It’s not every day that Queretaro makes the front page of Time.com in English.  A couple of weeks ago there was a fight in the centre, where a couple hundred preppy kids organised online to attack what turned out to be about 30 alternative kids.  The article says “emo”, but I would have called them goth or just alternative.  A few days later, there was (supposed to be; not sure if it actually happened) a parade in the centre, organised by the emos, in solidarity against the attack.

This article makes it seem like some kind of fight over music, perhaps a part of an eternal aesthetic conflict.  To me, it just seems like a bunch of bored kids with nothing better to do.  One guy from the DF is quoted in the article as saying, “This is not a battle between music styles at all. It is the conservative side of Mexican society fighting against something different,” saying it is more a battle against effeminate styles and homosexuality.  If there’s any greater meaning in this, I think this guy is the closest to getting it.

Kids here, just like in the states, get bored and pick fights with what’s different.  And, just like high school conflicts in the states, this hasn’t boiled over into wider society much at all.  None of the adults here are involved at all.  They don’t even know what an “emo” is.  They’re only getting involved now because there was a big scary expose about it on the nightly news (sound familiar?).   I don’t see it as indicative of a large problem spreading across Mexico among all classes or ages.  It’s mostly a middle class high school thing.  There is a large problem regarding homophobia and machismo.  This is without a doubt.  But I don’t think this is the biggest and definitely not the most important demonstration of that problem.

Here’s a collection of photos of some of the pretty blooming flowers happening in Queretaro right now. There are tons of jacarandas around the city, something I hadn’t noticed until a few weeks ago when they started to flower. We have some jacarandas around my home town, but they bloom in early May. Whenever they are in bloom, my mother reminds me that she saw them when they were driving to the hospital when I was born.

Here’s a link to some more pictures from around town.

But of course it’s not just jacarandas in bloom. Here are some pretty flowering plants from around my neighborhood.

Old, because I’ve moved!! Yay.

As you can see above, the red arrow shows my old house, on a street called 16 de septiembre in the old centre. The purple arrow shows my work (both of these were on the other map, marked by green dots) on Bernardo Quintana. The blue arrow shows my new place! I now live in a neighborhood called Carretas. It’s one of the first suburbs of Queretaro and it’s quite a ritzy, old money type place. It’s very green and leafy and shady and there’s a beautiful park in the center that is actually clean. I think it might be one of the first truly clean places I’ve seen in Qro.

But before we close the chapter on my old apartment, I wanted to share some pictures of the street where I lived for five months. Here’s a link to the pictures on Flickr (you don’t need an account to view them; you can click on each picture to see a larger version).

This is the start of a (hopefully semi) regular feature here: a tour of my city through maps and photos, so you can see where I live and where I go and the things I see. Today is simple. Only a map of the centre and a general orientation of the city.

Ok, so let’s start with the main streets. In purple, we have 5 de Febrero, a large highway. This is the main highway that goes north out of the city. The street in red is another huge divided highway called Bernardo Quintana. The northern part of B Quintana has a bunch of big box stores and shopping malls. The highway on the bottom in green is called the Autopista. It’s the main road east and west out of the city. The road in yellow is Zaragoza, but east towards where it meets B Quintana it becomes Los Arcos, so called because that’s where the famous aqueduct is. The road (unhighlighted) between Zaragoza and the Autopista is Constituyentes. Zaragoza and Constituyentes are large streets, but only four or six lanes at most and with crosswalks (5 de Febrero and B Quintana only have pedestrian bridges overhead; it would be impossible to use a crosswalk on these highways). The blue line is a small highway (four lanes at most) called Universidad. It runs along the Queretaro River.

The whole area bounded by the highlighted streets is older Queretaro. The city is much much bigger than this, but has only grown so big in the last twenty years or so. In the 70s, this area was the city.

The area in between the purple, blue, yellow, and red is the historical center, a UNESCO world heritage site. This is where I live. In fact, I’ve marked my apartment with a big green dot. My work (also marked with a big green dot) is directly off the big highway Bernardo Quintana, but luckily there’s a pedestrian bridge located right in front of it which takes me from my side of the highway to the east side. To give you a sense of distance, it takes me 35 minutes to walk from my house to work and about an hour to walk from my house to the intersection of 5 de Febrero and Universidad (purple and blue).

Okay, so there’s a brief overview of my city. Next installment, I’ll have some pictures to show you some of the major features. Also, please let me know if this is totally incomprehensible or if you’re able to understand the directions. Hopefully, all these streets and things will have more meaning when I have time to add pictures.

So, remember how I was feeling a little sick in December when I last wrote?  Yeah, that turned out to be salmonella.  I kept feeling worse and worse.  I couldn’t get out of bed for two days.  I couldn’t even sit up.  My roommate had to lift and tilt the glass so I could get a sip of water.

So, Wednesday (four days after the first incident) I went to the hospital.  Some good friends here who look after me well had volunteered to drive me there, so I called them up and they took me to the emergency room.  The doctor spoke English (he’s actually an Englishman, one of the reasons they brought me to that specific hospital) and was really kindly and helpful.  He saw me for ten minutes and decided I needed an IV drip because I was really dehydrated and also that I should have some tests done to check for more exotic strains of the virus.

I was so weak that I could barely keep my head up.  I definitely couldn’t keep my eyes open.  The sister (many of the nurses were nuns) brought me into the ER and laid me on a cot in an open room with a few beds in it.  There were some other people in there, but I didn’t have the energy to check out why they were there.  I had completely forgotten any Spanish I’ve ever known, including things I learned when I was a small child.  It was just completely gone.  Various nurses would wander in and out, asking me questions that I had no way of understanding let alone answering.  My friends were able to drive me to the hospital, but weren’t able to stay with me, so I was alone.  It could be possibly the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life.  There’s something about laying in a room full of sick people while other people that you can’t communicate with stick large needles in your hand.  Especially when you know that you are so weak that you are helpless and completely reliant on the goodness, sympathy, and professionalism of others.

But thankfully the rehydration IV felt like a miracle.  By the end, I could keep my eyes open and was able to stand up by myself.  I even started to remember some Spanish.  Also, most importantly, I was able to lift the glass myself when I got back home, meaning I could stay hydrated.  I was also able to walk down the stairs to the kitchen to refill my glass and get some yogurt.  This really helped.  All my tests came back as definitely salmonella but not any exotic kind.  Just the “your strawberries were covered in crap” kind.  Which was good.

I  am completely better now.  It took a couple of weeks.  But then I was just fine.

But very wary of strawberries.

Wow!  I’ve been really bad at writing the last month.  I’m going to do the many-short-posts-to-catch-up thing so that I’m not so overwhelmed that I never write anything.

So, here’s the first.

Here’s an article about a new system on the buses in Mexico City.  And here’s The Nation’s take on it.  I’ve been dealing a lot with the issues of sexism in Mexico, and this was really interesting to see.  It’s a bit of validation for how bad it makes me feel sometimes.

Money quote:

There’s no doubt the harassment women face in public spaces needs to be addressed – whether it is on the street, the train, or even the internet. We’ve been subjected to regular catcalls and groping for far too long. But while the idea of a safe space is compelling, this international trend – which often comes couched in paternalistic rhetoric about “protecting” women – raises questions of just how equal the sexes are if women’s safety relies on us being separated. After all, shouldn’t we be targeting the gropers and harassers? The onus should be on men to stop harassing women, not on women to escape them.

** As per request, I’m putting a disclaimer at the top of this post. While not having anything to do with fingernails, it will still be fairly explicit and probably unpleasant to read. So, why am I writing it? Because I feel a long way from home and not too good. By the way, the fingernail finally did fall off.**

So, Saturday night a big new club had it’s grand opening here in Queretaro.  My roommate had managed to get some invitations to the shindig and a bunch of us were all going together.  It was me, my roommate from Veracruz, two of her old friends from Veracruz, a friend from her masters’ program, a friend from work and her Scottish boyfriend, my Bostonian roommate, her quasi-friend/boyfriend here, and his three cousins.  I spent a good deal of Saturday looking for clothes that would actually fit me.  Living here makes me feel like a freakish giant.  My shoe size is a 27 (in the US that’s an 8.5 or 9) but no store ever has that.  Some few stores carry 26’s and occasionally those fit me.  So I spent the first part of Saturday having these little Mexican girls giggle at me when I asked if they had various different models in a 26.  None of them were particularly helpful, either.  I tried asking a couple of them, “Just bring out any shoes you carry in a 26 and we’ll go from there,” but they’d always ask, “Well, which specific shoe do you want?”  So, I’d choose another model, they’d go in the back, tell me that they don’t carry that model in that size, and the game would continue.

But finally, I found a pair!  And they’re really cute, too.  They are kind of low heels, maybe an inch and a half, and black with some strappy-ness on the toes that is sparkly.  I got tons of compliments on them from the group.  Then, it was on to look for a skirt.  I chose to look for a skirt not because I was super set on wearing a skirt but because I’ve given up looking for pants here.  I wear a size 19 (17 if they run really big), but the biggest size any store carries is a 15.  I did once find a pair of 19’s, but the waist was really funky.  Well, some might say nonexistent.  It insisted on coming up really high but not tapering in at all.  So, I figured maybe a skirt might be easier, or at least possible, to find.

And here comes the second disappointing thing from my Saturday.  I went shopping and tried to find any skirts that would fit me.  I tried on numerous pairs that didn’t fit at all; most of them wouldn’t even zip up.  Clothes here just don’t seem to be cut for my body.  I finally did find a below-the-knee black skirt, with a cute flounce to it.  It wasn’t something I would have gone out looking for, but after trying five different stores and not having anything even remotely fit, I was okay with this one despite it’s style.  The kicker: I found it in the plus sizes department.  Yes, that’s right, I shop in plus sizes here.  It was me and a bunch of grandmothers with no waist and a large, voluptuous belly.  All of my other female friends here are very small.  Well, normal for the US.  My roommates are both about 5.2 and my other friend is maybe 5.5.  I was about a head taller than everyone we went out with last night.  They’ve tried to make me feel better about feeling like a giant, but to do that they point out women on the streets that they think are the same size as me.  These women are usually about 5.4 and 160 pounds.  Needless to say, it doesn’t make me feel much better.

But what are you going to do, eh?  I did find a skirt and some cute shoes, so life’s not too bad after all.  We started to gather together around 10:30 and managed to make it to the club about 11:30.  I had been starting to feel a little urpy, and even considered at one point not going.  But I had spent all this time finding things and getting dressed and made up and I figured that getting out and moving around, dancing a little, would be good for me.  We had to stand around for about half an hour waiting for them to let us into the mostly empty club (but the politics of doormannery around here is another topic for another time).  I was feeling worse and worse, but figured it would get better when I got inside and found a seat.  No luck.  Some of my roommate’s friends tried to talking to me, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything they were saying.  Finally I decided it would just be better if I went home.  I was able to sit there for about half and hour, which in retrospect was an accomplishment.  You’re supposed to kiss everyone on the cheek when you leave, but I just didn’t have it in me to make the rounds of all ten people.  I told my roommates that I wanted to leave quietly and would they please tell people I was feeling unwell if anyone noticed.  I still don’t know how that played out.  I’m sure a bunch of people thought it was really rude.  I made it outside and went to where I could hail a cab and not ten seconds after making it there I lost all my stomach contents on the curb in front of the club.  It took a few minutes to accomplish, so I was “that girl” throwing up in front of the club by herself.  Finally, I felt stable enough to get in a car and thankfully there was a cab within a few minutes.  He overcharged me a little but I didn’t really care at that point.

I made it home and continued to vomit, just about every half hour, for about six hours.  I’m still trying to figure out what it was that I ate.  My roommate (who works in a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and has taken a good deal of biology/public health type classes) came home about 5:00, chastised me for not calling her, and convinced me to take a couple of pills she handed me.  They were two different types (I’m still not sure which), but thankfully, after only a couple more times, I stopped throwing up and was able to lie down and get some sleep about 6 am.  Those six hours, sitting by myself at home trying not to throw up outside the bathroom, have to be one of my lowest points since coming to Mexico.

I still haven’t figured out what it was that I ate.  Could have been some strawberries (but one of my roommates had some, too) or it could have been the peanuts at the slightly sketchy restaurant we went to (but another friend ate some of those as well).  Both roommates have been really nice to me this morning.  One of them made up some rehydration water (it’s a packet of powder that turns into a kind of Pedialyte when you mix it water) and the other one went down to the corner store for some ginger ale.  I’ve been diligently drinking these two things plus water, trying to ensure I don’t become too dehydrated.  At this point, though, I don’t really know what to expect.  What’s going to happen when the drugs wear off?  Is there any way I can make it to school tomorrow?  I can barely move off my bed today.  Is there some kind of lasting problem that I need to fix or is this just a wait it out kind of thing?  I’ve had food poisoning a few times in my life, but throwing up once is usually enough to get the offending item out and my body on the road to recovery.  I’ve never continued to throw up, repeatedly, once my stomach was completely empty.  If roommie hadn’t come with those drugs, I might still be sprawled out on the bathroom floor.

So, there we are.  That brings us to now, me propped up on my bed with a couple of pillows, mascara from last night streaked down my cheeks, computer sitting on my lap, using what energy I have to type and occasionally reach over for a drink from the bedside table.  I have some work I need to do for school, and I’m hoping I can get that done at some point.  Luckily, it only requires my computer.  I would love to take a nap, but the only sleep I’ve been able to manage is really restless and uncomfortable.  Thank god for metatalk!

Please leave comments if you’ve had similar experiences, have any “Anonymous, Internet, IANAD and/or IANYD” medical advice for me.  Also, if you just want to say hello and help me feel not so far from home.

On a more upbeat note, Christmas vacation is only three weeks away!  In just about exactly 3 weeks from now, I will be getting off my airplane in Tampa International Airport.  My mother, father, and sister will be there to pick me up (right?!).  I’ll sleep in my own bed, drink good coffee and tea, not have to worry about fruit giving me food poisoning, not have to write these stupid end of month progress reports that basically say the exact same thing every month but aren’t allowed to say the same thing every month.  Maybe we’ll watch some good movies in English and (though it sounds painful and awful right now, I’m sure it won’t always be this distasteful to me), maybe we’ll drink some good wine.  That sounds really nice.  So I won’t dwell on the present, but rather look to the future.

Not hours after I wrote my recent post complaining about my crappy washing machine, the gods got their revenge.  I tried to do a load the next morning and, every time I touched the machine: the body, the lid, the dials, the tub, the water inside the tub, the hose that is our water source at the back; I got a huge shock.  It was really strong.  I finished up my load (after the first few shocks, I wasn’t thinking too clearly), but afterwards, when my head stopped ringing, I turned off all the electricity to it and warned my roommates that they might not want to use it.  So, now I’m doing all my washing by hand.  Here are my thoughts:

1.  It takes a lot of time to wash all your clothes by hand.

2.  It sure is easier now that I have this plastic bucket.

3.  I use a lot of detergent when I wash things by hand.

4.  My clothes are actually getting a little cleaner now that I’m washing by hand.  Of course, it takes a lot longer, a lot more water, and a lot more soap.  But for the first time in a month or two, my clothes smell fresh after I’ve washed them.

5.  I’m still struggling with my socks.  I feel like my life is a constant struggle to keep myself in clean socks.  I haven’t yet figured out how to get them really clean.   (any thoughts or tips here would be really appreciated)

6.  Thank god I don’t own jeans.

7.  I understand now why they call it “greywater”.  Although I wonder why it’s not blackwater.  I don’t know if it’s just that there’s a lot of pollution here or if it’s a month’s collection of grime leftover from substandard machine washing, but the water is pitch black after I wash one pair of pants or two shirts.   Or maybe it’s always like this, and I just never knew.

I’ve been using straight-up machine detergent up to now, but tonight I bought a bar of laundry soap.  It’s much cheaper, so hopefully it won’t matter that I’m using so much soap.  Also, maybe it will be easier to rub the clothes against the soap bar.  I’ve been a little worried that I’m not agitating enough.  I’m sure I’ll iron out the kinks eventually.  I’ve washed small things on the road before, but never all my clothes.  Certainly never washed shirts more than once or twice in a row.  I feel like I’m learning all sorts of new things.  I’ve realised that I haven’t really put all that much thought into the process before.  Tonight in the grocery store, though, there were lots of women parked in front of the laundry bar soap shelf.  Most of them looked very middle class.  It made me feel a little less alone.  Apparently it’s not such an uncommon thing here.  No wonder lots of women stop working after they get married.  But more on my gender observations another time.

My friend Sarah has a new post on her blog with a super-easy explanation of how to follow a blog by RSS.  The first half of the post talks about a new service that allows you to receive e-mail updates anytime someone updates their blog.  The second half is a video that explains why RSS is great and how to sign up for it.  Let me know if this is something that interests you, and I can help you set up either service for my blog, my sister’s blog, my cousin’s blog, or any favorite blog or website you regularly follow.

So, sometimes living here is pretty hard. The weather changes a lot and it will be close to freezing in the early morning and late evening (during my 1st and 4th walk to/from work each day) and then really sunny and hot during the day (the 2nd and 3rd times I walk to/from work). The houses here (and most businesses) don’t have heat, so when it’s 10 degrees here (50 F), it’s cold all the time. I end up drinking a lot of tea and hot chocolate to keep warm, plus wearing my one sweater a lot and trying to keep my four pairs of socks clean so that my feet can stay warm. We have a fairly crazy split shift schedule, leaving us able to get only about five or six hours of sleep a night. Luckily I can usually catch a nap in the afternoon, but it’s still not exactly ideal. Queretaro is ideally a driving city and the bus system is expensive and not very good, so I end up walking a lot of places that I’d rather not have to walk to. It’s good for my health, but sometimes a little annoying. This includes places like the grocery store, so sometimes I end up not having proper food in my house. Not that I ever really have time to cook it. Laundry is an ordeal. We have a machine (thank goodness!), but it’s only a cold water machine and not very good. So when I want to do laundry, first I soak my socks and some shirts in hot soapy water in a bucket overnight. Then I have to manually fill up the drum with a hose, mix the soap into the water by hand (you have to agitate it or it just won’t mix), add all the clothes, agitate those by hand for about five minutes (or else they don’t really get clean). When the wash cycle is done, you have to manually fill up the tub again for a rinse. After the spin cycle, you still have to wring the clothes out, and then we have some clothes lines on the roof (a part I actually kind of like; nothing like fresh sun-warmed clothes!). This process makes one load of laundry an all-day sort of ordeal. Which isn’t horrible or life-threatening or anything, but it sure can be annoying.

So enough complaining already! I mostly just wanted to give examples of how I’m frustrated by everyday life here sometimes. This sets up our story.

It was a Thursday, much like any other here. It was midday and still freezing in the house and yet strangely hot outside. I had been able to grab an hour’s nap, but I was still feeling exhausted and definitely hadn’t wanted to wake up when the alarm went off. I trudged the 35 minute walk to work, feeling pretty sorry for myself the whole way. I really wasn’t in the mood to teach that day. I wanted to curl up in my bed, maybe take a nap, maybe read some Agatha Christie, maybe have a good cry, pretty much anything besides pretend to be chipper and teach factory workers the intricacies of present simple and the auxiliary verb ‘do’. I stopped and bought an empanada with rajas con crema on the way and one of those fake tasting Nescafe lattes from the machine in Oxxo (it’s a convenience store down here) hoping that these things would cheer me up. Nothing doing.

My first class sucked. I was in a bad mood and even a conversation class about breakfast foods couldn’t change that. My second class, I kind of forgot about my bad mood, and by the middle of my third class, I realised I was actually in a decent mood. By the end of the night, I was fairly happy. After five hours of teaching, I was happy. This, my friends, is the first time in history that a job has changed my mood for the better. I didn’t think this was possible. But something about interacting with the students, the satisfaction I got when they finally started saying “Does she have a pen?”, the general satisfaction of doing something semi-worthwhile and doing it well, this was enough to actually make me happy.

When I moved down here, I didn’t know if I’d particularly enjoy English teaching, but I knew it would be a good way to experience some awesome things for a while. But now here I am, sometimes enjoying the work part of the experience more than the living. Who’d have thunk it, eh?

And, for the record, living here isn’t actually all that hard or tough. I get on pretty well and I make a decent enough salary that I can feed myself quite well and have a good time. It’s certainly not desperate. It just gets to me sometimes. But it’s a good character-building/expectation-readjustment exercise, no?