When Saturday comes

Today is Saturday and I have finally finished a long week’s work. I woke up at 5.45am Monday to Friday but then had a lie in today – I got up at 6.30am. I finished work at 9pm Monday to Friday although I did have about a 6-hour break every morning/afternoon, when I would snooze, watch US Open tennis or cricket and prepare for afternoon classes.

I was waking up so early in order to get a bus to the industrial area of Querétaro, about a 40-minute ride away, to teach one of two classes of business professionals in their offices. This was a new contract agreed by my school and I stepped in to fill the gap at short notice – it will not be a permanent arrangement, and I at least made sure I will be well paid for it. This morning was my last class there. Next week, I will wake up early on Monday to escort the new teacher out to the industrial area for her class, and then I will sleep in every day until Saturday, not starting classes at the school until 4pm. Nice.

Each morning, leaving the house in the dark of night and eating a solitary banana (no breakfast till after class for me) I would feel tired, but not apprehensive, even though in most cases I had not yet prepared any activities to fill my hour-an-a-half slot in front of 5-8 professionals. I enjoy the classes, and as tired as I feel on the bus, I am never sleepy once I’m standing in front of the class. I suppose it is a little bit like going on stage.

It’s early days as yet but I am enjoying teaching. I still have a lot to learn, especially in my grammar teaching techniques. Sometimes I feel I pitch my classes to the wrong levels (like too basic for the advanced students, or too advanced for the basics), and I think I love the sound of my own voice a bit too much in the classroom (the idea with “communicative” teaching of English is to minimise TTT – “Teacher Talking Time”) but I rate myself as an OK teacher, who at least makes things fun. Eventually I hope to be a good teacher who makes things fun.

But now I finally have some free time. I realised last week that I had been in Mexico for four days before I had my first beer. The previous time I was in Mexico –October 2008- I was in the country about 20 minutes before having a beer. Last Saturday, though, I did make up for my prior temperance at a party organised by one of the students at the school for one of the teachers. It was a great house party and I didn’t get home till 5.30.

As for this Saturday, this afternoon I’m joining Jason, sort of my boss from the school, in going to a football match. The local team have just been promoted to the top division this season and they are the “West Bromwich Albion” of Mexico, so to speak – weekly whipping boys for the top teams. I doubt they will have much to cheer today against the usually-strong Monterrey.

After the football match we are going to a bar with some of the other teachers to watch... a football match. Mexico against Costa Rica is a critical clash in the World Cup Qualifying, as Mexico began their campaign disastrously under Sven Goran Erikkson’s command. Sven is now gone, having earned $4M in about a year, but the damage remains as Mexico are still out of the automatic qualifying spots in the CONCACAF region. If results go against Mexico in the next few weeks, watch out for Honduras in the role of “West Bromwich Albion” in South Africa, 2010.

So tonight will be my first trip to a bar this time in Mexico, about two weeks to the hour since I arrived. The previous time I was here, it took me, once again, 20 minutes to get inside a bar....

But I’m liking my lifestyle here so far. I have even had a flashback to my long train rides to and from Amersham a year and a bit ago – this week I have been tearing into Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter every morning on my bus ride home. It has made me laugh (almost out loud) consistently and though the ending provided much less drama than I had hoped, it has galvanised me to read another of MVL’s in Spanish. I finished it today sipping a latte in Starbucks. The grande skinny latte was a rare treat and provided a sensation that might be familiar to loyal readers of James’s America - that of finding a little bit of home in a good old American multinational franchise. Don't knock it.

Picture diary

A little flavour of Queretaro:

1. Outside my fancy hotel, Sunday morning

2 & 3: The road the school is on - one of the busiest in Qro, and not one of the prettiest.

4. The name of my street. Can anyone pronounce it?

5. The street itself. Weather has been gorgeous all week. Hot and sunny but not ridiculous.

6. The front of the house. In my experience of L America, big fences out front = nice neighbourhood. This is no exception. Every time I pass someone on the street they say hello. (And one day I will find out definitively why it is they paint the bottom of the trees white...)

7. The little patio/courtyard inside the house.

8. Mike's very good-natured dog, Roddy.

9 & 10 ...not as cute as little Henry in London, is he?

Look! He's got a "Learner" plate and everything! Now THAT is comedy for you.

Chapter two begins

I am back on the western side of the Atlantic, teaching English to Mexicans in Queretaro, a city just to the north of Mexico City. That means it's time to ressurect James's America from the abyss of laziness that had laid to waste all my plans for more "reflection and analysis" of my previous trip from New York to Buenos Aires.

ALready, I feel I have a lot to cover from this, the first week of my fourth trip to Mexico, and so I will begin with that rarity for this blog: a succinct account of what I have been up to with as few half-cocked observations about Mexico as possible. Here goes:

My first flight left London at 9.05am last Saturday morning. I slept most of the way to Frankfurt, where I had a three-hour lay over. I had a coffee and some Bratwurst in an airport cafe to tide me over. It was fun ordering in German (this was the first time I had been In Germany since studying in Hamburg in 2006) but then the polyglot waiter decided to address me in Spanish when it came to settling the bill etc. I have no idea why, but he was a nice guy, and he cracked the same joke I had heard him use in French with the table to my right. I didn't leave him any tip - I was in Germany, after all.

The flight to Mexico was uneventful. I had an empty seat to my right. Good. I slept half of the 11-odd hours. Good. The in-flight movies were awful. Awful. If you ever have the chance to watch Bride Wars with Kate Hudson and A. Hathaway, maybe you should take the time to gouge your eyes out and cut your ears off first, so you will be less offended by the content of the movie. Zac Efron's vehicle 17 Again was perhaps marginally better.

I arrived on time, completed my swine flu declaration form. No sore throat, headache, fever etc. No problem. Got 180 days on my tourist visa. (The maximum available). Got a green light when I pushed the button at customs.

My plan was to get straight on a bus to Queretaro where I would meet Jason, the academic director of Bridge Institute, my school here, and Jason would take me to my appartment. In the event, I couldn't get through to J, but got the on the bus anyway. As an experinced backpacker in Latin America, I had researched a cheap hotel in Qro as a fallback option just in case.

I fell asleep almost immediately I boarded the bus to Qro (it left probably 2.5 hrs after my flight landed) and woke up three hours later in my new home town. I was so tired I had decided to go straight to find this hotel and go to bed, rather than trying Jason again. As it turned out, Allen, the head of the school, was in fact waiting for me at the bus station, based on the info I had left on Jason's voicemail, but we missed each other, and poor Allen ended up hanging around till 1am waiting for me...

Anyway, I got in a taxi and headed for the centre of town. I eventually located my US$25-a-night hotel but it was comepletely shut up by this time (about 12.30) and I was exhausted. I walked a block and found another hotel, which quoted me a price of US$110 for a room. I got a discount to about $80 and wasn't prepared to walk any further to find an alternative, so asked to be shown to my $80 room.

As an experienced backpacker in Latin America, I had NEVER stayed in a place like this. From the colonial courtyard I was shown into first the living room of my suite, then the upstairs dressing room and then, up ANOTHER flight of stairs, was my king sized bed, cable TV and bathroom. The guy's question: "You like it?" seemed ridiculous.

I showered and slept like a baby. In the morning I went for a brief stroll round the old town of Qro, checked the cricket score in the Ashes, and had breakfast. Returning to my hotel room, I realised I could get WiFi in my room (of course) and listened to the final overs of the Oval Test. I was in Mexico as England regained the Ashes, just as I had been in 2005. I wonder where I'll be next time...

I called Jason and he came to pick me up straight away. Mike, my new housemate, drove the car. Mike is about 50 years old from Iowa. He has lived and taught in Qro for three years, initially with his wife, before they separated and she returned to the States. Mike is a very good cook and we have got along well so far, discussing largely English teaching, Obama and Mexico.

Jason ran me through my rough schedule for this week at Bridge. I would be substituting for one of the regular teachers who was away on honeymoon. That meant 7am starts Monday to Thursday - plus 9pm finishes pretty much all week. Straight into the fire - and probvably the best way to go.

Monday morning, I walked the 2o minutes into work in the dark, and sat awaiting my first students. I awaited and awaited some more until I decided they definitely weren't coming, and went to check my email and cricinfo instead - an excellent start to my teaching career.

I did take a class later in the morning - a converstaion class with two youngish advanced students. Both loved football and I invited them to discuss Real Madrid, while attempting to go over some debating vocab: "I see your point that Kaka is an excellent player, but I would say that he is unnecessary to the team..."

I sat in on another, elementary class given by Jason, and then had a few hours' break before returning to the school at 4pm to teach Denisse, a girl of about 10 years of age. This was somewhat harder, but we got on OK.

Still on Monday, my next assignment was to cover a "company-class". This meant a 45-minute ride with a few other teachers (Horacio from Mexico, Jenny, Morgan and Megan from the US) out the Colgate-Palmolive industrial plant outside of Qro (in fact, it is in another state - Guanajuato). Another conversation class - this time more business oriented, and with two students at least five times the age of Denisse, and then I headed back to the school. Walking home at 8.30pm, I reflected that this was the first time in probably 6 years that I had gone to work before light and returned after dark.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were similarly busy. A company class from 7-8.30am meant getting up at about 5.45 each day. This class was roughly the same group of 30-40-year-old professinals each day. The level was elementary and in fact we had a lot of fun (especially Tue and Wed - we were all pretty tired come Thurs).

Each day I had about two more classes in school, and Weds and Thurs I was back out at Colgate - on Weds to debate the Lockerbie bomber with one of the guys from Monday's class, and on Thurs for an hour-long chat about all things Peruvian and Latin American with the Lima-born head of HR for the company.

In between these compant-classes, I have had another class with young Denisse (better than the first), sat in on advanced classes and taught grammar and vocab to two high-school teachers.

Today, Friday, I don't start till 4pm, mercifully. I've woken up at about 8.30am, sat and had a cup of PG tips (left by a previous lodger at Mike's) and a bowl of Cheerios, read a little Vargas Llosa in the little courtyard-patio of the house (pics to follow) and now written this lengthy post.

I've taught probably about 15 hours' classes and I'm looking forward to a few more this eve. So far I am loving the new challenge. And for those who are interested, by the end of this week I will have earned.............. about $100.

Eso es la vida mexicana.

Highlights

On my way back from Buenos Aires I thought it would be a really good idea to paint a few verbal portraits of the most memorable places/times I had found myself in over the previous few months. This was mainly just to help me remember them as I'm sure no one is reading this blog any more (although, it is also obviously to emphasise what a great time I was having and all the fascinating experiences I had - which is kind of the whole point of a travel blog anyway.)

A few months later than planned, I feel like taking a break from writing about cricket to begin this list.... (in reverse chronological order, let's say.)

Buenos Aires Tango parties

Three nights that stick in my head were the nights I spent with Nira and her friends Roberto, Jan and others in a few milongas. Having learnt a bit of salsa in the past, I imagined that I would turn up, watch the Argies dance a bit, get an idea of the steps and then have a go. How wrong I was.

The first party I went to was on my second night in BA, at Salon Canning. This was an old-school tango hall, named after the original title of the street it stood on, which was, in turn, named after the British Foreign Minister of the early nineteenth century who first recognised Argentina's independence. Apparently, BA was once full of English-named streets, squares, statues etc, but they were virtually all renamed after the Falklands War. Canning was about the only guy to survive with some honour intact. (I realised last week that his statue stands in Parliament Square in London, behind Churchill and next to Lincoln, so he must have been a big cheese).

Anyway, Salon Canning was the most traditional of the milongas I would go to. There was one large, well lit room, with a square, wooden dance floor in the centre and tables around the outside. In Salon Canning, the traditional tango rules of engagement were observed. This means that a man cannot simply ask a woman to dance. Couples make eye contact with one another accross the room and then a nod or a wink will lead to a meeting on the dancefloor. The worst thing you could then do is talk to your partner. You must remain in silence until the end of a song, at which point everyone stops and introduces themselves or has a chat. Then another song will start and the couples will shuffle round in the hypnotic motions of salon tango. After about six or seven songs, the music stops for ten minutes or so and the dancefloor empties. If you invite the same girl to dance after that, you are basically asking to sleep with her.

Tango dancing is clearly a very sensual experience. Women tend to lean in towards the men, usually with their eyes closed, and dance very closely. Serious tangueros do not laugh or make jokes whilst dancing. But it is not just about getting off with each other. I noticed on my first night a pattern that was borne out through the other milongas I attended: I had never seen so many beautiful women dancing with so many bald or fat or old or ugly (or all four) men in all my life. Rather than dancing with the most handsome guys, all the women would go for the best dancers.

Halfway through the night, the band stopped playing (it was mostly recorded music, but a band did play for about 1/3 of the night). An MC came out, thanked everyone for attending and announced the next event at the Salon. He then invited two professional tangueros to come out and give a show for those watching. Out stepped an immaculately dressed man in his sixties and a woman of indeterminate age who probably had the same plastic surgeon as Annakin Skywalker. They danced a song or two and I was mesmerized.

(Below is a video of one such demonstration at Salon Canning. Of course, this isn't the night I was there, but it gives you an idea. This particular couple show what a subtle, un-flamboyant dance tango should really be.)


A couple of days later, I went with Nira to a tango class and learnt a few basic steps. Nira and Roberto teased me for my mirada del tanguero : the look somewhere between concentration and seduction that I kept on throughout my lesson. Later that night (probably about 1am - you never turn up to any place in BA until at least an hour or so past midnight) we went along to another milonga. More modern than Canning, this place was larger, darker and with an average age about five years lower. The style of dance was tango moderno: a showier, more variable form of the dance. It was Roberto's last night in BA and he danced with Nira whilst i photographed them several times from the side of the dancefloor.

Once again, halfway through the night an MC invited one of BA's star dancers onto the floor, and this time I could barely stop myself from laughing a short, morbidly obese guy in a black suit stepped out onto the floor with a stunning, twenty something Argentine on his arm. I actually asked myself for a moment if he had a cushion under his jacket, so absurd was his body shape. But then he started dancing. Not only was he amazing, but his particular style was to make a lot of very quick, very intricate steps. Cristiano Ronaldo, at least 5 inches taller and 50 pounds lighter, could not have matched this guy: it was remarkable.

As I watched him dance to two songs, I became conscious of how dreamlike this setting was for me. I was so far away from any of my previous experiences and from my own culture and completely captivated by this new art form I was discovering. I understood a shred of the reasons why the people i had met there from ths USA, Turkey, Germany or Italy, went to such lengths to come to Buenos Aires and dance tango. It was a world within a world that Nira had drawn me into.

(This photo actually is the fat man dancing that night)


After another hour or so of my usual routine of sipping a beer, chatting on the sidelines and enjoying the dancing and music around me, i decided, after my one lesson, that I would have to take the plunge and try it myself. Nira was pleasantly surpirsed as I invited her onto the floor and then fumbled around, moving with the most basic steps and doing my best not to bump into anyone. Nira had been dancing constantly for a few months at that point, and was no slouch on the floor herself. But, as in all Latin American dance, a couple is only as good as the man who leads. So we struggled round and i achieved my objective: by concentrating hard enough I didn't bump into anyone, didn't knock Nira over, and didn't look a total idiot for two songs. I must say that it didn't help when I looked to my right at one point and saw the chubby chavo who had given the demonstration earlier. After one lesson, I was dancing next to one of the world's greats. I was the caveman rubbing two sticks together, whilst some bloke walks past with a Zippo.

Soon afterwards we moved on to another, ultra late night after party, where I met my instructor from earlier in the day and some friends of his. The place was like a disused theatre with bizarre statues hanging off the walls and an empty dancefloor. Every so often, one of these professionals in our group would pick a partner and dance a song or two on the empty dancefloor. needless to say, after my achievment earlier in the night, I was happy to stick and not twist. N, R and I stopped for coffee and croisants at 8am on our way home and another BA night ended.

The next milonga I went to was on my last night out in BA: on Friday 13 February, my birthday. We had tried, unsuccessfully, to locate a viable kareoke bar in St Elmo, BA's trediest district, and ended up going instead, to the free milonga at the Armenian cultural centre (yeah, i don't know why Armenian either...) I chatted to Jaime from Harvard and Jan and Nira and eventually danced the far easier steps of some merengue as the lights went up at the end of the night. Obviously, the hours watching dancing ahd rubbed off as i suprised myself with a few inventive steps which actually came off.

It was a magnificent end to my trip and - simoultaneously - to my "early twenties" as I danced mernegue at dawn with a wonderful Nepalese girl in Buenos Aires, Argentina. One which I shall never forget - especially now I have committed it to cyberspace. More to come...

A bitter-sweet adiós

It's 12.19pm in Buenos Aires and I'm sitting in the most expensive internet cafe of my entire trip, getting rid of my last pesos before my flight to Heathrow (via Sao Paolo - a second hop into Brazil for me).

Buenos Aires has been an ideal end to my trip. (So ideal that I have been unable to write a blog post for over two weeks.) Highlights have included:

-a taste of the bizarre world-within-a-world of Buenos Aires tango halls

-taking a tango class myself and braving the austere atmosphere of a real milonga porteña (Buenos Aires tango party) to actually dance tango after that one lesson. (I was awful, and will stick to the salsa and merengue in future but most men learn for months without actually dancing in public, I'm told)

-watching two Boca Juniors matches: one in Boca's home stadium, the curiously shaped Bombonera ("the chocolate box"), and one in Jujuy, a city 21 hours' bus ride to the north of BA. My host Nira and I, therefore, completed a 42-hour round trip to watch the match - a feat almost unherad-of in European soccer these days

-never going to bed before 4am. BA is without a doubt the most nocturnal city I have come accross. No local eats dinner before 10pm (and more normally 11pm) and clubs, bars etc really don't get busy before midnight in the week, 2am on weekends

-and a chance to spend time with a dear, intercontinental friend.


Now I have a casual 14 hour flight to reflect on what has been an incredible 5 months. From sophisticated Buenos Aires bar life to ruddy northern Mexican pool halls, Colombian jungle to Andean mountains and deserts, and from civilised Seattle an Sacramento to, well, Colombia, Bolivia or most of South America this trip has encompassed so much and I am sad to end it. I am leaving South America with a longer list of places to visit than I had when I arrived.

But of course I am very pleased to be coming home. There are so many people I'm looking forward to seeing again, and so many things I have missed. (In a way, winter is one of those things...) Now I just have to figure out what exactly to do with the next few years of my life.

So I'm signing off for this journey - but not quite this blog. Stay tuned to James's America for more post-trip analysis and comment.

6,000 down, 1,000 to go (roughly)

It's a very quiet Sunday in Bolivia. Today the country goes to the polls to vote (mostly "yes") in a referendum to change the constitution. It is such an important vote that it makes the international front page of bbc.co.uk. (Of course, not that we Lateen Americans care what Europeans think... but really, amigo, ¿ees on the front page?!)

It is also such an important vote that just about everything is closed today in Santa Cruz, including most restaurants and all but this internet café, it seems. Apparently, this is part of Bolivian electoral law, along with a bizzarre rule which bans campaigning in the two days before the vote. So all this week I've seen demonstration after demonstration - mostly "no" voters as I happen to have been in the affluent part of Bolivia - but then Friday and Saturday were weirdly quiet.

Anyway, my achievement on this quiet day, when I couldn't even find a place showing Liverpool v Everton (imagine!) is this: a map I've been meaning to draw for a while with my route so far and the last bit I plan to do this week...

The heat is on

Today I arrived in Santa Cruz, after a two day mission from Sucre, the capital of Bolivia (if you believe the Bolivian constitution.)

The reason it took so long from Sucre was that I arrived in the bus station there too late on Thursday evening to get on a bus straight to Santa Cruz, so made the decision to board a different overnight bus and spend a day in Cochabamba instead. (Like going from Amsterdam to Berlin via Frankfurt).

In the end, I had a lovely day wandering around Cochabamba, where the weather provided me with the proverbial four seasons in one day. Cold and wet in the morning, the sun came out by lunchtime, it stayed warm enough to cause a thunderstorm in the afternoon, after which it settled into a grey, chilly evening. Then I got on a second consecutive overnight bus to Santa Cruz, and arrived here this morning.

Last night was, I think, the 13th night I've spent on a bus in this trip and Monday night will be the 14th. Two whole weeks. Monday's bus will take me to Asunción, Paraguay, arriving (depending on whether I believe the bus company or the Lonely Planet) sometime either on Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm actually looking forward to it after forking out 200 bolivianos for an "ethnohistory" book on North America to read.

Travelling on buses has been such a staple of this trip that I have got pretty good at it. I can sleep (hence the fact that i was actually able to enjoy a long day in Cochabamba on Thursday after a night on the bus) but I think the crucial discovery I have made is to put myself in a trance-like state where I slow everything about myself down.

Say I get on a bus at 3pm. I settle down. 10 mins. I think about reading my book. 15 minutes later I actually reach into my bag and get my book out. I read for a while. I start to feel thirsty. 10 minutes later I get my water bottle out. I read an interesting paragraph. I take 20 minutes to think about it. It's 4.30pm and an hour and a half has gone by and in my mind the journey has barely begun.

Of course, you have to be prepared to take delays in your stride as well. Almost every vehicle I have used in Bolivia seems to have broken down at some point. Most dramatically, the bus from Uyuni to Sucre last week actually went off the road at one point, causing an hour's delay in which most of us male passengers had to push the bus out of the mud beside the road...

Anyway, so I am looking forward to Monday/Tuesday's journey through the Chaco - the territory annexed from Bolivia by Paraguay amd supposedly one of the continent great bus journeys - but the point of this post was meant to be Santa Cruz, the city where I am now.

These are the last days for God knows how long that I will spend within the tropics. And boy does it feel like it. Santa Cruz is sweltering. This is in fact, the first heat I have felt for weeks since leaving Lima, Peru with Claire. And before Lima, I would have to go all the way back to Cartagena, Colombia, for my last bit of real, tropical heat (ie before that one post I wrote about how nice it was to be cold. No pleasing some people, I know.)

This heat is, to me, the Latin American stereotype, and I'm glad to be back in it. In fact, Santa Cruz is a very stereotypically Latin American city. Flat, hot, filled with traffic and car horns, various smart-ish restaurants and comercial buildings outnumbered by run-down shacks and food stalls, friendly people but with a slightly rough-round-the-edges feel. And colourful. I am convinced that somehow blue is bluer in this continent. Green is deffinitely much greener.

Santa Cruz is all of this. If you close your eyes and picture Latin America, it looks a lot like here, and very little like La Paz or Bogotá.

Maybe some pictures will follow.