MEXICO February 19, 2010: Los Dias Cinco y Seis en La Ciudad de Mexico

Escribo 19 de Febrero
Hola Amigos —

This will cover both el Jueves y el Viernes.
My classes are going well and now they are over (terminado). I’ve learned a lot about Maria Luisa in the past two days. The conversations have been fluid and difficult .. and slow, but it is more enjoyable than what I did in Guatemala when there was so much concentration on grammar. That said, I think I can make myself understood on some fairly complex social and political issues, but my grammar is quite atrocious, so there must be a happy medium somewhere.

Anyway, Maria es muy religiosa and she believes more in prayer than in science. So she has a lot of trouble understanding how anyone can deal with illness or other infirmities without a strong belief in god. I explained that I trusted science and evidence, and she said that it was important to pray so that god would tell the doctors what to do! She also wanted to discuss Adam and Eve, but I think she was a bit put off when I made some comment about the “powerful apple.” In any case, we have had some very good discussions and I think she became aware of my politics, just as I did of hers. While she says shes has friends – both male and female – who are homosexuals, she is totally opposed to same sex marriage and is actually not all too pleased to know that she has homosexual friends because it appears to her to be “not normal.” We had a very brief conversation about homosexual priests and she believes that this exists in the church (to her dismay.)

Maria is also very curious about the fact that I am Jewish (or at least by the fact that I am neither Protestant nor Catholic).. Lots of questions and difficult to explain that I’m not an overly engaged Jew.

She’s very obsessed with the fact that the great majority (98% according to Maria) of married men are not faithful. When I asked about women she said 60%.

In any case, Maria was patient and curious so the conversation moved along.. albeit slowly because of my low level Spanish abilities.

It poured again yesterday and was very cold (unusual weather for Mexico City), and we had a few more power outages. Today it is beautiful — sunny, blue skies, low pollution, etc.

Following class, I have been (unfortunately) coming directly back to do work, so my extra curricular activities are minimal… Last night Mike and I had dinner with two of the Mexican faculty and it was a good and stimulating conversation. They are both quite enjoyable. Eduardo is the chair of the Architecture Department and Andrea has been on the faculty at UAM for many years. Her husband is a scientist and is now head of a major department at the Gates Foundation in Seattle. She commutes every other weekend to Seattle and stays for about 4 days. He is the head of a special project that is dealing with the eradication of some diseases that are found in Central and South America. It’s a pretty demanding position and he travels around the world quite a bit. She did her graduate work at MIT so she’s very fluent in English. Eduardo is a real character — studied in London so his English is good too. Apparently he translated for Mike when Mike gave his lecture to the university a few weeks ago.

We ate in the San Angel neighborhood at a local fonda and we closed the place down.. lots of drinking.. And we began the meal with a dish of assorted pre-historic specialties (that’s how it was referred to on the menu)… consisting of fried worms (guisillas), ant eggs (escamole – which we had tried a few nights ago) and grasshoppers… They were all delicious.. You put them into a tortilla with some guacamole or salsa.. roll ’em and eat.. ) Believe me, I was a little skeptical, but they were all really really tasty .. I probably would have eliminated the worms because even though they were fried, the shapes remained.. Eating the ant eggs was like having caviar.. and they are mixed with other finely chopped ingredients and herbs. The grasshoppers were like a powder, so they mixed easily with the guacamole…

Oh, forgot to mention that we finally talked with the other guest here at the casita — Andrew Fierberg — a filmmaker from NY (producer) whose actually produced more than 20 films and has won several awards. He did “The Secretary” and a version of Hamlet that had Ethan Hawke in the cast. He’s here to consult on a film (fictional story) that will be released in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s independence — the story involves a house and the memories of the house over 200 years. It’s written by a well known Mexican novelist who is a friend of Andrew’s.. Anyway, lots of strange interconnections — turns out Andrew’s wife commutes to Cambridge, MA where she is a professor at Harvard at the Carpenter Center and the GSD, so we know many people in common.

Not much else to report, except that the commercials on television are quite hilarious.. Anybody interested in having me bring back “Slim Ice”.. Apparently you rub it on and lose lots of weight and decrease your clothing size by about 2 sizes… I’ll be marketing it in the US next week.

OK.. Back to work for me.. Maybe one last report tomorrow from the airport. We plan to get to the Saturday market in San Angel as soon as it starts at about 10 (a very special mercado we are told, that only takes place on Saturdays) and hope we can see enough of it before we taxi back to the hotel by noon so that we can leave for the airport at 12:30.. it’s a bit tight what with the unbelievable traffic and unpredictability of the taxis.

Tonight we are headed to a very poor community north of the city that began as a self-help barrio about 40 years ago and is now quite established with a strong social and physical infrastructure — complete with bars and shops and other amenities.. Peter, our American (soon to be Mexican) friend is taking us there as he once lived there and has friends there. Our visit will include going to some kind of Mexican transvestite bar.. We’ll let you know how that pans out.

Best to all.
Hasta Luego… probably mas informacion que desean.. Sorry.
Fern

P.S. — OK, I promise to update you on tonight’s escapade.