Yay I Finally Have A Goddamn Work Permit

My visa situation here is finally resolved, but (for posterity's sake, and before I completely block out all the gory details) I would like to record the entire, painful, tooth-jerking process.

• January 9: My tourist visa has about a month left and I take a day off of school (where I have already been working since October) to try and sort things out at the immigration office. Immigration office is in León, an hour away, and I don't have a car. Yay bus. Get to León, taxi driver rips me off. Get to immigration office (which is only open from 9am to 1pm on weekdays minus national holidays) and wait. By the time they give me the forms I need to fill out myself and use to pay at the bank, it's too late to be able to give them a completed application that day.
• January 16: Go back to León and submit completed paperwork.
• February 3: Go back to León and am informed that I need to give them some kind of document (description of document is intentionally vague), internationally certified, and officially translated to Spanish (ie stamped by someone who took the government certification course or whatever) to show them that I am qualified to teach English. And I have 10 business days to do so. I freak out, since I have none of the above.
  
• February 5: My mom gets my high school diploma and transcript certified to stall the office as I try and figure out how the hell it's possible to get my college transcript certified when Canada doesn't do the international certification procedure.
• February 17: 10 business days after the freakout begins, I go back to León and submit the documents my mom sent down, I translated, and the director of the language school at the University of Guanajuato stamped.
• March 13: I didn't want to go back to the immigration office until I was sure that my internationally certified college transcript was on its way down here. This took about a month, and is its own horror story. In the meantime, turns out, my high school transcript was enough, or the immigration office just wanted something with a shiny seal and didn't bother to read what I submitted. My change-of-migratory-status is approved. But do I have my new immigration documents? Of course not! They give me new forms to fill out, a new fee to pay, and a sheet of paper with a new list of requirements.
• March 20: New paperwork submitted.
• March 30: Previously, I had been told that my file would be definitively reviewed by this day, so I shuffled around my kids' week-before-vacation English tests and was at the immigration office when it opened. It was, in fact, not definitively reviewed, and not there. I freak out for many reasons, but mostly frustration with the whole goddamn process, and start crying in the immigration office. Nobody seems to care.
  
• April 3: Return to the immigration office. Everything is there, signed. The lady behind the counter, very archly, looks at me and says that I didn't need to make a big drama out of the whole thing.

On average, I waited at the office about an hour each time I had to go. It varied, from as little as 15 minutes to as much as 3 hours, but I was prepared to wait at least an hour every time I stepped foot in that godawful boring waiting room.

I would like to point out that this heinous process will have to be repeated, because it took me 3 months to get a visa that is only valid for one year.

Observations at a Café on a Friday Evening

Last night, my boyfriend and I went to one of the cafés in town to hang out for a while with the owners, friends of ours, and play a few games of Chromino without the stupid dog jumping up and upsetting the pieces. We get to the café, sit down, order and break out the forest green bag.

Now, I know I've had my fair share of café conversations where I probably sound like a loud twat to the people sitting nearby. We all have those conversations - loud, random, somewhat intellectual but mostly just predictable conversations with people, be they good friends or those with whom we just start talking cos they're there, that are kind of fun but mostly just familiar (How can you NOT like (insert book, author, movie, director, etc)? or I know, it was SO great about (random political and/or cultural event)...

I actually like having conversations like these, even if they are ultimately kind of vapid and pointless. And I think they're necessary, especially for people with academic interests, to feel like they're not just rotting away in their own mental masturbation. I can safely say that after 8 years of being a regular patron of various cafés in Boston, Montreal, and now here in Guanajuato, it's a haven that I am not willing to relinquish. You get a break from your usual apartment surroundings, from the feeling of confinement that comes from being somewhere you know far too well. You take out your book or notebook, or find the newspaper or an old magazine, and settle in. Someone is there to immediately make you a nice drink, and you never know who or what you will come across.

For better or worse.

So, anyway, we start to play Chromino, and the only other people in the café, seated in the corner just would. not. shut. up. For, like, an hour and a half. Some of their topics of perambulating, intentionally inoffensive "let's make friends cos you have a Mac" conversation included, but were not exclusive to

1. A hatred of trivial formalities and useless chatter (ironically)
   
2. Various zodiactic musings
3. The importance of life not being too "easy" (defined as being able to run errands and transport your groceries in a car)
   
4. Needing to make the most of every day i.e. not sit at home when there are Things to be Productive About
   
5. Not dwelling on negativity but being ready to, quote, move on to the next thing before the negativity happens
6. Russian women and inherent hotness therein, yet, somehow, they are so emotionally distant, and what's with that

Participants in this discussion were: Young Mexican Man with a Mac, Older White Gentleman Who Has Experienced It All with a Graying Pompadour, Much Younger Mexican Girlfriend of Older Gentleman.

Ruins and Tourists and Holes, Oh My!

On my third trip to Mexico City last weekend, I FINALLY made it to Teotihuacán - that place that every kid in Mexico (or, at least, the ones who can afford it) goes to on a field trip when they are in elementary school.

Museums are free on Sundays for Mexican citizens, and although I am still mired in the paperwork for my work permit, I am most certainly a Mexican citizen when passing through museum gates on a Sunday. Here, in pictures, are the highlights of a fun day getting sunburnt.


1) There are all these random tunnels that go through a small line of of barriers that line the Avenue of the Dead - the main street that transverses the ruins. So, of course, I climbed through one. A great idea if you are three. Not such a great idea if you are twenty three. And keep banging, alternately, your head and knees on the stone. Even when you try to crab-walk through. There were four or five of these that I could have gone through, but one was enough.




2) They sold little kid bow and arrows in the parking lot, in the gift shop area, and about every 10 meters or so throughout the ruins. And although I am not seven years old, I wanted one. Seriously, they looked awesome. Also - the thing on a pole behind those kids? There are trained professionals, dressed in their native outfits (someone told me from Veracruz) who twirl all the way down to the ground in a controlled decline while one of them plays a pipe. It is pretty impressive.




3) A cop chilling during his shift on the Pyramid of the Sun. Which only took 5 or 10 minutes to climb. Third largest pyramid in the world, y'all.

Like, Omigod, Shopping

One of my favorite things about Mexico is that the local markets always have a thrift store-ish section...where basically a bunch of clothes are thrown onto folding tables, and you can root around until you find that pair of jeans that would cost at least $60 at home for 100 pesos. (Of course, at home, I would be making $60/hr for private tutoring instead of 100 pesos/hr, but that's another story.)

When I was in high school, my favorite store of all time was The Garment District...in a time before hipsters made mix and match vintage and trendy cool. And when I was little, my grandmother would regularly take me to the thrift stores in her neighboring towns to see what we could find. I've never been, and never will be, adverse to buying something in a sketchy-looking situation as long as I know I'm getting something quality. The idea of something falling off a truck doesn't really bother me either.

I've always been kind of ambivalent about popular brands, and I think that mostly has to do with feeling like I'm being ripped off. I don't, and never have, owned anything from Abercrombie and Fitch, Aeropostale, Hollister, and only here have I bought anything from American Eagle (awesome pants? For cheap? At aforementioned collection of folding tables? Yes.) And it also has to do with not wanting everyone to know where I got my clothing, exactly what other colors it comes in, and how much it cost. Even if a shirt is nice, if I know I am going to pass 5 people wearing the exact same thing, I'm not going to get it.

This is not to say that I have any kind of grudge against mass clothing production or mass marketing or mall stores. It's just not really my thing. And this feeling was honed over the course of a childhood and adolescence growing up in a town where, when a girl bent over, 95% of the time you could be sure of seeing "Victoria's Secret" on her underwear band. Ironically.

I know that these issues of branding, and keeping up with the Joneses, and whatnot, are part of how the US is - needing to have the right clothes and the right look to fit in. And to a certain extent, it's like that everywhere in the world. But I find it refreshing that Lucky Jeans are mixed in with the brand from WalMart at the folding tables, and what matters the most is that you find a pair that fits.

Now, all they need are dressing rooms...

Blech

I am never doing any kind of immigration paperwork ever again. Period.

Once Upon a Cockfight

Last night, I got to go to a cockfight. What? What? Cockfights actually do exist in Mexico?!?! Yes, they do! They are also few and far between, and tickets cost an arm and a leg. So how did I go to a cockfight?

Well, apparently my boyfriend's mom works at a school for rich people, and one of the kids she teaches has parents who had complementary tickets for the cockfight at the state fair. And they didn't want to go. Obviously, if you don't want to go to a cockfight, you give the tickets to your 8-year-old's teacher.

Except she didn't really want to go either, but was told the tickets were worth 500 pesos (about $40) each. As they say here, "Hay que aprovecharselos." You have to take advantage of them. I was bored to tears my one time at the Montreal casino, so not so down with the gambling, but definitely down for this highly cultural (or at least exotic) experience.

When a group of 5 of us got to the little arena where the cockfight/concert after the cockfight was being held, we found out that the tickets were actually going for 750 pesos (about $60) each, and therefore we would not be buying any extra tickets. Elected to enter the ring were myself and my boyfriend's 85-year-old grandmother. So in we went. Me and grandma.

I think cockfighting would be a lot more interesting if it were just fight after fight after fight. At least at this cockfight, there was a new fight every 20 minutes or so. And to fill all that extra time between fights (cos a fight really only lasted a couple of minutes) there were raffles and bingo. Lots of raffles. Lots of bingo. Lots of noise.

But the fights! (Few and far between as they were.) First of all, I couldn't tell the difference between the roosters except for the red or green piece of tape wrapped around the little knife tied to its ankle. And yes, the roosters are equipped with weapons, to make sure the death goes that much quicker. The fight goes on until one of the roosters is dead, basically.

During the 20 minutes preceeding a fight, aside from the raffles and bingo, people are placing bets on which rooster is going to win. I guess 50 / 50 odds are as good as you're gonna get anywhere, so the gambling seemed to be quite fierce. Men and women in suits and quasi suits roved around the central ring of dirt, collecting money and giving out markers.

Then the rooster owners or trainers or whatever they are let the roosters smell each other. They hold them in the air facing each other before the fight, before they walk the roosters over to opposite sides of the ring.


Then the roosters fight.

Then one (or both) of the roosters die. Regardless of the death count, a winner is declared.

So, you know, once is kind of interesting. Or, at least, different.

This went on for THREE HOURS.

Then there was a concert with Ana Gabriel, and apparently myself and my boyfriend's grandmother were the only ones who had no idea who she was, since the little auditorium suddenly transformed into everyone else's personal shower and/or kareoke machine.

In short, a Mexican Celine Dion.
We left, half deaf, after three songs.