This is a more elaborate version of the last post, with various other temporally-related events thrown in. Photos will be uploaded when the Internet sucks less.
I'll start with Friday. Friday was the Feria Agrícola. All last week everyone was asking me, are you going? Are you going? And me, like, “well, if it's AT school, I can hardly be expected to avoid it!”. But everyone kept inviting me anyway, and it was very nice of them. So what they do is they put up a big tent in the courtyard you surely recall from last post's photos and lay out some big tables and all the first year kids sit at the tables and there's one table for some professors they gave honors to, and then they feed as many people as possible (professors and first-years first, or course). There was agua de jamaica (ha-MY-kah: hibiscus juice... super tasty and good for your kidneys. If you've never tried it, go to the Mission right now [for those Davis kids—when I say “Mission” replace it with “El Mariachi” because it's the closest we've got: even if they don't have whatever thing I'm sending you out for, the owner Victor is really nice and would probably explain it to you]) rice, nopalitos, and this dish called mixiotes (GPG: mee-SHYO-teys) which consists, in its 21st century format anyway, of chicken and onions and potato in this delicious orange sauce whose flavor I just couldn't place... a couple kids from every “generation” were chosen to give speeches and honors and such... and there was a Danza. What on earth is a Danza? (GPG: DAHN-sah) Well, there's a group of kids on campus who do prehispanic ritual dance, specifically taken from the Mexica (who you may also remember as the Aztecs) and they make an offering to some of the big-deal gods, Tlaloc and the like, and burn incense (specifically a native Mexican resinous wood called copal [co-PAL]) and do this elaborate gratitude number toward each of the four rumbos (cardinal directions), each of which represents a different element (not like the periodic table-- think Captain Planet) and they trumpet on conch shells and then everyone starts danza-ing and they're all dressed up and one guy is on the huge wooden drum with the sheepskin on top... it's pretty cool.
Oh, I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that not everyone reading this blog is a stereotypical gringo, and I think of this because of my Gringo Pronunciation Guide. I just want to make sure the reading field is level and that there isn't anybody (read also: my mom...) who is left scratching their heads. In light of which comment I want also to acknowledge that my mom left a message on our answering machine in very well-pronounced Spanish. Good work, you've come a long way since I was in Sinaloa!
So then I have to go to the lab (which was going to start at 12, and then it was going to start at 2, but in reality-world it wound up starting at 4:30 because the prof is a little nutty-- totally knowledgeable and charming but kind of a space cadet sometimes). Anyway we get out of lab at 6:30 and the prof goes, well, I'll see you at El Depo, and of course we all get a good laugh out of that (El Depo is the janky bar where they were having the Feria Agrícola after-party dance hall thingy). Pame and I went with her boyfriend to eat something before shipping out for the Depo with Mara and Richie and I'll be damned if we didn't show up just as our professor squeezes out of the dancefloor all sweaty and beaming with his wife. We got a REALLY good laugh out of that one... Anyway, we're not there ten minutes when somebody grabs me by the hand and drags me to the dance floor-- I don't even know the guy, even though I've seen him around. Tall, awfully cute, and I tell him, look, I can't dance to save my life, and it turns out he's super drunk and goes, whatever, that doesn't matter, here we go! And in fact he's a pretty good dancer but a horrible English speaker, as I discovered when he commenced to speak to me in very broken English upon learning that I was the Gringa. But I wound up dancing for like an hour with various friends and vague acquaintances, and it was really fun despite half of it being Norteña (the music that makes me want to silently take out tuba-ists in the night). I didn't even have time to drink a drop. Mara and I left at about 8:45 because her last bus passes at 9 and I went to keep her company.
But that's not all! That Saturday, I got to go visit Irak! He called me one afternoon when I was hanging around in the Agrícola student cubicle with Pame and a second-year kid they call Peyote (one of the alternative-looking kids, I'd say the one with the weirdest looking hairdo: short little dreads on top and back of his head, short on the sides, with a very Poki looking beard going on chinwise and chopwise). Anyway the student cubicle is pretty neat, with a big old banner that says something like “Ingeniería Agrícola: RESISTENCIA” and a mural in progress on the walls, plus old posters from Otra Campaña and traditional medicine festivals. I learned later that there is a rivaling cubicle which is directly below the one with the murals and is very orderly and such... Anyway, so Irak called to let me know he published a book of his poems and that he was going to have a reading and gosh it would be nice if I came. So I went. It was at this yoga studio in Ixtapalapa, not far from Metro Ermita. There was music and Irak's whole family was there... and his poetry was very pretty. But the funniest part was when Gabriel, the fella who gave a lecture in my Mexican history class about indigenous resistance in Puebla, showed up. I was like, man, I'm certain that's the interesting lecture guy. I kind of want to talk to him, but I feel so awkward. So eventually I went inside for a coffee (they were selling coffee) and he was there and stopped me and said, hey, don't I know you? And I said, yeah, you gave a talk to my class. Anyway, we talked for a while and it was super chill. We exchanged contact information, but haven't made contact since. C'est la vie. The coincidence is worth it.
The following Sunday I went to visit my friend Laura in the town of Tepeji del Rio in Hidalgo. Mara and I took 3 buses in order to get there, and it was a beautiful post-rainy-night day and Laura lives in this idyllic little house with her mom. They have a pretty garden and a little orchard and a pregnant sheep and a puppy... we went for a hike in the hills looking for turtles and bugs in the river amongst the nopales and huizache trees...
Of course I woke up the next morning SICK AS A DOG. I got the flu pretty hardcore. It sucked because Tuesday was Independence day and of course I couldn't get out of bed. I let myself get super dehydrated and wound up at the doctor's office... needless to say there was no Grito for me this year.
