Meghan은 간다, Meghan ya no esta aqui

Funny conversations, Jose, and living in Mexico

Yesterday afternoon Stephanie and I walked to the video store to pick out some mvoies, and stopped at the store. On the way back I patted my pockets and couldn't find my keys. I began to look in my grocery bag and started thinking of where I could have left my keys. Was it the counter at the video store? A shelf in the grocery store?

Me: I can't find my keys... I can't find my keys.
Stephanie just looks at me.
Me: No, I'm serious. I can't find my keys. Where could I have left them? I can't find them.
Stephanie: Did you check your pockets?
Me: Yeah.. oh here they are. In my pocket.

Wonderful, si?

All of our kids here come from various backgrounds. A few of the kids have parents that work in town and not in the fields. Some are from single parent households. Some are groomed very well, while others wear the same clothes day after day and arrive with messy hair, missing socks, and very dirty faces. Jose is one of our exceptions to any idea we have about the kind of children we take care of.

There's something wrong with Jose, but nobody really has a name for it. He's in the preschool class, but is probably 5 years old. If he's 4 years old, he's very close to being 5. He's fairly skinny, has a longer face, and always has a confused look on his face. When asked how old he was, he always said nueve, or 9. After a bit of training he now says cinco, 5, which actually comes out of his mouth sounding like ¨kinko¨. His words are slurred, he repeats things you say. He's very unpredictable and doesn't seem to have any indication that hitting another person might hurt them. We love to watch him and interact with him, but sometimes we just have to laugh. He says ¨¿a donde vas?¨ (where are you going), but it's so slurred, that it sounds like ¨a ond ay a?¨ We keep trying to think of what could be wrong with him, if he's autistic, or mentally handicapped, although the general consensus around here is that his mom might have drank while she was pregnant.

I realize now that many of you don't know what Mexico is like, and so I thought I'd paint a little picture with words. The valley that I am in is called the San Quentin Valley, and is an agricultural part of the Baja peninsula. Farmers here grow a LOT of strawberries (fresas), many onions (cebollas?), and cucumbers (pepinos). Many people here work at a ranch doing many different jobs, but that includes picking.

When you drive down from the States, the main highway to the Valley is the Highway 1, and the cuota, or toll, road. From Tijuana through Ensenada it is a four lane divided highway with small shoulders and no median. From Ensenada south it becomes a meandering road through the mountains with two lanes, no median, and if there are any shoulders I can't detect them. There are a few small towns to pass through, and then you end up in the San Quentin Valley, which I think starts somewhere up by Colonet. Along the way there is a military checkpoint station. Going south there are really no stops, but going back north your car is stopped by an army man. And they carry big rifles.

Vicente Guerrero is a larger town, and even has a stoplight at its section of the highway. Right now they are doing the finishing touches on making the town section of the highway into four lanes with a short barrier to divide them. This is royally messing up my ability to drive places. I'm used to pulling off the road whenever. There's the highway, and then you drop off into dirt which serves half as parking places and half has a little road for the shops that run parallel to the highway. At the traffic light there is another intersecting road that is also paved, but the pavement only lasts a couple blocks. With the exception of the highway and these short blocks the rest of the roads are dirt, with many bumps, indents, and little hills. It's always a bumpy ride. I'm sure people buy a lot of new shocks here.

In my neighbrhood (which is a few blocks from the highway) there are many empty lots, and small houses, although someone's building what amounts to a mansion a block away. Almost all houses have fences and gates that people shut at night. There are always a lot of people walking around town, but many cars, too, new and old. Most people say buenos tardes (good afternoon) or buenas dias (good morning) in passing, or when entering a store. There are a lot of stray dogs that nobody cares about. The taco stand by the candy store is open in the afternoon and evenings. You order your tacos, and eat them while standing around.

On any day you'll hear a number of things, one of which is the birds, who always seem to be chirping. People pass by in cars with loud music. One thing that always says ¨Mexico¨ to me are the cars that drive through the neighborhood with loudspeakers. Either their selling something, or it's a political campaign (the Presidential election is July 2nd, and it's kind of a big deal). Mostly, though, we hear a man's voice saying ¨naranjas. uvas. limones. peras.¨ (oranges, grapes, lemons, pears), or some such thing. Ask me when I get back. I do a fairly good impression if I do say so myself.

That's all I got for now. When I put pictures up, you'll see what I mean.

posted by Meghan @ 6:32 PM