Cry Me a Rio

I had another crying jag last night. This time it was tequila fueled. Not my finest moment, although I've been there before, and hope to not go there again. It's a really difficult thing to move to a new country and a new culture. Add to that all the other changes I've had to adjust to:

new country
new culture
new language
living in a small town vs. the large cities I've always lived in (and there are a Lot of changes that come along with this one thing alone)
being unemployed by choice

Now, I don't want you to think I'm complaining here - I mean, I've got this great opportunity to experience something a lot of people will never have the chance to - what have I got to complain about? But I am complaining.

This transition is difficult stuff. It ain't easy. And I haven't always had the smoothest transition. But I've also not had the transition from hell either. Maybe if I knew more Spanish things would have been smoother. But I didn't know much when I came down here. I am trying to study more each day, and I'm sure I'm learning things by absorption, but as usual I never give myself enough credit for anything I do. I never know enough, I'm never good enough, I'm never perfect. And lord knows I should be.

Where the hell that belief came from, I don't know. It's one thing I need to exorcise out of my life. I am not perfect, no one is perfect, and being imperfect is actually the more interesting and exciting way to live.

So this crying jag came out of feeling alone and left out. Here I was, surrounded by my family here, out at a restaurant celebrating Sergio's birthday and I'm feeling alone. Why? Mostly because I don't speak their language, and they don't speak mine. And they are all having a good time, laughing and talking about... well, I don't know what they were talking about. And that was the problem.

Plus, of course, alcohol is a depressant, which I seemed to have forgotten. So I went on a crying jag. But I kept myself in the bathroom while doing this so I wouldn't be too embarrased. I even thought about the fact that alcohol is a depressant and told myself to stop drinking. I guess I thought I needed another drink to mull that option over.

Silly me.

I don't think I did anything that really embarassed me. I mean, I did some stupid stuff - like drinking when I should have stopped, like feeling sorry for myself and not being able to pull myself out of it - but nothing so awful that I would have to live it down the next day. Mostly it was just internal mental torture. Plus a few external tears.

Today I felt better, especially after making my sister play long-distance therapist (bless yer midwestern self girlie!). And I am mulling over the idea of not feeling sorry for myself anymore. It's not serving me well to feel and think that way. It just makes me a more miserable person - on the inside as well as the outside.

So no more of that. And no more tequila fueled nights. From one of my sig files:

"good judgement comes from experience
and the best experiences come from bad judgement"

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Moving to a new culture requires a lot of changes. Some of the big changes you face are: location, weather, language, food, and cultural expectaions. But there are smaller things, things which you sort of take for granted in your usual place and only realize you have to adjust to once you are in the new changes. Things like: driving a car, how you dress, how you act, the sheer visual differences of your surroundings, how others react to you, how the environment (water, air, etc) will affect you. Every day I am running into new and different things here. Some of them distract me, some of them I barely notice until they are pointed out to me.

I was thinking about all this the other day when I was the one to drive the car to Guzman. It was the first time I had driven outside of Tuxpan. I didn't think much of it until I was on the Libre highway to Guzman. This is a two lane road that is fairly well traveled, and there are plenty of opportunities to pass slower cars. As I passed my third car, Luis told me that I was driving too close to the opposite side of the road - I was giving the car I was passing too much lee way. At first I thought this was a rather obnoxious thing to tell me - I mean, I've been driving cars for 22 years now! But he explained that there isn't as much of a shoulder on the highways here as there are in the States and that rubbish (which there is more of) can collect on the edge of the road. Should you hit a bit of it - Blam! - you can have a flat tire in no time, or you can get pushed off the road. Oh, ok, I thought. That's just good advice, not criticism. Later when we were driving out of Guzman, he gave me grief for not honking at another driver who pulled in front of me with little awareness of my existence. "People here don't care about their cars, or about anyone else around you. They will pull out without looking or pull in front of you and not give a damn. You have to be more aggressive here than in Tuxpan." Again, I was a bit miffed, but realized he was trying to give me good advice, and not trying to piss me off.

After I drove to the gym two days in a row, I decided that I wanted a break. My arms hurt from the workout I had been getting (who am I fooling - my whole body hurt!), and I just wanted to be a passenger. That day I realized another reason why driving was so difficult - there is so much to look at! Most of it probably seems like nothing new or exciting for Luis, but it's all new for me, so it is all distracting.

At that point I realized that I should go easier on myself for not being fluent in Spanish yet (I mean, after two months shouldn't I be able to chat like a local?!). There are so many things I'm absorbing, whether or not I realize it, that my brain can only handle so much. And being a visual person, the only way to minimize the distractions would be to sequester myself in the house or wear blinders when I go out. And, being a visual person, there is no way I can do either of those things.

Strangers in town

I‘ve run into three English-speaking people this evening. Two older white men in the plaza while Luis and I were eating our Bionicos (fruit and yogurt), and one potentially English-speaking black woman who walked by while we were standing outside Frogy’s talking to Joel. I found myself gazing off in her direction long after she had passed, some part of me hoping she would have recognized that I too was a stranger here and would return to talk to me. The white men walked past us and sort of looked at me oddly when they first passed by. I guess they either heard us speaking English or could see my white skin. When they passed back by, they didn’t look, but stopped to look back once they were a few steps off. I wonder if they are related to the white girl I saw in the center a week or so ago. And I wonder what the hell has brought all three of them to this small town. The woman looked fashionable – New York fashionable almost – with a long leather trench coat and an unkempt afro hairdo. Why is she here? Does she speak English or is she from a different state in Mexico where their skin is much darker? I'd love to find another English speaker here.

We're going to pump YOU up!!!

As of yesterday I have started going to the gym with Luis and Felipe. When Luis first started going, he thought I didn't want to go. I'm not sure why as I told him I used to work out in the weight room in Atlanta, but he has selective hearing at times (as do we all). And I thought he wanted time alone with a buddy other than me. But after trying a spinning class here in Tuxpan (women clientele only, and I only really worked out one area of my body-blech!), I decided that I should ask Luis to take me with him to the gym. Luis suggested I might like to find out if they have an aerobics class instead, and I looked at him like "you do remember who I am, yes? I'm the chick who likes to hang out with the guys, not the chick who wants to wear lycra and romp around a room with other lycra-clad women." So now the three of us go to Ciudad Guzman in the morning for an hour or so of weight lifting. I feel like I'm actually getting a work out there, which is much needed. And there are actually other women who work out there (on the weights, not in aerobics class!). Luis is a fairly ok teacher on the machines as well, which is good because it's been a few years since I used them. He's not a good teacher in general, but for some reason he's doing ok with this.

The last time I weighed myself (about 2 weeks ago), I was 72 kilos/160 pounds. After another week or two of this I'll weigh in again and see where I'm at.

more photos of Tuxpan

I've uploaded a bunch of photos which I've taken around town. More of the Sonajero and Chayacate dancers, some of the town, some from a drag race I went to, some from the first motorcycle event I went to.... and so on. Check them out:

http://baird.home.mindspring.com/mexico/