Enough about time already

So even though I was sort of invited to ruminate about the future on someone's blog, I am going to scrap the time talk and move onto something else. You might have checked some photos I put up recently about life in Mexico, so I will do a little parallel to those.

I am about to leave for a while again, and there is so much that I have been thinking about, about how here I have learned to do several interesting things (including some that I may not be able to put on my resume) and have been swept away by the excitement and occasional misery of being a foreigner. In all of the pictures I am smiling, though, and not just because I am about to be caught on film (or, better yet, a memory card), but because I am happy most of the time. And who wouldn't be, when all these funny and random things happen every day?

For example, today is now Sunday, and this is how it has shaped itself:
First, I woke up after nearly 14 hours of sleep. Late, you say? De ningún modo... I fell asleep around 6:30 p.m., so that means that I woke up at 8:08 a.m. Wild Saturday night, huh? If only you knew what I dreamt about... I immediately started loading my reusable bags with dirty clothes, and headed out on my bike with the whites on the right handlebar and the darks on the left. At the end of my street, I joined up with Recreactiva, the route that the city sponsors every Sunday for walkers, bikers, skaters, or any other kind of non-car riders. Needless to say, I was was the only one who actually uses my bike for a utilitarian purpose, and who actually dares to sport a skirt (knee-length) while doing so. At the laundromat, I used the wireless internet while my clothes were soaked, soaped, spun and dried.

At this point, I am in a Plaza that I have been to twice today. Why? Well, after leaving my clothes at the apartment, I also left my my bike chain. I didn't realize that until I arrived here for breakfast, and I had to choose somewhere that I could leave my bike outside in plain sight. The best option was precisely what I wanted, a place with tortas (or, if you are from Guadalajara or the North, lonches) of all kinds, but I had a licuado with oatmeal and bananas and a plate of fruit with everything except cantaloupe and papaya. Some kids touched my bike, but other than that, everything was calm.

Since tonight I have a dinner invitation from one of the company's directors and I understand it is correct etiquette to take his family something, I had no choice but to return home for my bike lock so that I could come back and find something. The book stores had dismal options for both interesting and intelligent children's books and also for traditional Mexican cooking books both with pictures and good recipes. So, I opted for soaps made out of essential oils and extracts from Michoacán (alright, I am obsessed with the store and always end up buying something there no matter what).

Now I am drinking a mint tea at Starbucks to make sure that I actually finish a blog post today, and I just saw a young woman who was turned away from the store Zara for trying to enter with a dog. Yes, it was pretty small, but what the heck? She was dragging it along, literally, because the outdoor plaza is tiled and it just skid along after her. She was determined to enter anyway, so she gave some woman sitting at a booth the leash. Hopefully she either knows her or is going to pay her, or that the woman will decide to run off with the dog so it no longer has to endure shopping excursions.

Otherwise, a clown on stilts passed by and imitated me typing on my computer, and some of his co-entertainers were walking around with glass paperweights on their heads. Is that a new trick? Clowns are in demand in Mexico always, but I think that they are here specifically today to entertain children (as opposed to clowns who entertain adults with dirty jokes and double entendres) because April 30 is Día de los Niños. I think we don't celebrate that in the US because the children already get a lot of stuff. Or something.

In front of me there is a mother with her hearing-impaired daughter. They are chatting, and I realize that this is only the second time since I have been here that I have seen people signing. I love it. Did you know that I used to know sign language, and that I volunteered at the Kentucky School for the Deaf? And that I have always thought about adopting a hearing-impaired child. In India, at the home where Vivian was adopted from, the only male child was blind, and I know that those children more than any others will rarely get a chance to have a family (although, thankfully, he did).

And now I am going to tell you about biking in Guadalajara, because since I started doing it, it has become the highlight of my life. Biking in the morning is a breeze, because it tends to be a bit cooler, I am freshly showered and my wet hair lays on my neck and upper back, and it is downhill nearly all the way. There is nothing much of particular interest in the morning, other than the waking city with occasional wiffs of bread baking and buses running behind schedule doing their best to mow me down. There is a particular right hand turn where I have to slow down to not hit taxis that come to sharp halts, the juice man who doesn't always park his cart in the same place, and the young, entreprenuerial men who stand just off the corner waving propaganda to people going to the American consulate there, trying to convince them that their services are required. Also, the other day a renegade car next to me came to an exaggeratedly screeching halt, and then peeled out when the light changed. Unfortunately, precisely there the street veers significantly to the left and the car didn't quite make up, so he jumped the curb and had to swerve to keep from heading directly towards a line of trees and service posts.

In the afternoon (meaning after 6:30 p.m.), things are much more interesting. There are about 160 people in my office, not counting the frequent visitors from the US, who have not yet all asked me about my affition for impending danger, so I spend the first few minutes prior to my departure patiently repeating the same thing while putting on my helmet, adjusting things, securing my bags to my handlebars, wasting time, etc. Then I hop on and go uphill, and stopping at nearly every other stoplight (although I confess, if no one is coming, I go on through, reasoning that half the cars do it anyway, and they don't have to do half the work that I do). At one corner there used to be a gay man selling gum and other candies. During the day he was always disheveled, with dirty, unmatching clothes and a sloppy ponytail. At night, though, I imagine that he is a diva. He always looked tired. One day, I was stopped at the light next to a car driven by a man in a suit, and the street vendor was peddling his goods to little avail. He then turned to me, called me "sister" and asked what I wanted, that the man in the car would buy it for me. Although I declined to "order" anything, the man in the car felt obliged to buy some gum. The light changed then, and the man on the street ordered the man in the car to yield to me, that couldn't he see that the "lady on the bicycle deserves some respect." Ha.

Further ahead, there are bongo bands, silver-painted men who juggle fire-lit batons on the shoulders of their friends, and children selling flowers, candy and other goods at stoplights. The same waitors are outside their restaurants daily, waiting bored for the dinner crowd that won't arrive for another hour or more. Others are closing up shop, and the traffic is dense from large streams of workers abandoning their offices for the day. I have twice had a car-door opening scare, one that so nearly sent me flying off my bike that a man in a truck next to me commented at the next intersection that they almost did me in. Other times, people in cars have whistled, cajoled, commented, etc., but most of the time they have been my coworkers who like to see what it takes to get me to turn around (the most prudent response is always to ignore that type of behavior). One time, however, three guys packed into a pick-up truck yelled "Güera hermosa" (beautiful white-girl being the closest translation), although I wondered how they could make that statement if its hard to find me beneath the helmet, sportswear, backpack, red checks, and, of course, sweat.

I love biking, and rebutting all the falsehoods related to it: that it is too slow, too difficult, too dangerous, etc. Clearly, they won't argue whether it is cheaper, because I was relieved that I had irreparably wrecked my car, because the insurance, the gasoline, the oil changes, etc. adds up to a LOT of money. And of course, it is easy to tell that biking has been good for me. For some reason, everyone here likes to talk about my legs, especially the girls. Many Mexican girls bemoan the fact that they have "chicken legs", and I happen to have the opposite. Actually, I have been embarrassed forever that genetics, soccer-playing and horse-back riding gave me big calves, but it has made me a veritable star here. Who would have known???

I'm already thinking about the next theme I want to cover, so I won't wait so long to write the next blog entry. Hasta pronto.