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Drama, Drama, Drama

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It took me three full days to find an affordable apartment in San Miguel. The Americans have invaded this place. There are over 5000 expatriate Americans living here. That's a pretty big impact in a town of 80,000 people. The prices vary wildly here, as they do anywhere in Mexico, but it definitely seems that a "guero", the Mexican term for a fair-skinned person pays a sur-charge. The prices for rents range anywhere from about N$800 per month for a furnished apartment, about $80, a rare good deal for an American, to the more typical price of about $200 per person. I have seen adverts for colonial style homes, complete with a maid and a gardener that cost $1200 month, or more. Yes, that is US dollars, not pesos. Well I had to find a place with a telephone, so I could work over the Internet, and I had a dog, either of which could be overcome more or less fairly easily. Unfortunately, together they seemed to make an impossible barrier.

Finally, on the third day, after literally making 20 telephone calls, and having walked all over town looking for rental notices posted at the coffee shops and restaurants, I came across Sam Seaman's humble notice that said simply "Studio Space and Rooms To Rent." I called the number, and asked him the cost. When he said N$1000, ($120 dollars) I almost said I'll take it, right then and there. Luckily I had the presence of mind to ask him if a dog was okay. He made a noise that could have been a sort of oral shrug, and gave me directions to his house. My room at Sam's studio is medium sized, perhaps 160 square feet, with a big built in closet and chest of drawers in dark wood.

Sam is a naturalized Mexican citizen, having moved here from the UK twenty years ago. His wife is a Mexican, a psychotherapist,who lives up the hill from the studio with their 5 year old daughter. He is a talented painter, and even has some of his work online, proof perhaps, that San Miguel has become fully wired.

I didn't really go into it before, but I had already looked at about 15 other apartments, and was nearly at the point where I thought that I was going to have to rent a place at close to Austin prices. I was also paying N$160 per day to stay at the hotel. I was starting to get really nervous.

Well, the room was great. I had a nice view (the picture is the view from my bedroom.) There was a telephone, and Sam liked Angus. I paid him immediately for the room, and went back to the Hotel and checked out, even though I was entitled to another night there. I had had enough of hotels. I just wanted to get unpacked, and get settled in.

Sam teased me a bit about being "too diligent" in my unpacking, not going at Mexico's pace. I just couldn't really explain to him how important it was to get everything out of boxes and into some sort of order. I don't like living in hotels, no matter how nice they are, especially when everything I own is basically stuffed into the back of a pick up truck.

The first week of living in the studio, I spent most of the time looking for a desk or table to put my computer on. There are no St. Vincent de Pauls in Mexico, well, at least not in San Miguel (hereon referred to as SMA). But there are a ton of "antique" stores. Apparently the requirements for antique are a bit looser here. I saw several tables that would have served, if they hadn't cost N$2500, close to $300 dollars. Most often they were ordinary pine, devoid of any decoration, pretty wobbly, and not more than 10 years old. The kind of table you'd pay maybe $20 for at a thrift store. I went into the new furniture stores, and they had several versions of a 50's dinner table, formica top and chrome legs for about N$800, but they were fairly small, and very ugly, utterly lacking the kitschy charm of the genuine 50's tables. Finally it struck me that I should see if a carpenter might be able to build something, even out of plywood, that would serve its function. Well, for N$550, $65 dollars, two weeks later, I had a sturdy 6' dining table built out of pine. One of the first good deals I had gotten here.

In the mean time, I had signed up for a Spanish class at the Instituto Allende, which, I later found out, is the most expensive school in SMA. Beginning April, I had a one hour a day conversational Spanish class with Rose, a 20 year old Australian, and Shirley, a retired college English teacher from, Minnesota, I think. Also during the week while I was waiting for my table to be uhh, 'carpentered', I also met my first girlfriend here, Andrea, who was a waitress at one of the cafˇs I had been frequenting.

Well, I didn't get too much out of the class. I learned Spanish very quickly from Andrea. It was strange, I had a sort of epiphany while I was struggling to explain something to her... Nearly any word that was Latin or Greek in origin in English could pretty safely be used in Spanish. I have a pretty good vocabulary, I think, so it wasn't too difficult apply it to my my Spanish. Within about a week I had the mechanics of the basic tenses down pat. Near the end of the month-long course, neither of my classmates had learned Spanish nearly as well as I had, and they were both enrolled in the intensive 6 hour a day sessions. (I was sitting in just for the hour-long conversation portion.) There is something to be said for learning language from a lover. In fact, Shirley, the retiree, on several occasions refused to believe that I had never studied Spanish before. The first time she requestioned me, she thought I was lying. Then she thought that she had misunderstood me, that I had lived here since March of 1997, not just since March of 1998 (about a month's time by this point.) During one of the classes, Rose asked me what my secret to learning Spanish was. "Sex," I answered, mostly to get a laugh. But my "maestra", Lourdes, kind of gave me a funny look. One of *those* kind of looks.

A little while later Rose dropped out of the class in favor of one-on-one tutoring. I think she blamed me a bit for her lack of progress. Personally I think that if you spend $800 dollars to learn Spanish in a month, you'd be practicing it all the time you were in Mexico. Everytime I saw her after class she was hanging out with other English speaking students, and watching American television shows in English on cable TV. Granted, Sam, my housemate and I speak English to one another, but I was spending a lot of time with Andrea and her friends and I was getting a hell of a lot of practice. Uhh, Spanish practice.

It was about this time, during our classes, that an *incident* occurred. I was discussing the fact that Rose had elected to study with one of the other Spanish teachers, and somehow, I slightly misunderstood, and thought that she was getting tutoring outside of the Instituto (or the Insti-puto, as it is sarcastically referred to). I said something in Spanish along the lines of:

"Lourdes, I didn't know that you could get tutoring after school hours."

Shirley had left the table for a moment. We were alone in the garden where we held our class each day. Lourdes gave me a look again, like she had on the previous day. Then she said, in Spanish.

"If you want, we could meet after school. I would like to practice my English, and you could practice your Spanish."

I very carefully held my jaw in place, trying not to let the surprise to show on my face. This was not an offer for informal tutoring, at least not in linguistics. I managed to smile. Lourdes is a very nice, 40 year old woman. I don't like generalizing people into categories based on body types, so let's just say that she wasn't exactly my type. Also, she knew I had a girlfriend. Mexico. Affairs and infidelity are looked on very differently here than in the US. Basically it is generally accepted that a man of means will have a mistress. I have noticed on several occasions, couples at a bar, or even in the Jardin, the town square, giving other people the eye, even as they hold their lover's hands. It has happened to me on several occasions. It is fairly unsettling, coming from Texas, where a look like that from a girl will earn you a blackeye from her boyfriend, or at least the threat of one.

Another interesting thing I have come across here are the couples. Never have I noticed couples as much as I have in Mexico. Every night, especially on weekend nights, every other doorway holds a pair of earnest young lovers, holding hands, talking, kissing, and other various states of arousal. On more than one occasion I have also seen "abuela", grandmother, come out to cool the heat. I guess in the US, kids just go into the house and have sex, or whatever, while their parents are at work. Here, where the entire extended family might be living under the same roof, and often as not, the girls are restricted to their front doorstep, or maybe allowed all the way to the curb in front of their house (about 3 more feet), the rites of passage of the teen years are conducted the the shadows of the doorways. Not that it always works. I have seen plenty of young mothers carting around a baby or two.

At the northeast corner of SMA, is a 10 hectare (about 25 acre) plot of land called the Jardin Botanico, the Botanical Garden. It was donated by the Comte de Canal to SMA in order to preserve the native plant species which are under threat due to urban encroachment, agriculture and livestock pressure. It's nothing like the greenbelt in Austin, I'm afraid, but this is the desert, and you can't really expect it all to be live oaks and cedar trees. Angus really loves it there, because, as frightened as he is by people, he really enjoys the opportunity to open up and tear across a strip of land at full tilt. I have to bring tweezers with me when we go, because of all the cactus. The first time we were there, he ran underneath one and picked up about 20 spines, including 7 across his forehead. He looked like he was undergoing acupuncture treatments, but he is learning. Usually now, he just picks up one or two.

At the northern edge of the Jardin Botanico is a cattle ranch, and for Angus, seeing a cow for the first time, he didn't quite know what to make of it. As he edged closer to the cattle, they eyed him warily. If you aren't familiar with Border Collies, let me just tell you that they are the best herding dogs in the world. It's hardwired. Angus slowly approached them, as unsure as they were. Then one of them decided to move away from the black and white menace that was trotting towards them. As soon as it moved away, it was like part of Angus' brain woke up. His coat ruffled up to twice normal size, and he swung around to the right side of the cattle. The cattle all began to move away from him. He circled back towards me, and watched carefully to make sure that they were still heading in the same direction. Then he turned to me and gave me a look that could only be interpreted as (if you will permit to anthropomorphize a bit more) "can you believe this shit?". He then ran off and proceeded to herd them back in the opposite direction. I am one of those bad Border Collie owners that doesn't own sheep, or any animals that need herding, for that matter. Being untrained in herding techniques, Angus simply improvised. And was herding the cattle towards the edge of the 150 foot ravine that separates the Jardin Botanico from the cattle ranch, I soon noticed.

I walked towards the edge of the ravine, trying not to think how much a cow cost. I was about to call Angus to my side when I passed a cactus and ended up about ten feet away from a bull.

An angry bull.

An angry bull, hemmed in on one side by a ravine, and on two other sides by a thick row of cacti.

What about the fourth side, you ask? Oh... that's where I was standing.

He looked at me and lowered his head and stamped the ground. This was a big bull. I have no idea how much he weighed, but he was about my shoulder height, and had filled out nicely, eating catcus and scrub brush. I had no where to go.

(this is the dramatic part)

Angus charged past me as soon as the bull stamped the ground. He ran up to the bull and stopped about 3 feet from it. He barked at the bull twice, his coat standing up like the Border Collie version of goosebumps, and hunched forward like he was going to leap up at it. He looked the bull square in the eye, and the bull turned away and went through the wall of cactus. Angus nipped the bull's heels for good measure and then lolled his tongue out at me.

Naturally I didn't take a picture of the bull about to charge me. The whole thing took place in about 8 seconds. I really didn't feel scared at the time. It's one of those things that you think about afterwards and think, "Well shit, I almost died right there." Well, maybe not. But it was something to think about. My dog 'saved my life', just like a Lassie episode, or Ol' Yeller, or something.

Angus has become quite a good rock climber, trusting me to boost him when he can't quite make a safe leap up, and guide him down when the rocks on the way down are a little too narrow. There are a couple of pools of water, "charcos" or "estanques" as they are known in Spanish, Angus actively seeks them out when we go hiking, to cool himself off. I try not to let him swim too much in the green one, since it is probably full of amoebas, but there is a cappuchino colored one that he seems to enjoy just as much. I am a little too paranoid to swim in it myself. Besides, who wants to walk home covered with slime....

Okay that's all for now.

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