Mr. Ukulele (guitarrita)

 

I know what you’re thinking.  How did this 30 dollar ukulele get from those little kids in Peru (top), to these in Mexico?  Ukulele’s don’t handle travelling very well, they get seasick, they don’t stow well in overhead compartments.  What about when a string breaks, is there really gonna be a ukulele string store atop Machu Picchu?  (Notice the color palettes...It's like the bloods and the crips with these pictures of each country).

Anyway, this bad boy is indestructible.  Rumor has it, the uke inspired the Bruce Willis movie “Unbreakable”.

Let me give you a sense of the uke’s schedule:

-Tues/Wed: During the day it goes to the CAM in Guanajuato (Centro de Atencion Multiple) and runs a music program for either the chiquitos (little ones), the grandes (big ones) or the entire school.  Granted, at times the "whole school" only entails 20 students or so. 

Select lessons:

-Teaching the Macarena

-Music appreciation (Beethoven to A Tribe Called Quest, Miles Davis to Jose Alfredo Jimenez (Mexicans know who he is).

-Making maracas out of frijoles and cups.

-Mon/Wed/Fri: The uke (with Arnulfo Velasquez, pictured here) runs an after school music program Resplandor in Cajones.  

This is Resplandor

 

Look here to see what goes down at Resplandor

 For real click that link.

Swing batta batta batta suh-wing a batta!

If diamonds are the way to a woman's heart, and pancakes are a way to a man's heart, than the way to a small Mexican child's heart is futbol.  I used to ask kids "que pasa?" or "como te llamas?".  Now I just ask what their favorite sport is.  Not everybody speaks Spanish, not everybody speaks African click languages, but everybody speaks soccer.

Sports related conversations with little ones are a way to instantly get accepted into their inner circles.  Hitting them in the face with a volleyball is a way to instantly lose that trust:

Marianna is in the middle.  This picture is minutes before I ruined her, and my morning.  I tried to tell her that I didn't mean to hit her, but I didn't know the spanish word for "spike".  Fortunately, she was tough as they come.  I bought her some pineapple candy and we were friends again.

Marianna, and most of these young ones exhibit a toughness that I'm not used to seeing.  They go all out on the futbol field, on the baseball diamond, when they throw rocks at each other, etc.  But they never cry.  They remind me of myself in my youth.  Except I probably was crying.

Here is a short glimpse into a baseball game at the Cienega Pedregal school.  I teach there thrice weekly, although Fridays there is pretty much zero class.  It's beisbol day.  We taught an hour of English, then cleaned the school grounds, then played baseball for an hour and a half.  That's every Friday.

This is a carload of the older kids (5th/6th graders) coming back from trash duty.  I count 13.  Plus trash bags. Unless you count Waldo.

Mexican child athletes are an extremely strategic group.  You can see in the beisbol video that every at-bat is carefully planned and executed.  

But ferreal though, they play differently.  Especially when we play soccer, I see how defensively-minded they are, how patient and strategic there game plan is.  This is as opposed to the run-your-ass-off-towards-the-goal style of play that I have grown accustomed to in the States.  

I imagine they would make great chess players.  As maybe Gandhi said, "a good defense is the best offense".

Select, slightly related, sports pictures:

Our resident history scholar and oft-quoted travel companion is Don Marcos. Check the form!  He was feeling so lively after meeting some UNC Chapel Hill students (his alma mater) that he had to start tossing up some jumpers.

 

Here's Phyl's retaliation shot.  Check the form!

 

An unrelated note: Both of these pictures were taken at a school/community center in El Gusano.  El Gusano is home to 80 families.  The 5 UNC students work/live there in a similar fashion as we do in Cajones/Guanajuato - minus our internet connection, and at times running water.  

This is Lupe from El Gusano.  Her story to follow.

Coffee, Coke and the 12 step program

Updates on the battle with addiction:
-Wikipedia tells me that Step 1 is admitting that you are powerless over Coke.  I am not yet powerless, so it's still all good.  I passed up buying a coke today, and instead bought an apple soda.  Made by the coca-cola company.

Yesterday I asked Emma, our surrogate Mom, if there was a coffee maker in the house.  She replied, "There's 3 things that I don't like in life and in the house.  Coffee, coke, and chocolate."
It's a shame, because now I have 3 reasons to run away from home.

If I were to run away, I would go directly to this cafe in San Miguel de Allende.  Not for the coffee (left), but for the free water, pictured here on the right.  This is likely the only restaurant in the state of Guanajuato that gives out complimentary water.

La la la la la Bamba!

Here are some mariachis.  Tons of them chill in el centro of town: El Jardin.

Guanajuato is a city of 170,000 people, all of which come to the centro, every single night.  This might seem like an exaggeration, but I count at least 150,000 people in the above picture alone.  Most Mexican towns seem to function like this:  There's a central plaza that everyone goes to, likely with a big church.  Thus these towns feels much smaller, as you start to see the same people day in and day out:
Michael, our resident American cellist bar-owner Michael Keaton look alike, with Denise.  Note the red eyes, they must be up to something.

And this is Mr. and Mrs. Billar.  Billar means pool.  They both wear pool gloves and take the activity extremely seriously.  They also usually win.  But not always.

Anyway, the small town atmosphere in such a beautiful and bumpin place has its ups, and not really any downs.
Ups:

• 10 peso (less than 1 American smackaroo) homemade ice cream every couple of blocks.  
• Kids to play futbol with, every couple of blocks.
• Corn tortillas at every meal.  
• Nightly live music of every style.  More than just Beatles and John Mayer cover bands, though I've, against my will, memorized the lyrics to Your Body is a Wonderland.
• A completely unparalleled, general attitude of relaxation and open-mindedness:

These are some of our 3rd graders, Giving us a little tour of the tiny, rural town of Cajones, while showing us the way to "Resplandor", our school where we run our summer camp.  

One day, Justin and I had to take 3 buses to get to Resplandor.  With no school-children to guide us, and despite our expert navigational abilities, we got lost.  Fortunately, we wandered past a glass shop, that is owned by the brother of a girl we know.  At the store's request, we inquired within: "Where are we going?"  They told us to hop in the pick-up, and they drove us the rest of the 2 miles to the school...Hot damn!  These are horses.  You might recognize them from such films as Dr. Dolittle and The Legend of Bagger Vance.

We were playing basketball with these guys and we didn't know how to get back to the bus stop.  Of course they showed us the way! 

 Downs: (And these are very general to Guanajuato/Mexico as a whole).

• Minimum wage is as low as 57 pesos per full day of work.  That's 5 bucks.  You can make your own Starbucks coffee comparisons/equivalents...
• Driving is scary, but that's in any country.  In Peru, people functioned as cars; go where you want when you want and auto traffic functions similarly.  In Mexico, cars don't stop.  Busses take hilly, winding turns in 4th gear, and there is the occasional near death experience:  Whilst Jess and I were walking with these two basketball boys (above) to the bus stop, a huge wooden sign flew off of a pick-up truck.  It missed me by about a foot.  It was about 6x6 ft.  Were I a non-religious man, that"seeing the light" kind of experience might have caused me to find God.  Fortunately, I have already found him/her in Derrick Rose.  And Zooey Deschanel. 

Whoah Derrick, what're you looking at?

• Moving on, every week, about 150 people in and around Guanajuato get diagnosed with diabetes.  That's because...
• Coke is cheaper than water.  One of the host families gives their 2 year grandson coke in his bottle because it helps with digestion.  Here's a coke bottle. 

• Finally, the right angle of a hill that we have to walk up, back home, twice a day.  

Well this post was supposed to go in a musical direction, what with the beginning being about Mariachis.  I guess that's for later.  Ignore the La Bamba title.

Yo, Vonny!

This is Yovani (like Geovanni).  He took my camera at the preschool the other day.  He would like to say hello.  This is what happens when Yovani is left to his own (photographic) devices.

Guanajuato Infinity and Beyond

Yesterday marked one week in Guanajuato, a small Spanish-colonial city in central Mexico that I will be inhabiting until mid July.

Allow me to some up the week in as simple a fashion as I can. 
The 6 of us live at The Caballero house.  They're great.  They have internet connection at one table; the Cafe Caballero:

We eat mamey, a delicious red fruit. 

We eat tacos, a traditional Mexican dish you might be familiar with.  Also we eat soup, chile rellenos, enchiladas and a different type of juice at every meal.  Today was melon. 

The purpose of this program, at long last, is to teach in and get to know Mexican schools.  Mondays and Fridays I teach 3rd/4th grade at an Escuela primaria in a little town called Cienega.  So far, the teacher has been absent, and myself (and a couple others) have been thrown into the class, using what Spanish we know to teach 40 students.  Math, civics, the history of Guanajuato and Spanish.  Teaching certificate?  Control of the Spanish language?  Lesson plans?  Throw that shit out the window.  Pictures to come.  Imagine a school a little John Wayne would attend.  Your mental image is exactly right.  Tumbleweeds included.

Tuesdays/Wednesdays:  Justin and I run a music program at the CAM: Center de Atencion Multiple.  It's a special needs school that has zero music in their curriculum. 

Thursday:  Student teach at Luis Gonzalez Obregon, a primary school in the city of Guanajuato that is miles apart, literally and figuratively, from the other primary school.  It is organized, impressive and expensive:

Most school days are roughly 8-12, as there are so many students in Guanajuato that they can only go to school for half a day, and then for the second half a new load of kids comes in.  It's crazy what a different system is in place in our neighboring country.  That's Mexico.

We have classes that we take as well that occupy the afternoon, and our nights tend to revolve around pretending to Salsa, drinking litros and hustling fools at pool:

I'm up 20 pesos in billar (pool) right now.  That's nearly 2 dollars.

Guanajuato has free concerts going on nightly, of all different styles.  There are always old people dancing in the central gardens, and you can just smell their classiness in the air. 

I was talking with Victor Abel, a man that sold me a watch today.  We talked about Mexico versus the USA in all it's splendor.  "What do you prefer" Victor inquired?  I admitted that the longer I'm in guanajuato, the more I love the relaxed, easygoing mindstate of just about everybody.  In Mexico, schedules are as firm as a worm.  Everybody's late, everybody takes their time, nobody minds walking you to the bus stop, or walking you across town, or giving you a ride to school in the back of their pick-up when you're lost as all hell and hitchhiking.  I could really get used to the attitude.  But, I told him, I can't necessarily live like this.  The school days for half the kids in Guanajuato are treated with as much timeliness, respect and consistency as a lunch date with your sister.  Who you hate. 

There are definite repercussions to the calm.  Still, Mexicans are just a happy people.  Money and education aside, they know how to live lives without stress-balls.