I’ll figure it out, give me time.

Chiapa de Corzo is a town of about 45,000 in the Southernmost state of Mexico, smack between San Cristobal de las Casas, the Chiapan capital established by the Spanish conquistadors, and Tuxtla Gutierrez, which functions as the capital today. Before the arrival of the Spanish, it was home to the Mayan people, who left some cool ruins and many descendants. Before the Mayans were some other peoples; it’s believed that Chiapas de Corzo has been inhabited since around 1400 BC. As a result, Chiapas is the Mexican state with the fewest native Spanish speakers; there are about eight Mayan languages still spoken here. As of the mid 90’s, it was also the least developed state in Mexico, but I haven’t been able to find any more recent data, so I’m not sure if that’s still true; for what its worth, my phone has five bars and LTE right now. It is also home to the world’s only lacquer museum. 

I am surrounded by what are either very large hills or fairly small mountains and rainforest vegetation. I can see a huge river from my backyard (the Grijalva) which I was told contains crocodiles. I can hear a number of exotic birds, occasionally interrupted by the deafening bang of late-afternoon fireworks (I know what you’re thinking and my mind went to gunshots first too, but after like the sixth one, I was able to spot the smoke trail). The weather forecast for this week has every day in the upper 80’s with at least a 50% chance of thunderstorms. For the next six months or so, this is home. 

It’s 5am and I’ve just boarded a plane to Dallas. I’ve been at O’hare airport since arong 11:30pm, but the bag-check people didn’t arrive until 2:30am so I was stuck waiting by the entrance. No sleep tonight. In about three hours, I’ll take a second plane from Dallas to Mexico City, where I’ll have a four-hour layover, before boarding a third plane to Tuxtla Gutierrez followed by a thirty-minute drive to Chiapa de Corzo, where I’ll be teaching English and studying Spanish for the next six months. It’s a long day ahead. 

***

I made it through Dallas just fine (though I did have to start running when they called my name on the loudspeaker) but the Mexico City airport (where I have a four-hour layover) is a different beast. You know how most airports are laid out so that as long as you walk straight and follow all the signs, you’ll pass through all the necessary check-in points, even if you can barely read? Someone in Mexico City said “fuck that shit, make it open-concept so they gotta walk all back-and-forth through the same area like fourteen times asking for directions and accumulating paperwork” and everyone around them agreed. It took about two and a half hours to get from my arrival gate to the gate of the next departure. Along the way, I tried a gross free candy (I think it was gummy dulce de leche) and went to a pizza restaurant and ordered a pizza, only to find out that the one word on the menu I hadn’t recognized (hongos) meant mushrooms (sad). At least I learned a word, I guess. 

***

I’m in my new bedroom at the house of my new host family. It’s a pretty large building, with at least four residents, two dogs, and a beautiful view of the Grijalva river. None of the host family speak English, and my Spanish is pretty rusty, but I know where the kitchen and the bathroom are, so we’ve got the essentials down. They all wear shoes throughout the house, which felt viscerally wrong, but it’s not my house so so be it. My host mother’s name is Marina, and the host father’s name is something like Carlos but with an extra syllable or two. I was brought here by Gina (my contact at the school where I’ll be working) and her boyfriend (whose name also escapes me, but I recall it sounded kinda similar to a woman’s name [I gotta get better at names…]) who picked me up at the airport. After dropping my stuff off, the three of us went to the school, where I met one woman and three cats (apparently only two of the cats were supposed to be there and the third was just some vagrant who had shown up earlier that week, but they were all pretty chill). Upon returning, I went to my room to type out this update, and I’m about to fall asleep. 

***

Some questions you might have:

Q: Does the school have a name?

A: Yes.

Q: What is the school’s name?

A: The Delmas Institute

Q: Can you speak Spanish?

A: Sort of. I studied it for seven years, but stopped after my freshman year of college because it was too hard to study Arabic and Spanish at once. I still get the words from the two languages mixed up in my head when speaking. Hopefully it will come back soon though. I’ll be receiving lessons as well. I think they start tomorrow; I still have to talk with Gina about that.

Q: Have you had any tasty Mexican food yet?

A: Nope, just airport pizza.

Q: It’s been three years since your last blog post. What have you been doing? And why did you choose to go to Chiapas?

A: That’s a longish one and I’m trying to go to bed, so I’ll answer it later.

Q: How are you already covered in bug bites if you haven’t even seen a bug yet?

A: Ghost bugs maybe? I wish I knew.

I typed out a few extra words here just to get the count up to an even 1000. Disregard.

I had to turn my computer on for a listening exercise, so yall get an update. Last Thursday, as I was getting ready to go to bed, my host parents came bursting through the bedroom door, singing Happy Birthday and holding what I’m pretty sure was a rescue flare. They sang the song in English, then French, then Arabic, all while wielding a foot-tall flame inside a tiny room filled entirely with scattered papers and clothing. I’m amazed nothing burnt down. It was wonderful, and a very heartwarming surprise. There was also cake and a small gift.

I spent last weekend in Rabat, the capital of Morocco. Upon arriving, I took a taxi to my hotel and found out that some dumbass had booked it for the wrong week, and the hotel wasn’t even open, and so began about 2 hours of scrambling to find a new hotel, and after everything was said and done, I have to say that Rabat is the friendliest city I’ve ever been in. A shopkeeper came down from behind his counter to give me directions to the nearest internet cafe, where the manager sat down with me to chat while I drank my coffee, after which I booked my hotel, and since my taxi driver couldn’t find where it was, he stopped the car and got out to ask people on the street. Once I got to the old city, where cars are prohibited, I asked one man for directions, and he ended up walking me all the way there, stopping to ask others for directions a few times. And then, when I arrived, the hotel keeper made me tea, and when I slept through checkout the next day (as you can imagine, I was a bit drained) he insisted on making me my free breakfast, even though it was already 1:30 in the afternoon. I was kind of a mess this weekend, but everyone else was wonderful. I ended up heading home a day earlier than I had planned, so I didn’t get to see the zoo, but I did get to the Rabat Art Museum, which is a great place to spend a couple hours if you’re in the area. The bottom floor explores the various artistic movements in the Mediterranean during the 20th century, and the top floor was full of works from contemporary Moroccan artists. Normally, the African section of an art museum is just a couple of masks someone stole, so it was really cool to see some of the more contemporary trends from this part of the world.

Now I’m back at ALIF for the last week of class, which means either two or three exams this week (and believe me, the fact that I’m not sure how many there are does not instill confidence). It’s weird to think that this time is already coming to a close.

19% Battery Remaining.

Update: The hotel has yet to get back to me and I’ve decided not to replace my charger. The laptop is currently at 28%, with seven days of class left. Nonetheless, I will continue to update this blog until the death of this machine, because I care about you all more than I do the possibility of another one of assignments where you listen to someone talk for three minutes and write down everything they say. I fucking hate those.

I’ve gone on a lot of taxi rides over the past nine weeks and not infrequently, when you mention to a Moroccan driver that you are from America, they will respond by listing a bunch of famous Americans that they know. It’s equal parts endearing and uncomfortable. I’ve probably heard ten different drivers (or vendors) do this, but first four names (and their order) are exactly the same, 100% percent of the time. They are: Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson. I don’t really know what to do with this information, other than suggest that maybe we let the Moroccans update Mount Rushmore.

And we’re down to 27%

Dammit guys I said don’t break the country while I’m gone.

I spent last weekend in Tangier, so now it’s time to reflect. Of all the cities I’ve visited, Tangier is easily among the most beautiful (from many rooftops, you can see Spain across the Mediterranean), and certainly has lots to do (I never actually got to the one place I had planned on going because there was so much to see in the old city), that said, Tangier is an incredibly tourist-y city, which meant near constant hassling by locals, the thing I hate most about traveling in Morocco. The night I arrived, the man who led me to the hotel proceeded to show me to a restaurant where I ate a decent meal, then found out that meal cost $30, after which my waiter to me to his uncles’ shops, where I had to spend half an hour convincing two different men that my mother didn’t need a new carpet. Saturday wasn’t quite as bad, but was similar, and Sunday I came back on the bus and pretty much slept all day.

Upon returning, I discovered that I had left my laptop charger in the hotel room, which is great. I’ve sent a Facebook message to the hotel ( I can’t find an email or phone number; they don’t even have a website) with hopes they can mail it to Fes, but I’m not optimistic. I think I can get a replacement at the mall here, but it will be for European sockets, meaning I’d have to another new cord when I returned to the US. If I don’t post in the next couple of days, it’s probably because the hotel got back to me and I blew my battery watching Star Trek (TNG), so I have to wait on the Moroccan mail system. Otherwise, who knows what I’ll do. It might just be best to wait out the remaining two weeks sans laptop rather than s[ending another $20 on a laptop charger I’ll only ever use for two weeks.

Yesterday I kind of made fun of the Arabic language, but today I learned there’s also a word for “when two people feel a reciprocal understanding of each other’s situation in life”, and that’s actually kind of beautiful.

Also, I’m in Tangier for the weekend. It’s a six-hour train ride back to Fes on Sunday, so I’ll write up a longer report then.

You can tell a lot about a region’s way of life based on the little, ultra-specific words that appear in their language. Today I learned that Arabic has word for “a place that has a lot of lions”, and I’m very thankful that English doesn’t.

Chefchauen, the blue city, is a city in the Rif Mountains, which is famous for two reasons, one of which is that pretty-much every building in the city is painted blue. Aside from a short hike on the mountains, I spent most of my time wandering around the old city and eating food. I don’t know how you make crispy lemon fried chicken in a tajine, but is was some of the best food I’ve ever had. Also, it turned out that my hotel was so cheap I accidentally booked three nights instead of two without noticing, meaning it was $8 a night, not $12. There was one shower and one bathroom (a squatter at that) for the whole hotel, with no soap. You get what you pay for I guess.

The weekend in Chefchauen was a well-needed break from a week of exams, (I slept 13 hours the first night) but on arrival back for the additional three-week session (with all new teachers and exams!) I’m starting to feel stagnated. My days have become too routine and I’m starting to feel kind of bored, which is the last thing I should be feeling during a study-abroad trip, which then makes me feel guilty, which only makes things worse. I need to figure out a new project or some things to do. I miss being able to run outside, and my guitar, and my friends.

Finally, this morning I ran out of bottled water, and breakfast was just bread as usual, and my mouth was like sand, so I drank just a bit of the water from jar my host family drinks out of, thinking I’ve been here for a month and a half, and half a glass couldn’t hurt, but I think it did because I have diarrhea now.