Cultural Experiences

Jardín Zenea has an elaborate nativity scene complete with flying angels, prickly pear cactus and kings approaching from other parts of the park. 

Missing from the scene is El Niño Jesús. 

My ¡SpanishDict! word of the day is pesebre, which means manger. The examples given:

1. Juanito, ¿qué hacen estas ovejas en el pesebre de Jesús?

     Juanito, what are these sheep doing in Jesus's manger?

2. El pesebre estará vacío hasta el veinticinco de diciembre.

    The manger will be empty until December twenty-fifth.

Okay, that makes sense. 

What we couldn't figure out was the message of the devil scene across the plaza.

We were told that life is a struggle between good and evil. That is also reflected in the seven-pointed piñatas we see everywhere this time of year, including hanging from the ceiling of the mercado. The seven points represent the seven deadly sins, which are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. 

Where the pedestrian walkway Calle 5 de Mayo meets the east side of Jardín Zenea, next to Templo de San Francisco, is a stunning statue called El Danzante Conchero Chichimeca. 

The dancer has a headdress of pheasant feathers, and on his legs are rattles made of seeds from the ayoyote tree. 

We were shopping for souvenirs on our last night in Querétaro when the sound of drums drew us to El Danzante. We were really pleased to find modern conchero dancers dancing. 

Many mysteries surround the Dance of the Concheros. Some claim it originated in Querétaro to commemorate the defeat of the Otomí by the Spanish conquistadors, but that doesn't make much sense to me. It is more likely a pre-Hispanic ritual that the conquistadors were not able to suppress, despite the punishment they inflicted on the indigios who didn't fully abandon their own culture and embrace Catholicism. 

In the center of the circle is a drummer who plays a variety of rhythms with a stick on a conga-like drum. Some of the dancers wear rattles around their calves to simulate the sound of rain. A few played mandolins, although the traditional instrument associated with concheros is made from the shell of the armadillo, which is believed to have ancestral wisdom. 

The dance is said to unify the participants with the cosmos and establish harmony. In the middle of the circle, in front of the drum, are some ritual symbols. The incense burner represents Fire. The conch shell, which a dancer occasionally blew, represents the Wind. Water is in a container and the dancers, some of them barefoot on this cold night, dance on the Earth. 

We were told that the dancers were probably members of the Otomí tribe. The dance may have spiritual, cultural and political meaning to the dancers. Each year on September 12 to 15, dancers come to Querétaro from all over the country for La Fiesta de los Concheros. 

Steve said, "That's why we love México! There's always some amazing happening!"

Learning Our Way Around a New City, Querétaro

We've been in Querétaro for a week now and have gone to a few museums. The old palaces that house the museums are more impressive than the collections.

Based on nothing more than a poster advertising a dance festival called Oximoron, we went to see a performance by Genius for Anjali Dance Company from England. In Spanish, the program described five scenes that would illustrate through dance important episodes in the life of Beethoven: the discovery of the child prodigy, his training, exposure to Hayden and Mozart, his mother's death from tuberculosis, his own eventual hearing impairment. 

The curtain rose to show a three-sided room, open toward the audience and made of 20 foot long vertical strands of tinsel, illuminated by colored lights. Dancers who weren't particularly athletic or graceful entered the tinsel-walled room and struck poses, then went back to the other side of the tinsel. The dancers were dressed in black shirts and shorts, with black knee-high socks, black bow-ties and red gloves. The entering and exiting went on for about 15 minutes. Then some of the dancers bit the necks of other dancers. We're thinking, what does this have to do with Beethoven? Then it was over, the dancers took a bow, left the stage, and returned to the stage several more times for several more joyous bows. Then the lights went up and a 20 minute intermission was announced.

Years ago, my siblings and I gave my father a certificate stating that a star had been named for our family. My father's reaction in his Maine accent was, "Whaught is the puhpose of this supposed to be?" Steve and I have found that question handy on numerous occasions, and when the intermission was announced, we looked at each other and asked that question. 

We noticed there were some people with Down Syndrome in the audience, and unlike us, they were not baffled by the performance at all. They were enthusiastically circulating and chatting with other patrons. We decided if there was going to be a 20 minute intermission between each incomprehensible scene of Beethoven's life, we would only last for one more scene at most. 

Finally the auditorium went dark and the curtain went up again. The tinsel room was gone.  Now the dancers were dressed in white, in sort of 18th century costumes. An announcer stated in English what we had read in the program about the scenes from Beethoven's life. This made a little more sense. We stayed to the end, but left still confused. 

I looked up this dance company later and found it is composed of people with learning disabilities. Prestigious choreographers have created works for them and heaped lots of praise on them. And I finally learned the tinsel room dance was not about Beethoven, it was called Bloodsucker and it was about vampires. Okay then. 

Yesterday was a splendid day. We hired a guide named Rodrigo to take us to the Sierra Gorda, a nature preserve a few hours east of Querétaro. Rodrigo has taught Spanish in Rhode Island and Florida, as well as teaching Peace Corps volunteers in México. So his English is very good. He also speaks French, and gave a lecture in French to some young people from France the day before our trip.

We knew that we wanted water shoes (zapatos acuaticos) to wear in the river we would be visiting, and we went to five stores in Querétaro looking for them the day before our trip to Sierra Gorda. This odyssey involved a search of three stores in the historic district followed by taxi ride to a spectacular mall, which was out of everything but three pair of children's zapatos acuaticos in pink. We ended up back at the first store and bought two pair that are a little too large. We hope they stay on when we walk in the river. 

As we left the city, we passed many miles of factories. The air was filled with smog. Our first stop was Peña de Bernal, the third highest monolith in the world after Gibraltor in Spain and Sugar Loaf in Brazil. Even though it was 9:30 by the time we got to the sweet little town of San Sebastián Bernal, it was still covered with fog. Rodrigo said he had been to this town hundreds of times, and had never seen Peña de Bernal obscured by fog. 

We started climbing and for about an hour we had the place to ourselves. There were some stone steps, but at times we walked across slick rock covered with powder that made it sort of scary. It's only about 7/10 mile to the end of the trail, but the elevation change is about 690 feet, so it's pretty steep, with some parts that I did on hands and knees so I wouldn't have so far to fall, but I never did fall. For you Tucsonans, this is about the same elevation change as Tumamoc Hill, but in one half the distance. It's vertiginous. The fog cleared and we could see mountain ranges many miles away beyond the villages and a huge gravel mine.

We went as far as we could go without climbing gear. When we got to the end of trail, other tourists started arriving, and they happened to be the French people Rodrigo lectured the day before. The French did a lot of hooting and hollering the whole time they were on the monolith, and I told Rodrigo they are as noisy as Americans. He said the French were always like that. I didn't know that. 

After our descent, we had a wonderful lunch in a cafe in Bernal. Gorditas stuffed with mushrooms, nopales and cheese, plus some beautiful flat blue corn tamales made with sour cream. 

Then we started the long winding drive up into the mountains to Sierra Gorda. It's like driving up Mt Lemmon in Tucson: we went from desert with magueys (used to make mescal, tequila and a sweet drink called pulque),  agaves and huge cactus with dozens of arms, like organ pipes, into scrub oaks, then the pines. Our destination was Río Escanela and Puente de Dios (Bridge of God).

This area is mostly undeveloped, with pine-covered mountains descending thousands of feet into narrow river channels occupied by villages of indigios who scrape out a living by charging access fees and selling handcrafts to tourists. 

We spent so much time at Bernal, Rodrigo was concerned we wouldn't be able to get into Río Escanela because we arrived at 3:45. The indigios were gracious and changed us 50 pesos ($2.75) for a guide to take us along their gorgeous river to a sight that was more amazing than we expected.

The water in the river is clear, and where white sand has settled out, it looks turquoise, which I usually associated with travertine, but Steve said it's due the manganese or magnesium in the water. It's always handy too have a geologist along on a hike. At the spot shown in the photo above, the river is about nine feet deep and people jump off this walk way into it. We were too hurried to get to the bridge to be able to do that.

We crossed the river on several rickety plank bridges and crawled through a few tunnels in the stone cliffs on the side of the river. Finally, after about a mile, we arrived at Puente de Dios. It looks like a cave with drapery stalactites, and water gushing from the ceiling, but now the cave is open at both ends, and the river flows through it. We went under the bridge, which straddles the river for about 100 feet, and waded into the river up to our knees. We were enthralled. 

When the sunlight comes in both sides of the bridge, the sandy river bottom reflects the light to the roof of the bridge and it glows.

I walked a bit in the river wearing my leather tennies before I switched to the water shoes we purchased with great difficulty in Querétaro.  Today I had my tennies cleaned while sitting in Plaza de Armas listening to a saxophonist play jazz at nearby restaurant. The shoe shiner did a great job for $1.50. They weren't this shiny when they were new. 

Most of the restaurants and many stores here have signs posted at the entrance stating the are looking for help. They are very specific in their ageism. Waiter or waitress aged 18 to 25. Cook aged 20 to 30. I'm glad I don't have to look for a job in México. 

On to Querétaro

Steve and I are usually pretty wary of street food, but we were curious about those green things the street vendors sell from wicker baskets. They call, "A diez, a diez, a diez, a diez, garbanzos!" A diez means 10 pesos, about 56 cents, for a clear plastic cone of garbanzos in their shells. If you want, the vendor will put chili powder and lime juice on top. Then the messy fun begins. You peel them and eat them, and man are they good. And we survived.

On Tuesday, we went to Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Morelia. I wasn't eager to go because I don't like most contemporary art, but this museum held lots of pleasant surprises. Housed in a nineteenth century mansion in a parque next to the eighteenth century acueducto, it holds the work of current and former Michoacán artists. As we walked in the door, we were immediately captivated by an intricate work of cut paper called Sueno de Pátzcuaro (Dream of Pátzcuaro) by Marcy Miranda James de Quintanilla, who with her husband Martin Quintanilla, owns Microgallery Mandibula on Toole Avenue in Tucson. It had delicate hummingbirds, night herons, caterpillars and butterflies finely cut into white paper. In the next room was a large print of dancing skeletons by Martin Quintanilla called La Vida Loca (The Crazy Life). In the small world department, there is only one degree of separation, because I used to work with Martin's ex-wife when I was a hydrologist. We saw some wonderful paintings by Alfredo Zalce, the famous muralist who was born in Morelia, along with lots of other impressive works. 

On our last night in Morelia, we found our favorite restaurant, Cuish. It's two blocks north of Madero. Take Benito Juarez north from the Cathedral, then turn right on Calle de Santiago Tapia to #60 on the north side of the street. The ambiance is outstanding. Stone walls, beamed ceilings, red tile floor, pothos plants, perfect lighting, mellow music in Spanish. We had cheese enchiladas with a yummy red sauce, a gourmet salad, and chocolate tamales for dessert. The staff is charming, and the owner told us we were there on their one year anniversary of opening. If you go to Morelia, please support this wonderful, inexpensive spot so it will be there when we get back. Muchas gracias.

We had time on our last day in Morelia to attend a recital at the Conservatorio de las Rosas, the prestigious music school established in 1743, making it the first conservatory in the Americas. It is housed in a gorgeous sixteenth century ex-convento across the street from El Jardín de las Rosas. Students and their maestros played incredibly difficult works on the classical guitar and piano with breath-taking skill. We were very impressed.

Then it was time for our three and a half hour bus ride to Querétaro. Most people who haven't been to México assume that we would take a chicken bus, which is a rickety old school bus that allows livestock with the passengers while motorcycles, lawn mowers, and all sorts of filthy things are in the luggage compartment. México actually has an excellent bus system, and riding a bus in México is a far better experience than any plane trip I have taken in the past 40 years. The buses have plush wide seats with lots of leg room. If no one is behind you, you can raise the leg rest and stretch out with the seat reclined to 30 degrees. The windows are huge, with shades and shutters if you don't want to watch the enchanting scenery. At the bus stops (there were only two along the way), vendors enter the bus to sell snacks and drinks. There are rest rooms with sinks. We could have done without the movies but fortunately the volume was low and we could ignore them. 

Our trip took us across Lago de Cuitzeo, a huge lake where we saw some of the first birds we've seen on this trip. Lots of egrets, grackles, grebes and maybe pelicans. One disadvantage of living in Mexico is the dearth of wildlife. I really appreciate all the birds, reptiles, mammals and some of the insects that live in Tucson.  

Our first surprise was how cold Querétaro is. It gets down to the 30s F at night, which is pretty harsh for our thin desert blood. During the day, it is in the 70s and sunny. In other words, perfect. Our apartment is a privately owned condo I found on Airbnb. It's on Calle 5 de Mayo, at the edge of the historic district, a great location. We enter through a huge old wooden double door on an unassuming cobblestone street, and we're in an open  courtyard with palm trees, pink cantera stone floor and a swimming pool. We're on the third floor in a very modern apartment that's as big as Steve's house, about 2,000 square feet. There are two bedrooms, three bathrooms, including a master shower the size of a car wash, a den, large living room, kitchen with granite counters, and a laundry room. It's such a maze of corridors  that after two days, we still get lost in here. And that's just the main floor. Upstairs is the maid's quarters with another bedroom and bathroom, and there's also a private roof terrace as large as the apartment with another bathroom and a view of the acueducto. We could have used the garage if we had a car. For this we pay $50 per night. The owner is a customs agent and he said this place was okay when he was single, but when he got married and had children, he needed a larger place. 

Querétaro doesn't have the elegant buildings of Guanajuato or Morelia, probably because there were no silver mines here to make the Spanish crown and its Nueva España representatives obscenely rich. Querétaro was originally a farming and ranching hub, but now is one of the wealthiest cities in Mexico because of all the industry that has moved here, doubling its population to 1.3 million in the past ten years. Someone in Morelia told me the air pollution is so bad here, she couldn't consider making this her retirement home, but we haven't perceived any problems. 

Today we went to Mercado La Cruz, also known as Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, named for the brave wife of an important Queretaro official who was a co-conspirator in the Mexican War of Independence of 1810. Spanish colonial authorities locked her up in a monastery when they discovered her role in the rebellion. Mercados sell fruit, vegetables, fish, cheese, clothing, household goods, and horrifying animal parts like whole pig heads that look like they're smiling. The seven-point Christmas piñatas hanging from the ceiling add to the colorful chaos. The seven points represent the seven deadly sins, which is why children smack them with bats, releasing a shower of candy. 

When you buy the delicious aguacates (avocados), the merchant asks if you are going to use them today or tomorrow. The avocados here are ready to eat when you buy them! Unlike at home, you don't have to leave a rock-hard avocado on the counter for a week, only to discover that by the time it has softened up, it's also starting to rot. 

At the Mercado Independencia in Morelia I saw this vendor with 12 chirping birds in 12 wicker cages on his back. Maya Angelou says she knows Why the Caged Bird Sings, although she never tells us the reason in her book by that name. I think caged birds and oppressed people may hope that they will some day be free. As the Mexicans sing in Cielito Lindo:

Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores

porque cantando se alegran

cielito lindo, los corazones

Sing and don't cry

Because singing, pretty darling, cheers up the hearts

As we walk down the street or sit in a restaurant, we are approached by adults and children who ask us for money or want to sell us something. The vast difference between the ease and freedom of our lives compared to the difficulty and limits of their lives is always on our minds. Because we were born a few thousand miles north of here, we ended up on the lucky side of the beggar/begged relationship. I have to wonder, what does this luck require of us? 

Third Week in Morelia

Steve was supposed to leave Zacatecas at noon last Friday and get here at 8:00 PM. My plan was to go to dinner and a symphony with Ann and her friend Nancy, who moved from Albuquerque to Morelia a year ago. The symphony was free, so we had to line up at 6:30 PM to get into the 8:00 concert. I had planned to leave the symphony when Steve arrived in Morelia and he borrowed someone's phone to tell me he was here, but when I found out I was going to have to wait an hour and a half to get into the symphony, I decided I wasn't going to leave until it was over. I wrote Steve a nice note en español perfecto welcoming him to our apartment, and telling him to look in the refrigerator for the garbanzos I made for him. 

About 6:00, I got a text in Spanish telling me to call a Mexican phone number. I called, and Steve answered. He was on the bus in Aguascaliente, about three hours behind schedule, and some nice Méxicano lady had gotten involved in his drama and inability to reach me, and had sent me the text. His bus left Zacatecas three hours late, the driver stopped an hour later to let everyone out to eat fried chicken and junk food, then made another stop to try to get the videos on the bus to work, even though the seven passengers said they didn't care about the videos and just wanted to get going. And so on. 

The symphony was great, and I might have a new client if Nancy decides to move to Tucson. I went home and went to bed, hoping Steve's bus would actually arrive at midnight, and there would be taxis at the bus station, and the night clerk at my hotel would let him in, and it all happened just like that. I couldn't believe it when he knocked on the door at 12:15 AM. I am still amazed that he made it here, but he never doubted that he would. I guess that's the confidence that comes with surviving numerous disrupted travel plans without the benefit of owning a cell phone or using the internet. Steve's outgoing nature always enables him to compensate for his techno-adversion. 

Saturday morning we met Ann to see the Tapetes Florales, which is a series of paintings made of flowers, seeds, grasses, pine cones and other plant materials. The flower carpet is about five feet wide and extends at least 500 feet down the middle of a beautiful 250 year old tree-lined pedestrian walk way. The pictures depict scenes in Morelia and surroundings, as well as musical themes. 

On a stage at the end of the Tapetes, groups of small children sang. They were adorable.

Ann said a Mexican child that isn't cute doesn't exist. One of the children's teachers introduced a song: "We're going to do a song called The Burro. We are dedicating it to the president of a country whose name we can't remember right now."

We made one last visit to my favorite church in the world, Santuario Guadalupe (AKA Templo San Diego), and there was a wedding going on.

 After we had some limonada with Ann at an outdoor cafe and shared some travel stories, she left to have her last lunch with her host family. She's at the end of her two week visit, but she will come stay with me in Tucson for a few days in January.

Saturday night we saw a parade of high school students from about 30 nearby cities and towns. The students each wore a different version of a military uniform. Some were goosestepping like Nazis. Their jackets were double breasted and knee-length, with lots of brass buttons, gold braid and dingo balls swinging from their upper sleeves. From each school, there were drummers beating on snare drums and others playing bugles. Each school was led by a student carrying the school flag and a bugler who twirled his bugle as a drum majorette would twirl a baton. Steve had reported seeing the Zacatecas crew practicing their march in Zacatecas, and when they passed in the parade, he felt an affinity for these representatives of his new favorite ciudad Méxicano.  

One reason Steve enjoyed Zacatecas so much was he met a classical guitar player performing in an outdoor restaurante. When Steve told the musician that he also plays guitarra, the musician invited Steve to play a song for the crowd. He played Hotel California, which wasn't easy because the wide classical guitar neck and nylon strings are not what he is used to, but he got through it and the crowd appreciated it. Hotel California seems to be Steve's theme song, because the guys he plays with on Thursday afternoons said they have been playing it in his honor since he left for his Méxicano adventure. 

Every Saturday night at 8:45, the cathedral in Morelia is lit by colored lights, and fireworks fill the sky. The buildings here are even more beautiful when they are illuminated, and I realized that the designers and builders never got to see them in their full glory as we do at night. 

Sunday we went to the Regional Museum of Michoacán, a museum housed in a former palace with a two story colonnade surrounding a lovely courtyard. Admission is free on Sundays. We saw pre-columbian figurines, pottery, ceremonial obsidian arrow heads and a replica of a burial site with real skeletons in it. It's all very well done, and I had an opportunity to try to figure out the Spanish explanations. 

This area has been inhabited for at least 20,000 years. As they did everywhere along the Ruta Plata, or Silver Route, the Spaniards came here in the 16th century, asked the indigenous people where the silver was located, and then enslaved the indigios and forced them to mine the silver so it could be sent back to Spain and made into doodads for the royalty. 

In the stairway was a 1951 mural by Alfredo Zalce depicting the never-ending struggle between good and evil. On the left in the mural, some modern upper class Mexicans are seen arm in arm with 16th century conquistadors. On the right side, you can see the saintly Miguel Hidalgo freeing the indigios from their Spanish chains in the 19th century. I told Steve he resembles Padre Miguel now that he's letting his hair grow, but he's not having it.

In El Jardín de las Rosas, modern day hippies, some with dread locks, spread handmade jewelry on blankets on the ground, and try to sell it to the few tourists. I never see a sale occur, but these young people still show up every day, mostly to talk to each other and occasionally play guitar. One of these would-be vendors has a white cat and two little dogs that patiently and calmly hang out with him, either in his lap or sleeping next to the wares on the blanket. I am amazed that these animals seem to think their life is perfectly normal and they are taking it all in stride, just as most Mexicans do.

In the portale across from the catedral, a huge red bloodhound with feet the size of a tiger's poses for photos. When seated, he is about the same height as the five year old children who are delighted to pet the gentle giant. Donations for his massive food requirements can be placed in a bowl atop a large plush dog bone. 

The third Monday in November is Revolution Day, a national holiday commemorating the 1910 start of the ten year struggle to find a successor to Portirio Diaz, who had been president/dictator for 35 years. Several revolutionary leaders including Pancho Villa were assassinated by the government before the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) was founded in 1929. 

A big Revolution Day celebration used to occur in Mexico City, but the 2014 disappearance of more than 100 student protestors from the college of Ayotzinapa in Guerrero resulted in national protests and unrest, so Revolution Day is now celebrated on a more subdued level in state capitols rather than Mexico City. 

We enjoyed the Revolution Day parade, which consisted of dozens of groups of students and some adult groups, all engaged in unique activities as they marched toward the catedral. Some did gymnastics, martial arts, tumbling, rope jumping, lacrosse, singing, folklore dancing in swirling dresses. Some made human pyramids, some waved hula hoops with tinsel attached, or flung a huge flag into the air and made billowing patterns. Some rode bicicletas in synchronized formations. A group of smiling deaf people walked with their arms raised above their heads and their fingers spread, shaking their hands in what we imagined may be a silent way of saying hurray. Hundreds of policía were last, lying on the street in radiating formations and doing sit ups while they barked out the count to 20. I especially appreciated this because doing sit ups while counting to 20 in Spanish has been part of my morning routine since I got here.

 

There were hundreds of police in riot gear, none of it needed. Although some of them gave terse answers when we spoke to them, two of them saw me standing in the middle of a street and waving my arm toward a store's sign to explain a point about Spanish pronunciation to Steve, and they approached us and asked if they could help us find anything. 

After the last group passed, the police closed the street. We got to the catedral just in time to see the mayor and other politicians high on a wrought iron balcony of a grand old building. The mayor's speech was over, and the police allowed people back into the street below. Workers set up a stage in the street for a mariachi contest. We came back later and heard lots of mariachi bands. 

We enjoyed another event in the Festival Música, a chamber music concert at the Centro Cultural Universitario by the Wiener Kammersymphonie from Austria. Three women played violin, accompanied by men on cello, upright bass and piano. They played Schubert, Beethoven, Gal, Mahle, and Korngold, ranging from the 18th century to the 20th. It was wonderful. 

During the first half of the concert, the colored lights aimed at the stage kept flickering off and on, randomly changing colors and making grinding noises. The musicians soldiered on, although I'm sure that never happens in Austria. Steve and I were both reminded of his father's comment when they were here on a family vacation many years ago: "Everything in Mexico is half-baked." Whenever something particularly Méxicano happens, like discovering that instead of having a proper fitted bottom sheet, the king size bed has a flat queen size sheet that can't be tucked in, so it ends up in a rumpled mess every day, I say, "Your father was right", and Steve knows what I mean. 

Another example: after Ann and Nancy and I had been waiting in line for an hour to get into the free concert, some ushers went down the line and told us that the people with free passes would get in first, then once they counted how many seats were left, they would let in that many people, but we weren't all going to get in. Ann protested that we had been there for an hour and we didn't know we could have gotten passes. It wasn't in the festival program, and wasn't on their web site, which both say simply Concierto Gratuito. The usher said the need for passes had been advertised on the radio since October. I said to Ann and Nancy they should just sell tickets so we don't have to go through this. Ann said then the rich gringos would get in and the locals wouldn't. That's a good point, but still it could be handled better. 

This isn't the first frustration I've had with this music festival. They don't announce the dates of the festival or the programa until two months before the festival begins, and the advertisements don't give the addresses of the venues. One venue was listed as CSAM UNAM, and no one could tell me what that means. I told Ann and Nancy I'm going to move here and help them run the festival more logically. Nancy said facetiously, "They really like people like you here." Ann said if it were run the way I want it, it wouldn't be Mexican, which is very true. One really needs to go with the flow in order to get along here. 

The Second Week in Morelia

I learned a lot of Spanish in my first week, and now the challenge is to remember it and use it while continuing to learn more. I have studied present tense, irregular verbs, por y para (Spanish has two ways of saying "for" -- this may be the only way in which English is easier than Spanish). We have learned past tense regular and irregular verbs and have moved on to future tense.  It's like having a fire hose in my mouth.

I had private lessons last week for lack of other students. Monday another beginner showed up, and he is in my class. He is a young man from Arizona or maybe New Jersey (he mutters vague, confusing things) who works or maybe worked at Big Bend, Texas. He has never studied Spanish formally, only in "Escuela de Vida" as he puts it. He was pretty lost at first and seemed like he resented being here, but that could just be his discomfort at the unfamiliar surroundings and the sudden immersion in Spanish. After a few days,  he is better than I am.  He likes to talk about getting robbed by Mexican police, shooting semi-automatic weapons in the US (guns are illegal here), getting arrested by border patrol, and getting high with people who rob him. He has driven all over northeastern Mexico, which is a pretty wild place. He appears to be actively looking for trouble, which he easily finds on a regular basis.  This is the first time he has come to Central Mexico and he hates it because he doesn't like cities and the people here are so polite and formal.  

Other more advanced students showed up this week from Norteamérica. There's a mother and daughter, a middle aged couple, and an elderly couple who have been coming to this school every Noviembre for 20 years. 

My first few days here, I felt very awkward and did clumsy things like forgetting to zip my change purse closed, and dumping all my change on the ground. I picked up my change, not sure which coins were worth how much, and put it all back in my change purse, but didn't zip it shut, so I immediately dumped it all on the ground again. Now even though people don't usually understand what I'm saying the first time, if I can keep them from switching to English, I can usually get my point across. Conversation is an extreme struggle. But the whole experience of being in another country by myself has been confidence-building. 

Last week, Carmen, one of our maestras, played Lotería on the roof of the school with Ann and me. Tucsonans will recognize the Mexican playing cards with images of La Muerte (death), El Gallo (rooster), El Venado (deer), La Campaña (bell), La Mano (hand), El Nopal (prickly pear cactus) and many more. I was never sure what they were for. Each player gets a card with 16 of the images arranged in four rows of four across. One of the players turns over the playing cards one by one and calls out the name of the image. If you have that image on your card, you cover it with a dried black bean. Unlike bingo, you need to cover all 16 images before you can shout "Lotería!" and win the game. 

On one of  my walks around the city, I  noticed a stand that sold "donas". On closer examination, I see they are donuts. Dona (pronounced dough nah) is what people here call me and it's even how I introduce myself sometimes because Spanish doesn't have a way to pronounce my name the Yankee way I was taught: daw naw. So people must think it strange that I am named for a greasy round pastry. Fortunately I am doing a lot of walking and I'm losing weight so I look less like a dona every day. 

Wednesday night we finally made it to see the Disney movie Coco. After class, Ann and I took a colectivo, one of the many little vans that run regular routes around the city to the mall to be sure we were able to get tickets for that night's show. Ann heard that this movie has sold more tickets in Mexico than any other movie in Mexico's history. Once we had the tickets, we got some lunch at a surprisingly good Italian restaurant. We had gourmet pizza and salad, which ended up costing us about $16 each with tip. Very pricey for México. 

Then we walked around the mall, which is three stories, about four times the size of Tucson Mall, and way more upscale. Unlike in Tucson, lots of people are walking around with shopping bags in the middle of the day. Whenever I'm at Tucson Mall, it's just to escape the heat, and it seems to be the same for most of the people there. The Sears (pronounced say-AHRS) at the Morelia mall looks like a fancy department store, with all the dazzling perfume, cosmetic, jewelry and women's accessory counters glowing at the entrance instead of the overstuffed racks of disorganized, cheap clothing we see in its counterpart at home.  Ann attributes the brick and mortar shopping to the general lack of credit cards in México, which prevents online shopping from destroying stores. She says México is about 20 years behind the US, so they can probably plan on their malls becoming mausoleums like ours within a few decades. 

Finally Ann's Mexican family arrived and we went to the theater, where we had plush, assigned seats and watched a gigante screen. The feature-length cartoon Coco is fantástico, increíble, cómica y hermosa. It's about Miguel, a Mexican chico from Michoacán, the very state where I am now, who is curious about his great-great-grandfather, who abandoned his wife and baby daughter to be a musician. The ancestor's head was ripped off of the family photo of him, the family won't discuss him, and they will not allow music to be played anywhere near them. 

Noche de los Muertos (Night of the Dead) is a huge Mexican celebration, especially in Michoacán, where families decorate their ancestors' graves with flowers and candles on November 2 and stay in the cemetery all night eating and drinking with their ancestors, who come back to earth this one night every year. Miguel and a street dog named Dante cross the bridge of marigold petals between the living and the dead and he goes in search of his long lost ancestor. He becomes a great guitar player and has exciting adventures. It is so colorful with such stunning computer generated images. Disney Corp did wonderful research, and I was delighted to see that Miguel's town looks just like Pátzcuaro, a 400 year old village that Steve and I visited two years ago for Noche de los Muertos. Pátzcuaro was the model for Miguel's village. They just got everything right with no stereotypes and lots of respect and humor. It was in Spanish, which I mostly could not understand, but it's a cartoon, so it was easy to follow the story. It was fun to see it with some Mexicans, who are so proud of how their culture and particularly their state has been represented in this spectacular film. I look forward to seeing it in English next month. 

One of our Spanish teachers said Disney Corp tried to copyright the words Day of the Dead. Can you believe it. Talk about cultural appropriation. They lost. But we have already started seeing the merchandising tie-in. 

A hairless street dog named Dante leads Miguel to the Land of the Dead. Dante's breed is Xoloitzcuintle, and they have been in Mexico for around 3,000 years. The Spanish conquistadors almost wiped them out. According to ancient beliefs, this dog has the ability to guide souls in their journey to the underworld upon their death. The term Xoloitzcuintle comes from the Aztec language Nahuatl. 'Xólotl' means strange and itzcuintli signifies dog.

These dogs always blow away the competition at the World's Ugliest Dog contests, especially if they have a long tongue that hangs out of the side of their mouth as Dante does. They are also said to be very intelligent and fast. Obviously, with no fur, they are sensitive to the cold. I am concerned that this movie will result in too many parents in the US making an impulse decision to buy these dogs as Christmas gifts. After the release of 101 Dalmations, animal shelters were filled with Dalmations, which require a lot of attention and do not like children. 

The Morelia Adventure Continues

Wednesday mi oficina (office) was a table in a cafe in Jardín de las Rosas (Rose Garden), a lovely little park across from the conservatory of music. Steve and I wanted to make this our favorite park when we were here before, but the two restaurantes are not vegetarian-friendly, and at night there are loud bands playing. In the afternoon it's quiet except for the occasional singer or guitar player who is so bad they must get most of their tips from people who pay them to go away. 

El menú showed something mysterious below the coffee and tea called tizana, which I couldn't find in my Spanish dictionary. I ordered a type of tizana called bosque tropicales because it sounded exotic. When it arrived in a white cup, I deduced that tizana is hot herbal tea, but my bosque tropicales seemed to have dried apples rather than anything tropicale in it. It was tasty.

My plan was to do my homework at the cafe. It's a little difficult because of the constant stream of people trying to sell me something or asking for money. I gave money in response to about one out of five of the requests. One guy sold me a pocket calendar. An old lady said there was something wrong with her leg. I would neither pay people to play music nor to stop playing. 

When I got to school Wednesday, as usual I said Buenos Días to the administrator, Regina, and she said Cómo estás? (How are you?). I am still struggling to answer this most basic of questions. I said Bueno (good) and she kindly informed me that Bueno is masculine, so I would say Buena if that were the appropriate way to answer the question, but it's not. I should say Bien. I was horrified to learn that when I have been saying Bueno or Buena, whichever comes out, I have been saying "I'm hot" or "I'm sexy". 

So many mistakes to make, so few people willing  to tell me when I'm making a fool of myself.

Thursday evening Ann and I went to two concerts. One was a group of estudiantinas, which is what they call the strolling minstrels who dress up in Elizabethan garb and lead tourists around the city. These estudiantinas were our age, and seemed to have traveled together a lot. One of them saw us looking like confused tourists who weren't sure where the concert was going to be. After telling us we were almost in the right place, he informed us that he got a PhD in petroleum geology from the University of Texas at Austin. Of course, he spoke perfect English. He told us people from the US should learn another language like the rest of the world, but they're too lazy. I was trying to figure out how to tell him that we were in Morelia to learn Spanish, but Ann told him before I got a chance.

The only song we knew in their concert was Cielito Lindo. You know the one: Ay-Ay-Ay-Ay. Canta y no llores. Sing and don't cry. That's the only part I can sing along with, but the audience enthusiastically joined in on all the songs. Ann is going to look up the lyrics to Cielito Lindo so we can be proper concert participants. 

Then we went to what was supposed to be a classical guitar and piano concert, but the pianist cancelled so the guitarist also cancelled. So they found a couple of classical guitar students to fill in. I can say that both of them play guitar better than I play mandolin. The most interesting part of the concert was when a bat (yes, with wings, not a rat) ran around on the floor by the guitar player. The poor thing must have been injured, and eventually ran to the back of the room where we heard some crashing and banging. I don't think it ended well for the bat.

Friday night the Festival de la Música opened with a concert by the Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco and I went with Ann and some of her host family: Lucy, whom I met a few days ago, her husband Victor and their son Irving, who works at the Ford Motor plant in Irapuato as an engineer. He provided our ride in his brand new Ford SUV. Ann reports that all of Lucy and Victor's children are brilliant: a doctor who is married to an American woman and lives in New York, a son in IT, a niece who is still in high school and currently staying with them. 

We met at Victor and Lucy's house and I tried to speak a little Spanglish with them. Victor said everything is Trump's fault, including the fact that Victor can't speak English. Ann and I agreed that was verdadero. Victor offered me some food, and I said no gracias. He asked me porque (why?) and I meant to say "No tengo hambre", which is the correct way to say I am not hungry. However, for some reason it came out "No tengo hombre", which means "I don't have a man". At least I am entertaining the locals. 

The symphony was espectacular. Teatros Morelos is a modern, relatively small concert hall with wooden interior walls and great acoustics. We had general admission tickets and were late because we were waiting for Irving to drive home from Irapuato, so we ended up in the last row, but we could hear and see just fine. Thirty minutes of speeches preceded the concert, so we didn't miss anything. There was a weird, disjointed piece I didn't like by Zoltan Kodaly, then fabulous works by Liszt, Brahms and Bartok. The audience went nuts for the pianist Daniela Liebman, a fifteen year old child prodigy from Guadalajara, who played Liszt's Concert No 1 in E Flat Major magically. Last year Forbes Magazine declared her One of the Forty Most Creative Mexicans in the World. She had to come back for several bows, and was not allowed to leave until she played an encore. I loved the Bartok: El Mandarin Maravilloso. So much energy, and so well played. 

About a million Monarch Butterflies spend their breeding season in the US and Canada, and in the winter, they almost all come here to Michoacán state, to a pine forest east of Morelia. They start arriving in November and leave in March. The best time to see them is on a sunny day in February, when they all here and fluttering around. On a cloudy day, they hang in clusters from the trees and look like dead leaves. 

I didn't expect to see Las Monarcas on this trip because it is so early in their season and because it's been warm up north, so they delayed their fall migration. But my school knows a tour company that takes tourists to see the butterflies, and they said there were plenty of butterflies there and they are putting on a show. So I took a chance that Saturday would be a sunny day and committed to the trip. I am so glad I did. 

It's a three hour drive, all up hill, to El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Preserve, a World Heritage Site. Once we reached the butterfly preserve, it was a 1.3 mile hike with 935' elevation change, from 9,952 feet above sea level to 10,887, according to my GPS. This is the highest I have ever been with my feet on the ground. The other customers were three ladies from Tijuana (TJ) who are a little younger than I am, but not accustomed to hiking at all, much less at 10,000 feet above sea level. One of them assumed they would ride the horses that take some of the tourists up the mountain, but the other two weren't having it. They chanted "Si, se puede!" Remember Obama's campaign slogan? "Yes, you can!" So we all walked the trail accompanied by a young Mexican couple and our guide, a young indigenous man. The ladies struggled with the hike, and were amazed that it wasn't difficult for me. I told them (in Spanish) that I hike in the mountains in Arizona, so then it made sense to them. We occasionally reminded each other "Si, se puede!" I couldn't figure out how to tell them that hiking at such a high altitude with thinner air is more difficult than at sea level where they live. Anyway, they were all good sports, and very kind to me, trying to speak English as I tried to speak Spanish. Their camaraderie reminded me of my hiking buddies. 

It was all worth it when we arrived at a clearing and the air was fluttering orange. High up in the pines, Monarchs were hanging in clusters and flying around. One of mis companeras gasped and started to cry, she was so overwhelmed by how beautiful it was. I mean, she was sobbing. It feels like a sacred place. Mecca for Monarch Butterflies.

Hard to see with my phone camera photo,

but those bits of orange in the pines are Monarch Butterflies.

You had to be there. 

This is the second time I have gotten a glimpse of what heaven may be like. The first time I was floating in a raft in the still water of the deep narrow channel of the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon, listening to Craig Childs play a wooden flute, with the music bouncing off two billion year old black Vishu Schist and pink Zoroaster Granite walls soaring 1,000 feet high. 

My new vision of heaven also involves looking up in awe, but now I'm looking to towering pines and the paradox of fragility and endurance that is the Mariposa Monarca.

After we descended from heaven back to earth, we enjoyed fresh blue tortillas, made of squash flower by an indigenous woman before our eyes on a wood stove made of half a 50 gallon drum. The tortillas were stuffed with mushrooms, onions, white beans, cheese and nopalitos -- prickly pear pads. Was it delicious? I had three.  

On the way back to Morelia, we stopped in a happening little village for home made ice cream. I had one scoop of aguacate (avocado) ice cream, and one scoop of mezcal ice cream. A sweet end to an amazing day.

Just heard from Steve. He has arrived in Zacatecas, and likes it a lot. As usual, he quickly made a new friend, and José is allowing him to talk all he wants on his cell phone, which has some incredible unlimited international minutes plan for $15 per month. Steve will take a nine hour bus ride to Morelia on Friday.

Steve met a couple from Texas on the plane who once had an undocumented Mexican living with them. This couple became very close to the Mexican and they consider him their son. He worked in the US and sent money home so he could build a house in stages as he was able to save the money. The last thing he did was add the bathroom, and he was so proud of this, because he had never had a home with a bathroom. He cried when talking about how important it was to him to provide his family a home with a bathroom. Once the house was built, he returned to Mexico to live with his wife and children. The Texas couple was flying to Zacatecas to meet the man's family and see this house that means so much to him. Steve saw the reunion in the airport. Needless to say, there was a lot of crying and joy.