Ensenada Adventures

Movie theatre in Ensenada. $4 for a ticket!

Well the language studies have been continuing had a good pace. Today we learned the imperitive or command form, which is very good for handling a room full of hormonal adolescents. Sientente (sit down)! Trabaje (work)! Afternoon activities have been slightly robotic in drills, but I guess I need the practice.

My "social" life outside of class has certainly been worthy of quotation marks. I´m on my own, just here for a week, so making friends or going on outings with others hasn´t happened. Today the school went to the winery, but alcohol isn´t my thing, so I skipped on that and conjugated irregular verbs in the preterite and imperfect for 90 minutes. What fun!

I did make a point of walking 1.5 miles to the cinema to watch "Hancock". Just my luck, the movie started 5 minutes before I arrived. It was in English with Spanish subtitles, so I got a little reading practice while I mostly just enjoyed listening to the dialogue. During the movie, this woman´s cell phone kept going off and she had no problem chatting away during the movie. I almost turned around and gave her the evil eye, but then I realized that she´s just reading the subtitles and doesn´t need to hear the English because she and the other watchers may not understand it anyway. I chalked it up to another cultural moment, laughed, and read the subtitles along with her.

Tomorrow`s my last day of class, then I retire to my favorite local hostel for a day of r&r from my mostly relaxing week. Just a way to kill time cheaply before I go to San Deigo for my AVID conference.

Armadillo Alley

There's something about an alley that makes good neighbors. It's off the street where buildings brace against passing pedestrians, constant cars, and blaring buses. It doesn't have landscaping to pretend to be something it isn't. The alley is where you peek into cluttered garages with layers of trash and trinkets exposed by every coming and going of car and truck. The alley is where laundry is aired, trash is left, and pretense is forgotten. Alleys are the soft underbelly of an Armadillo: vulnerable yet well-protected.

My apartment is set in the backyard of a house on a busy street. Yet my domain is peaceful with a window onto the alley below. Across the street, two homes are on the back property of another home on an intersecting street. The resulting configuration makes a tiny hamlet in an otherwise noisy neighborhood. Filled with large and extended Mexican families, my across-the-alley neighbors' homes always have some activity going on. It begins each day with an idling car at 5:30 am, which I imagine is a carpool ride for one of the men to get to the factory. Around 7 am its the rehearsed sound of Maria announcing "Tameles! Chorizu!" (or something like that) as she sells homemade foods out of a stroller to supplement the income of her children. When I come home from work, there's always a gaggle of children playing in the alley or behind the fence. Their conversation flows from Spanish to English to Spanglish as the play escalates in excitement. The playful cries give way to hearty laughter as parents, tios and tias come back from work to enjoy dinner and each other's company once again. When I come home from teaching a late night ESL class, I'll be surprised to notice the newlyweds sitting on the stoop to cuddle and talk in the dark as I stop my car to open the gate and call it a night. Just from the alley, I've gotten to know this family and exchange a few kind words each day as we pass through. On the street, it's different.

"Get that piece of shit outta my way!!!" Ann screams, sitting high in her white Ford truck, ready to back out of her front driveway if it weren't for the Mexican about to leave in the black Nissan Sentra that's blocking it. I know a tough shell when I see it. Ann and Matt live in a 102-year-old home across the street from me. They're patiently restoring it to its original luster. Subdivided rental homes are on both sides of them. One waves an overbearing, faded flag of Mexico. The other, unpretentious. I hear Ann rage as I go on my evening run. On my return, Matt's waving me over to me from across the street. I oblige him. "It's good to see another white face around here." I smirk in politeness to his off-color joke. He wants to show me the inside of his home that he's restoring. I'm leery of what I might see as he takes me from room to room, as if there'll be a stash of pot or something that now I'm party to knowing about. Matt and Ann don't plan to stay very long after their vintage home is restored. "Too many Spanish taking over the neighborhood. Our daughter is 7 and can't ride her bike yet. This neighborhood is too noisy," they say as the neighbor kids zoom up and down the sidewalk on scooters, skateboards, and BMXs. I thank them for showing me their home, but I can't get over the rage I saw before.

On my way back, I realize that I just left the tough outer shell of the Armadillo on the street side. Sometimes I want to roll up and only show my shell; other times it's a pat on my soft belly that helps me through the day. How thick is my shell? How soft is my belly? As thick or as soft as I choose to dwell on it.

Old Mexico

Another weekend. Another destination. Another Mexico. This time I went to Ensenada in Baja California de Norte, Mexico. Something in me wanted two more days out of the US, so Gilda and I took off on a Thursday afternoon to beat the weekend rush. Of course, LA would not let us go without at least one traffic jam. But Gilda and I were carpooling, so in this picture I think we're sailing by in designated lane for cars with 2 or more passengers. Kinda sad that most of the cars stopped to our right have only one person in them, eh?

The border station between San Ysidro, CA and Tijuana, BC is the most heavily traveled in the world. Gilda and I were all prepared to show our passports and answer scrutinizing questions by the border patrol. Instead a little camera took a picture of our license plate as we drove through at 20 miles an hour. Suddenly we were in another country. It was getting close to sunset and the Tijuana night life was just getting started. With ideas of Tijuana as a chaotic border down, we rolled up our windows and high-tailed it towards the toll road to Ensenada. Actually, Tijuana isn't that bad. Just don't go looking for drugs, shop for cheap souvenirs, or flash wads of cash around, and you should be left alone. It helps to speak some Spanish, too.

We stayed at the wonderful Hostel Sauzal, run by Maria. At $15 a night including breakfast, you almost can't afford not to stay there. Gilda and I didn't go for many activities while we were there. Just some together time at the beach, sitting around the Hostel reading books, and going out to taco stands and Mexican-Japanese restaurants to eat. Yes, there is a chain of fusion restaurants in Ensenada called La Cochinita. The portions were not Japanese (ie, huge) but it was still very tasty. I only wish that I could have tasted the other side of the fusion: Japanese-Mexican. Mexican food, being quite spicy, is not very popular in Japan.

Our trip was a short one, but it was fun to be immersed in another culture and language again. I got to practice some Spanish, but Gilda did most of the talking. I couldn't get enough of the tacos and paletas. But we had to get back for the start of the work week. Coming back, the immigration procedure was much more congested. We must have waited in line for 40 minutes. It is such a usual thing that vendors set up permanent shops right on the highway lanes leading up to the customs agents.

Now I'm back in the States for good. And the full re-adjustment begins. I'm struggling to figure out how to keep this blog going in a travel mood while I'm still in the States. Please bear with me in my efforts!