Ya he llegado! (I have arrived)

As eventful as everything felt for the last two days - trying to tie up loose ends
at work, packing two separte suitcases for two separate trips, getting the
house put together, and shipping the dog for two weeks at Casa Stroud-David - I
fully recognized that it wasn't significant enough to blog about. But then
Saturday morning finally came, with the alarm set for 3:45 am, and me hopping
out of bed at 3:15 am I was so nervous about missing the plane....

So I now I am underway, settling in to seat 18A for a four and a half hour journey
to Mexico City. Though we are still on the tarmac in Charlotte, USA, already I
can feel that things have changed. As I look ahead of me at row upon row of
dark hair popping up from behind seat backs, I can't help but wonder what the
explanation is, either cultural or socioeconomic, that about 85% of the people
on this plane are me. 10% are women sitting with husbands or partners, and 5%
are solo female travelers like me. I also can't help wondering about who the
men are and what their back story is. This trip, while seeming simple (what's
so profound about purchasing an airline ticket on Travelocity and driving to an
airport), is actually fairly significant. I think back two weeks to when I
drove Memo to the airport to make this very same flight, heading back to Mexico
for the first time since 1998. He would have been on of these single men that
make up the majority of the passengers on the flight, and he certainly has his
own back story. And thinking of Memo, I come back to wondering who all these
people are, where they came from, and where they are going.

For now I am going to set that aside and enjoy the state of suspended animation
that comes with flying. It just dawned on me why I have never like to talk to
anyone on the plane with me, be it a traveling companion or a well-meaning
extroverted stranger. Cruising above the earth at 30000 feet, we are completely
free of all stresses and anxieties that we left on the ground. If there is
something at home that didn't get done--too bad. You are gone, gone, gone and
can't do anything about it now. Anxieties about where you are going similarly
deserver a similar response: Worrying about it up here isn't going to get you
there any faster, so you might as well take a deep breath, close your eyes, and
let yourself disappear in to the diesel-powered white noise that is pushing you
every so gently through the clouds.

Descending into Mexico City was a bit of a surprise. I expected the change in landscape
from the lush hardwood forests that are found in NC to the direft brown
batchwork of fields and one-story cinderblock houses as we started coming into
the outskits of el Distrito Federal. With no trees to speak of, the entire
earth looked a dry ruddy orange, and it was fascinating to see houses crammed
into the spaces between fields, up until the base of a mountain range, at which
point they looked like the tumbled into one another and stopped. Travelling
further closer to the airport, the buildings became taller, and chande from
burnt ochre to a combination of colors seen only on beachfront houses in the
US. Sunflower yellow, cornflower blue, tulip red, and seafoam green. I noted
helipads on the top of almost all of the very tall buildings, and was reminded
of a news story that I read a few years ago. With all the traffic and violence in
Mexico, the rich and the powerful now use helicopters, rather than Lincoln
Towncars, to get around the city.

The immigration process was slow and long, and I gave myself a chuckle trying to

explain the coin belts that the
x-ray technician saw in my luggage as I passed through the last x-ray area. I was

so happy to see Memo patiently waiting for me at the exit for international
arrivals. He was wearing jeans and the shirt that he wore for our wedding, and
seemed like a knight in shining armor to me in this foreign land. We had a
lovely lunch of watercress salad and zucchini blossom soup, stopped to take a
picture of the Krispy Kreme donut shop, and then headed to ground
transportation.

It took about 5 hours and two different
busses to make it to Memo's hometown of Izucar de Matamoros. As we were leaving
Mexico City in the bus, I was reminded of Giza City on the outskirts of Cairo.
There, as here, are miles and miles of cement apartment buildings and other
dwellings, incomplete, with empty window frames and rebar poking out of the top
floors. And here, as in Cairo, these unfinished frames of houses were habited.


We drove through mostly poor
combination residential/commercial areas to get out of town, so imagine my
surprise when, after the old tires, the piles of trash, and the abandoned cars
on the side of the highway, I saw a horse grazing in the scrub. Imagine a horse
on the side of the highway, but with the traffic going 60 rather than 45. Memo
assured me that this horse was not a stray, but did, in fact, have an owner
somewhere in one of the nearby houses. The buses were very nice, and both
played American movies dubbed into the Spanish during the trips. We were
provided drinks and wireless internet during the first trip, and then were
treated to a combination of radio (think Culture Club and GaGa) simultaneously
with a movie called "Ice Princess" on the second bus. I had such a
head-ache when we finally arrived in Matamoros.

We checked into a lovely little hotel called Hotel Matamoros at around 8, and
cleaned up before heading over to Memo's mother's house for dinner. Our room
does have airconditioning, but the bed supports are cinderblocks, the bottom of
the closet was left unfinished, so it is concrete, and we have to use bottled
water to brush our teeth. It is also about a 10-15 min walk to his mom's house,
so I can see this getting tedious.

At around 8:45 we arrived at his mothers house on the edge of the downtown area,
and it is true what Memo has been telling me. She is not a wealthy woman. About half of the
five room house was built by Memo's dad, with Memo and his brothers as helpers.
The walls are thus concrete, and are riddled with holes and wires and bare
bulbs hanging from dusty power cords. It was dark when we arrived, and we went
into the kitchen where his mother had made us spaghetti with marinara sauce and
cheese filled chili rellenos. It was absolutely delicious.

She is a very sweet old lady, who walks with one hand on a cane and one hand on the
wall for support, but has a twinkle in her eye and is still very quick to
smile. We talked about the trip, we talked about plans for attending Mass the
next morning, and then we visited other parts of the property. Within the same
walled compound in their corner lot, lives Ricardo Jr. and his wife and 5-month
old son. This is one of Memo's nephews and I was grateful to meet him. He spent
6 years living and working in Chicago and thankfully spoke some English. We
also went into Memo's older sister's house, who lives on the back of the property.
She apparently makes a living as a "jill of all trades" involving
sewing, cooking, herbs, etc. Tonight, she was behind a sewing machine and knee
deep in burgandy and polyester fabric, and with hardly looking up from her
tasks, explained that she had thirty costumes to make for the parade tomorrow
and didn't expect to sleep tonight. We stayed just 5 minutes, wandering back
over to his mom's house, and then decided we better get back to the hotel since
the alarm was going to go off at 6:45am for Mass.

During our walk back to the hotel, Memo decided that he was stil hungry and wanted something from the open market near the Zocalo, or city square. I watched him eat, but didn't partake myself since I am still nervous about ending up hospitalized again in Mexico because of careless eating habits.

I am so happy to be here, but I can already tell that my language skills are
completely lacking, and it probably isn't helping that I just let Memo do all
the talking and zone out a bit, especially during commercial transactions. I am
going to let myself ease into this language thing, but by Tuesday I better get
crackin'! I just wish they didn't talk so darn fast!

Hasta manana, amigos y amigas!