Llegué

I’m sitting at a window table in a favorite café in Guadalajara enjoying a deliciously spicy plate of chilaquiles, and outside there’s a tiny large-eyed girl in curly pigtails carrying her own little purse and wearing rainbow-striped shoes a little to big for her miniscule feet. She might be as old as three, but I doubt it. She’s smiling at me, trying to get my attention. I just smiled back and waved, and she acted coy. Little children can be charming when their numbers aren’t overwhelming. This solitary child, for example, who entertains herself by climbing around on the planters in front of the café while here mother peddles cheap jewelry from the sidewalk, is making me think I might want a coy little girl of my own.

You gather then, that I made it—I arrived in Guadalajara yesterday afternoon, not quite 24 hours ago. My hotel is an old colonial palace converted to a hotel, and the window of my room looks out on this rear interior courtyard. It's in the middle of downtown, but it's peaceful. I’ve been reorienting myself to the parts of the city that I do know and the little nuances of the culture that I forget about until I’m here again. I’m struck by how un-Mexican I am when I’m here. I may be a nice Hispanic girl, but I am definitely from another place and another culture. Mexico is so distinct. My little expectations, both good and bad, of how people around me will behave are constantly unmet and flouted. In general everyone is more friendly, polite and helpful than I’m used to, but it’s also common for men here to stare at women, to make flirtatious (and sometimes derogatary, to my North American sensibilities) comments to woman as they walk down the street, and sometimes to hiss at women as they walk past. Yes, hiss. I’ve only gotten the hiss twice since I got here, though. All this attention might border on flattering if it weren’t so demeaning, and it’s not like it makes me special. They do it to any girl or woman past the merest sign of puberty. Then there are the smells, the sounds, the way of talking to people, the way to cross the street and navigate traffic, the way to meet or not meet someone’s gaze, and remembering not to flush the toilet paper. So many things about me betray me as a foreigner, and more than anything I think it’s my carriage and body language. I don’t walk like a Mexican woman, and they don’t walk like me. I’m just different, I guess.

This is not to say I’m not enjoying the readjustment process. A large part of it is geography, and that’s kind of fun. I’m staying downtown for a couple of days until I move into my room at the university guest house, and so little has changed downtown. I bet it hasn’t changed in decades, and when it does I think those changes are small, piling up over the centuries into the embedded mess it is now. It can feel a little claustrophobic, but luckily for this western girl, Guadalajara is laid out more or less in a grid system and therefore relatively easy to learn and navigate, downtown being the simplest. El Centro is fascinating and lively but slightly sketchy, so yesterday afternoon I headed west to my old neighborhood to buy a phone with a local number at a US-style mall (officially Centro Magno, aka Centro Gringo and loaded with fresas). There’s also an amazing salad restaurant there, and I indulged in a massive plate of veggies and a bladder-buster-size, all-fruit smoothie. Traditional Mexican food has that nasty reputation as a major artery-clogger, but less publicized is the quantity and quality of the local produce. If you’ve never eaten a fresh Mexican avocado, you don’t know what you’re missing. I know that silly rule about not eating any produce you didn’t peel yourself while traveling abroad, blah blah blah, but this is Mexico, and urban Mexico at that, and anyway my system’s always done a good job of digesting whatever I throw at it. I know to avoid (some) taco stalls on rural roadsides. I’m not going to deny myself a big yummy salad when the place is clean.

And then there are the religious festivals. Last night as I made my way back downtown on the slow, jerky old streetcar, every church we passed east of Chapultepec was surrounded by crowds of people in matching-colored tees waving matching-colored balloons and singing hymns. I was confused. The crowds got bigger as we went east, eventually merging into a massive congregation lining the streets and filling the plazas downtown. In my curiosity I asked a police officer what was going on, and he unenthusiastically informed me that it was a religious processional carrying a statue from one church to another. He didn’t seem too religious himself. Sure enough, as I walked past the main cathedral, they were testing the sound system on a large stage on the front steps, and a rather important-looking cardinal-type was nodding approvingly. I entertained the idea of coming back to see the whole thing go down, but being rather sleepy and not a Catholic, I’d given it up by the time I got back to my hotel several blocks from the main plaza. I read and watched TV for a while before dozin off fully clothed in the middle of the bed, on top of the covers. I woke up later chilled and uncomfortable, and climbed into bed. Sleeping without my husband is going to be an adjustment process, as well.

I’m going to go to my old favorite bookstore here before I track down the place I’ll be living. Should you find yourself in a major city in Mexico, I recommend that you find local Librería Gandhi. It’s a happy place, especially if you are a reader. Lola has a day and a half to play before classes start.