Photo montage!!

So in the interest of laziness and how I have homework to do tonight (I know, yuck!), I present to you fine folks a photo montage of last weekend.


On Friday we went to Cuernavaca, where we went first to the Palacio de Cortes museum, which does not merit a photo (read: sucked), and then to the house/museum of the late Robert Brady, an Iowa-born art collector who made his home in Mexico and then filled it with a ton of art from around the world. He also made sure to place his carefully hoarded pretties in arrangements which highlighted cool aspects of them. This, for example, is on the left: Josephine Baker, an entertainer from the 1930's who never gave birth to any children, but who adopted 12. On the right: an African goddess of fertility. You can't say he didn't have impeccable taste.




On Saturday we went to Taxco, a relatively nearby town. There is nothing to do there aside from buy silver jewelry (which apparently no longer even comes from Taxco, all the mines have been exhausted and they now have to import it). BUT thanks to my amazing friends Jackie and Erika, we managed to find something way better to do, we climbed all the way up to the Jesus statue which overlooks the town. It was basically a case study in different types of men: the nice old men who invite you in for conversation, the unpleasant men (young and old) who catcall you incessantly, boys like Edgar who give you directions and take your picture, and carpenters who died thousands of years ago but still get their statues put on hills.




That night Jackie and Erika and I decided that we deserved an awesome dinner, and we were not going to settle for anything less than extraordinary. How do you say "extraordinary" in Spanish? Italian Food. There was bread and oil, various pasta creations, a slice of chocolate-almond cake, and this bottle of wine. For all of that we spent less than $50 US and had a kick-ass time. Mexico I love thee. (plus it was really nice to NOT eat another Mexican dish for a change)



On Sunday we went to Tepoztlan, a very small town with a very big hill. Sitting like a small and insignificant bump on this hill/mountain is an ancient pyramid, which was ostensibly what we wanted to see. You will note that it did not merit a photo, but these cute little guys, called coatis, did. There are bunches of them at the summit, and if you are not careful they will steal any food you might have with you. Also, if you are not careful they will charm you so thoroughly with their adorableness that you will go temporarily insane, kidnap one, carry it down the mountain and back to your hotel room, feed it Valentine's candy, and be arrested by the Mexican police for poaching. So watch out!

Lo bonito, lo esencial

There are four things in my room that were not there before. I am very fond of each of them.


1. The first addition to my room is this guitar, shown here in its natural state. It is on loan from my exchange program, which is also providing me with lessons. I am quickly becoming obsessed with it; I now understand my father's love of the guitar, and can only hope that I have inherited his talent. I have definitely inherited his affinity for bluesy folk music. But despite any visions of grandeur, so far I'm still finding my way around the fingerboard and struggling to hear the difference between a string which is in tune and one which is not.




2. The second addition to my room is this drawing, sent to me from the USA, along with some much-needed supplies (i.e. chocolate and other valuables). Turns out that packages CAN indeed arrive here from across the border, safe and sound, albeit thoroughly inspected for any signs of value/ease of theft. The catch, however, is that the customs fees cost far more than the market value of what is contained in the package. Sentimental value, however, wins in the end, and I am very thankful to my dear friends back home! Los quiero mucho!





3. The third addition to my room is a print of this photo, which shows myself and Hugo (remember him from Acapulco?) at the program welcome party on Friday night. It was a very nice evening of socializing, eating, and DANCING. Hugo is an excellent dancer and a very patient teacher, and I can now say that I have a pretty good handle on cumbia, salsa, and a variety of banda styles. I am sure that I will go through dancing withdrawal once back home.




4. The final addition to my room is this Gerber daisy. Do you remember when I said that traditionally in Mexico if a man wants to date a woman there is a specific process involved, which usually includes flowers? If not, you can review it here, item #6. As with all things, to understand one needs only be told, but to comprehend one must experience. Let's just say that up until Friday night I merely understood this specific process of courtship, of which this flower is part. ¿Comprendes?

Veracruz

Last Sunday I met 7 other members of my Ethnomusicology class (plus our teacher and his girlfriend) at 7 AM in the cloudy, deserted cold of early-morning Puebla. We all loaded into a large red van and drove to the town of Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, the coastal state just to the east of Puebla. The town was holding its annual festival of the local Son Jarocho music, which has been named Patrimonio Mundial (world patrimony)!

We arrived in the afternoon and wandered around to all the town parks, which were littered (well jam-packed would be a better description) with tents in which people who had come from all over the place were camping. We were unable to find a spot for our 10-person tent in any of the parks, so we knocked on the door of a big house with a big walled-in yard and basically asked if we could set up our tent in the yard and stay for a few days. We were warmly received and made our temporary home!



Once the parks filled up, people pitched their tents in whatever space they could find. The whole town was one big, happy, musical, well-fed Hooverville.


Later that day we watched a parade through town of tons of people in traditional costume on horseback, we ate tamales de elote (like a regular tamal, but with whole-ish corn kernels in the masa), listened to hours of traditional Son, and topped off the night with toritos, a creamy alcoholic drink which comes in flavors like coconut, peanut (my favorite, of course!), caramel, chocolate, and several different fruit flavors.

The forum in which Jaranero music is played is called a fandango, which seems to be a large group of people who get together and jam. These sessions include instruments, singing, dancing, and of course drinking, and last well into the night/morning. Groups can perform on stage or can wander around. The tent cities were pretty well stocked with dueling jaranas!



This was my favorite group, La Familia Utrera. They were amazing. Sometimes Son Jarocho (that's what the genre is called) tends to be sort of yelled more than sung, but this group had its shit together. Not only that, but the songs they sang were not just the same traditional ones you heard over and over, but new and different. There's one sad one that translates loosely along the lines of "I won't sing of my sadness at the fandango, because the fandango is happiness. Call me llorona (a woman who cries too much) but just let me cry."



Sisters, two of many young performers at the Jaranero festival with their jaranas, resembles a guitar but has a sound all its own. There seems to be a big emphasis in continuing this art form by instilling it in the youth of the society. Seems to be working; people of all ages performed together!



The next day we basically did the whole thing over again, with more exploration of the festival. There were also several temporary markets, plenty of men on horseback, vociferous shrimp vendors, carnival games and rides, dancing, hippies from all over the world (seriously I have never seen so many white people with dreds wearing sandals and baja hoodies in my whole life; it was like Ithaca in Spanish), and all manner of delicious food! There were also rows of really ripe portable toilets, or you could pay 5 pesos in almost any restaurant or store to use their bathroom. Showers cost 20 pesos, but after so much humidity and dirt it's SO WORTH IT.




So their were games for the kids and for the -ahem- kid in each of us. This is my classmate Rodrigo, letting his inner child beat the socks off of me and Camille.

Tlacotalpan is not a huge city, so after the first two days we were all a little cabin-feverish. The cure? Impromptu road trip. On Tuesday we hit the road to Catemaco (which in Nahuatl means "the place of burnt houses"), a pueblo about an hour's drive from Tlacotalpan. Along the way we stopped at some incredible water falls called the Salto de Eyipantla, got soaked in the spray, which felt amazing in the humid heat of the coast. Then in Catemaco we went for a boat tour of the lagoon there, at 300-some-odd meters above sea level, the lagoon is a relatively pristine nature preserve. There are, however, various businesses thriving on its shores. We all got mineral facials, for example, then all got to pay a few pesos for the privilege to wash the mud off our faces in a mineral spring. There is also an island with monkeys on it! It's a small piece of land (like the size of a small house) with 5 or 6 macaques, but it was still cool! After our boat tour, we hit a fondita for some awesome food! I ate estofado, which is basically chicken cooked with tomatoes, onions, peppers, olives, and spices. It was very delicious!




The waterfall, view from the top. BREATHTAKING.



The lagoon of Catemaco. The picture really doesn't do it justice; it was incredibly beautiful! I recommend to anyone planning to visit Mexico that they swing through here and enjoy this rare gem.




Getting mud masks in the jungle! It felt nice to be pampered after a weekend of porta-potties and sleeping on the hard, wet ground, but I'm not sure it made any of the magical changes in my complexion that the lady promised.

We returned Wednesday, sunburnt, exhausted, and completely (at least in my case) sick of listening to Jarocho music. All in all a seriously awesome field trip!


This is my classmate Camille, from Quebec, while we were at the waterfall. This is my favorite picture of this whole trip (and possibly my whole time in Mexico) because her facial expression basically sums up my feelings about my experience here.