Adventures Across the Border

Back Across the Border

2009-07-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

We are at last, home. Home!!! Will write more later. :)

¡En el camino!

2009-07-13T05:07:00.000-07:00

Bags packed and ready to go... Tapping into some wireless internet at the airport Starbucks, gotta love it... flight leaves in 3 hours... we're on the way!

Estamos en México...

2009-07-12T10:22:00.001-07:00

...but only for a few more hours. Our time here has come to an end.

Tomorrow, at 9:54 AM, we'll leave Mexican soil and arrive in (appropriately enough) Washington, D.C. some four-and-a-half hours later. Barring any flight delays, we'll be in Chicago by 6:30 PM, home again with family (with more family to come soon!) at last.

We awoke this morning in the light of the Mexican sun, looked outside and saw the green trees and red-and-purple flowers, heard the birds chirping and - yes - the cars speeding by on the busy street. Still lying in bed, I stared out into that Mexican sunlight for a long while. It will be strange to wake up on Tuesday in another land, another place, another patch of creation on God's great earth.

Thanks again, a hundred times over, for all of your well-wishes, blog comments, emails, thoughts, prayers and everything else you've sent our way this year. It's helped to sustain us, more than we can say. ¡Muchas gracias a todos - y hasta pronto!

Photo Gallery: Mexico City's Southside

2009-07-10T07:17:00.000-07:00

In which: Matt & Chris visit peacocks at the Dolores Olmedo Museum of Diego & Frida stuff, Estadio Azteca, and the Tres Coyotes taco stand. Awesome day. Only 3 days to go!

Pavos Reales, Estadio Real, Tacos Reales

Photo Gallery: Museo Nacional de la Antropologia

2009-07-09T07:33:00.001-07:00

More fun in Mexico City! Another short photo gallery, fully captioned.

Museo Nacional de la Antropologia

New Blog

2009-07-08T21:29:00.000-07:00

Hey all... It's that time of year. Time to start a new blog and shamelessly self-promote it on the old blog! Be the first on your block to bookmark this brand new, just-created website:

http://insideasound.blogspot.com

As with the current blog, the new blog will no doubt evolve and change over the first few weeks and months. There probably won't be much on it for a month or so until after we get back to the States (think mid-August). And, ultimately, as you might imagine, I won't be writing nearly as much as I did this year, since I'll be immersed in internship instead of swimming in free time.

But I do hope to post a story or a photo album when I can. I'm also thinking that next year my writing will be less travelogue (though there will be some of that, as I've never lived in the Pacific Northwest!) but more introspective and "extrospective" (?) thinking about vocation - a different focus for a different kind of year. No matter what sort of epistle eventually finds its way online - whether from me or, I hope, Chris! - you'll be able to find them by pointing Firefox to the address above.

PS - The new blog title comes from a U2 song (and of course references the Puget Sound). Ten points to whoever can identify the song (I'm looking at you, From Michigan With Love - you're the only reader who I know who owns this album)...

Photo Gallery: Day in D.F.

2009-07-08T07:20:00.000-07:00

This week I'm exploring the city while Chris does a few final days of research in Mexico City's various archives. On Tuesday I went to check out a fantastic exhibit of colonial missionary art, climbed the bell tower of the Metropolitan Cathedral, and stumbled upon another exhibit of super-modern art with spiritual themes. It was pretty great.

Since I want to go right out exploring again today, I figured I'd just post a short photo album with captions instead of regaling my readers with tales of the day. Enjoy!

Day in D.F.

And thus begins our last week.

2009-07-07T08:17:00.001-07:00

That is all.

Photo Gallery: Back to Coyoacan

2009-07-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

Photos from our weekend back in Mexico City, fully captioned.

Back to Coyoacan

Transition Journal: Back to the City

2009-07-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

Is this place for real? We lived here for nearly five months last fall; I thought I’d remember how it is. But I was wrong.

We left Lagos before dawn and almost immediately fell asleep on the bus. When we awoke, it was light out, but the greater change was in the landscape. No longer were we surrounded by the dry brown land dotted with arid spindly trees and cactus-like maguey plants. Instead we looked out the window and saw one color: Green. We were definitely heading south.

Soon we approached the city. Smaller homes and businesses began appearing outside the window, the poorest areas of the city ringing the wealthy interior. The buildings grew in number, and grew, and grew. The city went on and on and on, and still we were not at the bus station. We had forgotten just how big the city is, a population center of 25 million people that makes the population of 100,000 in Lagos de Moreno seem even smaller than it really is. (This, I realize, is why I always thought of Lagos as “a small town.”)

We drag our luggage out of the bus to a taxi and take off. The first thing we notice are the billboards, billboards that tower over you advertising all manner of movie, cell phone, and political candidate – and the political advertisements in the city, we notice, are very different, with very different emphases, from the political ads in rural Los Altos. And, now that we are back in the city, we spend an unfortunate chunk of our taxi ride haggling with the taxi driver over the price of the ride and the admittedly heavy weight of our stuff. He expects a big tip, and we give it to him. Welcome to the city.

The whole place feels like another planet. People have asked me about culture shock going back and forth between the US and Mexico twice this year. But the real culture shock is not crossing some arbitrary border; the real culture shock is going between the monster of Mexico City to the sunny SoCal feel of Guadalajara to the dry rural ranchlands of Los Altos and then coming full circle by returning to the Mexico City monster that eats you alive as you enter it. That, my friends, is culture shock.

But for all the culture shock of our taxi ride, arriving at the Lutheran Center feels, oddly, like coming home, or at least coming to a kind of home. We’ve been here before. We’ve lived here before. The maintenance man on duty opens the door for us; he’s a familiar face, and we greet him by name. They’ve repainted the buildings in the Lutheran center to a bright yellow; that’s a change, but a good one – it looks great. We drag our stuff up the stairs into what will be our room for the next week, our final home in Mexico, and then we head out to find some food.

On Sunday we sleep in – we were exhausted – and then have breakfast at our favorite restaurant in San Angel; the food is cheap and good and plentiful. We walk to Coyoacan, our favorite neighborhood in Mexico City. The leafy streets that lead to it are even leafier than we remember; the sun dapples down through the trees throughout our walk on this beautiful Sunday afternoon.

When we visited Coyoacan in the fall its main plaza was torn up and fenced off; the neighborhood was still cool but a giant chain-link fence blocking your way at every other turn brings the prettiness level down significantly. But now we find – wonder of wonders! – that the fences are gone, people fill the plaza, and at the plaza’s center a fountain shoots water over a sculpture of two bronze coyotes at play. Did we mention this is our favorite neighborhood?

And to walk through Coyoacan’s market stands… San Juan de Los Lagos is full of merchants selling their wares, too, but San Juan’s wares are principally religious or bedding-related; lots of shiny rosaries and Chivas blankets abound. But there is not a rosary to be seen in Coyoacan. No, this market is more affected by the massive university of the UNAM a few blocks from here than by any Catholic basilica; its wares are made by who Luis would call los jipis (Spanish for hippies) and political activists and indigenous artisans selling all manner of colorful arts and crafts. Chris finds a scarf – so popular at the UNAM – and I find a magazine full of guitar chords for Café Tacuba songs. Then we stop at an unpretentious taco place on the main square to watch Mexico take on Nicaragua in the Gold Cup soccer tournament.

Ah, Mexico City. For all your craziness, we’d forgotten how much we liked you.

Photo Gallery: Los Altos de Jalisco, Ultimos Días

2009-07-06T13:21:00.001-07:00

Photos from our last days in the Highlands of Jalisco, with captions and everything.

Los Altos de Jalisco, Ultimos Días

Transition Journal: Adios a Los Altos

2009-07-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: I cannot possibly describe the fullness of our experience of last few days. But this is my attempt to try.

San Juan

I will never forget my first trip to San Juan de Los Lagos – mainly because of how we arrived. We walked for four hours to get there, following pilgrims along the side of the highway under a hot afternoon sun in the semi-desert of West-Central Mexico. Pilgrims on the road: this is how I was introduced to Our Lady of the Migrants, “Chris’s girl,” La Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos.

I accompanied Chris to San Juan twice in our last week in Los Altos. The first time, on Tuesday, I mainly went for the tamales and ended up being swept up in a whirlwind adventure with one of San Juan’s most colorful characters. (Later I discovered our tour guide depicted in a painted mural in the municipal building. That’s right. He’s so famous in San Juan that he’s in the mural. Seriously.) And then the second time, on Thursday, I was privileged to accompany Chris as she said her last goodbyes to la Virgencita.

I was supposed to be a research assistant during this leg of the trip, a role I haven’t exactly filled all that well. Appropriately enough, then, Chris decided to put me to work on her last day. We went into the archives of the parish church (a smaller church for locals, distinct from the virgen’s Basilica). Entry into these nationally-certified archives involves a very simple procedure: Chris smiles hello to the church secretary, who waves her on distractedly. Chris briefly explains who I am, but nobody cares. This is, Chris tells me, a very different procedure from the bureaucratic monster of the National Archives in Mexico City, where gloves, a face mask, and most of all certified credentials and identification are a must.

Our goal for the day, Chris told me, was to count all of the marriage records between 1957 and 1972. She had already taken oodles of data from these records, but did not yet have an accurate count of exactly how many there were. Given the organization of these records, this task involved counting our way through 80 heavily hardbound books. Chris figured we could do this in about 2 hours. An incredulous look washed over my face, but I quickly rubbed it away: Today, as they say in Mexico markets, I am a sus ordenes – at your service.

We flipped through page after yellowing page, sometimes moving quickly, sometimes very slowly, depending on the quality of organization for each set of records. As lunchtime neared, we realized we weren’t going to finish on time. The parish closes for lunch at 2pm, and besides, Chris had an appointment for lunch, a goodbye meal with one of her local contacts. We would have to return later in the afternoon, after the parish re-opened two-and-a-half hours later.

(That’s right: Two-and-a-half hours for lunch. Now, it’s the main meal of the day and you probably won’t eat go home from work for the evening meal until 8 or 9 pm, so it all makes sense, but still: Subway used to give me fifteen minutes for a lunch break. Fifteen minutes versus two-and-a-half hours. I like Mexico better.)

While Chris dined with her compañera for the last time, I grabbed some food at a grocery store and wandered around San Juan’s markets. It’s funny: Every previous time I’ve visited these markets I’ve barely given them a second look. It always seemed like there would be another time, yet now… now I have no time. I avoided the rosaries and virgencita dolls, which we already have enough of, but was drawn in by the soccer jerseys, which we… ok, which we also have enough of. But now I discovered that amid the cheap knock-offs were some really high quality jerseys. I admired them longingly. (My future internship supervisor asked me how Mexico had changed me. Does “I became a die-hard soccer fan” count?)

After the long lunch break I waited for Chris at the archives, and then we went back in for a second round. I told Chris about the soccer jerseys. She promised to buy me one for my birthday when we were done in the archives. Suddenly I moved twice as fast as I had in the morning… We finished our counting, said goodbye to the parish secretary for the last time, and went out into the streets of San Juan.

I told Chris I still hadn’t seen the murals in the municipal building up-close, so we stopped to see them before we left. They were, I was surprised to find, amazing, one of the best murals in the country right here in a public building that I’d walked by dozens of times without even thinking about it. In the mural, the Virgen of San Juan was front and center, of course, but the artist presented her in a way I’d never thought about her – or rather, in a way I’d forgotten to think about her in the midst of all my theological wrestling.

There she was, held up by two local people, depicted in a golden dress filled with the outlines of dozens of human faces. Behind her was the map-like shape of the country of Mexico, full of people coming from every direction to San Juan de Los Lagos, where a mother and daughter were planting a tree in the center of town, in the shade of the basilica. Here in this place, the mural seemed to say, people are brought together. They bring their sick, their weak, their little ones, in the hope that maybe, just maybe, here, in this place, where they are all gathering together, the ones they love will be healed, the ones they love will be made whole.

Before we went to the bus station, we stopped in the basilica to say goodbye to the virgen. We stood for a few moments in silence as the priest spoke the words of the afternoon mass, and then Chris turned to me. “Ok,” she whispered. “I’m ready.” And then we left.

Lagos de Moreno

I woke up on Friday, our last day in Lagos, feeling great. It was the end of a strange spring, a time in my life that was likely never to be repeated or even imitated, and the goodbye was certain to be bittersweet. But at first I only felt sweetness, a gratitude for this time, a happiness at having been alive in this place for these four months.

I went out for my last run in the park, and pounded the dirt with my tennis shoes for nearly an hour. I ate breakfast, and went to pick up the laundry. We packed our things, and our suitcases slowly filled up. Luis, our landlord, stopped by to show the apartment to some prospective tenants. He promised to pick us up the next morning – at an absurdly early hour – to take us and our things to the bus station. And then we packed some more.

We went to lunch at our favorite torta place, and ordered our usuals, our two delicious meals combined costing us less than a lone Big Mac would back home. We took a long walk, looping around our favorite old haunts – the Templo de Merced, the Rinconada de Capuchinas, the central plaza. We walked up Calvario hill and gazed out at the landscape for an hour or more, remembering the times we’ve had here.

They haven’t been easy times, not by a long shot. I’ve struggled to figure out what to do with infinite free time that sometimes seemed to stretch out endlessly before me. Chris left the library behind and struggled to do her work by a method, oral history, that she’d never tried before, a method that called for skills she was honing for the first time in her life. Both of us struggled to figure out how to live in a context different from any we’d experienced before. This place, Los Altos de Jalisco, was as different from Guadalajara and Mexico City as Mexico is from the United States. We had essentially started our journey all over again when we moved here in March. We had to figure everything out again from scratch; we had to start again.

And yet, and yet. This was the place where it happened, all the good and all the bad. This was the place where we struggled, where we learned, where we grew. We had good days and bad days, days that felt wasted and days so filled with good things we could hardly believe they all really happened. All of it here, in this place. We are ready to move on, ready for the future. But this place, after all that has happened here, will always be a part of who we are.

We went back home to finish up our packing and then went out into a Lagos evening for the last time. Before I joined Chris at the coffee shop, however, I wanted to stop at my barbershop one more time. I did need my hair cut, but, truth be told, I also wanted to say goodbye to my barber, who had always been friendly to me.

I walked in, feeling awkward as ever about my Spanish; somehow all my language learning seems to evaporate the moment I walk through the doorway of that place. But my barber was happy to see me anyway. I told him we were leaving in the morning. “Oh,” he said, “that’s too bad.” The radio was playing music broadcast from the local cultural center, Casa Serrano. The barber pointed this out, and then was shocked to discover that I had never visited it. He starts quizzing me about Lagos culture. “Do you know the writers from Lagos?” I name Mariano Azuela, author of Los de Abajo, the most famous novel of the Mexican Revolution. “Si, y que mas? – Yes, and who else?” Um…I name Juan Rulfo, another famous author from Jalisco, but of course this is the wrong answer because Juan Rulfo is not from Lagos. I am in for a lesson, I can see that already…

My barber names four other authors, and gives me the titles of their books. Then he moves on the visual arts, and shows me a magazine with the work of a Lagos artist inside. “This artist lives just down the street,” he tells me. Then he goes in a new direction: “Did you know that I am also an artist? I meet regularly with other artists in town, we have a little artist’s collective.” I look around at the paintings on the wall – which are, quite frankly, really good. “Are these yours?” Si, he says, of course! He finishes cutting my hair and asks if I’d like to see more of his work. Sure, I say. He takes me upstairs, behind the barbershop, to his tiny workshop.

There must be a hundred paintings in here, some huge and covering the entire wall, some small and finely detailed. They are done in a variety of styles and with a variety of materials. Many of them are of local places and people, Lagos landmarks and Lagos characters. All of them are excellently rendered, professional, clearly the work of someone who knows what he is doing.

“I am in a group with other Lagos artists,” he tells me again. “Some of them paint, others sculpt, some are musicians and some are writers.” I nod, but he isn’t satisfied that I understand. “We have so much culture here in Lagos! There are many artists here, and lots of culture.” And then I get it. Here in the upstairs artist studio of a local barber I realize – no, I am told flat-out – that after four long months I still haven’t seen the half of this place. There is so much I still don’t know about these people.

I leave feeling amazed. Who goes to get their hair cut and ends up seeing the barber’s personal art studio? I find Chris at the coffee shop. We think about saying a long goodbye to the baristas, but they’re busy with the Friday night rush, so we suffice with an “hasta luego – see you later” – they respond with the familiar “¡que te vaya muy bien! – may you travel well!” – and we walk out of there for the last time.

On the way home, I insist that we stop into the Super Fruteria produce store to say goodbye to its manager, who has always been so incredibly friendly to us. Luckily, it is still open, and he is there. He gives us a big smile, as always, and greets us by name: “¡Hola Cristina! Hola Mateo!” We tell him we are leaving, and his smile disappears. “Ay no, already?” We chat for a few moments about Chicago, where, we discover for the first time, he has family. The things we don’t know about the people here…

Then he asks us the question everyone seems to be asking us when we say goodbye: “When will you be back to visit?” Someday, we say, but not for a few years. “But don’t you have any friends here to visit?” he asks. We look at each other and smile sheepishly. We’ve met lots of friendly people here, to be sure, many of whom know our faces and some of whom even know us by name. But friends? Not really, we think, and shake our heads no. “Well,” he says, “I hope you come back soon. Tiene un amigo aqui. You have a friend here.” He smiles a great big smile, shakes both our hands, and tells us to travel well.

As we go to bed in our mattress on the floor for the last time, I find myself unable to sleep, overwhelmed by these last few hours in Lagos. Chris and I have moved so many times in the last few years, from one state to another, from one country to another, from town to city to city to town. But, with the exception of saying goodbye to our friends at seminary, this is the first time that we have had to say goodbye to so many people, people we will probably never see again. It is a realization that says something about our time here, something I have only realized now, at the end of things.

In the morning, while it is still dark, I take one last look at the view from our rooftop. I say a prayer of thanksgiving, and then it is time to go. Luis picks us up in his truck and drives us to the bus station. We shake his hand and thank him for everything, and then we are off and on our way, our time in Jalisco finally come to an end.

Coyoacan = Awesome.

2009-07-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

We had forgotten!

Had a great day in our favorite Mexico City neighborhood. Tomorrow Chris heads to the Archivo General de la Nación (the National Archives), while I hope to find a place to do some writing on Monday, the day when all of the city's museums are closed. Until then...

p.s. - this is our 300th post! (drop balloons...now)

Happy 4th of July from Mexico City!

2009-07-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

We made it! Safely checked in here at the Lutheran Center in our old San Angel neighborhood in Mexico City. It actually kinda feels like home, or "a" home, which I suppose makes sense because we lived here for five months last fall. Still, it's kinda of a weird feeling, all this familiarity combined with the RADICAL culture shock of going from little Lagos to massive Mexico City. It's hard to overstate how crazy this experience is. Mexico City makes Chicago seem rural...

I hope to do some writing later this weekend to collect a some of my thoughts about the last couple of transitional - and, truth be told, emotional - days. The internet connection is not that reliable, though, so I can't predict when I'll post again - I hope soon. Thanks for continuing to keep up with us, as always.

Oh right - and Happy 4th of July!

Moving Day... Otra Otra Otra Otra Vez

2009-07-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

(Above: In our beloved coffee shop for the last time.)

Well, friends, we're on the move again.

We've spent the last few days saying a lot of goodbyes to people and places. We thought we'd be used to this by now, and besides, we're excited to be heading home to waiting family and friends... and yet somehow it's still hard. Amidst the bittersweet feelings, though, we're also feeling really grateful - grateful to have had this time together in this place, grateful for the visits of friends and family who came here to visit us in Jalisco, grateful for all the thoughts and prayers that have helped sustain us, grateful for everything.

Tomorrow, before dawn, we leave for Mexico City, taking a six-hour bus ride to el D.F., where we'll check in at the Lutheran Center once again and begin the final week of our year in Mexico.

Whoa.

2009-07-01T16:01:00.000-07:00

So here's something fun I just discovered. Check out the "Adventures Across the Border" photo album.

Adventures Across the Border

Yep - it's our whole year in 476 pictures, all there on one page. I'm kind of bowled over by it.

An Unexpected Adventure to Kick Off July, My Favorite Month of the Year

2009-07-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

(How's that for a Sufjan Stevens title?)

Yesterday Chris and I had an unexpected adventure. Well, for Chris it wasn’t so unexpected – she’s been doing stuff like this for months now. But for me it was definitely out of the ordinary.

I had gone to San Juan with Chris in the morning in the hopes of getting tamales for breakfast. We aren't eating at home much this week, ever since our gas tank ran empty. We didn't figure it was worth paying the forty dollars for another one for only one week, so we're living our last week in Lagos with cold showers and cold food. Yes, it's true - my adventures in the Mexican kitchen have come to an end.

By the time we arrived in Lagos it was pouring rain, but we found our tamales and champurrada and took shelter on some steps inside of one of San Juan’s many markets. After breakfast Chris had an appointment, but we agreed to meet in the afternoon to go visit a lesser-known church in San Juan, the Templo de Santo Niño de Mezquitic. For reasons I’ll explain later, I’d wanted to visit this church before we left Los Altos. (You might also notice that I didn't provide my usual Wikipedia link with this one - that's because Wikipedia has no entry for it. Nope, not even a short one. You know you're into deeply local territory when Wikipedia runs dry.)

While I waited for Chris, I went to mass at the Basilica, then re-read one of my Mexico anthologies in a coffee shop for a few hours. Finally it’s time, and Chris comes through the door to find me – only she has unexpected news. She had been interviewing one of San Juan’s elder statesmen at his home. “He says he’ll take us to Mezquitic in his car, and that we should eat lunch with he and his wife beforehand.” She shrugs apologetically at this change of plans, but there’s nothing for it; we have been invited and we must accept. She takes me to his house.

He and his wife are very welcoming and, truth be told, very funny. They tease each other throughout the meal, and I laugh whenever I understand the Spanish well enough. This is the first time I have shared a meal in a Mexican home since December; I realize how much I have missed it.

Then it is time to go, and we pile in his rusty red sedan and rumble our way down the street. Our plan was to go straight to Mezquitic, but when he finds out that we haven’t yet seen the panoramic view of San Juan from a nearby hill, he insists that we drive up there first.

This detour proves to be well worth it. I think I have seen this view of San Juan in postcards; from here you can see the river that runs along one side of the city – a river that has already begun its yearly refill now that the rainy season has begun – and all of the many churches and hotels that fill San Juan’s central district. As we climb through some barbed wire to get a better look at the panorama, I realize how much of San Juan, this city Chris has worked in for four long months, that I have never seen.

We pile back in the car and head around the edge of town to neighboring Mezquitic. The surrounding landscape is beautiful, much more beautiful than the landscape we’ve seen on bus rides back and forth from San Juan to Lagos to León. The land is green, much greener than it has been at any other time since we have lived here. No wonder the rainy season is so welcome…

Along the way we pass lots of massive posters and painted billboards for various political candidates, all of whom our driver seems to know personally. “¡Hola, Chacho!” he says as he passes one of these signs, which inevitably feature a giant photo of the candidate's face next to his nickname. Have I mentioned that our tour guide for the day has been speaking nonstop, with barely a moment’s pause? He’s a hoot, and regales us with stories of San Juan’s past and present, often breaking out into spontaneous song as we roll along the city’s streets and surrounding highways.

We also pass a treasured nineteen-year-old landmark in San Juan: The outdoor “stage” where Pope John Paul II gave mass during his papal visit here in May 1990. It’s a fascinating structure that looks as if someone placed part of a steepled church on top of an Aztec pyramid. But it’s fallen into disrepair, and the paint is peeling. Apparently it now sits unused, its precious green space empty, a permanently fenced-off reminder of a proud moment in San Juan’s history.

Finally we arrive in Mezquitic. Here in this outlying neighborhood of San Juan is a church like the Basilica of the Virgen, but smaller. It, too, is dedicated to a holy statue, but, well… smaller.

The Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos is a little shorter than my arm. The Santo Niño de Mezquitic is a statue of Jesus that is a little smaller than my thumb. He is so small, in fact, that very few people actually call him by his official and church-sanctioned name of Santo Niño de Mezquitic. Instead, he is known as… well, this is how the Los Altos tourist guide puts it in its helpfully-included English translation:

“Located at Mezquitic de la Magdalena, in San Juan de los Lagos, 4 kilometers away from the city, you can worship the image of a miraculous baby Jesus whose size is no bigger than a peanut. This is the reason why it is known as “El Niño del Cacahuate,” the Peanut Baby.”

Actually, I have more often heard this Santo Niño referred to as “El Niño del Cacahuatito,” which adds the diminutive “ito” to “cacahuate” and makes it the “Baby of the Little Peanut,” as if just plain “peanut” didn’t convey the smallness well enough.

In any case, the tourist guide is right: the Santo Niño de Mezquitic is small – really, really small. It could probably fit inside of a peanut. Like the Virgen de San Juan, el Santo Niño is also covered up to its head in an elaborately decorated triangle dress and placed on top of a stand behind a glass case.

Appropriately, its temple is also small – perhaps the smallest chapel we have seen in Mexico. As you enter it, though, its connection with the Basilica in nearby San Juan is proclaimed clearly: There is a poster with a photo of the Virgen de San Juan and underneath the words: “Encontraron al Niño con Maria, su Madre” – “You will find the Child with Mary, his Mother.”

Like the Basilica, the Templo del Santo Niño also features a room of retablos, prayers for miracles to come and thank-yous for miracles received. Unlike the Virgen de San Juan, however, el Santo Niño is a specialist: This room is almost exclusively full of baby clothes and little toys, usually with papers clipped to them on which are written prayers to the Santo Niño for protection of a baby or a small child.

On our way out of the temple, we stop to buy some peanuts (yes, they sell peanuts, cheekily, outside of the temple gates) and listen to a peanut-seller try to convince us that the Santo Niño de Mezquitic is older and more indigenous than the Virgen de San Juan. Our tour guide is not convinced, and tells them so, and then he continues on with our tour, which we had thought was at an end.

First we stop at the house of one of his friends to chat for a bit, then we drive on to the San Juan branch of the Cruz Roja Mexicana – the Mexican Red Cross. The Red Cross is very important to our tour guide; he drove ambulances as a Red Cross volunteer in San Juan for fifty years (his fifty-year celebration photos are on the wall here next to a parked ambulance). He gives us a tour of the center and shows us the two newest ambulances in the fleet. I have flashbacks of being in Nebraska, where we were also shown ambulances and hospitals as part of our area tour.

We look at the time – nearly seven o’clock, eight hours after Chris first began her appointment this morning. We need to catch a bus, and before that Chris has some books to return to another gentleman, so she tells our tour guide that, sadly, we need to go. Rather than bid us goodbye, however, he drives us to where Chris needs to drop off her books – a good distance up and down a hill – and then, seeing that we are about to miss our bus, races us to the bus station. The ticket agent at the counter tells us the bus has just left; he points at the bus as it turns the corner. Maybe we can catch it, he says. We say a quick goodbye to our tour guide and race down the street, running as fast as we can, until the bus finally notices us and opens its door to let us on.

We collapse on the bus and catch our breath, winded by our backpack-laden run but mostly exhausted from a very long day. It has been one of our last days in Los Altos; Chris has only two days left in San Juan de Los Lagos. Some of our best days, it seems, have been saved for last…

Doña Maria's Gorditas

2009-06-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: The following is a post from Chris - yes, Chris! Enjoy. :)

Put them in the column of things I will miss about Mexico, along with balloon sellers in public squares and sprawling tianguis selling everything from herbs and fish to Hollister tees and American Eagle polo shirts. Doña María and three of her daughters and daughters-in-law (cuñadas in Spanish, for once shorter than the English expression) sell gorditas outside her house five days a week. Gorditas are kin to tacos, thick baked corn patties sliced open and filled with stewed guisados of beans, potatoes, pork rind, or sliced chiles or nopales (cactus) prepared ahead of time and scooped into the steaming hot corn pocket. Doña María’s gorditas are extra special because she places her griddle, or comal, over a wood fire, and after the gorditas are cooked on the griddle, they get a few seconds rest in the coals and pick up a smoky flavor. Generally consumed with a cold bottle of coke purchased from the neighbor next door, these are a heavenly meal and make up what Mexicans call almuerzo, a late breakfast, sometimes a second breakfast, eaten around 11 or 12 to stave off hunger until it’s time for the main meal of the day at 3 pm.

I met Doña María one of the first days I was in San Juan. The priest who agreed to show me around town and introduce me to people had thought of her as someone who would have memories of religious practices in the 1940s. She looks like the stereotype of a Mexican grandmother while she works, an ironed checked apron over an equally spotless flowered dress, and a black rebozo, or shawl, over her hair. I went today to say goodbye to her, an awkward proposition because we don’t have much to chat about. Our lives are so completely different that neither of us quite knows what to ask the other, and she is not an overly talkative woman. But when I saw her, she jumped out of her seat and offered me something to eat. I protested, but took her chair upon her insistence. We exchanged pleasantries and then she bustled away.

With no one else to talk to, I eavesdropped on the conversation of the people sitting next to me. Doña María’s gordita establishment consists of a table with the guisados, the wood-fired comal, and ten or so plastic chairs standing against the wall of her house. The little patio is roofed with corrugated metal and shaded with an additional yard of brown cloth stretched out toward the street. The chairs are always full with people from the neighborhood, sitting and chatting while they eat. This means that even a stranger can get in on the conversation, and often the cooks join in as well – no one has their back turned to the other. So I timidly listened in as one lady described to another how she hasn’t been to visit her son in college yet in the next town over because she’s not exactly sure where it is and she doesn’t drive. And by the end of the half hour, I was laughing out loud to her story about her daughter’s response to the swine flu: “I told her don’t be kissing your boyfriend right now you don’t want to be catching anything.” “And she said, ‘I’m gonna kiss him anyway, and if one of us dies then we both will.’” When they took off, they bid me adios along with saying their farewells to their friends and neighbors. And I found that without really asking Doña María any questions beyond “how have you been” I had learned about old pets that she had had as a child that she had to leave when the moved to San Juan, about her husband’s love for birds, and how happy she was in the neighborhood – “such a friendly street, people sit outside to pass the time” as she joined in the conversation with her more talkative neighbors.

This was only the second time I had gone to eat gorditas at Doña María’s. I had been trying so hard to take advantage of my time in San Juan that I spent the time when I didn’t have scheduled appointments in the archives. Probably that’s the way it should be. I am here to work, after all. But I’m glad that I had a couple opportunities to sit and chat, eavesdrop on the neighbors and taste her delicious delicious handiwork. And it’s one more thing I’ll remember fondly from home about the time I’ve spent here in Mexico.

The Last Days

2009-06-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

I woke up late this morning, gulped down a glass of water, and went out for my morning run. The everyday sights and sounds of a Lagos morning surrounded me, but now that we're down to our last days here my senses were heightened; I noticed everything more.

Traffic cops directed cars and people, keeping everyone in line with their presence if nothing else. As cars stopped at their direction, young window-washers, most of them rail thin, rushed up with their detergent-filled Gatorade bottles and orange squeegees, aggressively offering their windshield-cleaning services; most of them were turned away. The clothing resale shops were opening up, merchants hanging their hangers in the window and chatting up the window-washers who were taking up their corner posts again. As the shiny SUV's prepared to cross their intersections, small beat-up motorbikes sped by them loudly, carrying one two, even a family of four people on a two-wheel bike.

Later I walked up Calvario hill to sit and write for awhile. A group of kids is playing soccer in front of the church steps; their voices fill the air. They've made goal markers with piles of rocks that don't stop their rubber ball from rolling into the street again and again. A car drives past carrying three teenage girls in dark sunglasses, laughing as they turn up their bass-heavy music. As they pass the church, they suddenly notice where they are and solemnly cross themselves.

The sky grows dark; the wind picks up. It begins to rain. I move for cover and the rain stops just as quickly as it began. I look out over the landscape, the vastness of it visible from here. Through the shrubs and palm trees, over the brick rooftops, along the flat plain to the mountains beyond - I can see all of it from right here. Again it begins to rain, but the distant mountains stay bathed in sunlight.

I think I'm going to miss this place after all.

Michael Jackson, 1958-2009

2009-06-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

The collective mourning of a great American pop star - and one of my personal faves, as any observer of my DVD collection knows. (Seriously, do you know anyone else who owns all the music videos from 1991's Dangerous?)

Though I wish I could share this moment at home, it is something to experience it from abroad. I passed a newsstand and the local paper - local Lagos paper, mind you - filled its entire front page with a photo of Michael Jackson and the headline "El Rey Ha Muerto" - "The King is Dead." Later Luis dropped by and I told him I was reading the news, and the first thing he says to me, before anything else, is "Si, la muerta de Michael Jackson, El Rey del Pop..." as if it were the biggest news of the day throughout the world.

Which, of course, it is.

Dolores de Hidalgo

2009-06-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

The region just east of us, from the city of Guanajuato all the way down to Queretaro, is known in Mexico as the Cuna de la Independencia, or the Cradle of Independence. It was here, amid the mountains of the Sierra Madre and the plains of the bajio, where Mexican nationalists declared their independence from Spain in a rebellion that began in 1810 and ended some ten bloody years later. This area, in other words, is the Mexican equivalent of New England.

And if this is Mexico’s New England, then the small town of Dolores Hidalgo is its Lexington (the two towns are actually Sister Cities). Here in little Dolores, Miguel Hidalgo launched the rebellion by calling his parishioners to independence in a fiery speech in the early morning hours of September 16, 1810. (Longtime readers will recall that we witnessed the annual reenacted grito in Mexico City last September – you can read about that adventure here). But I’m getting ahead of myself – Hidalgo’s rebel yell is much more interesting with his backstory included.

The Life of Miguel Hidalgo (you can skip this part, but I don’t think you should!)

Miguel Hidalgo was born in 1753, in Guanajuato, to a criollo family. In the absurdly complicated hierarchy of race and class in the Spanish colonies, criollos were those of European descent but who were born in the New World. Due to the location of their birth (some things haven’t changed), criollos faced a legally institutionalized glass ceiling above which they could not rise.

Still, criollos were the equivalent of the upper middle class, and as such young Miguel was provided with an advanced education; eventually, he entered seminary and was ordained a priest when he was in his early twenties. From there he went on to teach at a prestigious school in Morelia, and before long became known as a hotshot young scholar, surely destined for great things.

During the decade he taught as a professor, however, he gained a reputation of one who was, to use the dreaded term, “unorthodox,” in his teaching as well as in his lifestyle. He earned the nickname el zorro, the fox (not to be confused with the masked “Zorro” of Mexican California). Father Hidalgo, in other words, attracted attention to himself, and in these days of the Inquisition, drawing attention to yourself could get you in trouble in short order. In 1804 he was transferred from his prestigious seminary post to a remote rural parish, presumably banished there as if it were Siberia, never, the powers that be hoped, to be heard from again. “But this reassignment,” as one of the museums I visited dryly put it, “proved to be fateful.”

In his new rural parish in Dolores, Father Hidalgo’s life took a dramatic turn. Rather than treating his assignment as a punishment, he threw himself into the collective life of his parishioners, organizing a pottery cooperative, cultivating silk and planting vineyards. He learned several indigenous languages and reached out to the lowest social castes. In other words, the Mexico Semester Program might say, Father Hidalgo became a practicing liberation theologian more than a century before the term would be invented. (He also, it should be noted, faced the pitfalls of liberation theology, coming under criticism from contemporaries for neglecting his parishioners’ spiritual lives, as well as for his general “restlessness.”)

Within a few years of arriving in Dolores, Father Hidalgo met Ignacio Allende, a fellow criollo discontent (nearby San Miguel de Allende would be named for him). In 1808, when Napoleon destabilized the Spanish monarchy, Hidalgo, Allende, and several fellow conspirators began plotting their next move. A plan was formed to declare independence – and with it armed rebellion against Spanish rule – in the city of Queretaro in November 1810. In September, however, Hidalgo received word that the plot had been uncovered by the authorities, who were on their way to arrest the rebels. The conspirators fled to Dolores, where they hurriedly met in Hidalgo’s house to discuss their options. There was little time and few alternatives. By the early morning hours, a decision had been made.

At 5:30 in the morning on September 16, long before sunrise and the normal time for church, Hidalgo rang the bells of the parish, the Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de Dolores, or the Parish of Our Lady of Sorrows, named for an image of Mary (the patron saint of Mississippi, who knew?) in which the mother of Jesus suffers at the sight of her son being crucified. Hidalgo’s cry for independence (read his supposed exact words here) would become known as the Grito de Dolores, named for the town and its parish church but which, thanks to this coincidental background, literally translates as “the cry of sorrows," or "the cry of pain.” From this parish named for the Virgin Mary, Hidalgo and his ragtag army went forth carrying a flag with, as a symbol of their American identity, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on it. With a history like this, is it any wonder that I think of Mexico as the land of Maria?

My Historical Adventure

Well. So much for backstory. Dolores Hidalgo is located in Guanajuato state about halfway between the city of Guanajuato and the city of San Miguel de Allende. But with our time running short, I knew Chris and I wouldn’t have time for another weekend Mexican road trip together. If I wanted to visit the birthplace of Mexican independence – and, amateur history buff that I am, I definitely did – I’d have to go myself. So, before dawn on Thursday morning I boarded a bus heading east, ready for adventure.

The first bus took me from Lagos to León (this ride before dawn), and from León I boarded a bus to the city of Guanajuato, where the Lonely Planet mentioned regular bus service to Dolores. This final leg of the trip, from Guanajuato to Dolores, was the prettiest. The bus snakes it way up into higher altitude, first offering passengers gorgeous views of the colorful city of Guanajuato (nice to see you again!) before heading even further up onto a winding highway that hugs the cliffs of the tree-covered mountainsides. I haven’t felt this much of a thrill on a bus ride since that early morning journey through the mountain jungles of Chiapas on my way to Palenque.

Five hours after leaving Lagos de Moreno my bus finally rolls in to the tiny but bustling town of Dolores Hidalgo. Upon leaving the bus I immediately see a very large shrine to the Virgin of San Juan de Los Lagos in the bus station, the only such religious shrine there. ¡San Juanita! I make a mental note to tell Chris about it when I get home.

I pull out my Lonely Planet guidebook and study its street map of Dolores. The central plaza is only a few blocks north of the bus station, so I start walking in what I hope is the right direction and I reach the plaza within a few minutes.

And then there it is: The place where it happened. Somehow this feels more like a holy place than most of the churches we’ve visited this year. It is a place where something monumental happened, right here, in this place, some two hundred years ago, an event far enough away to be legendary but close enough that its effects are still felt, like aftershocks of an earthquake. I find myself struck by this place as a link between Mexico and the United States – and so many other countries of the American continents, for that matter. Independence, I realize, is part of the common story of the Americas; it is something that binds us together as brothers.

I head to the church first, and walk inside. It’s surprisingly beautiful, though poorly maintained. There is a Taxco-like churrigueresque façade and churrigueresque side altars, all impossibly detailed sculptures of stone, metal, and wood. I sit for a moment in the pews, then walk outside, pausing at the door to look out on the plaza, as I imagine Hidalgo did on that fateful morning. Next to the church entrance is an 8-foot-tall pillar with an electronic counter on it counting down the days to Mexico’s 2010 bicentennial. 447 days, 11 hours, 39 minutes, and 7 seconds… 6 seconds… 5 seconds…

From the parish church the rebels went to the town jail and freed all the prisoners, and so I, walking their path, walked the few short blocks to the prison, which is now the Museum of National Independence. It proved to be a surprisingly excellent museum, one of the best I’ve been to in Mexico, with English translations next to all of its explanations. The independence museum mostly told the story of Miguel Hidalgo, who I had previously only known as the rebel leader who, especially in Guadalajara, is depicted principally as crazy-looking. Who knew Hidalgo was a hundred times more interesting than that?

Hidalgo, the museum tells me, was eventually captured and executed less than six months after crying the grito from the doors of his parish church. After being shot by a firing squad, his head was cut off and placed in a birdcage so that it could be hung in a prominent place in the city of Guanajuato as a symbol to would-be rebels. Hidalgo’s decomposing head hung there for ten long years while the war dragged on, but after the war was eventually sent to Mexico City where it was buried under the Monument to Independence. Is this monument the famous Angel of Independence? I’m not sure. I make a note to find Hidalgo’s head when we’re in Mexico City next week.

From the prison I walk to Hidalgo’s house, where the rebels met in secret on the morning of September 16. It is also now a museum. I was going to skip this one, until I noticed that it was run by INAH, the National Institute of History and Anthropology. INAH museums are, as a rule, really well done, so I figured I had to check this one out. I shouldn’t have. It was lame, full of replicas of various “important” documents, and all of its explanations were in Spanish. Tip: If you ever go to Dolores Hidalgo – and you should, since I’ve already told you to go to San Miguel and Guanajuato – definitely go the Museum of National Independence, but don’t bother with the house of Miguel Hidalgo. You can see it fine from the outside.

That was about all I needed to do in Dolores – and I needed to be getting home besides, what with my five-hour bus ride ahead of me – so I snapped a few more photos of the plaza and the church, grabbed a torta to go at a popular-looking restaurant, and bought a ticket for the first leg of my several-stage journey home.

Reflection (also skippable, if you like)

This has, I have to say, been a very thought-provoking week for me. I took two adventures on my own, which was an experience in its own right. Still, I thought the two adventures had nothing to do with one another, but in Dolores I realized that they perhaps had more in common than I had supposed.

My visits to Toribio Romo and Miguel Hidalgo were actually both visits to places dedicated to priests, ordained ministers, each of whom had served his parishioners in a very particular way. Each found himself opposed to powerful forces, and each, in the service of his parishioners, led their parishioners in resistance to those forces, specifically those forces that they believed threatened their parishioners’ ability to live as God intended them to live. Am I oversimplifying? Of course – but bear with me for a moment.

Toribio Romo refused armed rebellion, but he did choose a path of resistance when he continued to administer the holy sacraments to his people in full violation of the law, an act of liturgy-as-resistance that brings to mind William Cavanaugh’s Torture and Eucharist. Miguel Hidalgo, on the other hand, rejected the brutal hierarchies of his day by forging cross-cultural, cross-class relationships and building up the community of his parish through cooperative economic life. And then, unlike Toribio, he chose the path of taking up arms, uttered the Cry of Pains, and unleashed a bloody war that quickly spiraled out of his control. That last part is easy to glorify as history but hard to justify as principle; if I were writing the story as an ideal I’d prefer a peaceful resistance akin to MLK or Ghandi’s spiritually-sourced people’s movements.

Still, I’m holding Toribio Romo and Miguel Hidalgo in my head and in my heart this week, two examples of priestly vocation lived out in the Americas in the last two centuries. They are worth remembering, I think, as I continue to ponder the vocation of ordained ministry in the Americas in the twenty-first century, and as I prepare to take these many adventures back across the border.

And of course, here's my inevitable Dolores Hidalgo photo gallery:

Dolores Hidalgo

A Visit with Santo Toribio

2009-06-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to see Santo Toribio Romo.

Santo Toribio Romo, for those who haven’t been to the interior of Mexico recently, is quite possibly the most popular saint in the country. To be fair, he does face stiff competition from San Judas Tadeo (St. Jude), whose image is everywhere in Mexico City, as well as one image that looks like St. George but with a person at the end of the spear instead of a dragon (if anyone knows which saint this is, please tell me!) that is especially popular among bus drivers and taxistas. But the omnipresence of Toribio Romo’s black-and-white mug is powerful, and growing.

There are at least two obvious reasons for this popularity. One is that Santo Toribio Romo is becoming the unofficial patron saint of immigrants to the United States – especially those who cross the border on foot, without papers, under the natural threat of a deadly waterless desert and the man-made dangers of the Border Patrol, the Minutemen, and immense risk involved in choosing a responsible coyote. Is it any wonder that the God-fearing faithful, who have always cried out for divine intervention in their most dire moments, would find help from a spiritual source? For these vulnerable travelers, Santo Toribio often shows up as a guardian angel, helping the migrant through a tough spot before mysteriously disappearing into the darkness. We rationalists may scoff, but the stories – and the faith of the people – are growing.

The other reason for Santo Toribio Romo’s popularity, however, is that unlike San Judas Tadeo or the Psedo-Saint-George, Santo Toribio is certifiably Mexican. He was born on April 16, 1900, right here in the highlands of Jalisco, dirt poor. He grew up under the shadow of the Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos, and entered the seminary in San Juan when he was only 12 years old, to be ordained as a priest by the time he was 22. But of course, by now, thanks to my endless ramblings about it, you know that the 1920s were a dangerous time to be a priest in Mexico. As the government cracked down on religious practice, Toribio Romo rebelled – not with guns and knives, but instead by continuing to administer the sacraments to his people. On February 25, 1928, government troops finally caught up with him in the town of Tequila. He was shot to death in his bedroom.

Pope John Paul II canonized Toribio Romo as a saint of the church in 2000. Twenty-four other martyrs of the Cristero Rebellion were also canonized, but none of them have yet reached Santo Toribio’s popularity. Aiding his belovedness, Chris and I have surmised, is the arresting photograph of Santo Toribio that serves as his image (see the photo at the top of this post). His eyes are almost sad, but fixed and firm, as if they are seeing his future and he is deciding in that moment that though it is not pleasant it is the path God has called him to, and he will not waver from it. Is it any wonder the saints are stand-ins for Jesus, stepping-stones to Christ?

Well. Enough background. On Tuesday I decided to visit this Mexican miracle-worker, to see Santo Toribio for myself. Chris had already made her visit with a priest in San Juan who helpfully drove her there in his car and introduced her to the priests in charge; she came home with a Santo Toribio keychain and prayer book, gifts from the administrators of the church. I, on the other hand, would be going by myself, by a series of public buses – yet another practical test of all those Spanish classes.

Santo Toribio’s shrine is in Santa Ana de Guadalupe, a tiny, tiny, tiny village outside of Jalostotitlan, a small town about two hours from Lagos by bus. Traveling through the other towns in this region helps me realize just how relatively big Lagos de Moreno really is. It is no teeming metropolis like León or Guadalajara, to be sure, and yet compared to Jalos (the popular abbreviation for Jalostotitlan) it is full of urban comforts. When my regional bus arrived in Jalos, it dropped me off at a street corner office that served as the Jalos bus station. And I thought the bus station in Lagos was small…

I walked over to the office and asked the man in an official-looking uniform how to get to Santa Ana de Guadalupe. He stared at me blankly and pointed at the corner where I had just gotten off the bus. Apparently this was the bus stop. As I was turning to go, another group of people who had been on the same bus – an friendly older gentleman and two women who seemed to be about the same age – came up and asked the official-looking person about Santo Toribio. I decided to follow these people.

We waited for about twenty minutes, and I passed the time by reading my copy of The Brothers Karamazov and trying not to look too out of place. I love traveling, but this stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb-gringo feeling is not my favorite. In a cosmopolitan city like Guadalajara, where airplanes arrive daily from foreign lands, I hardly ever feel it, but here in a rural town you really feel like a stranger in a strange land. Of course it’s a thrill, but it can be a bit terrifying all the same.

When the little bus arrived, I and my (unsuspecting) traveling companions got on board and we all rattled our way out of town. As we made our way out into the countryside, the smells became more and more pronounced. You know what I mean. Farm smells. Cow smells. Nebraska smells. Iowa smells. This was a long way from Mexico City.

We turn down a dirt road and pass under a stone arch that announces the place of Toribio Romo. There is nothing but dry grass and desert trees around this shrine; nothing is visible from here. I wonder if this is what the arches in Guadalajara were like before they were swallowed up by the growing city. I wonder what this place will look like in 10, 20, 50 years. Will it be like San Juan de Los Lagos, pumped up to a sprawling size by the development steroids of cash brought by faithful pilgrims from across North America? People in San Juan call their town’s economic health the “true miracle” of the Virgen; will Santo Toribio deliver the same economic miracle to his hometown?

If it will happen, it hasn’t happened yet. The bus driver – who is extremely friendly – drops us off at a street corner, but I don’t see anything resembling a church. This is nothing like San Juan de Los Lagos, a mad market of religious souvenirs leading to a towering basilica that is visible for miles around. Not wanting to seem uncertain, I spot a weathered tourist sign and walk firmly toward it. It’s the right move – when I reach the sign, I immediately see the stone church around the corner.

It’s almost shockingly small. Later I discover that Padre Toribio built this church himself, organizing the people and resources to get a church built in his hometown. This explains the church’s size, but still: This is the land of massive parish churches and towering basilicas stuck in the middle of small rural cities, yet the shrine for one of Mexico’s most popular saints is a tiny stone sanctuary far outside of town.

As I walk through the church doors, a woman next to me drops to her knees, and then begins shuffling up to the altar. What is it with this shuffling up to the altar on your knees thing? People do it in San Juan, too, and I’m always bewildered by it. On the one hand, it’s beautiful piety, a powerful expression of devotion that even a Protestant can’t help but respect. On the other hand, what kind of God – or Virgin or saint – wants you to shuffle up to their throne on your knees? I understand it rationally – puny human before powerful deity – but this physical submissiveness doesn’t exactly make me feel full of love for the Lord.

On the other other hand, I continue to be amazed by the Mexican faithful’s use of physical acts in their religious practice. From the Christmastime posada parades to the outdoor theater of Good Friday, Mexican Catholicism gives you something to do and not just something to think. I’ve come all the way out to see Santo Toribio – now what? I can pray silently in my head, and I do, but as I watch the woman shuffle up to the altar I find myself wishing I had something physical and physically demanding I could do during my pilgrimage, to cap it off. I make a note to file this away for further reflection later.

Outside, in the “backyard” of the little church, I find a long walkway leading to another little church. This is the Calzada de los Martires, or Walkway of the Martyrs. All along the little stone path there are cement busts and inscribed plaques to the other Cristero martyrs. Most of them are from Jalisco, but there are a few from Zacatecas, too, and at least one each in the northern border states of Durango and Chihuahua, and one, I am surprised to find, from the southern state of Guerrero. (Question: Why is Santo Toribio the patron saint of migrants, and not one of the martyr saints from a border state?)

In the middle of this walkway, there is a monument to Christ the King and the Virgin of Guadalupe, a visible rendering of the Cristero martyrs’ final cry: ¡Viva Cristo Rey y la Virgen de Guadalupe! Long live Christ the King and the Virgin of Guadalupe! The monument itself is a curious one. There is a black cross. On one side of the cross is Jesus, his arms up in the air and wearing the cloth of resurrection – this is “viva Christo Rey.” On the other side of the cross is the Virgin of Guadalupe, life size. They are positioned like two sides of the same coin – or two sides of the same cross. I have no idea what this means theologically, but it’s got to be worth a paper or two in a systematic theology class.

At the end of the walkway is another stone church, about the same size as the first one. Later Chris tells me this other church was built by Santo Toribio’s family after his death. Next to the church is a replica of Toribio Romo’s childhood home. It’s like one of those 18th or 19th century homes you can visit in certain national parks (there’s one in my grandparents’ town in Iowa), complete with furnishings from the era. This one is about the size of the living room in our apartment in Lagos. Later Chris tells me that Toribio Romo’s parents raised five kids in this one-room log cabin. The point, she tells me, is that they were dirt poor. I try to take a photo of the house, but it’s difficult to capture without the fancy restaurant built just behind it.

On my visit I miss the retablo room, where visitors put thank-you notes, thank-you paintings, and random thank-you items like soccer jerseys on the walls as an offering of gratitude to Santo Toribio. Chris tells me that on her visit one retablo struck her especially: A family gave thanks to Santo Toribio Romo for helping them to finally find the body of their daughter who had died in her attempt to cross the border. For these parents, the miracle was that their daughter did not disappear in the desert like so many other sons and daughters who perish in the wilderness; against all odds, they found her body, they could bury her, they could have closure.

As I leave the place of Santo Toribio, I notice his photo over a doorframe on a nearby house. The Christian faith represented by this devotion is so different from the Christian faith that I grew up with. Yet it is faith all the same, a powerful, fierce faith, strong as any I have encountered elsewhere. What does God see when he looks at this faith? What do you see, O Lord?

I have spent so much of my time parsing the differences between my faith and the faith of the people all around me; throughout my time here I have struggled to make sense of it all. But there are moments - moments, I think, when the truth beyond my brain breaks in - when my heart is pierced by what I can barely understand. And it's times like this when, well... when it brings me to my knees.

I sat on the side of the road for an hour and a half waiting for the little bus to come back and take me home. When it finally did, it was in the middle of the loop to a nearby town, so I rode the bus from Santo Toribio's rural church to San Miguel el Alto and then back to Santo Toribio and then finally on to Jalosototilan, where I caught another bus to San Juan de Los Lagos and finally back to Lagos de Moreno, another long day come to an end.

Santo Toribio

¡Segunda Cumpleaños en Guanajuato!

2009-06-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Editor's note: Just captioned the photo album in the middle of this post. Check it out.

Chris wanted only one thing for her birthday: To go home. Sadly, our flight is still three weeks away, so she had to opt for her second choice: A weekend visit to the colorful mountain city of Guanajuato.

Our globetrotting scholar spent a birthday in Guanajuato three years ago, in the summer of 2006 when she spent 6 weeks traveling around West-Central Mexico doing pre-dissertation prep work, scouting the research landscape for this year. (In case there’s any confusion: Even though I’m writing this blog about adventures, my wife is the real adventurer, having gone on one study abroad program and three solo trips to Latin America over the last decade, nearly every other year when you add it up, and now she’s leading this trip. And all this before her 28th birthday!)

On that last Mexican birthday, she was alone, and not having the best day: For breakfast, she ordered a fresh-squeezed orange juice, one of her favorite things ever – and it promptly made her sick to her stomach… again. But when I called her that evening, using a phone card and standing in the parking lot of College Mall in Bloomington, Indiana, she was feeling better: The owner of the hostel she was staying in, learning it was her birthday, had bought her flowers. She nearly cried at the sight of them, an out-of-nowhere gesture of kindness to a stranger in a strange land.

Needless to say, Chris left Guanajauto with happy memories and looked forward to another visit. This time, though, things were quite different. Rather than figuring things out anew at every turn, Chris knows the landscape here like the back of her hand. She’s mastered the bus system, traveled most of the route more than once (Guanajuato is about twice as far as León on the same highway), has been speaking her Spanish for the last 11 months rather than the last 11 days, and, when we arrived in Guanajuato, knew the route from the bus station to the well-hidden hotel without even having to consult so much as a map. Who even needs the Lonely Planet anymore?

As for me, well, this was my first visit to Guanajuato, and from the first wide-angle view from atop our hotel terrace (see the photo album below) I knew this was going to be one of the highlights of our time puebleando (a slang word meaning, awesomely, to visit little towns on a road trip) in Mexico.

Guanajuato, to put it briefly, is like Taxco but bigger and more diversified in its attractions. Both are former mining towns, born in the silver rush of the 16th century. Today, however, rather than trafficking in silver like its southern cousin, Guanajuato specializes in a Cervantes festival every October that leaves its streets and museums peppered with artistic Don Quixote tributes. Like San Miguel de Allende, the streets are full of four-hundred-year-old Franciscan and Jesuit temples surrounded by very-brightly-colored two story (but rarely more) adobe buildings. Unlike San Miguel, however, Guanajuato is anchored by a major regional university to keep itself lively – and resoundingly Mexican – all year long.

Actually, the first thing I thought of when we arrived in Guanajuato is that the place seemed like West Virginia – specifically, Morgantown, West Virginia, which is literally built in the mountains and is also a college town, home to West Virginia University. Turns out (thanks Wikipedia!) that Morgantown is actually an official Sister City of Guanajuato! Who knew?!

¡Cumpleaños en Guanajuato!

Guanajuato’s downtown is so pretty-at-every-turn jaw-dropping that it’s been named a certified UNESCO World Heritage Site. At this point I must beg your patience for a short digression. I was beginning to think, given how many UNESCO World Heritage Sites we’ve visited this year, that the United Nations is just giving out World Heritage status to pretty much everywhere. I mean, honestly – everything from the UNAM university campus in Mexico City to the ancient ruins of Xochicalco is a World Heritage Site! Turns out, though, that Mexico simply has more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than anywhere else in the Americas, with 29 sites. Italy, the country with the most, has 43 sites; Mexico, a country that is probably only a short flight from where you are, is hot on its heels. Do I need to give you any more reasons to visit this country? (Also, I will refrain from asking whether being a Catholic country makes you more likely to have World Heritage sites.)

Back to our trip. We checked into the Casa Bertha, where Chris stayed three years ago; the proprietor was just as friendly and welcoming as he was then. Chris showed me the rooftop terrace where she spent many an evening sipping tea and reading while watching the sun paint the town in different colors as it descended behind the mountains. I remember her talking about this terrace during that summer, about all the time she spent there, and it was sort of surreal to actually see it in person. Hungry, we went straight for a nearby restaurant, and stuffed ourselves on a cheap but delicious set lunch (other benefit of GTO over San Migel – way cheaper!). We spent most of Saturday afternoon pleasantly wandering the streets.

In fact, we walked around town for hours and hours and hours over the course of the weekend, and yet: I still think I’d get lost if you dropped me in Guanajuato by myself. The place is like a labyrinth, a crazy labyrinth of colorful buildings and cobblestone streets that alternately narrow and widen, that curve around at sharp angles suddenly, and are almost never horizontal but usually going either steeply uphill or steeply downhill. But this labyrinth is a dream to get lost in: Nearly every path leads to a yet another leafy little plaza with benches and a fountain in the middle. It is an absurdly pretty place to spend a weekend.

No wonder Chris wanted to come here for her birthday. We awoke early on Sunday morning, thanks to a bunch of nearby roosters who decided to wish Chris a happy birthday, and began their birthday song at 4 AM. We finally wandered outside after dawn, energized ourselves with breakfast, and set off in search of the path up the hill to Pípila.

Pípila is Guanajuato’s resident independence hero, who, a mere two weeks after Miguel Hidalgo’s first rebel yell in the nearby town of Dolores, torched GTO’s granary to give the rebel troops their first victory in Mexico’s War of Independence. One hundred years later, the city of Guanajuato built a massive statue of Pípila atop one of the surrounding hills, visible from nearly everywhere in town. You can take an inclined railway to the top of the hill to see the statue, or you can just walk up the hill along the winding cobblestone paths. Chris, knowing my love for climbing all manner of monuments in Mexico – ruins are like a playgrounds for adults! – led the way on the long walk up the very, very steep hill. And, just like in the climb to Tepozteco outside of Tepoztlan nearly one year ago (whoa), this one paid off with one of those spectacular wide-angle views – impossible to capture in a photograph, though you can see me try in the photo album above.

After that we went to find Chris’s #1 must-see in Guanajuato: The house where Diego Rivera was born, where there is now a Diego Rivera museum featuring works from his childhood to his final years. When we were in Mexico City we became serious Diego-philes, visiting every massive mural we could find. But here, in Diego’s birthplace, the collection is of smaller pieces that reveal much more of Mexico’s most famous painter. Chris loves how you can see his development over the years: First the preternatural technical skill, then several years in France, where he copied and mastered all manner of European styles popular at the time, then an increasing interest in peasant life, poverty, and the problems of industrialism, then an immersion in the ancient codices of pre-Hispanic Mexican art, and then, finally, the beginning sketches for his national-pride murals. You walk away with a new appreciation for Diego Rivera, his wide-ranging skill as an artist and the way in which he came to find his ultimate vocation as the painter of his people.

(Plus, I was able to make use of the bathroom in Diego Rivera’s house, which gives me an idea for the title of my book that Chris finds highly inappropriate. Sigh.)

From the Diego Rivera museum we went to the Cervantino museum in this Cervantes-obsessed town, an art museum that turned out to be three floors of surprisingly striking and diverse art depicting Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Chris decided that Miguel Cervantes must be to Spanish-speaking countries what William Shakespeare is to English-speaking ones. Neither one of us has ever been able to finish Don Quixote, despite having tried more than once, but Guanajuato makes me want to try again…

We spent our final hours of the day eating and drinking our way through Guanajuato’s many outdoor cafes, stuffing ourselves on crepes, chocolate chip cookies, guacamole, quiche, cheesecake, frappuchinos, red wine, sangria, and black coffee, not surprisingly making our tummies hurt yet not regretting a single bite, or a single step in this beautiful town on a beautiful weekend for a beautiful girl who has now completed 28 years of adventurous life. ¡Feliz cumpleaños, mi amor! Hasta el proxima aventura…

Ojalá Que Llueva Café... Tacvba!

2009-06-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

(Yes, the subject line is a joke that no one reading this will get. But I'm sticking with it anyway! ☺)

Last night we went to our first concert of 2009. Concerts are a big deal for us; they've been the source of so many great Matt-and-Chris experiences... from Run DMC (yes, Run DMC) in Valpo all the way to U2 in New York City, from multiple Midwestern doses of Bruce Springsteen all the way to KT Tunstall in a tiny North Side theatre, we've been "spending our hard-earned on a rock show," as Bono puts it, since our first days together. I'd wanted to make it to a concert in Mexico at some point during our year, but with our time drawing to a close I figured it probably wouldn't happen.

But then I saw online that Mexico City chilangos Café Tacvba would be playing in the nearby metropolis of León as part of their 20 Years 20 Cities celebration tour. ¡¡Café Tacvba!! If you're interested in world music you can click here to learn more about Café Tacvba, but suffice to say that they are one of the most Mexican of Mexican bands in the 90s generation of Latin American rocanrol... and we had a chance to see them in Mexico! Naturally, we - ok, I - couldn't pass this up.

*****

When we arrived in León the line of people waiting to enter the arena was already winding around the block. The effect of this sight - a critical part of the concert experience - is hard to overstate. Up until that point you might be feeling ambivalent about your evening - so many things to do, why did I buy these tickets in the first place, the transportation is so much work - but when you see those fans lined up, a whole bunch of people excited about the same thing, well... the excitement is contagious. Your heart beats just a bit faster...

You also learn the first thing about what the concert experience will be like. Having attended the concerts of mostly, shall we say, "experienced" artists we are used to a more, er, "experienced" crowd. Most people at a Springsteen show are twice our age. Since tonight's band was celebrating its 20th anniversary, Chris expected the crowd to again be a good deal older than us. But we were wrong. The vast majority of those lined up ahead of and now behind us were in their late twenties, maybe early thirties at the oldest. In other words, our age. (Hey, this is a new thing for us!)

As we made our way closer to the arena's entrance, we checked out the tour merchandise out for sale. Choosing a concert t-shirt is one of the most difficult yet potentially rewarding aspects of the concert experience. (Yes, I wrote that with a straight face. I think there should be an Uniwatch blog for concert t-shirts. Somebody do this.) It's especially rewarding with a band that takes its visual design almost as seriously as its musical composition, which Café Tacvba certainly is. Even so, I couldn't make the call before the concert. This being Mexico, there were already stands set up outside selling cheap($10 or less) versions of the "official" concert merch, and it looked likely, given the presence of newly-arrived vendors only beginning to unpack their stuff, that there would be more after the show. Deep breath. Ok, I'll wait until after the show. Chris puts her arm around me. "It'll be ok," she says, "you'll find one you like later." My wife knows me.

Finally we walk through the turnstiles.... only to run the gauntlet of security guards waiting for us. We each get pulled aside by a different security guard to be patted down. I get approved, then turn to look for Chris again but I'm suddenly pulled aside by another security guard. He pats me down, then asks me something that I don't understand. I show him my ticket. "No no," he says, then asks me again. For all my Spanish training, I still don't understand what he's saying. Crap. I hate feeling like a foreigner. (We are definitely the only gringos here.) The security guard finally gives up, looks at my ticket, and points me in the right direction. Chris is already waiting in that hallway, her belt in her hand. "The first guard told me I had to check my belt," she tells me, "but then another guard told me I didn't have to." Crowd confusion - you gotta love it. She shrugs her shoulders, puts her belt back on, and we make our way up the stairs to the cheap seats.

The lights go down, and the show begins. The crowd goes wild. How to describe the experience? Maybe a video would help.

(This one is worth watching all the way through - at about the halfway point, the 3 minute mark, a dude comes out with a fiddle, the lead singer starts yodeling, and the song turns on a dime, Outkast-style, to become a very Mexican hoedown. Check it out!)

There's a guy next to us who is clearly a superfan. He dances like crazy throughout the show, singing all the words at the top of his voice and thrashing his arms about - a bit like the lead singer, actually, who is a crazy ball of dance-y energy. (Think: a 5-year-old on a sugar rush. A 5-year-old on a sugar rush for 3 hours. Yep.) Although our friend next to us is one of the most dedicated fans, we're amazed at how the entire crowd goes wild for so many of the songs. From the mosh pit of people at floor level pushing up against the stage to the standing-room-only up in our balcony, the crowd sings along with jubilant energy for song after song after song, their faces lit up by the extravagant light show of spotlights coming from the stage. The mass singalong: It is, hands down, my favorite thing about concerts. It's like church - but with better music. ;-)

Unlike our U2 and Bruce shows, however, we know almost none of the words to any of these songs. Oh, we've tried, of course - we've been listening to the Café Tacvba catalog on our respective iPods for the last month - but the different language makes the lyric learning curve a bit slower, even for Chris. We know lots of the tunes and a few of the first lines of several choruses, so we en up doing a lot of "La la la la bum bum bum whooooo!!!!" And with the energy of the crowd all around us, that seems to be enough. We bop our heads with joy through the wide range of Mexican-pop-folk-rock-punk that flows from band to fans and back again, and enjoy ourselves immensely.

After the show we take some time to wade through the now-two-dozen-at-least independent merchandise stands. Our favorite innovation: The concert soccer jersey. Before and during the concert, we'd noticed people in England national team jerseys with "Radiohead" on the back and an LA Galaxy MLS jersey with "Metallica" on the back, and now we find a Mexican national team jersey with "Café Tacvba on the back. Too cool - but not quite what we're looking for. Finally we settle on the fantastic cool-kid playeras you see us wearing in the photo above. Mission accomplished.

I look at my watch. 12:41 PM. The last bus left for Lagos de Moreno at 11:00. We walk to the bus station anyway, thinking it'll be the best place to find a safe taxi to take us home. It is, thank goodness, and before long we're heading out of town, watching the sea of León's city lights fading behind us, giving way to the nighttime darkness of the countryside. In twenty minutes the lights of Lagos de Moreno rise up before us. Just before 2am we finally fall into bed, exhausted, the end of another adventure across the border, this time one we'll remember with songs. Gracias, gracias por la musica...

Concert Time!

2009-06-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

A Visit with Christ the King

2009-06-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we decided to take a day trip to the mountains of neighboring Guanajuato state. Our goal was to reach El Cubilete del Cristo Rey – the "tumbling" hill of Christ the King, where there is a towering statue of Jesus on top of a mountain that is said to be in the exact geographic center of Mexico. Mountain? Towering statue? Jesus? That sounds like an adventure to me…

We awoke just before dawn. Chris made tortas – crusty-bread sandwiches with Mexican fillings (we like beans, avocado, tomato, and chipotle) - for a midday picnic, and we headed out to catch a third-class bus to neighboring León (about an hour, see previous blog post), crossing the state line into Guanajuato in the process. From León we needed to take another third-class bus to the smaller city of Silao (another hour), and then, from the bus station in Silao, we boarded what looked like a small school bus that would take us up the long and winding – and rocky – road to… well, to Jesus.

Along the way we gazed out the windows at some of the most jaw-dropping landscapes we’ve yet seen here, making the ride itself as much of an experience as… well, as Jesus. Mainly this was because we left the highways that we usually ride on the bus for much, much smaller roads. The photos I took (see the photo album) are, I think, some of the most “Mexican” I’ve taken so far, in the sense that they fill the American stereotype of what rural Mexico looks like. Stereotype or not, I love what these photos were able to capture.

Cubilete de Cristo Rey

Dry semi-deserts patched with small green trees and smaller brown shrubs. Rolling fields of tequila-producing blue agave plants. A horse tied up under a tree. A woman walking along the side of the road with a child in her arms. The towers of a European-looking church placed seemingly in the middle of nowhere. A little burro – yes, a burrito – poking his head around for something to eat as the bus rolls by. And – though I took no pictures of them – there were beggars, mostly women and children, the children dirty and mostly in old torn clothing, sometimes alone, looking lost.

And the bus rolled on, on and on and on, going up the edges of the mountain on a road paved with rocks that made the whole bus bounce continuously, even as it whipped around hairpin turns that left you peering over the edge of a valley that seemed to withdraw farther and farther away. As the bus drew near to the summit - as we ascended to Jesus - food stands started cropping up along the side of the road. No McDonald’s here, only family fondas, outdoor diners set up like long tables around which people gathered to eat home-cooked, home-stewed, home-grilled food, served in brown clay pots and heavy gray molcajetes.

Finally we approached the monument itself, and the bus stopped to let everyone off. An older gentleman tapped us on the shoulder and told us not to follow everyone else because it was quicker up the back staircase. He was right. And then there he – He? – was, Jesus himself, standing tall on the top of the mountain.

Chris had visited this monument before, on her last trip to Mexico in 2006. When she shared her adventures with her academic adviser, a Catholic himself (and also working on research this year in nearby San Luis Potosi), he remembered his own visit here and recalled he found this particular monument to Christ the King “kind of Stalinist.” I suppose that assessment had me prepared for just about anything.

The heavy metal Jesus has his arms out at his sides, palms mostly down, as if he is attempting to calm a stormy world. Two cherubic angels stand at his sides, one on his left holding up a royal crown, the other on his right holding up a crown of thorns. Jesus himself stands on a spherical structure that looks something like a globe. Underneath the concrete globe is a small sanctuary, of which the most striking thing is a massive bronze crown of thorns that, just above our heads, rings the ceiling of the entire circular sanctuary. Also above our heads, some ways above this crown of thorns, is a more traditionally royal crown, smaller in size.

We left the sanctuary and wandered over to the information panels on the edge of the monument platform. They told the story of how and when the monument was built, as well as a little history on the Christian concept of Christ the King.

The festival of Christ the King, which takes place every year in late November – even in Lutheran churches – was made part of the church calendar by papal encyclical in 1925, notably not during but between the great wars. A decade later, this region of Mexico – northern Jalisco, southern Zacatecas, and here in western Guanajuato – put the concept into very concrete practice.

When the government began a brutal repression of Roman Catholicism in the 1930s, a number of priests and laypeople resisted. Some priests continued to offer the sacraments and were executed, later to be named martyrs of the church. And while priests and bishops officially refused to support a violent rebellion, many laypeople did take up arms. When they were killed, they were said to have cried a very curious rebel yell: ¡Viva Cristo Rey! Long live Christ the King!

How quickly the world turns: Only ten years after what became known as the Cristero War, this massive monument to Christ the King was built, without government interference, in the heart of rebel territory, in a place that martyrs called home, in the very center of Mexico, a powerful symbol of what these Cristeros stood for.

But of course, the Cristero War, like any war, was hardly black-and-white. One of Chris’ host families from a previous visit continues to have a tenuous relationship with the Church because the family patriarch was beaten and robbed by raiding bands of Cristero rebels. Some historians continue to claim that the Cristiada was fomented by wealthy landowners who saw their power threatened by a newly socialist government; they, like so many others, used the power of religion to protect their possessions and keep out any threats to the status quo.

None of this means that there weren’t everyday Catholics who desperately sought out the sacraments from outlaw priests; none of it nullifies Padre Toribio Romo’s faithful dedication to his vocation, even in the face of state violence and repression. But this is the messy nature of giving Christ the man-made title of “king.” It inevitably ends in a knotty tangle of the secular and the sacred, of monarchism and monotheism. The golden crown may hide the blood better than a thorny one, but there is always blood, always, always.

Well. I suppose I should save any more meditations on Christ the King for November, or it will threaten to take over this entire blog post like Napoleon on a European rampage. And, anyway, you can only look at the monument to Cristo Rey for so long before your gaze is pulled away, in our case by the earthly landscape that lay all around us – and by the clouds that were now at eye level.

At this altitude your breath gets shorter; there’s not quite as much oxygen as down below. But the view takes your breath away anyway. We looked out over the bajio – the famous fertile lowlands of this region of Mexico – and to the dusty mountains that border it. Just a little lower on this particular mountain, a soccer match was taking place on a dirt pitch in the place where the mountain had been flattened out a bit. It reminded me of the ruins of an ancient Aztec ball court in the mountains of Xochicalco, near Cuernavaca. Outdoor team sports have been in Mexico for a long, long time…

We stopped in a little convenience store inside the monument to buy some cold Cokes for our picnic lunch – is Christ the king even over Coca-Cola? ...sometimes it’s hard to tell – and stuffed ourselves on bean-and-avocado sandwiches. We sat peacefully at the mountain’s summit for a little while longer, and then it was time to go. Leaving Jesus on his mountain, we boarded the yellow school bus and made our winding way back down to the ground, another adventure come to an end.

El León No Duerme Esta Noche

2009-06-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

We went to the neighboring city of León last night. I needed to get my cell phone fixed, and León is the closest place with a big mall with big Telcel service centers. So we went and made a night of it.

We took a second-class bus from Lagos to Leon. The bus station in Leon is surprisingly close to a Metrobus line – a Metrobus being a cross between a Metro and a bus, basically a bus with its own dedicated center lane, a very popular strategy these days for transportation improvements in Mexican cities, as seen in the brand new Metrobus lines in Guadalajara and Mexico City. (Sorry – I find urban infrastructure fascinating!) The time it took us to get from our apartment in Lagos to the mall in Leon was probably about an hour and forty-five minutes. By car it would have been closer to thirty minutes. Such is our life without a car. Still, the system of bus lines in Mexico to get you from place to place: Pretty amazing.

There are two parts to the CentroMax Mall in Leon: The regular mall, and the shoe mall. Yes, there is a whole mall, the Galeria del Zapato, dedicated only to shoes. Chris says that this is because Leon is part of a leather goods region and so they’re known for their shoes, but this regional strength does nothing to lessen the presence of globalization: International brands like Florsheim and Converse are just as common as the more local Flexi brand. Chris looked for some new professional shoes – both of us seem to have worn our shoes down to their last soles this year – but to no avail.

We continued on to the regular mall, where we hoped to catch a movie. Since Chris was nice enough to take me to an animated movie last week (did you see Up yet? Go!), I decided not to push for the action-adventure of Wolverine or Star Trek (but I’m still holding out for Transformers!). We finally decided on Angeles y Demonios - Angels and Demons. Yes, we saw The DaVinci Code and thought it was an awful movie, and yet somehow we were still sucked in like a moth to a flame by the double-draw of Tom Hanks and evocative religious intrigue. Ah, well. At least Cinepolis was offering this particular flick in English with subtitles instead of the normal Spanish-dubbed standard. (Yes, dubbed into Spanish is a great way to practice your Spanish. Really! It’s how I prepared to come to Mexico! But sometimes, every once in a while, a movie in your own language is a special treat.)

The movie was okay. Definitely better than the last one by a long shot, though I still could have done without the overwrought speechifying about science and religion. But this was pretty fun for us: Tom Hanks – er, Dr. Robert Langdon – spends a lot of time in the Vatican Archives – just like Chris, who also spends lots of time in church archives! Except that this caused Chris to notice all kinds of flaws. She kept whispering to me: “Are you kidding me? No way they would be in that archive without a face mask and gloves!” “What?! No way they would let him touch that book if it’s really that old – and definitely not with his bare hands!” “There is no way you could smuggle something like that out of an archive. You go through so many security checkpoints it would be impossible. In Mexico City you couldn’t even take a notebook into the archive! And you’re telling me in the Vatican Archives these two can just walk right in?!” “Ok, now he doesn’t even read Latin? You’re telling me he’s a Harvard academic studying Catholicism and he doesn’t read Latin? Do you think Fulbright would fund me if I said, uh, I can’t actually read Spanish?!” Meet my wife, heroine of a new – and much more realistic – religious mystery series… The archbishop of San Jan de Los Lagos has been kidnapped, and only one academic can find him in time…

After the movie we turned in our ticket stubs for a free brownie sundae at Chili’s, then raced to a taxi stand to catch the last bus back to Lagos. As usual, it was a lot of hurrying up to wait around. We found the bus, but no one was there to drive it yet, and it looked like we might be the only ones riding it tonight. About ten minutes after the scheduled departure time, another gentleman showed up and asked us if this was the bus to Lagos. We confirmed that it was.

Then he asked where the driver was. We said we didn’t know, we were waiting for him, too. “I think he must be drunk!” Uh…ok…we laugh politely. He walks around the bus, then comes back with a grin. “Yes, he’s back there drinking! I want the guera (white girl) to drive!” Ha, ha…we continue to smile politely and gently play along, but it’s late and we just want to go home. We’re going to assume he’s just joking and hope that he, too, has not been drinking, though at this point we have our doubts.

We finally board the bus, twenty-five minutes after the scheduled departure time, and almost immediately fall asleep. We’re back in Lagos by midnight, our night out complete.

Uno Mes Mas en La Tierra de Maria

2009-06-13T11:09:00.001-07:00

One more month in the land of Maria.

On July 13 – one month from today – we’ll head home. And oh my, I actually started tearing up when I wrote that. It’s a big deal for us. Nearly every day Chris tells me, “I just want to go home,” and nearly every day I feel the same way even when I’m unwilling to admit it outright. We try reminding each other that when we get home, we’ll have an unstable summer without a place of our own and then we’ll have to move halfway across the country to a new city. But at least it’s a new city in our own country. This year we’ve moved halfway across a foreign country three times. You’re only going to make us move once? And in our own land? Man, you’re going easy on us…

The fact that we want to go home doesn’t mean we haven’t had some great times here. I think we’re both actually a little amazed at just how great a time we’ve had, and how many things we’ve discovered about Mexico that we love and that we’ll carry home with us. No, I don’t mean the souvenirs, like the absurdly bulky molcajetes, metal lanterns, and Chivas blankets – though we are somehow managing to carry those home with us, too.

Rather, I’m thinking here of the gloriously festive fiestas we’ve not only observed but sometimes even been a part of, from the Day of the Dead to Holy Week. I’m thinking of the food, both the recipes I’ve learned to cook at home and all the crazy things I’ve tried out in the streets and markets and in homes where I’m served something I don’t recognize but am trying so hard to be polite I don’t ask what it is. I’m thinking of all the different landscapes that I could never adequately capture in a photograph, like the early-morning rainforests in Chiapas, the wall of mountains that ring Mexico City, and the blue-green tequila fields of Jalisco. I’m thinking of the language that I’ve learned this year, of how far I’ve coming in recognizing its regional dialects, its city-specific slang, my D.F. accent. I’m thinking of my greatest triumph this year: Making it to the faraway jungle ruins of Palenque all by myself and sitting on the top of a pyramid with a stupid grin on my face looking out from the mountain over the wet plains of Tabasco and thinking I’m here, I’m here, I’m really here!

I felt that feeling so much in our first several months. I went back and read my blog post after our first full month in Mexico – a big moment for me, the longest I’ve ever been outside the United States. Everything still felt so new, and I took it all in. The author Michael Pollan writes of the heightened senses a person has when he visits a foreign land for the first time – but it’s implied that those senses begin to fade, to return to normal, once your surroundings become familiar. I try to recover those heightened senses from time to time – they help a great deal with writing travelogues – but it gets harder and harder because, with one month left, this place has become so familiar to us. We are used to this place. We have become a part of it, and it a part of us.

And yet, for all that: It isn’t home. We are still strangers in a strange land. And home, dear reader, still lies on the other end of a plane ride one month from today.

Video: Vienen Las Lluvias

2009-06-12T11:46:00.001-07:00

I tried to take a video of the rainstorm blowing in yesterday... next time I'm wearing a helmet.

Crossover Event!

2009-06-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

I just posted a book review/lectionary reflection over on the Seminarian's Sojourn blog. It really doesn't have much to do with Mexico, so I'm not posting it here - but I thought I'd shamelessly self-promote, crossover-event! style, anyway.

This post is part of my attempt to get back into the rhythm of the church year. It's kind of like the shorter running sessions I've been doing to prepare for whatever 5-and-10Ks might come up in the future - nothing too formal just yet, just some steady warm-up training. So don't call it a comeback - and definitely don't call it a sermon.

Have a great weekend and we'll be back up soon with more adventures across the border...

Unas Fotos #3

2009-06-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

More photos from around town.

Here's our local abarrotes, or convenience/grocery store. This is where we buy giant jugs of drinking water about twice a week. Notice the three red posters over the doorway trying to get people to vote for Pepe Brizuela, PRI candidate for the Presidente Municipal. Yep, it's election season in Mexico. (Election day = July 5).

The PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institutional) uses the red-white-and-green colors of the Mexican flag. I could definitely fill a post and a half about Mexican politics, but I'll save a longer discussion for another day. (Also, Chris still needs to write a post about the pregnant Olympic kickboxer campaigning for the conservative party! Anyone who wants to read a Chris post, please write in!) Below, folding up the national flag.

Speaking of national flags and the red-white-and-green tricolor, El Tri, Mexico's national team, played a qualifying match for the 2010 World Cup last night. El Tri has been nothing less than terrible lately, but last night they managed to win 2-1 against Trinidad and Tobago. All the commentators said Chicago Fire star Cuahtemoc Blanco made the difference. They were right - Blanco's passing is a joy to watch - but the Cuahtemoc worship in Mexico is pretty astounding all the same. Other fun thing about El Tri - half the players have nicknames, usually animals: The goalie is "El Conejo Perez" (Rabbit Perez), one of the strikers is "El Venado Medina" (Deer Medina), and so on. It's just pretty awesome to hear a commentator exclaim his surprise at the Rabbit's fantastic block and the Deer's speed... it makes the whole event seem more mythical! I think the US National Team needs more nicknames. Landon Donovan, you're on notice.

Anyway, we watched the match literally outside, because Pepe Brizuela was shilling for votes by broadcasting the match on a projector against an outside wall in a big courtyard. Hmm... Maybe the US National Team should try this, too. Well, not so much the shady political campaigning - we've probably got enough of that - but the broadcasting of games outdoors on giant projection screens. US Soccer, you're on notice, too.

Below is a photo of a dirt soccer field just down the street from our apartment.

Great thing about our apartment? It's so full of wildlife... Like just yesterday, I came home, walked into the bedroom, and felt a crunch underneath my sandal. I looked back to find... yep, a scorpion. I think it was already dead, though - I've sprayed scorpion-killing-spray along the walls, so we've been finding dead scorpions for the last week. Not a big fan of the fumes, though.

And what collection of photos would be complete without a few scenery shots? I particularly like the last one, which shows the dark clouds bringing rain into Lagos de Moreno.

Adventures in Mexican Food: Chilaquiles

2009-06-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

Last night I made chilaquiles.

The first time I had chilaquiles (chee-la-KEE-lays) was during the J-Term immersion class in 2007, when I stayed overnight with a Mexican family in Cuernavaca. At breakfast my host mom put giant plates in front of us full of green salsa, white sour cream, soaked tortilla chips, and eggs, sunny-side up. The green salsa was only a little thicker than the consistency of soup, and it soaked everything. What I remember about that morning is looking at my plate, realizing it was like nothing I’d ever eaten for breakfast before and definitely in a higher quantity than what I normally eat for breakfast. But there was nothing for it: Trying to be a good guest, I cleaned my plate.

Now, more than two years later, I love chilaquiles. I order them at diner-style Mexican restaurants all the time, usually for breakfast. There’s a range of quality in them – last week I ate the best chilaquiles ever one day and the worst ever on another day. Whether they’re delicious or not-delicious normally has to do with, first, the quality of the salsa (I prefer green salsa (chilaquiles verdes), but they also come in red (chilaquiles rojos)) and, second, the crunchiness of the chips, which have to be soaked in the wet salsa, but not too much or they get soggy and gross. Sometimes there’s a fried egg amidst the chips, sometimes some shredded chicken, but not always – the primary ingredient is always the fried corn tortillas that form hearty layers, like pasta in an Italian lasagna dish. In their best form, chilaquiles will wake you right up with the lively tang and bite of Mexican salsa while filling your belly with the warmth of traditional homestyle cooking.

Rick Bayless, our Mexican food guru (see either of our two cookbooks), sometimes compares chilaquiles to a casserole dish. In his Mexican Kitchen book, he calls them “my favorite Mexican soul food – a homey pot of slightly chewy tortillas simmered up with forthright flavors.” I think that’s about right - although this guy, an Anthony Bourdain fan, calls them "Mexican nachos," which might also be a legitimate way to think about them from a Tex-Mex perspective. Anyway, last night I decided to try Rick’s recipe for chilaquiles with a guajillo chile sauce.

(Rick Bayless side note: Chris’ sister Erica and her boyfriend Fred actually saw Rick Bayless in person a few weeks ago! Seriously!!! Ok, I will let my jealousy subside now.)

Guajillo chiles are not quite green or red, but are more of a dark purplish color. I bought them dried at the local produce market, which is turning out to be an awesome place to buy dried chiles because they aren’t nearly as brittle (or expensive) as the ones sold pre-packaged at the local Wal-Mart. (So, tip #1: Find your local Mexican produce store!)

Following Rick’s instructions, I began by toasting the chiles (16 of them!) very briefly on a hot griddle, then putting them in water for a half-hour to rehydrate. This is a little trickier than Rick describes it, because I didn’t want to hydrate my chiles with either (a) the non-drinkable water from the tap or (b) the precious purified water we buy only for drinking. So I filled the pot with tap water and boiled it for awhile before soaking the chiles. But hey, at least we had water at all - a few hours after we ate, just as we were getting ready to do the dishes, our tap water dried up... again. (It came back on this morning, thank goodness.)

While the chiles rehydrated I roasted a half-dozen garlic cloves on the griddle, then set it aside to cool before peeling the dry skins off the now-soft garlic cloves. Once the chiles were hydrated, I put them in the blender with the garlic, plus some oregano, black pepper, and cumin. To make it all blend better, I added a cup of chicken broth (this is what Rick recommends, but you could probably make it with veggie broth just as well). I pressed the puree button and within seconds my motley crew of ingredients had turned into something that looked like a dark red tomato sauce.

I cooked the sauce the same way Rick had me cook the green tomatillo-serrano sauce a few weeks ago: Coat the bottom of the pot with oil, turn up the heat until it sizzles, pour in the sauce all at once and basically fry it, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes. Once the base has darkened and thickened, pour in a few cups of broth, turn down the heat, and let it simmer for about 45 minutes.

Everything was going rather well, but I knew better than to get too excited: This was exactly the moment at which I ruined the dish last time. I had followed all the right steps, and I could smell – and snuck a taste – of the sauce getting more and more delicious. I couldn’t wait to serve it to Chris. Then Rick says, “Season it with salt and sugar.” Ok. So I added a little salt, then reached for the sugar. Hmm… still tastes a little salty. So I added some more sugar. That’s odd – it’s still really salty, and I can’t taste the sugar. I added more and more spoonfuls of sugar, but to no avail. Finally it dawned on me. I looked at my spoon with horror, and tasted the little white sugar crystals I had been pouring into the sauce. But of course, it wasn’t sugar. It was salt. It had all been salt! I tried to salvage the sauce, but it was too late. After hours of work, I managed to make my culinary masterpiece… completely inedible. After that disaster I left that guajillo chilaquile recipe alone for months. Tonight, however, I was determined to redeem myself. I left the salt and the sugar on the shelf.

When we could wait no longer I put a few handfuls of fresh tortilla chips in a pan and poured a few cups of sauce all over them, stirring the chips until they were completely coated. To round out our platefuls of food, I added a side dish of the “refried” pinto beans (frijoles refritos) I’d made the night before and a dollop of lime-and-cilantro-seasoned guacamole for some brightness of flavor and aesthetics. Voila! Chilaquiles Guajillos.

And Chris’ verdict? “This is delicious. So stop taking pictures of your food and eat some of it!”

So I did. ☺

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

2009-06-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Grandma! We miss you... but we'll see you soon!

Unas Fotos #2

2009-06-09T11:06:00.000-07:00

More photos from around Lagos.

This is our mailbox. Also our fusebox.

This is our produce market, Super Fruteria El Gordo Salazar Jr., ,which roughly translates as "The Fatty Salazar Junior's Super Fruit Market." Funny name. Awesome produce. Cheap prices. Friendliest staff ever. Love it.

The Nestle factory is the largest employer in Lagos.

A wild-angle shot of La Asuncion, the main parish church downtown, currently covered in scaffolding all up the front of it for repairs and restoration.

Back home. Somebody in our apartment building likes the Chivas...

Unas Fotos

2009-06-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

A photo taken through the window of the bus, on the road to our home in the highlands of Jalisco. This one is worth clicking on to see it big...

A photo of the rains finally coming. They're nearly invisible in this photo, but you can see droopier trees and, if you blow the picture up big enough, the sheets of water streaking down at a windy angle onto the tin roof below...

It's a big deal for the rains to finally arrive in Los Altos! This rainfall was only a short one, about twenty minutes or so, but we welcomed the drops as the relief from the oven-baking heat that is the usual state of our weather...

And finally, a shot from indoors, under the rain-shielding roof. This is our little menagerie, which first grew with every new place we visited - see the brightly-painted giraffe and chupacabra from Oaxaca and the clay jaguar from Chiapas - and now grows through creative contributions from our friends, leading to the curious situation of home run king Miguel Cabrera standing tall over his kingdom of Neyland Stadium, with Mexican creatures in tow. Um...

(Slightly) Offtopic: Up

2009-06-06T07:48:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to see the new Pixar movie Up, in glorious 3D (or tres-day, as it's called here). Best thing about 3D movies? How cool you look in the special glasses!!!

Anyway, the movie was great, which for Pixar is unsurprising, but the surprise was in the emotional wallop it packed in the first twenty minutes. Who knew it would be such a serious tearjerker?

But after we wiped our eyes, the movie aimed for high adventure, and I couldn't help thinking how fantastically appropriate that was for this year, a year of adventures across the border and beyond. Last spring, the year adventurously kicked off with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and now, almost a year to the day later, comes the cinematic (and similarly South American themed!) bookend of Up.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed both movies, I couldn't help thinking of one particular contrast between them. While Indy 4 ends with a happily-ever-after wedding day, Up's wedding day begins the story. In other words, while Indy's adventuring days end - though happily - with his marriage, for Up's characters, wedding vows are only the prelude to a lifetime of great adventure. The adventure doesn't end at the altar. It begins there.

Of course, we know that well, having been lucky enough to experience so many adventures together already: in the stained-glass ivory towers at Valpo, in the country college town of Bloomington, amidst the concrete canyons of Chicago, and through the many Mexicos we've found south of the border. As one adventure comes to a close and another rises up on the horizon, we know well: Adventure is out there...

PS: Go see Up! :)

Photo Gallery: Elisabeth's Whirlwind Trip

2009-06-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

Photos from our fun week!

Elisabeth's Whirlwind Trip

¡Adios Amiga!

2009-06-04T15:57:00.000-07:00

Well, we just took Elisabeth to the airport and she's on her way home. What a whirlwind trip! It was such a gift to be able to hang out with our friend again, nearly a year after we'd last seen her.

And, for Chris and I, it was an opportunity to spend a final few days with our onetime home of Guadalajara. After we board our bus this weekend, we won't return to this great city. We leave for Mexico City - and home - less than a month from today.

It might have been bittersweet to see all the sights for one last time - except that we were with Elisabeth, who brought such joyful energy to all of our sightseeing that we'll leave Guadalajara for the last time with the priceless memories of this week lingering in our hearts and minds.

Thanks, E. We can't wait to see you again...

¡Postales de Nuestra Amiga #2!

2009-06-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we took 3 normal touring days and stuffed them into 1 day. We started with breakfast in front of the Guadalajara Cathedral, then we took a rapid walking tour of the Historic Center's main attractions, including its many photo ops. Here's Chris posing as the famous Minerva statue...

Of course, one of these main attractions is La Michoacana, ice cream and agua fresca shop, always important for refreshments on a hot hot hot day!

Then it was off to Tlaquepaque, artisan center of western Mexico, where we ogled the public art and snapped lots of photos. Here's Elisabeth with Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas, always a popular one in day-of-the-dead-loving Mexico...

Of course, Tlaquepaque is also a place for shopping. For Chris and I, it was our last visit to Tlaquepaque and thus our last chance to pick up a few items we'd been pining for since we arrived in Mexico. I finally bought my molcajete!! (And yes, it does have a sweet cabeza del puerco on it!) Click here for more on molcajetes...

By the end of the day, we were giving new meaning to the phrase "shop til you drop." We piled all of our many purchases onto Elisabeth for her to take home for us - here she is trying to carry everything!

¡Postales de La Visita de Nuestra Amiga!

2009-06-02T21:21:00.000-07:00

Our friend Elisabeth made it to Mexico on Monday! We traveled to Lagos de Moreno on Monday night and wandered around the central square in the evening with our ice cream cones. Today we woke up early to make a pilgrimage to the Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos. Here are the girls in front of the Basilica...

After our stop in San Juan, we went back to Guadalajara for a quick tour of the city. Every time friends come to visit us we try and throw something different into our tour. This time it was a trip to La Bodequita del Medio, a Cuban bar/restaurant with legendary mojitos. The Cuban food was great, too - I got a big old pile of pork meat with a Cuban salsa on top. It was awesome. (Sorry, vegetarians.) Chris and Elisabeth split some fried plantains and other Cuban-style appetizers to go with their minty mojitos. Put it in the category of "Cuban-Mexican Experience"...

More fun to come!

¡Viene Visitante!

2009-06-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

Seriously: Do we have some great friends or what?

We're in Guadalajara today to pick up our friend Elisabeth from the airport - she'll be in town for three days to visit us and have a Mexican experience!

It'll be a whirlwind trip - we're heading to Lagos and San Juan tonight for a pilgrimage to the Virgen and then back to Guadalajara for a day and a half - but we're looking forward to showing her around our little corner of the world. :)

Stay tuned for photos...

¡¡¡¡¡¡CAMPEONES!!!!!!

2009-05-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

We never would have predicted it in a million years... and we still can't believe it! The Pumas have just won the championship, their 6th overall in their history, in the craziest game ever against Mexico's-oldest-team Pachuca! The match went into OVERTIME and the Pumas were able to score to avoid a shootout of penalty kicks and win outright... whew. I can't even describe it. This is too cool.

But even cooler: Walking back to our hotel through the streets of Guadalajara (where we are for the week) and having cars with Pumas flags on them beep at us because I'm decked out in Pumas gear, and having a dude on a bike ride past us singing the Pumas' rally song: "Como no te voy a querer, como no te voy a querer, si mi corazon azul y mi piel dorado siempre te querer!"

What a way to end our year of Mexican futbol! :)

2009-05-31T15:18:00.000-07:00

La Batalla Final de los Pumas

2009-05-30T11:53:00.001-07:00

Our beloved Pumas won on Thursday night, 1-0 in Estadio Universitario, their home stadium. Tomorrow night they play the second match of the finals at Estadio Miguel Hidalgo against Pachuca. It's a heck of a matchup, pitting the best defensive team in the league, the Pumas, against the best offensive team, Pachuca. One more victory and the Pumas are campeones!

Quick explanation for Adam: Each "round" in the playoffs consists of two matches which are sort of conceived of as one long match. Each team gets one match at home and one match away. The team with the higher aggregate score at the end of both matches wins. (Zach can likely explain the finer complexities, but that's the basic deal.) Earlier, the Tecos had crushed the Pumas 2-0, but in the second match of that round, the Pumas miraculously turned things around to the extent that at the end of the second match their aggregate score surpassed the Tecos. Got it? :)

Progressive Pentecost

2009-05-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Acts 2:4

A rush of wind and suddenly you’re fluent? If only learning a new language were always this easy.

I’ve spent the last three years trying to learn Spanish. Back in 2006, when I first realized we would spend a year in Latin America, I started listening to audiotapes like a man on a mission. Thirty hours of repetition later, I knew quite a few phrases and I had started to get a sense for verbs in the present tense. But when I tried to watch TV shows in Spanish – a dubbed version of The Simpsons, for example – I still needed English-language subtitles to understand exactly why Homer was running for Springfield sanitation commissioner.

For the next two years I set Spanish on the shelf in order to learn the more, um, “useful” languages of Greek and Hebrew, but by 2008 there was nothing for it: It was time to take the plunge into full Spanish immersion.

First a three-week “Spanish Language for Ministry” program, where I learned the very, very basics by day and lived in a Mexican home by night. The first week of the program was wonderful, full of the adrenaline rush of new things, but by the second week I was frustrated at the slow progress I was making. I wasn’t learning as much as I’d wanted to as fast as I’d wanted to. Yet I got over many fears during those three weeks, and had some of my first great triumphs of using Spanish out in the real world.

Over the next several months I spent every weekend with a Mexican family. I tried sharing what we’d learned in Bible study with my very patient host mom, who was no doubt used to dealing with foreigners whose language skills were feeble at best. I talked Mexican soccer with my host dad, describing as well as I could how much I was enjoying attending soccer matches at the massive Mexico City stadiums. I had countless awkward conversations with their teenage kids, who had as little an idea of what to say to us as we did to them. And I watched hours of Spanish-dubbed Disney Channel TV shows with their youngest son, whose boundless energy brought a smile to everyone’s face. Yet in nearly every interaction I was painfully aware of my inability to speak in any tense other than the present. I cringed whenever I translated the tenses I was saying into English, imagining how awful I must sound. I knew I could do better with a good textbook and some well-organized teaching.

So in January and February I took six more weeks of Spanish language courses in a certified Spanish language school. We breezed through one textbook, supplementing its verb charts with computer-based exercises and in-class conversations. I gave oral presentations on current events and debated the merits of Guadalajara soccer teams with my teacher. I made lots of progress over these winter months, improving my ability to read, write, and speak the language of my new home country at a level and a pace that I’d always hoped for. And then, just as we were passing the halfway point of our second textbook, it was time to move again, out of the city – and far from any language school.

Over the next three months in the rural ranchlands of Jalisco I felt the well-structured grammar I’d learned in class slowly slip away, withering without the constant tending of daily homework and weekly exams. No doubt this feeling of hard-earned learning slipping through my fingers like sand contributed to the frustrated restlessness I couldn’t seem to shake off during the long, dry month of April.

And yet, as it so often happens, even while I was staring at the skies looking for answers, God was hard at work on the earth below. By May there were a handful of people around Lagos de Moreno who knew us by name and who seemed to relish the opportunity to speak with a couple of gringos from out of town. And somehow, over three months here, my ability to speak with them flourished.

“¿Que hay?” the barista at our favorite coffee shop says every time I walk in, using one of the Mexican equivalents of “What’s up?” He always seems to be expecting me – which makes sense, since I go there nearly every day. During the Mexican soccer season, Chris asked him where we could go in Lagos to watch a Chivas game. He recommended La Cura, a seafood bar where the most die-hard Chivas fanaticos gathered every Saturday night to watch their beloved Rebaño. Watching the Chivas-America Superclasico match there, shrimp-spiked michelada in hand, is a memory I’ll cherish nearly as much as the Superclasico we watched live at Estadio Azteca.

Across town, nearer to our apartment, is the Super-Fruteria El Gordo Salazar Jr. (phew!), the Lagos equivalent of Hyde Park Produce back home. The manager of the super-fruteria, a young guy with a big smile, has been super-friendly to us since the first time Chris stopped in for groceries. At first, I used to wait outside with our backpacks while Chris shopped, and the friendly fruteriero would ask Chris why I was afraid to come inside. When I finally did begin going inside the store – nearly every day – he grinned. “¿No tienes miedo?” You’re not afraid? No, I said, I’m not afraid, shaking my head with an embarrassed smile.

Now the fear, real or imagined, is a distant memory. On Wednesday he noticed my Chicago Fire jersey and asked me if I liked “el fut” (i.e. soccer). Of course, I answered. “Then are you going to watch the game today, Barcelona and Manchester United? Barcelona is my team. How about you?” Eeesh. I don’t really know, I told him, I only really watch Mexican and MLS soccer, not so much the European leagues… “Ah, but these teams are the best in the world! You have to watch. It’s on at 2:00 today. At 2:00!” So I did. And the next day, when he asked me if I watched the match, I could respond affirmatively. And congratulate him on his team’s victory.

Then there’s the owner of a local pizza place, where we always watch Mexican National Team matches. Like the barista, he, too, has a brother in the States he hasn’t seen in years.

And there’s the lady who runs the corner convenience store across the street. She always apologizes about the dust on the jugs of drinking water we buy, as if there were some way to avoid dust in this time before the rains.

There’s the man who runs a tailor shop next door to our apartment gate. Chris always says hello to him, but I continue to hold a silent grudge ever since he scolded Adam and I for playing soccer in the driveway.

There’s even my barber, who remembered me – with surprising joy – when I went in for a second haircut a few weeks ago. He hopes I’ll come back one more time before I leave.

And then, of course, there’s Luis. Yesterday he came by ostensibly to practice his English, but over the next three hours (!) we conversed in our usual English-Spanish hybrid – mostly Spanish, but trying English words whenever Spanish words didn’t seem to be hitting their mark. My conversations with Luis can be wide-ranging; at one point I explained that the lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Luis’s favorite band, is actually from California even though he writes all his songs about the Louisiana bayou. “Ah,” Luis says, nodding, “It would be like if you, from Chicago, were to write all of your songs about Lagos de Moreno!” Exactly. ☺

But yesterday Luis said something that surprised me. “Your Spanish,” he said,” has become much better.” Nah, I said, waving away what I took to be an empty compliment. “No,” he insisted, “When you first arrived you had so much fear, you’d hardly spoke at all. Now you’re speaking a lot, and getting better and better…” And it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, he might be right.

I’m a long way from being fluent, I really am. As one who’s loved grammar since he was in eighth grade (thanks, Mrs. Smith), it still pains me not to have proper verb conjugation at the tip of my tongue. My vocabulary is in the stratosphere compared to where it was a year ago and I’m even getting pretty good at understanding and pronunciation, but I still have interactions, like the unfortunate and, truth be told, rather terrifying interaction I had with an immigration official in the Guadalajara airport.

And yet, and yet. Little by little, step by step, paso a paso, I am beginning to speak in another language. As the Spirit, mysterious as she is, moving around like the wind, at her own pace, in her own unpredictable directions, is giving me ability. She has taken her sweet time, but she is filling me up, fanning my Pentecostal fire.

This slow-cooked version of speaking another language, filled as it is with imperfections, fits and false starts, and continued learning over a long period of time, is very different from how we often think of the Spirit’s work. It’s certainly different from the way we read the second chapter of Acts. WHOOOSH! a rush of wind and then BAM! you can suddenly speak another language – fluently and without missteps, we presume. If only it were that easy.

In the run-up to our Mexico trip I tried everything to get into Spanish-language ministry experiences. But always I faced the same roadblock. “Are you fluent? No? Well, this opportunity is only open to those who are fluent.” And so I was rejected from multilingual ministry because I wasn’t starting with fluency. And I thought, if this is our model, then this church will never be a multicultural church.

I’m not complaining about those rejections today, though there was a time when I did. Sometimes, I’ve come to understand, those decisions were, given the individual situation, for the best. And, as for me, I like my life the way it turned out better than the hypothetical way I’d planned it in my head. But I learned something from those come-fluent-or-go-home roadblocks, something that leads me to challenge the attitude that permits only the fluent to go forward.

In a sermon my first year at LSTC, my advisor, Dr. Richard Perry, urged the student body to take some uncomfortable first steps in learning a new language. He acknowledged that we’d probably feel pretty awkward at first, and tried himself to use a few Spanish words while we all laughed. But that was the point. Perfection – fluency – wasn’t where we started. A step was where we started. A word, two words, a phrase. Enough to make that first connection with someone else, someone you thought was so different you’d never bridge that gap. But you do, with those first awkward steps.

And then there will be a few more steps. And a few more after that. And eventually, the Spirit will fill you up. She will give you ability. Sometimes she takes her time, avoiding shortcuts and taking the long way round. But she will get you there. She will.

Eventually. Gracias a Dios.

¡Pumas en los Finales!

2009-05-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

My beloved Pumas rock and roll tonight against the best offensive team in the league, Pachuca in the first match of the FINALS. Winner of tonight's match is halfway toward the Apertura 2009 championship. Don't get Mexican soccer on your TV? Follow along here.

La Cocina Mexicana

2009-05-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

While I was in Seattle this past weekend I was asked more than once about what kind of food we eat here.

"You know," people would add, "like how is it different from what we think of as Mexican food?"

Well, I'd answer, what is it that you think of as Mexican food?

"Well, like tacos and that kind of thing."

Truth is, we do eat a lot of tacos here. Not the ground beef and iceberg lettuce variety served at your standard fast food chain, mind you, but definitely lots of cooked or stewed fillings stuffed inside of soft, warmed corn tortillas. Just yesterday, for example, I made a taco filling for dinner. I followed a couple of pretty standard Mexican cooking steps.

First I cleaned and disinfected the raw vegetables - always a necessity here. You start with a tiny bottle of iodine-based cleaner, seen below.

See the little drop-man cartoon? You drop about 10 of him and his drop buddies into a giant pot filled with water, wait for the chemicals to disperse, and then soak your veggies for about 10 minutes, like so.

After they've dried, you're ready to begin. I began this particular taco filling by pan-roasting two dozen little tomatillos, known here as tomates verdes. I found them pretty easy to find in Chicago, so we've been cooking with tomatillos for a few years now. They've got a fantastic tangy taste that goes perfectly with a spicy chile to make some of my favorite salsas.

Together with the tomatillos, I pan-roasted a serrano chile pepper. Rick Bayless, author of our Mexican cookbooks, recommends 2-3 serranos, but I tried that once and the sauce was so spicy it was barely edible... so I usually go with 1 or 1.5. When these were done roasting, I threw them into a blender and let them cool while I pan-fried some chopped onion and garlic, stirring them around until the onions were fully caramelized. Then I added those to the blender, too, and pureed the whole thing.

At this point Rick has you cook this wonderful little sauce you've made. Throw a tablespoon or so of vegetable oil into the pan, turn up the heat real high, and then pour the sauce in all at once, stirring it for a few minutes as it sears. Once the color darkens, you cover it, turn down the heat, throw in a cup or so of chicken or vegetable broth, and let it simmer down for a good ten minutes or so. This gives the sauce a deep and complex flavor, one that almost tastes like you've slow-cooked it.

To complete the taco filling, I threw in some shredded cooked chicken and whole bunch of chopped green chard leaves (seen soaking above) and stirred the pot until everything had been coated in the sauce. Voila! (oops, voila is French...I'm mixing cultures here!) Heat up a few tortillas from the tortilleria, break out some cold beers, and dig in.

Chris got home from work just as I was finishing things up. She gasped when she saw what I'd made. "You made my favorite!"

Wow... delicious food and it somehow turns out to be your wife's favorite! This is the life...

Viaje a Seattle

2009-05-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

Just got back from my quick whirlwind of a trip to Seattle. To give you an idea of the travel involved: On Monday morning I took a 3:30 AM shuttle to the Seattle-Tacoma airport, flew from Seattle to Phoenix, had a one hour layover, flew from Phoenix to Guadalajara, took a taxi from the airport to the bus station, took a bus from Guadalajara to Lagos de Moreno, and finally walked up the long steep hill to our apartment in Lagos. Phew! Still, the fact that you can travel all the way from the Pacific Northwest to Central Mexico in only one day of travel is definitely a modern marvel. I am both exhausted and amazed.

And what a weekend it was! Landing was like arriving at another planet. I leave the deserts of Jalisco in the morning, and by the afternoon we begin a descent over Mount Rainier (!!!!!!!) and then down into endless pine trees and the clear waters of the Puget Sound. Incredible. How is any one place allowed to be this gorgeous? And I thought there was only one West Coast state this cool... California, you're on notice.

Of course, I'll be spending most of my time doing the hard work of internship, with my time divided between St. John United Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Public Policy Office (LPPO) of Washington State. After visiting, I'm even more excited about both places.

In the summer of 2007, I did my CPE work in a homeless shelter on Chicago's north side. It was one of my best experiences at seminary, a time when everything I was learning was coming together in something that felt more like ministry than anything else I did in my first two years at LSTC. I missed having those experiences during my second year, when life was full of books and papers. But I find it all coming back to me now. St. John's, my internship parish, hosts a soup kitchen and overnight shelter for homeless men twice a week, and has close relationships with several people who live in vans in the surrounding area. This outreach, these relationships, are an important part of who they - we - are.

And only the night before I found myself back in conversation about the policy debates around homelessness. Proposals poorly implemented by too-eager local governments, funding shortages, the "not-in-my-backyard" syndrome - all of these are familiar from the months I studied them closely just two years ago. I can't believe I'll be able to be a part of these relationships and policy conversations again!

Of course, this is only one of many areas of ministry I learned about this weekend that seemed so encouraging, so indicative of the possibility of an great internship year. I have no doubt there will be real challenges and rough patches ahead. But here at the beginning of things, I am full of energy and excitement. I think that's a good place to be. :)

Below are some pictures I took from the weekend, as well as a map showing where we'll be in the Emerald City. Enjoy!

This is the church where I'll be working next year.

An image outside the church. I like the words in it, which you can read if you click on the image to make it bigger.

This is the view from my future office. See the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains in the background (you can just see the white snow outlines through the power lines)? Wow. :)

The congregation's community garden. This is too cool.

There is a BBQ joint across the street from our apartment. Seriously. My mouth is already watering. If they have sweet tea I'm going to eat here every day.

I stayed overnight with my supervisor's family. They live on the Puget Sound north of Seattle. This is the view from their living room. Really.

This tree is in their backyard. It's like, 500 years old. In Mexico we have churches that are 500 years old. In the Pacific Northwest they have trees that are even older. Probably this tree was here on the shore of the Puget Sound when this area was "discovered" by Europeans. Unbelievable.

While I was there Seattle was hosting its annual Northwest Folklife Festival. It's full of dozens of "official" performers at dozens of stages, but also welcomes informal street performers to set up shop throughout the park. This was a bluegrassy kind of band that was really good. I couldn't help but think of the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago...as if the Old Town School suddenly spilled out into Millenium Park for the weekend. Just. Too. Cool.

At the Folklife Festival they were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909. This was one of the clever posters for the AYP commemoration.

And they have a big ol' public fountain too! (The fountain, as some of you may know, is my absolute favorite thing in Millenium Park in Chicago.)

Seattle is just too cool. Below you can see where in it we'll be living. Click on the blue markers to see what each one represents.

View Internship 2008-09 in a larger map

En el aeropuerto

2009-05-22T04:54:00.000-07:00

Made it to the airport, check. Made it through immigration, check (but check with difficulty). Now I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Miguel Hidalgo International Airport, copping wi-fi from the Chili's across the way, while I wait for my flight.

Americans are all around me, speaking English - it's a little disconcerting. Dude sitting at the next table is on a cell phone talking business with somebody, in a drawled-out English. "We've just got to set that aside and figure out a way to win," he tells the person on the other end of the line. It's not even 7am yet - at least not here. A couple just sat down at another table in the Starbucks and the woman asked the man, "Do you think they take credit cards?" (It strikes me that these might be pretty common things to hear wherever you are, dear reader. But this is the first I've heard them since...well, at least since my last time in the States.)

I have another half an hour until my flight boards, so I'm downloading audio podcasts on iTunes for the trip. No Democracy Now! yet, unfortunately, but amazingly the Slate Political Gabfest is already out. Wonderful. That should keep my mind occupied until I fall asleep, something I desperately need to do if I'm going to make it through a day in which I'll travel across one border and almost all the way up to another one before meeting with one of my two future supervisors all afternoon and evening. Whew. Here we go...

This Chicago Fire Jersey Is Too Awesome

2009-05-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Cielos Nublados

2009-05-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. Acts 1:9

Clouds. There are more of them here in north-central Mexico now, more of them then there were before. Vienen las lluvias – the rains are coming, announce the hardware stores. Showers of actual rain are still rare, but the cielos nublados, cloudy skies, with their nubes gordos, fat clouds, are harbingers of the falling water to come.

Here in the neighborhood of La Luz, people are so desperate for clouds that they make their own. In an annual celebration of their patron virgen, Santa Maria de La Luz, laypeople at the domed, medieval-looking church at the bottom of the hill are sending off powerful explosive CRACKs that bounce off the mountains and hillsides of town, setting off car alarms and leaving behind, high in the air, a puff of cloudy smoke that quickly dissipates in the wind.

Whether these explosions are the result of fireworks or a trigger-happy shotgun is unclear to these sheltered ears, but the sound is so ear-shatteringly loud that I physically jerk every time I hear it. Is this celebration or penance? I’d like to be charitable and join the celebration, but my idea of celebration is not to recreate the horrific sounds of a war zone. But maybe my grouchiness is merely due to a lack of sleep: The burst of apartment-shaking, popping-popcorn-on-steroids usually begins at 5:00 in the morning, a daily unwanted wake-up call when the skies are still too dark for an audience to see the brief smoky clouds that are left behind.

Clouds have long been a source of human fascination. We stare up at them, imagining what familiar objects they might look like. Sometimes we even look up to the clouds and find God. My new Green Letter Bible lists more references to Clouds than to such stereotypically Biblical nature objects as Deserts, Seeds, and Vineyards. Even Rain has fewer references than its mother, the Cloud. First God creates clouds, covering the planet with them in Genesis, and then by Exodus the Lord is using clouds to speak to Moses, to fill the temple, to lead the people by day. God uses clouds so much that when Job asks, “Can anyone understand the clouds?” it’s clear the poor man is just asking, in another way, Can anyone understand God?

Of course, the clouds are not God; rather, they simply become one of God’s primary traveling cloaks, a traveling tool God uses whenever God decides it’s time for a formal visit. The writer of Psalm 104 sees this pattern and calls the clouds God’s Winnebago: “You make the clouds your chariot.” “The Lord is riding on a swift cloud,” Isaiah says, continuing the transportation theme. For all the fun with winged wheels, though, the point, for both Isaiah and the Psalmist, is that the clouds are a sign that God is coming – or that God is already here.

Which is why it comes as a bit of a shock when the clouds come, in our Ascension Day readings, to take Jesus away. The disciples stand openmouthed, dumbfounded. It wasn’t that they didn’t expect clouds to be involved. Clouds always seemed to be showing up at important moments. Matthew records a voice coming out of a cloud at Jesus’ baptism, Mark writes of a cloud overshadowing the Transfiguration, and Luke tells us of Jesus’ proclamation that in the last days people will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and glory.” But that a cloud would come to take Jesus away? Away? Whatever can this mean?

When the clouds come, they bring a change. Here in Jalisco, the weather is cooler now with the clouds hovering over us; there is relief from the unrelenting heat of the sun but new cause to throw on a jacket. Soon there will be more cracks in the sky, accompanied by their fiery bolts of light, and the waters will come. Farmers will rejoice. And the season will change.

I walk up to the roof to see about the need for that jacket. The clouds are increasing, rolling heavily through an overcast sky. Vienen las llluvias, the hardware store announces. It won’t be long now.

Preparando Para Pacifico Noreste

2009-05-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

This Friday I'll board a plane bound for Seattle, Washington, and put my feet on American soil for only the second time this year. My upcoming internship site - a joint placement split between St. John United Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Public Policy Office of Washington State - is flying me out to meet people, tour the area, and generally get an idea of what to expect when I arrive there sometime this August.

I'm simultaneously totally psyched and a bit nervous.

Totally psyched: I've been reading Timothy Egan's The Good Rain, a book about the Pacific Northwest. Egan is an gifted writer (seriously, I've read a lot of books this year, and he's good), and my insides are rip-roaring to get out there and see the shimmering beauties and gut-wrenching struggles that he describes coursing through both the natural landscapes and human communities. It's not a given that a seminarian be excited about his internship placement before he begins, but I find myself more and more excited every day by the woolly wilderness and the citizens of the city alike. This is a good place to start, I hope.

Bit nervous: After ten months in Mexico, I'm full to the brim of Mexican history, culture, and even a little language, but it's been months since I've thought theologically. In short: I'm way out of pastor shape. My friend Zach is nine months into his internship and he's like Rocky after all of his Siberian training in Rocky IV, all set to take on Drago, if Rocky were a pastor and Drago were, well...something. Me, on the other hand, I'm like Rocky before all of that log-lifting and mountain-jogging. I could give you a 20-minute lecture without notes on the importance of Benito Juarez in Mexico's political and religious history, but if you ask me my call story, I'm up a creek - nay, I'm up the Columbia River - without a paddle.

Funny thing, then, that I ran into Luis at the coffee shop today and he flat-out asked me why I wanted to be a pastor. After batting around a handful of wildly disparate topics, he says to me, in his broken English: "I want to ask you about your religion."

Luis has asked me this many times now, and I keep trying to explain it to him, but it never seems quite satisfactory enough. This time, after I try again to explain the mysteries of the Lutheran tradition to a Mexican Catholic, he moves to my own life, asks me again if I will get paid for this (this part is always a great mystery to Luis, who spends his days breathlessly running around Lagos trying to complete real estate deals), and then asks me a question in Spanish that I think I understand even while I hope I don't. I ask him to repeat it, and then it's clear: He's asking me my call story.

I go the short and simple route, drawing a line from the muchas preguntas y pocas respuestas of college philosophy classes to the singularly helpful respuesta I found in the particular brand of faithfulness practiced by a little Lutheran community in southern Indiana. I can't tell whether this version of my call story is satisfying or not. But suddenly Luis opens his mouth and out pour preguntas, questions both personal and abstract but all filled with confusion, anger, sadness, preguntas in which I hear myself eighteen months ago, broken and angry by the violence filling Chicago's streets, preguntas about the presence of continued unspeakable evil in a God-loved world.

I have no clean-fix respuesta for Luis - or for myself. I make no attempt to pretend that I do. Yet in the midst of our exchange I notice two curious things I did not expect.

The first thing I notice is that my faith feels stronger now; while craters still lie gaping where answers should be, the substance of the pregunta-pocked meteorite that is my faith has been chemically altered by what I've learned about Jesus Christ over these past three years, two in seminary, one in Mexico. And the second thing I notice is that this entire exchange feels like God showing up, like the Grim Reaper in a bad movie, a meeting that somehow feels long-expected even while unplanned (how's that for imagery, Z?). The opening pages of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory come to mind. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

Life is about to shift gears in a big way. There's nothing for it: The getting ready begins now.

(slightly) Offtopic: New U2 video

2009-05-18T09:26:00.001-07:00

The images make me think of Mexico...

New U2 video "Magnificent" - Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.

Adios Amigos

2009-05-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

We bid adios to our friends Zach and Hannah early Thursday morning, an hour before the sun shed its first light. For nine days they shared their inimitable company with us, and we tried our best to share with them a bit of our “Mexican experience.”

From the bustling dusty street market of Tonalá to spending Mother's Day with the Virgin of San Juan, from taking a ramshackle pickup truck tour of the lesser-known neighborhoods of Lagos with the now world-famous Luis to designing a new publicity campaign for the Primera Plus bus line, from breaking the Guinness book record for Mexican map puzzling to witnessing a veritable owl attack in the Mexican futbol playoffs, Z & H left their mark, and Mexico will never be the same.

The photos – and unforgettable soccer story – that we’ve posted over the past few days only tell a few sliver-sized slices of our time together, but I’ll post a few more anyway, hopeful that they’ll convey a just a bit of the, well, bonanza of fun that we had in the company of our friends.

Z&H's Mexican Experience

I began the week thinking of how grateful I felt for our friends' visit, given how tenuous it seemed only two weekends ago, and I end the week with that same single overwhelming feeling: Gratitude, a grace-rooted word that feels like rain in this desert of a place. Would that we would carry these memories with us through the – can it be? – less than two months that remain in our Mexican journey…

Tecos. Pumas. Playoffs. ¿Que mas?

2009-05-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we planned to attend the Atlas-Pachuca futbol match, the last match of the Mexican futbol season to be held in the city of Guadalajara. Zach and Hannah and I sat outside making our final preparations when Chris came downstairs with bad news. “I just checked the Atlas website,” she said. “They’re closing the doors at Estadio Jalisco.”

For three weeks now the Mexican Futbol Federation has shuttered stadiums across Mexico for fear of the flu, playing the final games of the spring (Clausura) season without fan support. This week they went back and forth, first announcing closed doors, then opening them, and then, hours before the match was to begin, closing them again. There would be no Mexican soccer experience for Zach, the most die-hard soccer fan I know.

Disappointed but undaunted, we spent the last half of the weekend in Los Altos, and Z & H stayed in our “guest room,” which right now looks like the bedroom of a 13-year-old boy. The bed is covered with a Chivas bedspread, and it lays in the shadow of one wall plastered with photos of soccer players from around the world and another wall strewn with soccer jerseys from around Mexico. Gazing at the jersey collection through a sleep-induced haze Zach suddenly made a decision. Whether he attended a match or not, he would throw his support behind a Mexican soccer club. “The Owl, Matt,” he says. “The Owl.”

Now Zach is far too independent a sports fan to join either the Chivas, whose fan base is the most massive in Mexico, or the Pumas, who I’ve supported since our time in DF. Nor would he support Atlas, whose jersey Adam now proudly owns, nor even Pachuca, who currently stars a jugador from the US national team. No, rejecting all of these formidable clubs vying for his attention Zach instead opted for a Guadalajara team whose fan base is so small that a local taxi driver once told us that not even their family members support them. “Yep,” Zach said upon hearing that story, “That’s the team for me.” And so it was that Zachary Parris become a fan of the UAG Tecolotes.

That night we waited in the Lagos de Moreno bus station, aimlessly eyeing the newspapers when we suddenly noticed that the futbol playoff brackets had been announced. I looked at the schedule for several long seconds before it dawned on me what I was seeing.

“Look at this,” I said, pointing at the broadsheet. “The Pumas are assigned to play the Tecos in the opening round!” Then we both noticed the details of the first match. Wednesday, May 13 – Z & H’s last night in Mexico. Estadio 3 de Marzo – the Tecos’ stadium located 15 minutes from our apartments in Guadalajara. We looked at each other wide-eyed. Maybe we would attend a soccer match after all!

“I’ll be right back!” I said, throwing my backpack down and sprinting back up the hill to our Lagos apartment to grab all the Pumas gear I had.

*****

We arrived at the stadium an hour before the match was set to begin. Chris had made a solo trip earlier in the day to buy our tickets, and it was a good thing – the cheap seats were already gone, and the remaining seats were few in number due to the flu-induced attendance restrictions. The restrictions were probably good for the Tecos, though – from the looks of it, any more seats sold were likely to go to Pumas fans.

From the moment we arrived it seemed like we were outside Estadio Olimpico Universitario in Mexico City, where we saw the Pumas four glorious times last fall. Groups of Pumas fans were everywhere, peppered by a comparative handful of Tecos fans. Merchant stands lined the east side of the stadium, selling both Tecos and Pumas gear – but, truth be told, Pumas gear outnumbered Tecos gear at this, the Tecos home stadium. I reveled in it all, nothing less than thrilled to get one last taste of the Pumas passion I’d soaked up since the first soccer matches we attended last August.

But all this Puma power only further riled up the Tecos’ newest fan. Earlier in the day Zach bought a jersey at the Guadalajara market. We had to look in multiple stands to find one. We asked one merchant if she had any Tecos jerseys, and she looked at us incredulously. “Tecos?!” she asked again, as if we were crazy. Then she laughed at us. (We did end up finding one. Eventually.)

Jersey firmly in hand, Zach decided to invent a new cheer for his team. Channeling his inner owl (the Tecos’ mascot), Zach began…hooting. As only an owl can. Soon he added flapping wings to his hooting calls and then of course with all this owlish fury I couldn’t help but bring out a puma snarl and vicious paw swipe and soon there were two gringos acting like wild animals challenging each other on the sidewalk of one of the busiest streets in Guadalajara. Will this continue long after the game is over? Yes, yes it will.

Joining in the fandom (though at a slightly higher level of adulthood) Hannah bought a Tecos headband and Chris draped our Pumas scarf around her neck, and the four of us headed into the stadium. Seeing that we would be required to wear cubrebocas (surgical masks) because of flu fears, Zach and I bought special cubrebocas emblazoned with the logos of the Tecos and Pumas and the words “Eres mi cura” – “You are my cure.” Oh, Mexico. All week we’ve seen blue surgical masks on bronze statues and even giant ones on cars, and now die-hard futbol fans are declaring their teams to be their personal “cure” for the flu. Laughing in the face of death and disease – este es Mexico.

But the flu prevention did not stop with cubrebocas. Security guards squirted antibacterial gel on our hands, and then doctors in white lab coats pointed what looked like radar guns at our necks and took our temperatures. When this flu scare recedes, Mexico is going to be the healthiest place in the world. (Or maybe just the least germy place - antibacterial gel is everywhere.)

Safely sanitized, we made our way to our seats. Chris and I looked at each other in amazement: After Estadio Azteca, Estadio Olimpico Universitario, and Estadio Jalisco, three of the biggest stadiums in Mexico (and three of the biggest soccer-specific stadiums in North America), Estadio 3 de Marzo seemed really small. And yet this was the best of all possible situations, for we could see our beloved Pumas up close. Though we had attended four UNAM games in Mexico City and one in Guadalajara before today, we had never, ever been this close to the Pumas. In fact, I don’t think I’ve had seats this good since the 6th-row Cubs-Brewers seats Adam and I accidentally acquired a year ago this month.

The first half of the match was a thrill to watch. For the first time I realized just how much the Pumas’ 15-year-veteran goalkeeper Bernal absolutely runs the team from the goalie box, pointing and shouting commands and directing the top-ranked defense in the entire league. The Pumas weren’t scoring any goals, but they looked like a team that came to this match battle-ready to win. As did their fans.

At mediotiempo, the score was still tied 0-0. But now, of course, it was time for the halftime show. The Tecos, it turns out, have the greatest halftime show in the league. Like most Mexican soccer halftime shows, it consists of an obstacle course, but this particular obstacle course featured lucha libre fighters in the middle of it! To get through the course, the contestants had to either fight the two luchadores – usually getting flipped into the air or slammed into the mat – or try to avoid them, a tactic which was usually followed by the luchadores chasing them down the field. After all of this the contestant had to try and kick a soccer ball into the net – and more than once this turned out like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football. As the Tecos’ giant owl mascot walked off the field with the luchadores, we all concluded that it was one of the best halftime shows we’d seen.

But now it was back to the game. As the second half began with yet another Pumas ¡GOYA! cheer, Zach shook his head. “Just wait,” he tells us. “When the sun goes down, the OWLS come out!” And somehow, someway, as the sun disappeared behind the stadium lights and the crazy man next to me hooted like an owl, the Tecos’ newest fan would be proved right.

Within minutes of the start of the second half the Tecos scored a golazo. As we stared at the goal in disbelief, we realized the Pumas’ veteran star was missing, a young substitute keeper in his place. For a few minutes the Pumas tried to rally, but suddenly Palencia, the best Pumas player on the field, was pulled out of the match, and, now missing their four best players (national team call-up Leandro and top-scorer Cacho were already out with injury) the blue-and-gold seemed to wilt. Late in the second half the Tecos were awarded a penalty kick and went up 2-0 and then, without warning, it was all over. The sun had gone down. The Owls had come out!

We poured out of the stadium, picked up a few more pieces of Tecos and Pumas gear to take home with us, and then found a place to wait for the bus. Suddenly we heard drums. And not just any drums…familiar drums…the drums of the UNAM…and sure enough, it was the Pumas supporter club, marching out of the stadium, drumming and chanting loudly and enthusiastically and seemingly having the time of the their lives. I remembered a match we attended in the fall in which the Pumas lost brutally, but after the game the fans marched out of the stadium with the full band, as passionate in their support after the loss as they were before the game. This is what I love about the Pumas, I thought. This is what I love about soccer.

The Puma fans paraded out into the four-lane street, filling it and marching on, drums pounding, out into the night. A few minutes later our bus came by and we filed on, riding home for an after-party on the porch, neighbors for one more night, our fantastic week dotted with the exclamation point of a soccer night.

And somewhere in the distance, an owl is still hooting…

¡Futbol!

2009-05-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

We just had an INCREDIBLE SOCCER EXPERIENCE tonight. Let me repeat: INCREDIBLE. SOCCER. EXPERIENCE. Full description to come...soon.

Postales #3

2009-05-13T06:30:00.001-07:00

More postales!

While on vacation, every morning should begin with a good breakfast. Mexican-style sweet breads and bananas, for example...

And if your clothes happen to match the color of the food, walls, and friends, all the better... even if it gets that Coldplay song stuck in your head for awhile...

Fun with the self-timer...

But before leaving you must complete the daily ritual of putting together the Mexican States Puzzle! It took Z&H a whole ten minutes to complete the puzzle on their first day here, and then they halved it the day after that and halved it again the day after that and yesterday morning? Under two minutes!

But now for a day of shopping. First the Tuesday tianguis (or mercado de martes) two blocks from our apartments, where Chris checked out some new jewelry...

And then on to Tlaquepaque! Full of giant outdoor sculptures...

...and foreign tourists...

...and, uh, people comparing shoe sizes...

...and chairs where your feet don't touch the ground...

...and fun times with friends. (Even if the pterodactyls threaten your peace and security...long story.)

Finally a dinner of tamales on the way home...

...to finish up the day and move one step closer to the end of the week.

Postales #2

2009-05-12T08:38:00.000-07:00

From Chris: Matt is out picking up breakfast for me, so I thought I'd put up some of his new photos from the last couple days.... we're still having a great time with Zach and Hannah!

At lunch in Zapopan in the cool courtyard of Aggios Aggelos Greek restaurant....

On our weekend "road trip" to San Juan de los Lagos and Lagos de Moreno: the four of us outside the Cathedral-Basilica in San Juan...

And on the way home, Zach and Hannah show off their "plusness" in the special first-class waiting room for Primera Plus buslines - the "plUs bUs"....

Postales

2009-05-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

At the sprawling Thursday market in Tonalá...

And below, trying pulque, a traditional fermented cactus drink, for the first time ever... I thought I was getting like a little plastic cup, but instead they gave me a gi-normous clay mug! So I shared. (A little.)

¡Visitantes!

2009-05-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

So I'm really bad at taking pictures of people. I don't know why. I just am. So y'all may just have to wait for Hannah's shots whenever she gets them uploaded. But in the meantime...

Zach and Hannah arrived in the afternoon on Tuesday (¡el Cinco de Mayo!) We spent Wednesday touring the Historic Center of Guadalajara, checking out political murals and religious cathedrals (or are they religious murals and political cathedrals? think on that one... :)), but mostly we've been just, well, hanging out. Hanging out in the courtyard of the city market watching kids act out lucha libre, hanging out on the promenade eating ice cream, and best of all hanging out on the back porch of our temporary apartments in a throwback to old times.

Mexico's bright colors rarely shine so bright as when friends are here to take it all in with you. And so we take it in, grateful for everything...

La Tranquilidad Continua..

2009-05-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

As soon as I can hook up my own trusty blogging machine to some wi-fi, I´ll post a better update. In the meantime, the NY Times´accounts of the decline in panic in Mexico City are surprisingly accurate to our area as well. Hardly anyone is wearing a mask anymore. Also, last night, Sunday night, there were more people out in the square than we have seen in over a month - just an insane number of people. We guess cabin fever probably got to them... plus, all of the cafes and bars are closed, so where else are you going to go but outside, right?

Also, I love, love, love this article about the flu. It features a photo from this guy´s blog, which is just, well, perfect humor for a country that celebrates a day of the dead. Classic Mexico.

And now, we are diligently preparing for the arrival of our dear friends tomorrow afternoon... Expect great pictures soon! :)

Sabado Tranquilo

2009-05-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

Still fine here. Just bored. And we´re not alone in that feeling...

Influenza Porcina, Día 6

2009-04-30T10:26:00.001-07:00

Just a brief update.

Mexico's president Felipe Calderon has declared what is basically a forced vacation for everyone in the country. From tomorrow through Tuesday May 5th, pretty much everything will be closed. For more on this and other developments from a perspective within Mexico, I strongly urge you to click on the Mexico Today blog on the left side of this page.

What this means for us is that our Internet supply is likely to be cut off completely, since we don't have access to it in our home and rely on cafés and cultural centers for our connection with the outside the world. We'll do the best we can to seek out a connection to stay in touch, but basically this is going to be a weekend of hibernation. (What will we do with no TV and no Internet? Good question. Probably a lot of books will be read... Thank goodness I still haven't started my new 500-page copy of Moby Dick yet.)

Other than that, though, there is still no need for panic where we are. People are still wearing surgical masks, and there were fewer people out on the running trail this morning. Restaurants and cafés are closed, which is a real bummer. Most of all we're just checking the news every day, hoping fervently that there won't be a border closing. We're scheduled to have visitors next week, and we've been looking forward to it for months now. (That's right, President Obama, there is no need to close the border because the virus has already spread. Listen to the experts! They're smart people!)

But it's weird - when I stand on our rooftop and look out over Lagos, as I do every morning, life seems, well, pretty much the same. The mountains are still there in the distance, the trees are still green, the birds still chirp, the giant wasp still buzzes past my head annoyingly... We're still here. And we're not going anywhere.

Yet.

El Sabor de Chiapas

2009-04-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

Time for a break from swine flu news. I decided to spend the afternoon listening to podcasts on my iPod (U2 Special Edition iPod, that is - thanks EJ!) and doing my primary activity of spring 2009: cooking. Today’s menu: Oaxacan Black Bean Soup.

The recipe comes from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen, a cookbook Chris bought me for my birthday last summer, just before we crossed the border. Rick Bayless owns our absolute favorite Chicago restaurant, Frontera Grill (if you’re in the Chicago area, you should go there!), and he’s been our constant companion as we’ve explored Mexican cuisine this year.

Rick calls today’s recipe “Oaxacan” in part because he is in love with Oaxaca and in part because black beans are particular to southern Mexico. Up here in Mexico’s central and northern regions, white beans are more popular – and are best when they’re cooked up with jalepeños and bacon to make frijoles charros, which I did last week with incredible results. But normally we like black beans better, so I’d been wanting to make this soup for a while.

I began with a bag of dried black beans (frijoles negros). I dumped 2 cups of these into a pot, then threw in some diced white onion (cebolla) and about 4 chopped up canned chipotles for good measure. I then covered the whole thing with water and let it simmer.

It’s been simmering for about two hours now, all during the time I listened to the World Soccer Daily podcast talk about today’s match between Chelsea and Barcelona and all during the time I listened to Ross Reynolds on Seattle’s KUOW talk about cuts in public health funding in the state of Washington (yep, Seattle NPR – the Seattle prep has begun!). Before I moved on to my baseball podcast to see if my Cubbies won, I checked the simmering pot.

Whoa.

Forget Oaxaca. The whiff I got when I removed the lid of the simmering pot of black beans was all Chiapas, Mexico’s other southernmost state. You know that climatic scene in Ratatouille when the critic tastes Remy’s food for the first time and is suddenly transported back time-machine-style to a memory from his childhood? It was like that, except that I was WHOOSH transported back to a little courtyard restaurant in the misty mountain town of San Cristobal de las Casas. Funny thing is, I don’t even think I had black bean soup there… but I’ll take a Chiapas memory any way I can get it, thank you very much.

Finishing the recipe, it looks like, will just require pureeing everything in batches in a blender, and then serving it with some fried-up tortilla strips.

Now if only Subcomandante Marcos was here to enjoy it with us…

Mas Noticias

2009-04-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

More local responses to the influenza porcina, courtesy of the morning paper in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico...

"Eliminan Besos En Telenovelas" - Yep, they're getting rid of kisses in the daily telenovelas, or prime time TV soap operas, in order to encourage people not to engage in physical contact of any kind. Now if only they would also get rid of the hideously bad stories...

"Se Suspenderán Las Siguientes Actividades" - The municipal government in Lagos is eliminating all sporting events, all cultural events including the Clown Festival, the Miss Tourism 2009 competition (I think they should do this anyway, but with surgical masks), visits to the municipal jail (?), and, perhaps worst of all, the Festival Día del Niño, or the celebration of "Children's Day" on April 30. In Mexico, there is Mother's Day, for which you actually get a day off of work (i.e. three day weekend), and there is Children's Day, for which there are all kinds of celebrations and special deals in toy stores. Oh yes, and Father's Day. No day off work for that one, though.

"Como Leprosos" - The Chivas of Guadalajara traveled to Chile this week to play Everton in the town of Viña del Mar (Hannah, do you know where this is?). Apparently (if my Spanish translation of the news article is right) the players went to a mall and were ostracized. People were overheard to say "Ahí vienen los mexicanos, nos van a infectar" - "Here come the Mexicans, they are going to infect us!" This made them feel "como leprosos" - like lepers. But hey, Chivas, at least you're going to have fans at your Chilean match, right? Because that will not be happening in Guadalajara this weekend...again.

"Evitan Robo en Farmacia" - Apparently four people tried to rob a pharmacy in downtown Lagos. Their nefarious plot was foiled, and, as is custom, their mug shots were placed in the local paper.

And those are just the headlines. The worst flu-induced shutdown? Our local coffee shop! Well, it wasn't exactly closed down, but they removed all the chairs to discourage people from sitting a spell and, presumably, sharing germs in the process. This is no fun at all. Especially because there still no confirmed cases in Jalisco. None. So at this point, we are in a safer place than New York, Texas, California, South Carolina, Connecticut, and Ohio. Just for the record.

Yet because of the all the shutdowns of public places, there are still lots of people out in the parks and plazas, most of them looking for something to do. And if they finally close this Casa de la Cultura and cut off my Internet supply, I'm going to join them...

Editor's note: One of the best places to get updates on the flu from a Mexico City perspective is at the English-language Mexico Today blog, accessible in my blog list on the left hand side of this page. Check it out.

Cruces, Clowns, y Cubrebocas

2009-04-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

Poor Mexico City. Today's Reforma newspaper declares "The Only Thing We Were Missing: An Earthquake." Apparently there was a 5.7 grade earthquake in D.F. yesterday - because, really, a war on drugs and a swine flu epidemic just aren't enough for one city.

So how does Mexico respond to their all-at-once apocalypse? Let's see...

Exhibit A

On Sunday the Cathedral in Mexico City brought out a special life-size crucifix called El Señor de la Salud (Lord of Health) and processed around the cathedral holding it high. According to the national news daily La Reforma, the last time this particular crucifix was brought out of the cathedral was in 1691, in order to combat la viruela negra - the black plague.

Now, this is no black plague - for one thing, the influenza porcina is quite treatable by a far superior health infrastructure than we had in 1691 - but what strikes me about this procession of the health-specializing crucifix is that I cannot imagine us doing this in the United States. Or, if this or that church did it, it would not be the front-page image in the New York Times on Monday morning. As much as some people repeatedly declare the U.S. "a Christian nation," it's clear that whatever Christian culture we have really is radically different.

Still, I find the procession of the el Señor de la Salud a powerful liturgical act, even if I'm somewhat wary of it as a sufficient response to a health crisis. Any ideas, theologically-inclined readers?

Exhibit B

In Guadalajara and the rest of Jalisco there are still no confirmed cases of swine flu, none, cero, nada. But the governor is taking precautions. Movie theaters have been closed (did no one tell him that Wolverine comes out this weekend?!). Public libraries have been closed (ok, so no movies and no books - what exactly are we supposed to do with ourselves?). Schools have been closed, but only until May 6 (only because it's a national directive).

But do you know what hasn't been cancelled? The Clown Fest. The Clown Fest must have friends in high places. (Or maybe there are just clowns in high places. Oooh, cheap shot! :))

Exhibit C

Finally, there is the little matter of the cubrebocas (mouth covers). I've noticed that foreign newspapers love to show these, and they usually call them surgical masks because in the States pretty much only surgeons wear them. But here in Mexico cubrebocas were much more common even before the flu hit. I think they must be a relatively cheap way - cheaper than the pharmacy drugs we revert to - to protect yourself, whether it's against the annual cold season or the year-round smogged-up air in D.F..

So the spike in people wearing them is more of a spike than a sudden appearance. But yes, it is a spike, so much so that local pharmacies are running out of them. Fortunately, Chris had her own special stash that she had to buy for use in her archival work, so she gave me one and we wore them out last night when we went to the market for food. In the market (the market we go to is just like Hyde Park Produce back home) maybe a handful of shoppers wore them, but all of the cashiers and food handlers wore them, probably by order of their bosses. The cashier Chris always chats with was not wearing one, however - he said he was wearing it earlier, but it got annoying so he took it off.

And they do get annoying, let me tell you. You're breathing your hot breath right into that little space, so within a few minutes the whole space of air that you're breathing is hot and wet. How can this possibly be healthy? (And how in the world do surgeons do it? Eddie, you got any insight on this?) Anyway, after we left the store we pulled ours down, too, so that they hung around our necks. There are at least as many people walking around here with mouth covers around their necks as on there are people wearing them on their faces.

On the way home, though, a guy leaned out of a truck, beeped his horn, and yelled "¡Hey, gueros!" (gueros = white people). When we looked over at him, he put his hand up over his mouth as if to say, "Put on your cubrebocas!" Ok, ok.

2009-04-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

Quote from a conversation with my dad this morning:

"Matt, it was a good weekend in Chicago: The Bulls won, the Cubs won, the Hawks won, and the Sox lost! Hahahahahaha!"

(My apologies to all you White Sox fans out there. I know you outnumber me.)

Planes Desviados Por Los Puercos

2009-04-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

On Friday morning we had a plan for the weekend. And it was a good plan, or so we thought. Chris would work on Saturday (she’s working overtime now as we near the end of her research time) and then on Saturday afternoon we’d hop a bus to Zacatecas, about four hours north of here, where we’d spend Saturday night and all of Sunday (we’re traveling overtime now, too, as we near the end of our Mexican adventure time).

Then the influenza news hit. At first we figured we were far enough away from it – Mexico City is 8 hours from here – but by the time the Saturday morning paper hit newsstands they had found cases of la gripa porcina (Chris translates this as “porky flu”) in San Luis Potosi – 2 hours northwest of here – and were testing others in the neighboring state of Aguascalientes and right here in Jalisco. We still felt personally safe here in sleepy little Lagos, but then we started thinking about our weekend trip. We’d need to get on a second-class bus – usually packed and not the most well-ventilated vehicles – and stop for a brief layover in Aguascalientes, a city hosting their annual Feria de San Marcos (Festival of St. Mark, one of the biggest yearly festivals in the country). In other words: crowded bus to crowded possibly-infected city. Probably not the best move right now.

So we stayed in Lagos all weekend, bummed at the collapse of our best-laid plans. After work on Saturday, Chris and I went out for lunch, and then spent a few hours at our favorite coffee shop. One of the baristas we always chat with commented on what a slow day it was, especially for a Saturday. We looked out at the plaza: Where were all the people? On the weekends the outdoors are usually filled with families walking around, enjoying the warm weather. “Everyone must be freaked out about the flu,” our barista guessed.

They must have stayed freaked out on Sunday, when we went to La Cura, our local Chivas bar, to watch our beloved Pumas of UNAM take on El Rebaño (the Chivas’ nickname, which I thought meant “stripes” but which Chris, from conversations in San Juan, now thinks means “flock,” giving a whole new meaning to “El Rebaño Sagrado”…). Last week La Cura was packed with fans who’d come to watch the Superclasico. This week there were moments during the game when were the only people in the entire establishment. Pumas-Chivas is no Superclasico, but still: They’re two of the four most popular teams in the country and they’re both in a furious end-of-the-season playoff hunt. It was eerie. Though I can imagine that University Olympic Stadium, only blocks from the Lutheran Center in Mexico City, was even eerier. The game was played “a puerta cerrada,” with closed doors, in an empty stadium, by order of a Mexican government trying to prevent large gatherings of people.

But while people stayed largely in their homes all weekend from Mexico City to Jalisco, the Lagos Municipal Government must have missed the memo, for it held not one but two ferias (festivals) this weekend.

Friday night was the first-ever Feria de Rock (yep, Rock Music Festival), with four very young local bands taking the stage in front of the former Capuchin convent. The best band had a born lead-singer who kept trying to get the dwindling crowd to “make a desmadre” (basically, to go crazy; the etymology of “desmadre” would take more than one blog post to explain) and, during one of the band’s original songs, led the crowd in a call-and-response. The call-and-response song was called “Pastel de Amor” (Cake of Love); whenever the singer came to the line “But I lack the…” we were to respond with “¡HUEVOS!” (EGGS!) and then the singer would complete the verse with “to make a cake of love…” It’s a hilarious little baking metaphor, made all the funnier if you know some, er, other uses of the Spanish word huevos.

Then, Saturday kicked off the first-ever International Clown Festival, held right here in Lagos. The actual event is both less ambitious than the title suggests but more ambitious than we’d expect from little old Lagos. Payasos (clowns) are arriving from as far away as Brazil and Mexico’s own Yucatan Peninsula, the Secretary of Culture for Jalisco is coming to discuss his new book about mimes, and there are even some experimental theater performances (though it seems those will take place in Guadalajara). Still seems a bit random, but hey, who doesn’t love a good excuse to festejar?

So now, our weekend of swine flu, youth rock festival, and clown convention come to a close, we begin Monday a little differently than usual. When I went for my run this morning, about half of those exercising in the little park were wearing tapabocas (plastic mouth coverings). After hearing on the radio that schools are closed due to flu fears, Chris decided to stay close to home today, spending her day in the Lagos archives rather than walking around the crowded streets of San Juan.

Midmorning I went out to the café and picked up a newspaper. Bad news: Two people died, victims of the flu, in Aguascalientes, and the Feria de San Marcos was canceled "por la primera vez in 181 años" (for the first time in 181 years). On the brighter side, the governor of Jalisco declared that there are no cases in the entire state, and he's angry the University of Guadalajara closed without consulting the state government.

I also spoke over email with Luke at the Lutheran Center in Mexico City, and they don't seem too worried. They're still receiving delegations, and they're frankly more concered right now about those who might not have access to health care. So, taking a cue from them, we, too, are praying for the millions in Mexico City who lack access to health resources, even in a country with (supposedly) free health care for its citizens.

And finally, the most bewildering thing of all: Today the streets and plazas of Lagos are absolutely flooded with people. Schools are closed, to of course the kids need a place to go, and many of them are walking around with their moms and dads. Some people are wearing tapabocas (the blue mouth coverings), but the thing about tapabocas is that they're not all that unusual here in Mexico. We used to see people wear them all the time in Mexico City. It's probably the equivalent of popping a few Airborne, taking a few extra vitamins, in the United States. Looks scary on TV, and probably is in Mexico City, but here it's just cause for some extra precaution while the powers that be sort things out.

And this, my friends, is Mexico: The kids are going to chase each other around the plaza, screaming and laughing, as they're doing right now, tapaboca or no tapaboca, flu or no flu...

2009-04-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

Real quick -

There's international breaking news right now about a deadly flu epidemic in Mexico. It really is deadly - it's reported to have killed 61 people so far. Very frightening stuff. We're grateful to be far from Mexico City right now (where the outbreak is currently located) but we're praying for all those affected.

Peace,

-M

Los Musicos

2009-04-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

Ever since Johnny Cougar Mellencamp made me feel better about moving to Indiana, I’ve tried to soak up the music of whatever place I happen to be in. In Chicago, I listened not only to the neo-soul rap of native southsider Common (and his more famous colleague Kanye West) but also the decades-old city blues of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, blues that grew out of the Great Migration of the early twentieth century. Later, my time at the Old Town School of Folk Music led me to discover another side of Chicago’s musical heritage, from the late singer-songwriter Steve Goodman to the Chicago-based folk-rockers Wilco. As much as good regional literature, good regional music can help deepen your sense of place, in whatever location on God’s green earth you happen to be.

In Mexico, though, this has been a lot harder. For one thing, I hardly knew where to begin. I started with the big names in rock en español, artists I’d already heard of: Maná, Café Tacuba, Julieta Venegas. Then, last fall MTV released a collection of songs culled from their Unplugged series, which is apparently still going strong in Latin America. The nice thing about Lo Mejor de MTV Unplugged is that its 19 songs are like a who’s who of the last two decades of Latin rock. At least a third of them are Mexican artists: Not only the few I already knew but also artists I hadn’t heard yet, like Soda Stereo, Caifanes, and El Tri. It’s a quality disc, and a good introduction to the recent landscape of rock en español.

The thing about rock en español, though, is that much of it just sounds like rock in English but with Spanish lyrics. It’s true, sometimes these lyrics are super-Mexican, even if the music is not. When I started reading Chris the letras (lyrics) to some of the songs from Guadalajaran rockers Maná, she started laughing and pointed me to an essay by Alma Guillermoprieto in which the journalist describes a typical Mexican party that ends with grown men with their arms around each other, wailing tequila-induced songs of lost love. Nearly every Maná song seems to be about this topic, none more so than "Clavado En Un Bar" (Nailed in a Bar - and yes, it's as pathetic as you'd imagine). When you listen to their live discs you can picture the stadiums full of fans waving their lighters back and forth. Like their northern counterparts Bon Jovi and Journey, Maná can be an irresistible guilty pleasure when you’re in the right mood. The song below is my personal favorite, a song about a (what else?) lost love, in which the abandoned lover waits for eternity "on the pier of San Blas, alone with her spirit, alone with her love, alone with the sea..." Click here for the lyrics in Spanish AND English.

Café Tacuba, on the other hand, brims with indie street cred despite their status as one of the most popular bands in Mexico. Their music grows out of the arty student scene in Mexico City, and their music incorporates everything from traditional Mexican folk sounds (see 1996’s “Las Flores” – The Flowers) to lilting lullabies strewn over Eno-style electronic soundscapes (see 2003’s “Eres” – You Are). While the bleeps and bloops that pepper their most recent album may not seem Mexican on the surface, Café Tacuba definitely captures the one-foot-in-an-ancient-past-one-foot-in-a-chaotic-postmodern-future Mexico City. I consider them the Mexican R.E.M., and they continue to bring back memories of walking through the sprawling UNAM university campus (home of the Pumas!) in Mexico City.

But both of these male rockers take a backseat to Tijuana-born Julieta Venegas. Last year, Chris bought her song “Eres Para Mi (live)” on iTunes. A year later it’s the second-most played song of the past year in our iTunes Library (the only song ahead of it is, inevitably, U2’s “Get On Your Boots”). When we arrived in Mexico last year I immediately went looking for the full disc – again, an MTV Unplugged live album. We’ve listened to this album a lot since then, mainly because it’s sort of, well, awesome. The first song begins like something from Feist, but with lyrics about “Limon y Sal” (click for the music video) that only really make sense from a Mexican perspective in which the combination of Lime and Salt has an essential everyday meaning. From there the songs take the form of little pop gems, but pop gems created with everything from a mariachi-style accordion, which Julieta plays (“Me Voy” (I Am Going) is a good example) to the hip-hop beats and straight-up rap of “Eres Para Mi” (You Are For Me). Julieta’s MTV Unplugged has filled our various apartments time and time again during our year in Mexico.

Whew! All that and we’re only through rock en español. Stay tuned (though not necessarily tomorrow) for parts II (ranchera, inexplicably still popular) and III (the future of Mexican music?) of Los Musicos...

Instituto Mexicano del Sonido

2009-04-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

More tomorrow...

2009-04-23T11:06:00.001-07:00

And what can I say about this article? It's just too cool. My man Bono writing about carnavale, Lent, and the resurrection, with a conclusion about knowing - and showing - who you are. Thanks to Laura and Adam and Andy for tipping me off about this one - apparently some people think I like U2 or something...

2009-04-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

Opened up the digital NY Times this morning to find this horrifying immigration story. Check it out.

Tiempo Tranquilo

2009-04-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

The Eric Clapton song “Layla” (for which my friend Eddie named his cat) begins with the rush of a blazing guitar riff and blistering blues vocal. For three minutes the song is a fast-driving 45, one of the classics of classic rock. But what many radio listeners forget is that the song is actually like 7 minutes long. After the punch of the first half, the song’s second half slows to a gentle crawl, as if the raging rapids had spit it out onto a lazy river.

And it’s that second half of the song that I seem to be living right now. There’s nothing like the rush of that first arrival in Mexico City, and then I kind of got used to el D.F. but there’s still Cuernavaca, Taxco, Puebla and then the legendary Oaxaca and then just when you think it’s over there’s an unforgettable trip to the misty mountains of Chiapas. Then it’s off to a nice relaxing week with the fam in Puerta Vallarta and then back to P.V. with dear friends and then after this winter break it’s on to a nice workmanlike routine of Spanish classes which are ended suddenly by yet another move to a brand new place.

But now we’ve settled into this place that was once so new. It’s very peaceful here. Almost too peaceful, sometimes, but all things considered it’s a nearly perfect place to live: warm weather, friendly people, and fresh yet shockingly inexpensive food to keep us nourished. ¿Todo bien? Luis asks us every time we run into him. Si, todo bien, I say. It’s all good.

And yet… and yet my all-too-human soul still feels restless. Maybe I should be doing something really productive with this time, I thought. Maybe I need to. Maybe I’ll never have this kind of free time ever again! So I tried filling up my time with all sorts of disciplines – exercising, reading the Bible, practicing my guitar, cooking incredibly complex gourmet meals, cleaning the apartment from top to bottom daily, and so on and so on and so on.

But after a few days of this I was falling behind and feeling more and more guilty. So I screeched everything to a halt. One thing I probably should not do with this time is to create new sources of guilt. So I trimmed the routine down to the basics: a half hour of running, a half hour of prayer, figure out the food situation. Whatever else happens with the day is up to the whim of the Fates…

Unfortunately, the Fates seem to be kicking back, too – I wander around town keeping my eyes peeled for something interesting, but no pasa nada. So the days just seem to fall through my fingers like sand. I spent an hour or two on the roof yesterday morning, just watching the sunset over the town, the plains, and the mountains, and letting my mind wander. It was nice enough, and probably good for me. But another 3 months of this? I don’t know. I just don’t know. Any ideas, loyal readers?

I should close with two very important points.

First, this is very different from Chris’s experience right now. She works from dawn to dusk in San Juan de Los Lagos interviewing people, collecting data in archives, and just generally trying to get done as much as she can in these, her final Fulbright-funded months. At this point my supportive role takes the form of cooking the most delicious meals I can (thank you, Rick Bayless) and doing some data entry for her. She is having FANTASTIC experiences, but, owing to her crazy-busyness, has absolutely no time to write about them for the blog. You’ll just have to hear her stories when we get back to the States…

Second, we are blessed with some of the greatest friends in the known world. Since beginning this latest chapter of our adventure in Lagos, we enjoyed a weeklong pachanga with Adam and Laura only a month ago, we’re looking forward to the arrival of Zach and Hannah in less than two weeks (!), and then recently received word that Elisabeth is planning to come for a four-day jaunt in June. Words cannot describe how awesome this is. It’s sort of like most of our adventuring fun now is compressed into those weeks, with stretches of work (Chris) and nothingness (me) punctuated with tiempo muy divertido. The lucha libre mask hanging on our wall is proof enough of that.

Well. There’s a brief update for you, hopefully not too confessional but definitely the most descriptive update I can give right now. There may be some music and food postings soon, but those adventures take place mainly in this apartment… which is beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic. Time for another walk. Hasta pronto...

Alacránes y Búfalos // Scorpions and Buffalos

2009-04-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

The above image is from the greatest Mexican juego de mesa (table game) of all: lotería. It's basically Bingo, but with words and pictures instead of numbers, which for my money makes the whole thing way more fun. It's also a great way to learn vocabulary. When I visited Mexico on the 2007 J-Term Mexico City Immersion Course, we stayed overnight with a Mexican family for one night, but we, the students, were all pretty nervous about it, since our Spanish wasn't great. But when the family brought out lotería, the laughs, the conversation, the - dare I say it? - fellowship began.

Lotería is especially fun because, in the classic version, the pictures include such classics as "El Borracho" (the Drunk), "El Valiente" (the Brave Man? the image is of a guy who looks like he just left a barfight, I don't know...), "La Muerte" (Death, looking like the grim reaper), and, of course, El Alacrán - the Scorpion.

I post a photo of El Alacrán today because, how do I put this, some of his little scorpion friends have invaded our apartment. On Friday we returned from a movie (Monsters vs. Aliens, appropriately enough) to find a little scorpion scurrying out from under a chair. Chris quickly crushed it, then spent the rest of the night worrying about whether it stung her through her new Chuck Taylors. (It didn't.) Then, this morning, Chris went to wash some breakfast dishes to find - no! not again! - a scorpion in the sink. Both were only very small scorpions - alacranitos? - but hey, a scorpion is a scorpion. Click on that link and tell me the photos don't creep you out.

We're not quite sure how to handle this latest problem. We took care of the mosquitoes with some locally-recommended plug-into-the-wall repellent. Roaches - Chris prefers to call them beetles - only seem to come into the apartment to die, and we've only seen a handful in six weeks. From reading James and the Giant Peach recently, we learned that Miss Spider in our bathroom is actually quite helpful for taking care of our mosquito problem. But scorpions?

Look, people, we're from the Middle West. We have, like, ants at picnics and flies in the summertime and every 17 years or so a cicada invasion, and that's about it. Maybe you Texans are all over this problem - and if so, we welcome your advice! All we're doing at this point is wearing shoes in the house all the time and taking care to, as Chris put it in her note describing the scorpion discovery this morning, "Be careful of dark places!"

But alacranes aren't the only wildlife in beautiful Lagos de Moreno. Recently the local paper has been documenting the saga of a herd of buffalo that were abandonado - abandoned - in the local fairgrounds. By "documenting," I mean the paper has featured these búfalo in a giant color photo and big bold headline on the front page for four days in a row. (Did I not just call this the Mexican Kansas?)

On the first day, the story was just about the discovery of the herd. On the second day, the newspaper reported that "a representative of the owner" - the owner apparently being too embarrassed to make contact himself - had called the city to claim the buffalo. The "representative" explained that their buffalo transport equipment had broken down, but because it was Semana Santa, there was no one available to repair it. They tried to call the municipal government to get permission to leave the buffaloes were they were, but, again, because of Semana Santa, all offices were closed. So they just left them. This didn't quite explain why the buffaloes were still there without explanation at the end of the week after Semana Santa, but, come on, I think we've all been there. I mean, who among us hasn't had to leave their buffalo herd in the local fairgrounds for an extra week or two?

The next two days of front-page búfalo coverage will have to remain a mystery, however, because we failed to buy the paper over the weekend. Today, though, the poor beasts were knocked off their press perch by - what else? - fútbol. The Chivas of Guadalajara defeated Club América 1-0 in the spring Superclasico match, a repeat of their victory in the fall.

We watched the Clásico de Clásicos at La Cura, a local bar and seafood place that is known for being popular among Chivas fans. A few yellow-and-blue Águila (Eagle) fans (referred to loudly as Americanistas or simply chilangos, residents of Mexico City) were in attendance, but the red-and-white striped Chivas (Goats) of Jalisco soundly drowned them out. And the winning goal? It was a cabezazo (pronounced ca-bay-SA-so, and, incidentally, was also the word Mexican commentators used to describe the end of the 2006 World Cup), or header, and it was awesome. Went right past the diving body of pretty boy (we kid because we love) Guillermo Ochoa, goalie for the Águilas of Club América and backup goalie for the Mexican national team.

So: Scorpions, buffaloes, eagles, and goats. Adventures across the border, indeed...

San Miguel de Allende

2009-04-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

Last week, while most everything was closed in Lagos and San Juan, Chris and I decided to take a quick road trip to San Miguel de Allende, about a four hour trip west of here.

Ever since David Alfaro Siqueiros started offering art classes there in the 1940s, San Miguel has been famous for being a colony of English-speaking Americans. But there's a flip side to its artiness: Today the Lonely Planet calls San Miguel “a Mexican Disneyland for American retirees.” Ouch.

Well, the trusty LP is at least partly right: Immediately upon arriving we heard a lot more English being spoken. We sat down at the first restaurant we found, hungry after our long bus ride, and were surprised to find that not only did our waiter speak to us in English but we could – no way! – eavesdrop on neighboring tables with ease. We quickly found the inevitable English-language bookstore. Of course, we didn’t really need any books, but just wanted to spend some quality time running our fingers along paperback spines, pulling out anything that looked interesting and reading the first few pages… yeah, we miss our bookstores.

After awhile, though, the English-everywhere thing grew a little disconcerting. We’ve lived in Mexico for nine months and know much of the country's geography and history, and for the last month and a half, we’ve been the only gringos in a town few foreign tourists ever visit, the equivalent of, say, Mexican Kansas.

Yet the moment we set foot in San Miguel, everything changed. In San Miguel, we weren’t residents of Mexico, but rather tourists fresh off the boat who should be spoken to only in English, even when we respond in Spanish. We’d stop to look at trinkets at a streetside stand only to find they cost two to four times as much as similar items cost even in Guadalajara. We’d walk down the street, admiring the picture-perfect postcard scenes of cobblestone streets and super-brightly painted buildings, only to realize that they were perhaps a little too perfect: No buildings we have seen anywhere else in Mexico are so brightly painted as those in San Miguel.

Finally we opened the newspaper, trying to get a bit deeper into the world of San Miguel. But we couldn’t escape the full-page real estate ads that confronted us at every turn. All were in English. The worst offered the opportunity to “Live in the Heart of the City You Love…With All the Luxury You Can’t Live Without.” Sigh.

So you might think that, after all that, we’d probably recommend against a visit to San Miguel. Well… Not quite. Once you get past the fact that it is definitely an "upscale" version of the rest of the country (exhibit A: its town square has a Starbucks on the corner), you can actually find much to enjoy in San Miguel.

There are several excellent restaurants, including one of the best Mexican restaurants we’ve eaten in all year. (It was upscale, of course – but we decided to treat ourselves in honor of the 9th anniversary of our first date. Is this a legitimate anniversary? Yes. Especially when it's an excuse to eat really good food.)

San Miguel is located in the mountains, and so offers beautiful views of the town and surrounding landscape from nearly everywhere. (If you haven't noticed by now, I love mountains, love them, love them, love them, and cannot wait to move to the West Coast.)

And there are lots of cultural events – not necessarily Mexican cultural events, but, still, cultural events, like those you might find in a quirky American college town or an arty neighborhood in the city. (The local paper advertised a weeklong workshop on Byzantine Christian icons, to be held in a local monastery later this month. Nothing about this is Mexican… but I was still sorely tempted to sign up.)

In short, my travelers’ review is: San Miguel de Allende is a perfect place to visit if you want to get away from Mexico’s beaches to see some of its inland charm (something any visitor should definitely do at some point), but you don’t speak much Spanish and you're worried about it. If this is you, San Miguel is your gateway to the rest of Mexico!

But if you are us, San Miguel is more like the opposite: It's kind of like a gateway back home, an inland Puerto Vallarta with American ships and airships arriving and departing daily... and we’re not quite ready for that just yet. We will be ready very soon – Chris just booked the return flight for July 13! – but not today, not just yet.

Anyway, here are some photos from San Miguel. Like I said it’s a very scenic, very colorful place, seemingly tailor-made for snapshots, which makes for a fun photo album. Enjoy!

San Miguel de Allende

¡Bienvenidos Presidente Obama!

2009-04-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is in Mexico City today, and the NY Times is reporting that it's the first time in 12 years that an American president has visited el DF.

Seriously, W? Led the country for 8 years and you couldn't even visit the neighbors? Actually, according to the Times article, other presidents have visited Mexico. They're just choosy about where they go. From the article:

That Mr. Obama is visiting the capital is particularly significant, said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a policy organization in Washington. Other leaders have visited Mexican resort communities, but Mr. Selee said Mr. Obama “really wanted to be seen going to the heart of the country, where the people are.”

Anyway, because of this much-anticipated event, both the American and Mexican press are publishing lots of stuff about each other. One of our favorite online magazines, Slate, just put out a collection of pieces about Mexico that are all worth reading. Check out the collection here. The best article, called "Distant Neighbors" is about the misunderstandings and mistaken perceptions that each country holds about the other. We highly recommend it. (For those that have already visited us - and for those that are coming soon! - there's a reference to the infamous randomizing "button" you have to push to enter the country. "Green, you're good to go; red, open your bags...")

The Mexican press is excited, too. TV news is providing extensive coverage of the massive security detail accompanying the President through Mexico City, and the print newspaper Reforma features the headline "Todos Quieren Ser... Obama" ("Everyone Wants to Be... Obama") with a large color photo of a dude making latex Obama masks. Way to bring the hard news, Reforma, way to bring the hard news.

In fairness, below the attention-grabbing photo, Reforma features an article about marijuana legalization, an issue many Latin American leaders are talking about with some seriousness these days. It's a gutsy topic - or at least it would be in the States - and its one the NY Times didn't touch in its coverage.

And that concludes our news roundup for the day. Hasta mañana...

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

2009-04-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

My brother Greg turns 25 today. Normally we'd go to Wrigley to celebrate...

...but this year it'll have to wait another 3 months. Oh well - I'm wearing my Cubbie blue today anyway, just for you. Happy Birthday!!

Vigilia Pascual

2009-04-12T13:09:00.001-07:00

I’ve been in awe of the Easter Vigil service ever since I first attended one four years ago in Bloomington, Indiana.

On the night of Holy Saturday the congregation gathers around an outdoor firepit and watches as the Christ Candle is relit. From that relit candle all of our little candles are lit, and then we process inside to hear the story of salvation, from Genesis to the Gospels, in the candlelit darkness. At midnight (ideally) the bells ring out, resurrection hymns are sung, alleluias are said once again. Then there is a rite of renewal of baptism, and the sprinkling of baptismal waters, and we all, finally, gather around the table for Holy Communion.

I love this service so much that last year, when my Ministry-in-Context parish didn’t offer one, Chris and I took the Red Line all the way to the other side of the city to attend an Easter Vigil at another Lutheran church. It was hard to justify on rational grounds, as it added yet another worship service to an already full weekend and subtracted several precious hours of sleep before Sunday’s early-and-often Easter services. But it was worth it.

This year, as we gathered at dusk around a charcoal firepit in the courtyard of a little Catholic church in central Mexico, I reveled in the elemental nature of the flickering flames. They reminded me of an old Aztec tradition I learned about earlier this year.

When we lived in Mexico City we lived very near the University Olympic Stadium, and we would often walk by the mosaic mural that adorns one side of it. It was designed by Diego Rivera for the 1968 Olympics to depict the “New Fire” ceremony of the Aztecs, in which a sacred fire is lit once every full cycle of the Aztec caelndar in order to, as Wikipedia describes it, "stave off the end of the world."

As a rule I don’t approve of oversimplifying cultural traditions to make them all neatly blend together, but as we stood around that firepit I couldn’t help thinking of the New Fire and the ancients who gathered, again and again, from generation to generation, to see it relit.

A high-school age youth group from another Mercedario church in Toluca (near Mexico City) has been helping lead Semana Santa services all weekend, and as we waited for the rite to begin the youth tended the flames. Some of the jovenes from the group used giant wooden boards to make very loud clacking sounds. These clackings served as the call to worship, for the bells of the church could not be rung during this time between Good Friday and Easter. We bought our candles for the service, little replica candles of the Christ Candle, with the Alpha and Omega symbols painted on, and we took our place around the circle.

Finally the priest came out, dressed in white with fantastic red images sewn into his vestments. He welcomes us, calmly explains where we can still get our candles for the service, and then he begins.

“Oremos. Let us pray.

“Dios nuestro, que por medio de tu Hijo nos has comunicado el fuego de tu vida divina, bendice este fuego nuevo y haz que estas fiestas pascuales encienden en nosotros el deseo del cielo, para que podamos llegar con un espíritu renovado a la fiesta gloriosa de tu Reino. Por Jesucristo, nuestro Señor. Amén.

Our God, who through the means of your Son has communicated to us the fire of your divine life, bless this new fire and make it so that these Easter festivals (or parties) spark in us the desire of heaven, so that we can arrive with a renewed spirit to the glorious festival (or party!) of your Reign. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

The priest lights the Christ Candle from the new fire of the firepit, and then he begins to trace his fingers through the symbols carved into it.

“Cristo ayer y hoy,
Principio y fin, Alfa y Omega.
Suyo es el tiempo y la eternidad.
A él la gloria y el poder,
Por los siglos de los siglos. Amén.  

Por sus santas llagas gloriosas,
Nos proteja y nos guarde
Jesucristo, nuestro Señor. Amén.

Que la luz de Cristo, resucitado y glorioso,
Disipe las tinieblas de nuestro corazón
Y de nuestro espíritu.

Christ yesterday and today,
Beginning and ending, Alpha and Omega,
His is time and eternity,
To him is the glory and the power,
From century to century (or through the centuries). Amen.

Through his holy glorious wounds,
He protects us and keeps us
Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

That the light of Christ, resurrected and glorious,
Dissipates the darkness from our heart
And from our spirit.”

Now the great Christ Candle is lifted up high. The priest carries it into the church as we follow after him and crowd into the building, which was already full of people. The priest sings in a chant “Cristo, luz del mundo – Christ, light of the world” and the congregation responds “Demos gracias a Dios – Thanks be to God.”

At first the entire church is dark except for one flame in the center, the flame of the Christ Candle. Cristo, luz del mundo.

Then another candle is lit from this flame. Demos gracias a Dios.

Another candle is lit from that one – Cristo, luz del mundo – then another, and another – Demos gracias a Dios.

The church is so dark that the only thing we can see are the little dancing flames that are quickly multiplying in every direction.

Before long they have illuminated the entire church, the light flickering off the pillars and archways. We lift our candles high, and the priest chants a final time: Cristo, luz del mundo, and the entire congregation responds: Demos gracias a Dios.

Then all of the candles except for the Christ Candle are extinguished, and we settle in for the Old Testament readings. The sound system in the church is loud and clear, and I can make out most of the stories being read in Spanish. We are standing in the back with a crowd of people; all the pews are full. We listen to the readings in the darkness for what seems like hours.

Suddenly and much earlier than we anticipated the priest announces that it is time: The bells begin to ring, alleluias begin to be sung, the lights are turned on and up, and then - an unexpected addition - a giant purple curtain in the front of the church splits and is pulled open to reveal a gigantic painted image of the resurrected Jesus, dressed in white and surrounded by golden rays of light, with his arms open to receive us.

The curtain-opening-to-reveal-stageprop-style-cardboard-cutout-Jesus thing is a pretty corny, especially after all the elemental power of the symbolic flames, but it does bring a goofy grin to my face, and maybe that’s a good enough thing in itself. The priest reads the New Testament readings, and we sing some more alleluias. Everyone lifts up their right hand to renew baptismal vows, and then, instead of a sprinkling of baptismal water, a handful of people hurry forward to have their plastic bottles of holy water blessed by the priest. I don’t quite understand the bottles of holy water, but they do seem to be everywhere this weekend, and they are certainly always in full supply in San Juan de Los Lagos. It is another Catholic tradition I’ll have to learn more about, I guess.

We stay to watch the rite of communion, and then, sent off by the priest, we leave with everyone else and head down to the town square. For the rest of the night and on into the next morning Chris and I talk about our week. Chris says our experiences here have brought home to her the “otherness” of Easter and the strangeness of our faith, which sometimes becomes so familiar in familiar settings, so tame that we forget how wild it really is.

For me, though, tonight was a time when I felt connected not only to the Laguenses but to their church, a Roman church I have so often struggled with and against in my time here. Tonight it seemed less like a different denomination and more like just one more congregation, part of the great small “c” catholic church of our faith, one more community lighting the Christ Candle and ringing the bells, as so many other communities of Christians would do in their own way and in their own time over these next twenty-four hours.

As we walked into the town square that night, we found it full of life. The ice cream stands and coffee shops are open and full of people; balloon and toy vendors are selling their wares on the corners. Teenagers drive by with music playing loud, then drive by again, and again…they are cruising the tiny town square of Lagos de Moreno. It was a Saturday night like any other Saturday night.

Except – there go the bells in the towering central parish church. We look up and see a silhouetted figure in one of the bell towers flailing away at a massive bell that is much larger than he is. For the rest of the night and on into the next morning, bells will suddenly ring out from the various churches in Lagos. Even though the ringing of church bells is a common sound here, on this day, somehow, the sound seems the most joyful noise in all the world: A bell ringing out, year after year, from Indiana to Chicago to Mexico – and beyond.

¡El es resucitado! El es resucitado, de veras. ¡Aleluya!

Photo Gallery: Viernes Santo (Good Friday)

2009-04-11T14:15:00.000-07:00

Here are 30 of the best photos from Good Friday. There are no captions (I'm exhausted from writing) so it's best to view these after reading the preceding post, "Viernes Santo."

And thanks for keeping up with our stories and pictures. We miss you all...

Viernes Santo

2009-04-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

Last year we tried to attend a Via Crucis – a Good Friday passion play of Jesus’ final hours acted out in the streets – in a Latino neighborhood in Chicago. But we arrived too late. After wandering the streets of Pilsen for an hour or so on a freezing spring morning, we finally found a street vendor and asked her what was up. “Oh,” she explained to Chris in Spanish, “It was too cold, so they moved it inside. But it’s over now.” Sigh. Our failed trip over, we bought some champurrado (chocolate-flavored atole) from her to warm up and then we went home.

This year we were determined not to miss the Via Crucis. There were plenty of options: Posters were hung around town advertising not less than three different churches each carrying out their own Via Crucis in their own neighborhood. We opted for the one taking place at the Templo Calvario – Calvary Temple – because of its perfectly appropriate name and position on the top of the highest hill in Lagos. And of course, not wanting to arrive too late, we left our apartment really, really early.

While nearly every restaurant, store, and office building was closed for the religious holiday, street vendors were out in force. Along the road up to Calvario, the most common item being sold was seafood. Long lines snaked around the block, full of people hoping to buy “fresh” fish for the last meatless Friday. Clusters of pilgrims making their way to the Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos (they’re everywhere this week) crowded around taco stands, ready for a breakfast of fried shrimp and fresh salsa in warm tortillas. It was a chilly desert morning, and we looked everywhere for tamales and atole, but found neither. Who knew it would be easier to get tamales and atole in Chicago than in Mexico?

We arrived at the top of Calvario hill twenty minutes before the scheduled start time: no way would we miss it this time! But ten o’clock came and went, and still no Via Crucis. It finally began about an hour after we arrived. No matter: There was plenty to see while we waited. Food vendors lined the adjoining streets, selling everything from ice pops (known generically as bolis or by their brand name, Bon-Ice – at any large gathering of people in Mexico you will inevitably hear someone walking around with a little cart and a bell yelling bonICE! bonICE! and then loudly rattling off the flavors) to the most popular snack of the day: a full head of green leaf lettuce with lime and chili powder poured over it. You eat it out of the bag, pulling little pieces of lettuce off as if it were cotton candy. Chris thinks it’s genius. I think it’s too weird. You decide.

While we waited for things to begin, child actors prepared for the day by getting into character. Four-year-olds dressed from helmeted head to sandaled toe in bright red-and-blue Roman centurion costumes lifted plastic swords and challenged their ten-year-old brothers to epic duels.

Before either solider could claim victory, however, a line of thirty or more adult actors – all in Biblical costume – marched out of a nearby school building and up the steps into Calvario chapel. We guessed that they entered the church to pray before their performance. Ten minutes later they came back outside and then began taking their places around the large plaza in front of the church. It was time.

It was hard to tell what was going on at first. There was no introductory announcement or anything – just all of a sudden things started happening. Different scenes of action seemed to be taking place in different spots on the plaza. Loudspeakers on the edges of the plaza blared static, then barely understandable words from the performance, then clearly understandable words about kids getting down from off the railings (¡Bajense! ¡Bajense, por favor!), then more static again. Not knowing what to watch, we hurried over to the largest crowd and tried to see over peoples’ heads.

The first scenes were of John the Baptist. This would not, we soon found out, be simply a passion play of the stations of the cross; it would be a play of the entire gospel narrative. John was dressed in animal skin and had long hair that hung over his face. He yelled various things that we couldn’t quite make out. Suddenly Jesus arrived on the scene, and we could see him being baptized, then leaving, presumably driven by the spirit out into the desert. Even without great sound, most of the action was easily recognizable. Most of it.

All of a sudden Roman soldiers arrived on the scene. They yelled at John, then laughed, then John yelled back, and then one of the soldiers ran forward and pushed John down, hard. My heart jumped: A sudden moment of unexpected violence, real violence, not just happening on TV but right there in front of you, only a few feet away. Forget the cheesy costumes: That guy in rags just got slammed down on the hot cement, hard, and the armed men that ganged up on him are staying in character, laughing hard laughs and flashing angry looks. They dragged John away, and with the rest of the crowd, we followed.

Suddenly we were standing in front of a royal throne, watching Herod and his wife welcome us to a party. A harem of scantily dressed women draped themselves around the royal couple. John was dragged out, then violently pushed and shoved down the aisle to the throne; everyone laughed, and he was taken away again. Pulsing Indian music began playing over the loudspeaker, and the women began their dance. One woman in striking black rags – Salome, presumably – gave Herod nothing short of a lap dance. Herod offered her the kingdom, but after a brief consultation with Herod’s wife, she asked for the head of Juan Bautista on a platter. The king was horrified. A few seconds later, two soldiers walked down the aisle toward the throne, making loud jokes and laughing while they carried the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter.

The crowd grew. More and more families, young couples, and even gangs of what we call “street toughs” made their way up the hill to Calvario to watch the unfolding events. A hooded figure dressed in black led Jesus up the steps of the temple to the highest point on Calvario hill and pointed out over the city below and plains of Jalisco beyond. “All of this, all of this can be yours,” he said. Jesus responded with a few words we couldn’t make out, and then the sinister-looking figure left angrily, and angels led Jesus back down the steps.

Then Jesus walked around the plaza, making his way through the growing throngs to heal different costumed people. He put his hands over one little boy’s eyes, and then suddenly the boy shouted in surprise. “I can see! ¡Milagro! Milagro!” After a time Jesus stopped and began preaching, and then, noticing something was wrong, gave his disciples instructions and within minutes costumed disciples were making their way through the crowd, handing out pieces of bread.

As the action scenes grew more elaborate, young people took each others’ hands to form a human chain link fence to hold back the crowds from the action taking place. The fence seemed to grow and grow as more and more people wanted to be a part of it.

Palm branches were lifted up, and it was Holy Week, Semana Santa. Now more scenes seemed to take place at the same time. While Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples at a long table on the steps of Calvario – a living sculpture of the Renaissance painting – in another part of the plaza Judas tried to negotiate with a hostile Roman army. They laughed and pushed him around, but finally gave him a bag of money and sent him away. Then we were in Gethsemane and – this was hard to see, because we had moved to a tiny garden on the side of the church – Judas was kissing Jesus, a skirmish broke out, Jesus scolded Peter, and then was arrested and led away.

We could see now that people had begun lining the street leading from Calvario down to the center of town. Roman soldiers had tied ropes around Jesus’ hands, and now began leading him down the street, pushing and prodding and making jokes and laughing loudly as they went. His mother followed behind, looking distraught, but she was kept from getting too close by the spears of the soldiers. Young girls in similar costumes walked behind her carrying slices of oranges, and one of the disciples took her side and offered her his arm.

The streets were packed, and we soon fell behind. Chris bought a sombrilla – an umbrella meant to keep out the sun – to protect us from the now-scorching heat. (The next day's paper would carry the headline: "Reviven la Pasión entre intenso calor - The Passion is relived amid intense heat") When we reached the center of town, we found even more people than had been at the top of the hill; many of these people, we guessed, had waited down here for the action they knew was coming. On the steps of the bandstand in the town square Jesus was condemned to death, and on the steps of the main parish church two other condemned criminals joined him. He was stripped of his clothes and dressed in white, and a crown of thorns was placed on his head. Then a giant wooden cross was placed on his back, and he began the long, slow march back up the steep hill to Calvario.

All along the sides of the street people crammed in to watch what was happening and to follow Jesus along the road, but the human chain link fence kept them back. We fell behind again, but soon found we had a perfect view of one of the other criminals. He wore only a white sheet tied around his waist, and the rest of his body was dirt-caked and bloodied. The Roman soldiers shoved him back and forth and yelled - "¡VAMOS! ¡VAMOS¡ ¡HAHAHAHAHA¡" - as he staggered up the hill, barefoot on the blazing hot asphalt road. Every few blocks he – or another of the condemned – would fall down on top of his cross, and then the procession would stop as the Roman soldiers glared down at him and around at the crowd – but while they glared, they shaded their fellow actor with their capes and quietly him some water.

When we finally reached the top of the hill we found the largest crowd of the day gathered to see the crosses raised. This took some time, so as the soldiers made loud hammer sounds, “nailing” their prisoners onto their crosses, we found our way up the steps to get a better view. And was it ever a better view. We watched as the crosses were raised up and the dying prisoners looked out over the valley beyond.

The Roman soldiers laughed and offered Jesus a sponge on a stick, and then the prisoner on his left turned his head to the center cross and yelled angrily between spells of heavy, labored breathing. He might have been the best actor of the day, he was so believable. But the prisoner on the far right shut him up, and Jesus said something we couldn’t make out, and then finally the central prisoner breathed his last. The crosses stood up there in the air for awhile, as the crowd watched. Then the prisoners were taken down and their bodies were carried away.

The entire performance took about four hours, and it concluded during the hottest part of the day with the sun blazing down. You would think, with the cheesy costumes and the amateur actors, that a Via Crucis like this might not really be that cool – but you would be wrong. It wasn’t exactly solemn: The vendors kept selling food and teenagers kept flirting with each other and neighbors kept talking to each other distractedly and kids kept playing and heck even Chris and I had to get a drink and an umbrella at one point but all of us, all of us were present, part of the crowd of people watching and wondering what to make of all of the staggering violence, imagining what it must have been like to be a part of the crowd those two thousand years ago.

When it was over, everyone dispersed, and we went home, too – hungry, tired, and filled with the knowledge that we had just seen something we would never forget.

+ + +

Later in the evening we walked downtown. I wanted to post a blog piece about Thursday, and then we were going to make our way to church for the Friday evening services. When we left the café, though, we found people gathered on the steps of the church and along the street leading around the central square. What was happening? We decided to wait and find out.

“I think it’s a funeral,” Chris said as she peeked over the crowd to catch a glimpse of the coming procession – and she was half right. First came a relic of the cross, carried as through it were a coffin by a group of four pallbearers and accompanied by the parish priest. Then came the cross itself, draped in a white cloth. Then came a mannequin-like image of Mary carried aloft by another group of men and followed by a long, long line of women dressed in black and carrying candles. As she passed, a haunting voice began to sing through a speaker on the church steps. The effect was chilling.

Jesus came next, in the form of a mannequin-like image dressed in purple and carrying a cross and held aloft by another group of men dressed in black. Then came Jesus lying in a clear closed coffin, wrapped in white cloth, carried again by a group of four pallbearers in black and surrounded by men holding candles. Now another image of Mary, herself dressed in black, following behind, held aloft by women pallbearers and followed, again, by women carrying white candles.

We followed the images until they stopped in the Plaza Capuchinas, site of a former convent of Capuchin nuns. The different groups with their different holy images met in this plaza and took their places around a central space where the priest stood under a cross. As the night faded to black and the plaza was lit only by the electric torches of the former convent and the candles held by the gathered crowd, the priest led us all in prayer. Chris translated some of it for me. It is hard to well describe the feeling of standing outside at dusk in the middle of Mexico, standing and watching with a crowd of candlelit people holding holy images, praying in another language on the night of Good Friday.

What is this event that took place so long ago? How is it still remembered in such arresting ways by human beings, rich and poor, young and old, two thousand years later and halfway around the world from where it took place? How is this possible?

Words fail. And so stories are acted out. Processions are made through the streets. Candles are lit in the night. Prayers are said in the darkness. The people watch and wait, each people in their own way, but all gathered together by the same event.

Into your hands, Father, into your hands.

Jueves Santo

2009-04-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes traditions are nearly the same (see Domingo de Ramos, for example). Others are so different and so unexpected that the contrast leaves you marveling at the wide, wide world.

Back home, Jueves Santo (Holy Thursday) is known as Maundy Thursday. “Maundy,” as every seminarian knows, comes from the Latin word for commandment, a reference to Jesus’ new commandment to “Love one another as I have loved you.” As an illustration of this love, Jesus then washes his disciples’ feet. Back home, in most of the Lutheran churches I’ve attended over the last few years, we do the same. The congregation gathers, lining up to have their feet washed – and maybe to wash a few feet themselves. Everyone who wants to participate, does. After Holy Communion – which carries special meaning on this night when we remember its institution – the altar is stripped bare, and all paraments and vestments are folded up and taken out of the church, usually while a plaintive Psalm is sung by a soloist. The congregation departs in silence.

It’s important that I write that little inadequate description, even though I know some of you are more than familiar with it, because the above scene is what was going through my head like a movie as we walked to church Thursday evening - and it was nearly the opposite of what we were about to experience.

On Thursday evening we found a seat in the back of the parroquia and did our best to follow along with the service. Chris always does a better job with this than I do; frustrated with language issues and the lack of a helpful order of service, I usually give up trying to follow what’s going on and end up just watching.

As Mass began, twelve costumed men stood in the back of the church, preparing to process forward. By costumed, I mean they wore brightly colored satin robes with sashes, the traditional way you see Jesus and his disciples presented in paintings. From her friends in San Juan Chris had learned that these men were chosen from among the congregation to represent the disciples during the footwashing ceremony. Indeed they did: When the time came, the priest – representing Jesus, as the priest always does – knelt down to wash the feet of the people representing the disciples, a living symbol that the hundreds of people in the cavernous cathedral watched.

Well, some of the people, anyway. We were sitting near the back and couldn’t really see anything. Here we were in one of the most intimate services of the church year, and we were in the least intimate church in town. It looked as though weren’t going to have our feet washed or do any foot washing ourselves, and we faithful Protestants definitely weren’t going to be invited to Holy Communion on this of all nights. During the sermon the priest tried valiantly to counteract some of the priest-as-Jesus symbolism, urging each of us to love our neighbor as Jesus commanded us, but I was already distracted. I felt awfully homesick. I missed participating in the service, singing songs, taking communion, even the indescribable awkwardness of footwashing. I missed everything.

About halfway through the service I noticed that large groups of people – families and extended families, it looked like – kept entering the church, standing by the door for five minutes, and then leaving. After awhile I started to get annoyed, and I whispered to Chris: What is the deal? These people just stop in, breathe a bit of the incensed air, and then leave? She shrugged: Maybe they’re starting their visitas already.

Our landlord, Luis, told Chris a few days ago about the visitas, one of the traditional Semana Santa practices, known usually by its full name: Las Visitas a Las Siete Casas, or the Visits to the Seven Houses. The houses are represented, Luis said, by the templos, or church buildings, in Lagos. But this was all we knew; we had never heard of the Visits to the Seven Houses before, and wondered what it would look like.

When it was time for communion we left – I never see the point of staying to watch – and walked down to another church a few blocks away. Mass was over at this church, but a long line of people was streaming into door of the church and streaming out of another. Not sure what else to do, we did what we normally do in these situations: We joined them.

On our way out of the church, we stopped by a table where a woman was selling bread, candles, and little brochures. She was very friendly, and explained everything to us as though we were the foreigners we so clearly are. “This is schedule for the weekend,” she said, pointing to one brochure. “And this paper has the Seven Prayers for the Seven Houses.” For fifty cents we bought a copy of the prayers, then sat down on a bench to try and figure out what they were.

The Visits to the Seven Houses, it turns out, is an ancient Christian tradition (click the link to learn only slightly more). As in the Posadas, people walk from place to place acting out Biblical events. Each visited “house” – or in this case, each church – represents one of Jesus’ stops on the night before he was killed – Caiphas’ house, Pilate’s house, Herod’s house, and so on. At each house, you say a prayer, contemplate the events that took place there, and then move on.

Not wanting to miss out on something that was completely new for us, we followed some people to the next church. As we walked, we noticed that the crowds wandering the streets were getting bigger – much bigger. By the time we arrived at the church it was much too crowded for us to get inside, so we merely read the assigned prayer and kept going.

The next church was surrounded by a huge cement patio. A very long line snaked into the building, but all around it people filled the public space, some sitting on steps and benches and the edges of fountains, some buying fresh potato chips or ice cream cones from the many mobile vendors, some just standing around in half-circles chatting with their friends. “What is this?” I asked aloud, more out of dumbfounded wonder than anything else. “It’s a party,” said my esposa, matter-of-factly. She had bought a bag of fresh potato chips with lime and salt on them, and happily offered me one.

By now all of the downtown streets were filled with people. They talked and laughed and ate and kids chased each other as they made their way from one church to the next. Inside the churches there was something like silence, to be sure. At one parish a youth group acted out the events of the Last Supper, complete with costume and a fake wig of flowing locks for Jesus.

At another there was a mannequin-like statue of Jesus, and people gathered around, reaching up to touch the hem of his garment before moving on. But everything else was indeed like any other Mexican street party. It was the third time, actually, that we had experienced this sort of thing, after the everyone-outside-going-house-to-house events of the Day of the Dead and the Posadas, all three stupefying hybrids of public spirituality and food-filled fiestas.

I kept thinking about how at home Maundy Thursday ends with solemnity and silence, while here Jueves Santo ends with a roving street party. What does this mean? Is one more reverent than another? If you have an answer, I’d love to hear it, but I can barely begin to put my systematic brain to work: The contrast is almost too much for me.

And what would Jesus think?

Of course, I cannot speak for the Lord. But I have a hunch that somewhere, Jesus is laughing. I can almost hear it: A great long laugh of approval.

If you’re going to have a Last Meal, I hear him say, It might as well be a party.

Semana Santa

2009-04-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

Not much going on here (yet), but y'all know I can't go more than a few days without posting on the blog, so...

Wanting to spend at least part of our Semana Santa like the rest of Mexico - i.e., on vacation - we took a quick midweek "weekend" trip on Tuesday and Wednesday to San Miguel de Allende.

San Miguel is a fascinating place - a little quasi-American colony smack in the middle of Mexico - but I'll wait to write about it until next week, when Holy Week is over and I have my photos organized and all. Still, I wanted to post the above photo of a sidestreet in San Miguel, where for Lent they've put up papel picado in purple and white, with shapes of crosses and crowns of thorns and scenes from the Stations of the Cross cut into them. Mexicans decorate for everything. It's awesome.

Now we're back in Lagos, and from the signs up around town it looks like there'll be a lot going on this weekend, starting this evening. I'll post as often as I can and take lots of pictures, you can be sure of that. In the meantime, we wait for sunset, for the start of services for Santo Jueves, and for the start of the Triduo Pascua. Until then...

I'm in Mexico, but I'm ready...

2009-04-06T15:25:00.001-07:00

...for Opening Day!

Yep, we've come full circle, and it's Cubs season all over again. Let the heartbreaks and joys (in that order) begin...

PS - It's very sunny here at the moment. Hence my painfully squinting eyes.

Domingo de Ramos

2009-04-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

Kim Erno, director of the Lutheran Center in Mexico City, once told us how he made a minor language gaffe early in his ministry with a Latino community.

Speaking in Spanish, he announced the upcoming observance of Palm Sunday - and in short order was informed that instead of announcing el Domingo de Ramos (the Sunday of Branches, or Palms), he had instead announced el Domingo de Ranas (the Sunday of Frogs). So keep this in mind, o Spanish learners, and take care that you observe Palm Sunday, and not Frog Sunday.

We walked down to the main parish church this morning to begin our own observance of Holy Week, known here as Semana Santa. On our way we passed many families coming back in the other direction from earlier Palm Sunday services. Nearly every child in these families carried a palm - or rather, a woven rounded rectangle of many palms, laid onto a bed of branches of either laurel leaves or chamomile flowers (see the photo above). We walked on.

When we arrived at the parish of La Asuncion there was a makeshift market set up outside, with a dozen or more vendors selling palm leaves woven into all sorts of creations: mostly the rounded-rectangle-on-laurel-leaves, but also little crucifixes and Guadalupes and crosses with different saints' images in them and even little woven chalices with glitter accents. Nearly everything cost between 10 and 15 pesos - about one US dollar.

I asked Chris what she thought accounted for the presence of these woven palm creations instead of the thin single palm leaves handed out on Palm Sunday in the Midwestern Lutheran churches where we grew up. Looking up at the towering palm trees in Lagos' central square, it was clear that one reason was simply that palm branches - and laurel branches and chamomile flowers - were much more plentiful here than in Illinois or Michigan. Another reason, Chris guessed, was that this was a way for low-income people - mostly, it looked like, from out of town - to make a little extra income, selling their woven religious creations outside the church gates.

Whatever the reason, creations these surely were. Back home, we usually fold our single palm leaves into a simple cross. But these people were artists, weaving dry plants into a sturdy cross that held a detailed Christ: bended knees, crown of thorns, even a veritable face of eyes, nose, and mouth woven right in.

Inside the church, things proceeded much as they do back home, excepting the usual differences in liturgy that, right or wrong, I find liturgically frustrating (less congregational participation, fewer songs, restricted communion, priest playing the role of Jesus during the readings).

And I continue to find the practice of reading the entire Passion story on Palm Sunday an unnecessary rush through the rest of Holy Week. Even back home we do this, though, so it's not a Catholic-Protestant issue - though I was surprised to find the Catholics doing it, too. Might we not spend just a bit more time pondering the procession of the palms?

Enough of my griping. One thing was impossible to argue with: Attendance was overwhelming. There are services every hour on the hour nearly all day on Sunday, and at each of them the massive cathedral-sized space fills up, people pouring in and out as the bells toll overhead. At the service we attended, the place was so full that people were gathered in the doorway - standing room only. Hosanna, indeed.

***

Around 9 at night I went out to get some milk. On my way back, I walked over the bridge, and looked over to see the carnival still going strong, its blinking neon lights looking eerie in the smoky-looking kicked-up dust of the riverbed. I continued on, and saw the cathedral-sized parish church lit up in the distance, its nightly spotlights making it visible for miles. I kept passing families on their way here and there, kids laughing and playing, fathers carrying little ones on their shoulders. Most of these kids wouldn't have school tomorrow - Semana Santa (Holy Week) is universal Spring Break in Mexico.

Then I passed La Luz, the church nearest our house. By the time I passed it it was nearly 10pm, but the place was still abuzz - tamale stands outside, woven-palm vendors, people milling about the church courtyard, and a standing-room only crowd inside, spilling out the doorways. I walked over to catch a glimpse of the sanctuary. Giant palm branches were mounted like green archways over the pews. The priest - decked out in blazing red vestments for the day - was just spreading his arms over the altar to bless the meal.

After I got home I couldn't resist dragging Chris down the hill to La Luz to see what I had seen. "Wow" was all she got out, and then was quiet for awhile. "There are these moments," she finally said, "Moments that seem to contradict everything else. You're struggling along, frustrated, annoyed, moody, just trying to through the day, and then all of a sudden you have one of these moments."

Moments we can't, it seems, create at will. In a recent interview, my favorite theologian was talking about making his band's most recent album. "It's a very strange feeling," Bono said. "We're waiting for God to walk into the room — and God, it turns out, is very unreliable." It's true. Much as you might have wished it, that moment of utter holiness just didn't happen at your morning Palm Sunday service. But then, when you were out for milk, God snuck up on you when you were least expecting it. And then there is nothing else to say but what we always say.

Gracias a Dios.

Río Seco... con un Carnaval

2009-04-03T16:11:00.000-07:00

By request, I wandered around the riverbed today and took some pictures.

This photo is taken from the main bridge. Here you can see, over on the left side of the frame, the small stream that still runs along one side of the riverbed. It's kind of marshy there, and in a few places there's a bridge that crosses over just that stream. People walk over the stream-bridge, then walk through the riverbed, which is covered with gravel now, and then back up some stairs on the other side. That little stream, though, only a few months from now will overflow to cover all that gravel and end up creating a full-grown river! This happens every year. Or so we're told.

Cross to one side of the riverbed and walk a little further on, and you can look back and see this view of the main bridge crossing over a river of gravel. A truck is parked there; the riverbed often becomes a makeshift parking lot, or even a campground - when we were here for the festival of Candelaria, pilgrims were camped out in the riverbed for the night, resting before the walk to San Juan de Los Lagos the next day.

Right now Lagos is being even more creative with their dry riverbed. Rather than a parking lot or campground, they've brought a travelling carnival in. Here you can see the stairs heading down into the riverbed - and the fun being had within. (We can see the lights and hear the music from our apartment - it's pretty cool.)

And it's a decent-sized carnival. They've even built a mini-coaster....but I'm not brave enough to ride it. (Even the lightweight Whizzer at Six Flags is too fast for me. Just leave me on the Lazy River attraction and I'll be fine...)

It's kind of weird to walk through the deserted carnival during the day. I half-expected a tumbleweed to come rolling through... but no. Just dust. Imagine though: This is all going to be full of water soon...

Walking past the carnival, with another shot to show the scale of the carnival-in-the-river...

And then one looking on down the riverbed beyond. You can see the stream continuing on - it apparently goes strong all year - but the rest of the river just looks like a giant gravel road. I hope we'll get to see it fill up before we leave...

Locales

2009-04-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

The morning was going just fine. I had finished my run, and was just getting ready to step into the shower. First, though, I had to check for the giant spider currently living in corner of the bathroom. We’ve decided we don’t mind him for now, because there are also mosquitoes in the bathroom, and we’re hoping he might take care of them for us. Still, as Chris put it: “If he tries dropping on our heads, he’s done.”

But this morning I couldn’t find the spider. I looked in his normal spot, then high and low, but nothing. Maybe he dropped on Chris’s head, and she had to take him out. I shrugged and reached in to turn on the water, and – WHOA!!! THERE HE IS RIGHT BY MY HAND!!!

So now the morning finds me writing, waiting for the spider to go somewhere else. Yes, I could just kill him, but then who would get rid of the mosquitoes?

+++

Last night Chris came home early (early being around 6pm) so that we could go out to watch the Mexico-Honduras World Cup qualifying match. We don’t have a TV, but even if we did it’s much more fun to watch it out with the gente, with the people.

Green jerseys were out in force all day, as they always are when the national team – known officially as La Seleccion (the Selection) or colloquially as El Tri (the “tricolor” of green, white, and red) – plays. I still wear my 2006 version of the Tricolor jersey, the one that Chris bought me when she was here during the summer of the last World Cup.

The player whose name adorns my ’06 jersey, Omar Bravo, has had a rough year. Last fall he left the Chivas to go play in Europe, but failed pretty miserably there, and probably because of a lack of playing time in Europe failed to get the call-up to the national team, too. But just last week he was called back to El Tri, and scored the first goal of a 2-0 victory over Costa Rica. It was a resurgence for both Bravo and the national team, their first victory in this round of qualifying matches.

So it was with hope for another step toward South Africa (site of the 2010 FIFA World Cup) that we headed out into the evening. We don’t know a wide range of restaurants yet, so we sheepishly went back to the same pizza place where we watched Saturday’s match. But we needn’t have been sheepish. Everyone was so friendly, and our water from a few days ago was very happy to see us again. He even wore his own 2006 jersey (Chris said he was jealous of the one I wore on Saturday). After a little while, an older man walked in whom everyone seemed to know. He shook the owner’s hand, and then the owner left and came back with coffee and the two of them sat down to watch the game, too. Just your average neighborhood hangout in a little Mexican town…

By halftime we were done with our pizza, so we decided to go our coffee shop to watch the second half. You might be wondering why we didn’t just go to a bar, to the local equivalent of Jimmy’s in Hyde Park. In Guadalajara that is probably what we would have done. When we lived there we had found a little wings place where we’ve watched the Chivas play away games a few times. But bars are kind of funny here in Lagos. They all seem to be very masculine – even more than those in the States – with not a woman to be seen. So Chris and I can’t go in together, and I’m surely not going to go hang out in the bar by myself, so… we end up going for coffee and dessert instead, which Chris likes better anyway.

In the coffee shop we again find that despite – or maybe because of – the fact that we go there nearly every day, everyone is happy to see us. The staff is crazy-friendly, and the owner starts chatting with us about soccer. He asks Chris if she plays, then comments that the States have the best women’s soccer in the world. A man walks in off the street, looks up at the screen and starts asking about the match in rapid-fire Spanish that’s too fast for me to understand. This is a favorite Mexican experience: Watching soccer and hearing rapid-fire foreign language all around. For some reason I just love it…

Unfortunately, we have to tell the man that the match is not going well. Honduras scored twice early on, and Mexico hadn’t had more than one decent shot on goal. In the second half, Honduras scores again. Mexico scores on a penalty kick and saves themselves the embarrassment of being completely shut out, but it’s still an ugly result: a 3-1 loss. Everyone thinks the coach is going to lose his job tomorrow, but nobody seems to think Mexico will fail to qualify for the World Cup. I’m not so sure. They’re playing pretty badly right now, and the victory on Saturday now looks more like a fluke than righting the ship. (I'm not the only one who's worried - check out this World Cup qualifying round-up from ESPN Soccernet below.)

Still, the man asking us about the match gets off three or four questions before asking us the inevitable question of where we are from. This makes Chris extremely happy. Anytime “Where are you from?” is the third or fourth question instead of the first question you know you’re just a little less of a foreigner. Heck, sitting here in our little coffee shop, going back-and-forth with people we see every day, we almost feel like locals.

On our way back home we pass the pizza place, and our friend in the green jersey is standing outside. “Perdimos!” he says – we lost! But he says it with a smile, and Chris responds with “Fue muy feo!” – it was very ugly! – but she’s smiling, too, and for the first time we feel like we’ve made some kind of connection with the people of this place where we now live. Oh sports, the great equalizer…

+++

Now there’s a large beetle running across the floor, so I’d better go take care of that. Look, I don’t want you to think our place is dirty and disgusting – I sweep and mop the floor every day, wash down the countertops, do the dishes…we keep the place pretty clean, it’s just that there are a lot more bugs in Mexico and maybe more of a sense that every last one of them doesn’t need to be exterminated. But I still can’t have them running across my floor. So if you’ll excuse me…