Tuesday - Day Eleven of the Mexico Adventure
Things have been mostly good today except for one thing that I will get to in due time. The morning started out well. I really like Citlali's, my Español teacher, approach to teaching. She mixes in games along with the grammar to keep things interesting. I have written down all the different things that she has done so that I can use them in my own classroom. Games obviously liven things up and keep students' attention, plus she usually has a purpose for the games, like practicing vocabulary or a grammatical form, which means that you are still learning while you are playing.
Unfortunately I am not as happy about my conversation class, or at least the first one. I was there with the two guys today, Will and Jeremy, and they just tend to dominate the conversation. I came with today with ideas of what I could talk about, but instead everthing was steered toward what bars or clubs are good to hang out in and what you should order for your first drink. Well, all I could anwer is that I haven´t been to any of these places, I didn´t care to go, and that I don´t drink alcohol. Short, sweet, and to the point. I really can´t imagine being in a club, as I have never been in one, so don´t bother asking me what I think it would be like. ¡I don´t know and I don´t care! Then at the end of the class Elena, our teacher, said that I need to talk more. I was really irritated but all I said was I would try. I am so glad that I am missing that class tomorrow to go on the excursion to the school with the others.
In my second conversation class the topic of clubs and drinking came up again, but there I was able to say more because the people in that class were at least interesting in asking why. So I got to explain the whole LDS thing in Spanish which was kind of fun. Give me the opportunity to talk and be a little patient and I will talk a lot!
The cultural class helped to restore my good humor, though have been ticked about Elena's comment all day. Our topic for the lecture was Fray Bernardino Sahugun and the school he created to educate the Mexica after the fall of Tenochtitlan. This was awsome becasue I studied Fray Sahugun when I wrote about La Malinche for my undergrad history thesis. It was so interesting to learn more about the school and how special it was. Most people at that time, our teacher said, either believed that the native people here were either souless animals or that they were just inferior in every way possible to the Spaniards. Fray Sahugun's school took the position that, not only were the natives people with souls, but that they could be taught European philosophy, language, etc.
His experiment was incredibly sucessful and soon his students were writing not only in Spanish, but in Latin and also in their native language Nahuatl. Our teacher said that the students were absorbing this knowledge like sponges, so much so that some people became afraid of what they could do and the school was shut down. But not before the students produced some of the most important documents in this period, basically a record of the knowledge that the Aztecs had of medicine, history, their religion, etc. along with their account of the conquest in the books of the Florentine Codex.
One of the most interesting points that our teacher brought up is a theory that Juan Diego, the man who is said to have seen the Virgin of Guadalupe, was a student of Fray Sahugun's. This would account a lot for the story, but like our teacher said it was blasphomous to suggest this in Mexico. If I understood him correctly, the paper that our teacher, the very cute Agustín, had based his lesson from was written by an American scholar. I wrote down this guy´s name because I would like to get a hold of the original publication and see what else he has to say. I love this period in history!
I was feeling pretty happy with my level of comprehension this day in this class. Background knowledge and good guessing can really help you understand a language. Thank goodness for cognates!
After school, Dee and I met some other USU people, including instructors Lisa and Martha, to go to the Museo Muros. This is an interesting museum that was built by Costco to protect an old church and create a museum for the people of Cuernavaca. Like Lisa said, it is a good example of what big businesses can do when they take an interest in the communities they are in.
It was an interesting place to visit, I can say. The first floor was definitely not my taste in art. As much as I tried to appreciate the pieces on display, I kept thinking to myself "And they call this art!?" I did like the mural that was in the process of being created on the ceiling of one of the rooms. Like the Diego Rivera one at the Palacio this one shows the history of the country since the conquest. It was an interesting representation with many of the same themes that the other mural. The second floor was much better because the art was much more to my taste and included works by the famous Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. I actually like the stuff on this floor, but I know that I am pretty old fashioned. I prefer the primitive art like we saw at Robert Brady, classical art, or earlier European stuff. Some modern stuff is pretty cool, but I am picky. If it looks like something my niece drew, I'm not likely to think it is art.
When we parted ways, Dee was in the mood for an adventure and I was game too. We decided to look for the pyramids in Cuernavaca itself. We knew from maps that they existed and roughly where they were, which looked to be pretty close to the Muros, so we set out to find them. Unfortunately, these pyramids are in a much more run down part of town and we had to ignore several inappropriate comments from the local males before we managed to find our destination.
At $34 pesos it was one of the more expensive entrance fees we have had to pay, especially since the place was supposed to be closed, but Dee put her limited knowledge of Spanish to work and with a "rapido" we were in. This place turned out to be one of the cooler pyramids that we have visited because it was actually in the process of being enlarged, like they would do at Teotihuacan and other sites, when the Spanish showed up. So you actually climbed up one pyramid and looked into the older structure. We had a lot of fun running around here, or rather cautiously walking around since it was such a big pyramid with few places to hang onto. It was also one of the steeper ones so we decided to go back down on our bums. After running around to look at a couple of other buildings, it was time to leave. We did manage to take some cool pictures before our time was up and we agreed that it had been worth the price and the walk through the seedy neighborhood.
We still had some time after this, so we decided to walk to the Xocolo. But it turned out to be farther than we wanted to go so we hopped on a bus that said it was going there. Not knowing much about the bus routes, we don´t know whether this particular bus was the best one to take or not, but it got us there in the end. Traffic was so bad at this time of day that we decided to walk the last little bit and wandered around for a while. We were both pretty hungry having missed comida and we decided to look for a restaurant that had been recommended to us by Pete, our housemate. Luckily we found said restaurant, Marco Polo, easily and were soon enjoying Mexican style Italian food (which was good) and enjoying the view of the cathedral from the balcony we had seated ourselves on. After that we went back to the Xocolo itself and saw our friend, the spraypaint painter, and bought a couple of more things from him. We also ran into Jessie and Amber down there and listened to some people giving a concert/performance of music and dance. We also ran into some of our house mates who were on their way to a club.
Happy, full, and tired we then returned back to the house to chat over cena and then it was off to bed. A good end to a day that had started unpleasantly.