this way. all in all, the town is small, the uni is smaller and i ready to get the hell out of dodge. two months until vacation and then i think i am out starting in august. my group of friends is quite small, but this is actually ok. the gossip is ridiculous. i try to pass on as many rumors as i can just while away the time.

my best friend down here leaves on monday. another really good new friend leaves on sunday. nothing more to say about that i guess. things change. the new recruits are separated from me and i do not really get to know them too well. that might change when i have absolutely no friends left. with the way people are jumping ship around here, and mid-semester to boot, that time may come sooner than i think.

if this were mid-winter i would say that with the cold has come a cooling of relationships and the doldrums have set in. as it is pretty much summer and hot as can be, i must revise my descriptors when it comes to seasons. we have two seasons here: hot and hotter. it is now early ¨hotter.¨ cant wait for mid-hotter!

as my buddy oscar has advised me, numerous, numerous times, i have considered bailing on this job. like now. but i shant. meh. too hot to move. too hot to be much more than lazy really.

i read a book in english the other day. the all true adventures of lydie newton by jane smiley. really entertaining book.

it is odd bc this is only the second book in english i have read in over 8 months. each time i get into one i finish it in two days because i spend all my time reading it. after reading a foreign language for so long, english is really, really easy. and fun. 50 pages in spanish takes me close to two hours sometimes. in english, 30-40 minutes or so. it is like swimming in a pool for an hour and then someone gives you fins. suddenly, you are cruising, and what was a task is now fun and enjoyable. i like reading in spanish, but you get the idea. also, i have been reading of lot of essays and philosophical works in spanish, so pure fiction, where i do not have to analyze each sentence, is a pleasure. kind of like last summer when i finished my ma degree and suddenly began reading a book or two a week. this also had to do with taking my morning coffee in a chair in the sun with one of said books. and being in flag. and knowing that a trip to the library or throwing disk or going to campus to look for teaching jobs on the internet would probably be the most i might do that day. life was good.

in other words, cuban b, enjoy the start of your summer. you are no longer a prof at nau. congratulations. good luck in phd land, iowa city.

anyone have big plans for the summer? j-felony is getting married. that is pretty big. el coco-roco (ricky doo) is getting married also. but he does not have this blog addy, that i know of, so cant really say anything to him. still crazy. two of my old college roomies are getting hitched. wild. joel jerrius jeremiah jackson is next i guess. like sands in the hour glass, so are the days of our lives.

i will at some point be unemployed. that does not seem so big as it probably wont be for more than a few days while i relocate to wherever it is that i am going.

even as i ask a questions and comment about other people, it all comes back to me in the end. i am the center of my own attention most of the time (all of the time), something that apparently getting older has not improved upon. i also write a description of what i do and think once or twice a week to which few people respond to and thus seems to beg me to talk more about myself. in that way, i miss having a cell phone and being able to call friends all over the states for free. they could at least interrupt me at times (these opportunities were rare, granted). ok, i do have a cell phone, but i dont call anyone on it, not even here in mex, bc it is too expensive. and i am cheap. lets not forget that part.

i am probably forgetting something. when i remember it, i will let you know.

not sure how i forgot this one: happy cinco de mayo! ¡feliz cinco de mayo! today is the day, in 1862, that the vastly outnumbered poblanos(people from the city of puebla) successfully defended their city from an invading french army. damn french and their aggression. when will they learn?

anyway, the day is celebrated bc of the victory. a crushing blow to the french that had them licking their wounds kept them at bay what seemed like an eternity. unfortunately, this eternity ended 10 days later when the french returned, easily routed the poblanos and occupied their city. i reminded students of this latter fact this morning yet did not receive a very positive reaction. it seems they prefer to remeber the (short-lived) victory. indeed.

¡salud! cheers! (i would insert something french here, but i got nothing)

if you like ween, today is your day. buenas tardes amigo, hola my good friend. cinco de mayo´s on {friday} and i´d hoped we´d see each other again....

i like this pic(bc i took it) bc it catches the waves crashing in the background. this beach, like most, was totally deserted.  

sunset. bored yet? 

action shot of me and a running to get in place before the sun goes down(there was a large cloud bank (you can kind of see the sunking into it) that we thought would spoil the true sunset. 

another sunset, better focus. this also my 200th post on blogger. true lots are pictures, but damn- am i longwinded or what? 

sunset at playa del amor 

a and c(she is at the top of the rocks) at playa del amor (lover�s beach) on the other side of san augustin bay(they waves here are brutal and any thought about swimming is absolutely absurd) 

me and a at ojo de agua outside of ixtepec. notice the ever-present hammocks in the background. people are all about laying down- it is so hot what else can you do? 

this is where i napped for part of the afternoon our first day in bahia de san augustin (huatulco) at charly�s again 

me and a at charly�s. this is pre-jellyfish, hence the smile as i am seated on my yet unscathed tush 

me and c at charly�s. c in a hammock (every restaurant has at least 3 or 4 of these hung up for their patrons� usage) 

abby and �the fish� this mammoth serves 3 people. again at charly�s in huatulco 

this is in huatulco- charly�s place, strangely enough (his name is carlos, which means charles in english). over my left shoulder you see a hut in background- we threw up hammocks and slept there 

as i was walking through garibaldi (this is the central square that is just across the street from my apt) yesterday afternoon to catch the bus, i was first nearly brought to my knees by the oppressive heat that refuses to take a siesta like everyone else down here. next, through the blinding sunlight of 3:20 in the afternoon, i noticed the usual: drunks hunched over in pain and pairs of young boys and girls lounging in the shade of mango trees, being lovey-dovey(gag) and draped all over each other. my first thought, as usual, is that these fools must be extremely hot- cooking to be exact. no breeze and you are going to let your hot stinky self touch someone else? breathe that furnace onto someone else? cleary love allows you to tolerate the seemingly intolerable infernos of hell(the isthmus of tehuantepec).

anyway, as i am crossing the square, i notice a pack of high school kids (they wear uniforms, easy to spot) hanging in the shade of a building. when i approach, they begin to move closer and I hear their voices and feel their eyes on me. then i hear something i never really thought i would hear: no dude(clearly i am translating) he´s mexican. look at his skin, he ain´t that pale.

you must be kidding me. someone thinks i am mexi! sure enough i hear a bit of broken english saying hello and hi. next thing i know, they are upon me, all 12 of them.

the english dies away and they ask me if i am mexican. doubt it, i reply. suddenly, the flood gaits open, bc i spoke in spanish, and 12 questions descend simulataneously. whats my name, why am i here, where am i going, why dont i have a strong(i.d. bad) accent, etc. we chat for about 5 minutes as they are all extremely anxious to know what a gûero, white person, is doing all the way down here. where are my wife and kids, the rest of my family, etc. when i respond i am not married, the four girls are, literally, pushed to the front, pretty much shoved into me, and the boys tell me they are all ¨disponible¨which means available. immediately the girls cuss the boys and blush, yet begin again to ask me why i am not married and without child. i tell them i am far too old for them, this elicits laughter from the guys as any male within 20 years of a 15 year old is not ¨too old¨ down in the istmo (this is where i live).

eventually, i ask them what time it is and tell them i have to go bc i have afternoon class, which although they understand, clearly disappoints them. they all tell me how great it was to meet me and that they will see me around (some attempting broken english which i congratulate them for using and praise their accuracy, and then five of them start to follow me to the bus stop- stalking, fascinated, curious, who knows. when i get on the bus (alone, thankfully) they wave again and i say goodbye.

reflections: my first thought upon seeing a pack of kids is that i dont want anything to do with them. for some reason i associate negative things with groups of high schoolers (now why might that be, i wonder). i was pleasantly surprised to find out that each and every one of them was extremely nice and when i did not understand one of their slang questions, three of them immediately hit the one who asked me (and chided him for being so informal with a professor) and they said it in a more formal manner. they also used ¨usted¨with me, which is the formal way to speak to someone older than you or someone you do not know: think ¨vous¨ in french(i think that is how you spell it). they were polite, very curious, and extremely nice. this is not the first impression these kids give off. they look like little hooligans, thuggish in a southern mexico kind of way. but they are exactly the opposite. i must say i walked away with a smile on my face and though (or because?) i was still feeling loopy from all the cold medication i was hopped up on, i felt pretty good.

lesson: talk to strangers. they might surprise the hell out of you in a good way. or, they will pull a knife and try to rob you. either way, you exit the situation with a story to tell.

hello up there. hope all are well. i had a fun weekend last weekend. i went to huatulco with two other english profs, one from tehuantepec and another from a town in the mountains of oaxaca (i cant remember the name). we had fun, went snorkelling, ate great seafood, slept in hammocks, i got stung by jellyfish(but not bad), and in general had a grand time.

unfortunately, i returned with a sore throat which turned into a cough and now has progressed into a cold. as you might expect, this does not mix well with the heat. either way, i have been taking frequent cat-naps in my office so i should be good as new come next week. hopefully this explains my recent silence.

let´s see, funny story....

so caroline, abby and i (these are the two teachers) have our snorkel equipment and are ready to go on monday morning. we jump out of the hammocks (25 yards from the ocean), eat breakfast and head to the water bc caro tells us that in the morning the fish are active (she has been here b4). after i comment that it is absolutely impossible not to look dorky in the mask and snork(i have no idea what the breathing tube is called so bear with me), we head into the water. the first 10 yards or so of the reef are spectacular- lots of colors, abundant and varied species of fish, tranquil waves. we push a bit further and i take off my mask bc it is blurry. i clear it, making sure to spit in it a little to keep it from fogging and go back under.

the truth is that it is not foggy or blurry or that there is poor visibility. the answer is that there are millions of little jellyfish hovering in the water like mines in some wwII submarine movie. they are quite small, none larger than a chicken egg, so as the girls press on, i follow behind. i must admit that at this point i am a bit apprehensive and the fun is starting to wane.

50yards out, the waves become stronger and the jellies are multiplying. i am using my arms and hands to try and clear a path in front of me as i swim out, but to no avail. the critters are everywhere. i get a little freaked out as one glances off my cheek and come up out of the water for a second. immediately, a wave pushes me into the reef and i scrape my butt, both cheeks, on the razor like surface. i wisely put my hand down to free myself and slice my fingers as well.

as you are guessing, this is where the fun starts.

i imagine you know the soothing and cooling feeling of salt water and open wounds. compound this by realizing that my tender tush, which rarely if ever sees the light of day, has been scaped up. we gave been out for less than 40 minutes at this point so i tell the others i am fine when they notice i am no longer with them taking in the beauty of the reef.

we are nearing the mouth of the bay, or at least the border of the reef, and there is a large system of buoys that separate swimmers from aquatic craft. there are some young men fishing, two manning the paddles, another tossing a line in the water which he pulls in by hand, and when the boy standing up notices us, he makes a strange comment. caro has lived in spain for 2 years and mexico for 1.5, so i assume she knows what he is saying. however, her reply seems kind of odd.

for example, imagine someone asking you, ¨what time is it?¨ and you respond with, ¨no, i´m fine.¨ exactly.

so the young man resorts to hand movements. it dawns on me after a few seconds (this is normal in that sometimes it takes me a second to realize what someone has just said- and yes i am only talking about spanish here, smartypants, i can almost hear the smartass comments you are thinking all the way down here) that the boy is saying pica, which means to sting. indeed, the young man on the sea is telling us ¨hey, whitey, there are tons of jellies in the water, what are you thinking? they sting you, jackass, get out of the water!¨ i translate for my friends and make for the shore.

on my way back, or at some other earlier point, the ¨when¨ of this is not important to the story, i am stung on the leg and back by some evil jellyfish. how do i know they are hell-spawn? because the small clear ones i was swimming through (and i mean swimming ¨through¨ as the sea was infested with them- imagine this ratio: try to separate the salt from the sea water. you will undoubtedly be able to picture the scene) were fairly benign. there were these larger ones, however, painted warrior purple with tiny blac dots (which i can only assume is where some higher power directly injected both poison and a tendency toward all things evil) and ready to attack, which gave me a fright, and two large red welts. these were clearly the spawn of either satan, or some aggressive and angry lineage, and as we are english teachers and not biologists, i cannot tell you the genus, species or anything. so i have named them myself- evil. simple? yes. descriptive? maybe. conveying what a swimmer who comes into their midst immediately needs to know? clearly.

after waiting a few hours, we went back out for another two hours and had a grand time- except for the feeling i decribed of salt water and open wounds. that, not so much.

keep in mind i was only thinking of a funny story when i began this little tale. i did not promise you anything. if you read the above expecting funny and ended up not laughing, then you and i have different humor. the minor pain and embarassment of others is often hilarious to me. and in the end, the pain and embarassment are all mine. so go ahead, laugh a little. if you need a touch more, keep in mind where i scraped the reef and that i am sitting in a chair typing this. thanks for mocking my pain. what a jerk.