Arrived in Mexico for the wedding. Resort is decent, though not my style (by a long shot). Food is okay, but not great by any means so far. Company is stellar, though the crocodiles all over the nature reserve in which the resort is located kind of freak me out a bit…
God, guide us through this weekend powerfully through and with your love and your will – your will be done. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2022
Perusing the various social aspects of my phone as I get in my final required steps before I am allowed to go to bed for the night, I have noticed a sense of slight oddness…, but I have been unable to identify what is odd, nor really be sure that something is, indeed, odd… I’m just tired, and under the after-effects of a large margarita (from six hours ago, mind you) and lots of tamales and tacos to fill my belly and tire me out.
I had consciously decided to gorge on them in celebration of Cinco de Mayo – truly more of a Texas day of celebration of Mexican culture than a Mexican celebration of boosted morale in the midst of a takeover by France… – and to be delighted with the whole experience… and I have been – today has been great.
But, sitting here on my bed, there is something tickling at the back of my tired mind and body…
I wiggle and trench my shoulders a bit, and it suddenly hits me, as I declare happily, “That’s what’s weird! I don’t have a shirt on!”
As usual when I am really tired, I messed up the order of things in getting ready for bed, and forgot the one that involves putting on a shirt. 😂
So, I popped over to clothes, selected a soft t-shirt, and pulled it on happily.
Aaahhh… that feels good… satisfying.
At last, the oddness is gone, and I feel whole in my bedtime preparations. 😂
Silly, silly… 😂
Post-a-day 2020
One of the things I love about Houston is how I can just immerse myself in different cultures here.
Tonight, my mom and I attended a festival that was in celebration of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Naturally, we were immersed in the Spanish-speaking world, with a great emphasis on Mexican culture (and Mexican Spanish).
And it was wonderful.
People, for a good part of it all, did not behave using U.S. standards of behavior – southern hospitality, southern sweetness, and southern chivalry were on vacation, for sure.
A small fight even broke out between two guys, and people broke it up and gently shoved people back on their way through the festival, almost immediately forgetting about the altercation that had just occurred in front of them.
Items for sale couldn’t have been more stereotypical, and they were all genuine.
Performances were wonderful and traditional.
And the food was spectacular and native, as much as is possible out of country… I wasn’t even hungry, and I had to get some, because I knew how good certain things would be. (And I was right, too. But I just had a taste, and then saved the rest for tomorrow.)
And it was all a really good time, the two of us kind of being two of the very few gringas and gringos at the event – it was such a genuine piece of culture that we were the ones who were visiting, as opposed to the event visiting Houston… (I hope you get what I mean by all of this – it isn’t intended to be ignorant or rude or anything of the sort, but merely showing an appreciation for the drop of foreign culture that is utterly at home and at its ease here in Houston.)
It was great.
Post-a-day 2018
I said to myself yesterday that I needed a native-Spanish-speaking boyfriend, or else a native-Spanish-speaking friend, because I need Spanish in my life, and I need to use the language more than I currently do (hardly at all).
Tonight, at dinner, the waiter, who might also be the manager or owner or something, brought over to our table a handsome-looking young man, probably right around my own age, and explained that the guy knows very little English, and, if I would like, would be willing to work with me on improving my Spanish, if I would help him learn English. And no, I hadn’t told him about yesterday’s declaration.
Isn’t life awesome? 😀
To give a little context, – the waiter was not being crazy or anything, with his suggestion that the helper and I work on language together – I had asked the waiter, after interacting with him a few times in English, if he would speak to us in Spanish from now on. My mom had studied Spanish in high school, and then briefly in college, and has had plenty of interactions with Spanish in the years since then. I spent a summer in Spain while in high school, and had just used Spanish all over for a couple years after that. So, while it could be difficult at times, I figured we could handle it.
The waiter was delighted at the request, and instantly spewed out fast Spanish. My mom told him almost immediately (in Spanish), “But you have to speak more slowly, because I am a gringa.” (It’s essentially a term for foreigners.) We all laughed, and he acquiesced.
As the meal went on, the waiter would pause and chat with us here and there. He moved here from Mexico when he was 17 or 19 (I forget which), and don’t even know how to say ‘please’ in English. To help himself learn English, he watched the American movies, and had on the English subtitles, and action I fully approve and support, and which I have done plenty myself. He also spoke of how strong the Spanish-speaking community is in Houston, and that I need only get involved, and they will turn me into a Latina. He learned that we are not studying Spanish; that I speak Spanish, but just never use it; that I just lived back from Japan; and that I just have no friends here who speak Spanish. So it made sense that he brought over the guy later. And it wasn’t weird.
When we left, a while later, I gave the young guy my number on a napkin.
Post-a-day 2017
In college, I spent a summer studying in Germany. It was a language school setup, filled with foreigners, but in such a small town that everyone knew that we were studying German, and so everyone always spoke to us all in German. I had already studied abroad a few times before this adventure, and I had learned firsthand about what works and what doesn’t work, in terms of language immersion. I was dedicated to learning German, and so I made sure that I only spoke in German with others, even if they spoke to me in English. This made friendships hard among the people in my program’s group, since they all used English together; I came across a bit snobby, but I was just really committed to learning German.
I made friends with other foreigners rather easily, though, and especially ones in higher levels of German, which was even better for me. My German was improving immensely. But this led to a unique situation one day.
One day, near the end of either my time at the school or my friend Paul’s time there (he’s British), I found myself faced with a desperate Paul, actually begging me to speak English. Why?! was my repeated question to his pleas.
“Because I want to hear what you sound like!”
I don’t know if he was pleased or not by how I sound in English, but I spoke a little for him. And it was way weird, using English with him, despite the fact that I’d heard him speak English loads, and that it’s our common native language. I had just never used it with him.
And then this brought up a unique and interesting sentiment. He wanted to hear me, and that meant speaking English. I can guess that my native tongue was the one in which Paul believed my identity to lie. I know that it felt like I was setting aside a sort of mask when I switched to English with him. I even felt a little called-out… as though I had been hiding somehow, and it had been behind German. The real me (I) lay in English, in the English part of me.
Yet, years later, here I am, missing the parts of me that belong to these different languages in which I have lived. A part of me, true me (I), exists only on German, and others in French, in Spanish, and in Japanese. So much so that the real me (I) is this whole combination of languages – I feel a huge emptiness and feel not myself when I am using only English in my daily life. I listen to Spanish-speaking radio when I’m in Houston, mostly because I don’t get to use Spanish often enough. I read every night in French, and trade off an English book for a German one at times for my evening reading, too. I regularly pull out a Spanish book to read, or my German audiobooks. And I have noticed that I have been searching for a tolerably satisfying way to have Japanese in my near-daily life, too. (For now, it has just been the occasional music, and a perpetual repeat of a certain song being stuck in my head.) When I don’t have them all, it is as though a part of me is missing, and suddenly getting to speak with someone in them, almost reminds me of that mask I was setting aside in Germany with Paul… like I am again setting aside some mask I have been wearing.
Perhaps it is now a mask of monolingualism, pretending that I only speak English, while I long for the world to talk to me in several languages, all the time.
Anyway… I’m exhausted. And I miss Paul. He was studying opera, and was a really great guy. I wonder if he’s been really successful with opera these past several years. Maybe I can go see him perform one day. That would be awesome. 🙂
Post-a-day 2017
hannah ananas 