heading back to hogtown

I will be back at work on Wednesday, with a 7:20 am flight out of Merida on Tuesday. I am sure Oliver is ready for his mom to come back home.

You know that they are ready for you to leave when the maid stops by to get her propina (tip) before you go. They almost couldn´t get the American Express machine to work so that would have been interesting, to try to get UF to reimburse me.

Last night we went to eat at Alberto´s, which is probably one of the best restaurants in Merida. I have always meant to eat here but never made it! What´s interesting to me about Alberto´s is that it is a Lebanese restaurant. Merida has a sizable Lebanese population who moved here at the beginning of the 20th century. Even though I am not a huge fan of middle Eastern food, the meal was very good.

I went into a store with Mark last night to buy a man purse for a certain Joshua who works in my office. (yes, haze him about it.) and Mark goes into the verbal prison with some dude and I end up buying more purses. also a surprise, right?

i saw some cool maya sites too

so that you don´t think all I do down here is shop and eat, I also got to go see some really cool places. I really like the trip to Chiapas, the Palenque site is very marvelous and we also got to go the waterfall at Misol-Ha.

is my name judy or melissa?

all I seem to have done today is shop, mostly with Mark and Rick. We went down to the market and then to a few stores. I am not entirely sure how I am getting everything home but I will manage.

fiestas and such

well, I am back from Chiapas and it was a great trip. Before I left I went with the students to the Mambo Cafe on Wednesday night and that was so ridiculous. First of all, the live band was outstanding and who says you do not need an 11 piece band? all men in tight jeans, and very lively.

another celebration was the annual pinata (sorry I cannot find the apostrophe nor a tilde on this keyboard) for those who have the birthdays in the summer...and of course that includes ME ME ME ME! I got to hit at Batman and there are several photos of course which you can see later. I did break it and got some candy. all of the birthday people got presents including a Mexican wrestling mask and boy am I lucky!

also I got to try a michelada which is like a bloody Mary but with beer instead of vodka. It sounded not good, but Rick let me try his and it was very good. Once Kara can drink again, I foresee her liking these!

I also got some ceviche de camaron in Palenque at a little cafe, very good.

field trip to Chiapas

tomorrow we are going on a field trip through Saturday to Chiapas, which includes an eight hour bus ride. We are going to Palenque and Campeche on the trip. Chiapas is known for its 1994 Zapatista revolution. As obnoxious as I find Wikipedia to be, here is their definition. It is rainy and colder there as it is the highlands.

Q: What are the Zapatistas?

A: Marcos: "In the movement of the EZLN there is no perfectly defined ideology, in the sense of communist or Marxist-Leninist." "It is not a nucleus that has come, not a guerrilla foco; what has come is something you have never in your life dreamed of: this is the truth."

Tonight I am going out with the students to the Mambo Cafe for the big ¨night out.¨ Good thing I had a siesta today.

Other reading I have done includes David Sedaris´ Naked, David Balducci´s the Hour Game, and I bought the new Jonathan Kellerman novel.

cuter than jeb!

this is a much more interesting story than the non-hurricane. On Monday mid-day Mark and Susie and I went walking around to see if anything was open. The answer is not really, other than the governor´s palace which has some really neat art work so we wandered on in there.

Well, walking down the stairs was the governor himself, Patricio Patrón Laviada, and Mark starts pointing to him to let me know that´s him. So we chat for a second and that´s it. Well, we walk out and Mark goes up to the governor and tells him that I am running for office myself and he wishes me luck and poses for a photo!

Then a reporter from the local paper, Diario de Yucatan stops us and asks about who I am and...I´m in today´s paper! You can read it online. Note, of course, my name is misspelled but this is at least a little more interesting.

emily was not so scary

not much happened in the hurricane other than I watched a lot of TV and there was nothing open downtown for 2 days. The rain and winds came around 4 am Sunday night and rattled the windows and door for about 8 hours and that´s about it. Classes were cancelled and there were no stores or buses on Monday so there was a lot of sitting around. No alcohol sales were allowed all day or night Sunday-Monday. Can you imagine if this happened in Gainesville?

Last night Mark, Susie, Rick and I went to eat at the Peregrino and I had this really good eggplant parmigiana with chicken in it. For dessert I had coconut ice cream with kahlua on it...they let us get that without the fear of getting drunk and crazy!

emily is visiting soon

so this afternoon and evening we are supposed to see the beginnings of hurricane Emily. The weather report has not changed much over the past few days. Saturday night you would not have been able to tell that a hurricane is coming, as there were lots of people downtown dancing in the blocked off streets. I saw three different bands playing and some performers on stilts doing a dance thing and I also saw a trova duo playing at the Restaurante Amaro.

Well, this might be my last post for a few days, I might be without power and internet access.

my reading list

so usually I read a lot while I am down here but I haven´t had too much time so far. I also had Josh email me my fall syllabus and reading list so I can work on my syllabus while here.

Melissa had given me some magazines and I finally had time to read them, and I liked The Week (which is a summary of news) and Details. This is funny, because one of the students asked me if Details is a gay magazine and I didn´t know the answer! I think it´s a metrosexual magazine so it has a lot of gay articles or they bring up gayness in about every other article. Note that Tom Cruise is on the cover this month. I also bought myself the International edition of Newsweek, which I always enjoy because it has a lot of different world-centered articles in it (a lot on Africa this week).

I also read The Birth of Venus which my mother had given me in San Antonio, and I didn´t really like it (but Kara probably would). I am reading Fast Food Nation right now and it´s really good. Today I will probably go to Dante´s to buy a trashy novel in English in case I am stuck for a day in my room to read it by Jesus-candlelight. I have also been buying El Diario de Yucatan as many of you know that I am a newspaper freak. Yes, it´s in Spanish. I have previously bought the English Miami Herald edition for this part of the world but haven´t gotten one this year.

telchac puerto

Yesterday Alicia took me to her family´s beach house near Telchac Puerto, which is east of Progreso. We ate chilaquiles for our meal, which is like a casserole with corn tortillas, onions, salsa verde, tortilla chips, cheese. Then a dulce vendor was walking on the beach with a tray of sweets, so we summoned him to buy meringues and dulce de coco which is a coconut candy.

I now have a candle (with Jesus on it for extra protection) and a foco de mano so I won´t be sitting in the dark at the Hotel Caribe if we lose power from Emily. I also bought some snacks to eat in case I can´t go out to eat.

The students will stay in their houses around Merida. We ran into a few of the host families yesterday in the supermercado and they are more worried than the students. The students had a free weekend this weekend and some went to Cancun, and others had planned to go to the beach. But alas, they were told that they can´t go.

huracan emily

so I am not trying to be paranoid, but it appears that Rick Barth is not the only perpetual target of hurricanes. I have to go buy a foco de mano (flashlight) for this weekend. Here is what Emily has to say for herself. If you aren´t familiar with the Yucatan´s geography then you might want to watch. Note that I haven´t seen any local coverage at all, unlike the madness in Florida.

izamal and progreso

today we went to Izamal and it was a pretty good visit. Not only does Izamal have the church and the virgin Mary sighting but it also has a huge Maya pyramid. After Izamal we went to Progreso which is a great beach town on the Golfo de Mexico. It´s a very shallow waterway and it´s the main port of the Yucatan. There are lots of trucks picking up cargo. It made me think of the TV show The Wire Season 2 so now I gotta find out when that comes out on DVD.

For lunch today I ate a pescado frito, which is a fried fish. Danny would love this--it is served whole with the head and eyes and it has big creepy teeth. I also ate a botana from the market at Izamal, it was made up of a fried pocket of dough with beans and cilantro in the middle and it had pickled onions and tomatoes on top. Last night I ate at Restaurante Amaro and ate a bowl of gazpacho which was quite tasty.

yucatecan cuisine

so this is probably the post that will get Danny the most excited so far. Generally I really like Yucatecan cuisine and get to eat it frequently (or as frequently as possible). Today at lunch I had sopa de lima once again, and Mark took a picture of it so you can see it.

Mark´s favorite place to grab something to eat is at the Cafeteria Pop. Their sopa de lima is pretty good and I also like the ensalada atun con avacado (I can´t recall the Spanish word). Mark and I also ate at the Pop´s sister restaurant, the Portico del Peregrino, and I ate the grilled pork chops with homemade apple sauce which were like slices of grilled apples.

More culinary adventures await...

cemetario y lluvia

the Lombardi scholars and several other students on the program went with me via bus to the cemetario (yes, cemetery). it is not very close by, they are doing part of their anthropology project there and tomorrow we are going to visit another one. One of the students on the UF trip DROVE HIS TRUCK to Merida and so he hasn´t ridden the bus yet...I think he was disappointed to find out that we didn´t have a charter bus but instead we were paying $4.50 to ride the public bus to the cemetery.

Well, we were out there and we were caught in a huge rainstorm, we all got drenched in a very ungraceful manner. Alas, I will bring my rain jacket with me next time. The streets got flooded very fast and I have to say, if Emily
arrives in the Yucatan, it´s not going to be a good thing.

bob esponja

so Kara is always a big fan of the stories I have about watching Mexican TV, and she particularly enjoys the tales of bob esponja. yesterday bob esponja and his nutty friend patricio had some major bad breath odor problem. I also discovered a show that I had never watched before and I did like it, scarily enough, Gilmore Girls on WB. I caught an episode of los simpson and the family guy (all cartoons are dubbed into Spanish, but TV dramas and comedies from the US are usually subtitled). I haven´t caught plaza sesamo yet, that crazy Elmo guy is a lot of fun. I also saw another episode of CSI last night.

poligono 108

the bus I ride to the Faculdad de Educacion is called the poligono 108, but nobody seems to know why. what´s interesting about the bus rides is that there is no map out there for the bus system, you just gotta find out from someone else or by trial and error of how to get around town on the bus. The price went up this year also, to $4.50 from $4 (those are in pesos, not dollars). They are typically not air conditioned and the bus rides are slightly crazy with aggressive driving. to make the bus stop, sometimes there is a bell you can ring or more realistically you can yell BAJA! and they will stop.

Some of you may recall my very first bus ride by myself four years ago...and a bus inspector got on the bus and asked for my travel receipt. I thought he was trying to sell me something so I kept waving him off.

el mercado

after class today I went to the market and just walked around. it is a huge open-air market without air conditioning (a theme you´ll see a lot in my Merida blog). I saw (and this is not an all-inclusive list): live birds, live chickens, live guinea pigs, live puppies, dead chickens, avocadoes, tomatoes, onions, dried and regular peppers and chiles, chiote, flowers, marzipan, cilantro, radishes, and of course much more for sale.

pane e vino

yes, indeed, I am switching languages, because Mark and I went to an Italian restaurant last night. for years I had seen this place but wasn't sure if it would be a good idea...but indeed it was quite good. Surprise, I had gnocchi with tomato sauce and a glass of Montepulciano red, and I mooched some eggplant parmigiana from Mark.

I am off to Anthropology class this morning, a few of the students (including Jason Bell from the Honors office and a few Lombardis) got into the country without getting a visa to get out of the country. Accordingly, that is today's field trip, to immigration officials, to try to get them visas. This happens every year. Makes you feel safe, doesn't it?

buenas tardes from Merida

I have arrived safe and sound, it's always refreshing to see Mark Brenner at the airport to pick me up as he is about a foot taller than the entire crowd. I managed to drive to Orlando between hurricane bands and have no flight delays.

So far things seem to be very similar in Merida this year, although I am pleased to report that I have air conditioning in my hotel room AND...DRUM ROLL PLEASE...they now have cable. 58 channels! I watched an episode of CSI last night dubbed in Spanish and could follow it, and watched some CNN en espanol.

I ran into art professor Maria Rogal already and today the Lombardi scholars came to meet me. We walked around the Merida en domingo today and enjoyed the Sunday festivities.

Alas I believe it's time for a siesta and perhaps a dip in the Hotel Caribe pool.

I ate some sopa de lima last night, it was quite wonderful. More links to Yucatecan food soon.

international travel to oxford

ok, so I am in Oxford, Mississippi, not England. I am at a coffee shop using the wireless because there is no wireless for campus guests, only students. The campus is truly gorgeous (go Rebels!) and I have been fed two really good meals in the cute downtown square.

I have seen about 343 copies of Faulkner books in town already. I bought a new Spanish grammar review book so I will not be an idiot in Mexico.

I am seeing yet another hurricane on the horizon, which could also follow me to Mexico.

I would like to think that I would really enjoy moving to a very small southern town. Because I am truly a southern belle.

I had a peach creme brulee and part of a Mississippi mud cheesecake with lots of caramel on it. not at the same meal, of course. I spread it out.

I heard "Drops of Jupiter" by Train twice on the drive from Memphis to Oxford.