In the interest of posting more photos for my family, here are three random observations of life in Mexico.
Firstly - Mexicans don't seem to have any shame in their use of a name to pursue the higher capitalist goals.
Firstly - Mexicans don't seem to have any shame in their use of a name to pursue the higher capitalist goals.
St Francis of Assisi has a chain of supermarkets, Ghandi a successful bookshop franchise, Our Lady of Guadalupe is often ringed in a halo of soap suds and folded laundry and Jesus has his own bus line (he lets other people use it though. Nice guy).
I guess perhaps it's an extension of the Catholicism here, which seems to fuse all elements of church and life - the dirty and the holy coexist comfortably. People have no problems playing bingo on the stairs of the cathedral, or of living sordid lives under the eyes of Santa Maria in their lounge room, encircled with flashing fairy lights. In Merida we found what seemed to be a very dirty love letter under the pews of a small chapel. I'm sure Christ would have been very happy here in Mexico.
Language. Our Spanish is coming along slowly slowly. The only problem is the more you know, the more you know you don't know. It doesn't have the deliciousness on the tongue as French does, but poetry in Spanish... utterly beautiful. We try to do a 30 minute lesson each day but somehow, crazily, we often don't find the time. There is a library only 2 blocks away and so we often sit there and read to the kids, so we now have a large vocabulary of animals, dinosaurs and space-related terminology. Reading is easiest, then writing and speaking, but listening is the most difficult, especially when people don't stop after every verb to let you conjugate it. Mexican soap operas are great for listening practice - people talk slowly and say entirely clichéd, predictable things. The kids though, are amazing. I guess it's not surprising as they are so entirely practised at using the tools you need for learning language. They can understand a lot, are listening all the time and often come up with bits and pieces themselves in their play.
I blame some of this current little 'black' phase I'm going through on being isolated by language, and so at the moment I am a little cross with Spanish. I miss my friends and I miss the opportunities for random social interactions, of opportunities to express myself, to make an impression (in a small, literal sense) on the world. Never mind. Perhaps I need to embrace the silence some more. Take some inspiration from Ghandi (and his bookshops).
I guess perhaps it's an extension of the Catholicism here, which seems to fuse all elements of church and life - the dirty and the holy coexist comfortably. People have no problems playing bingo on the stairs of the cathedral, or of living sordid lives under the eyes of Santa Maria in their lounge room, encircled with flashing fairy lights. In Merida we found what seemed to be a very dirty love letter under the pews of a small chapel. I'm sure Christ would have been very happy here in Mexico.
Language. Our Spanish is coming along slowly slowly. The only problem is the more you know, the more you know you don't know. It doesn't have the deliciousness on the tongue as French does, but poetry in Spanish... utterly beautiful. We try to do a 30 minute lesson each day but somehow, crazily, we often don't find the time. There is a library only 2 blocks away and so we often sit there and read to the kids, so we now have a large vocabulary of animals, dinosaurs and space-related terminology. Reading is easiest, then writing and speaking, but listening is the most difficult, especially when people don't stop after every verb to let you conjugate it. Mexican soap operas are great for listening practice - people talk slowly and say entirely clichéd, predictable things. The kids though, are amazing. I guess it's not surprising as they are so entirely practised at using the tools you need for learning language. They can understand a lot, are listening all the time and often come up with bits and pieces themselves in their play.
I blame some of this current little 'black' phase I'm going through on being isolated by language, and so at the moment I am a little cross with Spanish. I miss my friends and I miss the opportunities for random social interactions, of opportunities to express myself, to make an impression (in a small, literal sense) on the world. Never mind. Perhaps I need to embrace the silence some more. Take some inspiration from Ghandi (and his bookshops).
And finally - culture and patriotism. I am wondering why I find Mexican patriotism (and cultural pride) so endearing and genuine and the Australian equivalent (if it exists), so abhorrent. For example - every Sunday here, in Campeche (population of 100,000), there is a theatre that stages for free an extravaganza of traditional Mexican song and dance from around the country. The whole thing is elaborately staged and costumed and goes for 2 hours, and the theatre is full. There is an international jazz festival here at the moment which has entry by donation (to a charity) and class acts every night from around Mexico. As far as my Spanish extends, most of the performances seem to be dedicated to 'the glory of Mexico'. On kids' night they provided free hot-dogs as they knew it would be dinner-time. Several compositions are variations on Mexican folk tunes and having people singing along (quite hard to an experimental jazz quartet) and applauding like wild. School kids seem to have at least one day a week where they show up in traditional regional dress (exceedingly cute). And every event, no matter how base (the carnavale in Merida, Campeche fun run) is accompanied by a performance of traditional dance. It is wonderful to see people so devoted to and proud of their country. And maybe a little confusing to an outsider considering the complicated mix of Mayan/Spanish/Mestizo heritage. How have they achieved this seemingly ubiquitous, healthy and perfectly balanced sense of nationalism I do not know. I guess I will try to find out.
That's it for now. We're still having a good time, despite my feeling slightly like an irresponsible parent for having my kids away from home/school/friends...? And slightly rootless at not knowing what will become of us on the other end. Pero no importa.
Soon our blissful days in Campeche will be over, and we will be heading to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas via Palenque for the month of April. We are all excited for the new adventure.
I will leave you with some photos of the Mayan sites of Uxmal, Labne and Edzna, and the Lol Grutas caves (all of which were very awesome).
Miss you all very much. xxx
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