Guadalajara

became something of a mirror of the inevitable reality that lurked all along behind my ideas of grandiose world-trekking. Once Dora and her family left the picture (after being unspeakably kind and helpful in setting me up), I was left alone in a city I didn´t really want to be in. Which gave me lots of time to think. I had four long days of facing the music, and this was the chorus - I´m a college graduate, I´m travelling alone through countries that speak a language I don´t know, and I am without solid direction in any physically concrete sense until further notice. Not even when I was in India two years ago did I feel like such a foreigner - both to others and to myself.

I wrote this as I left Mexico on a jetplane yesterday:

For me, and for now, Guadalajara was a city of shadowy glances and impenetrable sunlit corners. Moving like a machine, waiting like an injured vulture. My silences in Guadalajara were fathoms depers than my American pauses, and even my English was mangled by my Spanish´s utter disapproval. I was whipped in the face daily by a vine hanging down from the patio next door, and when it happened at dusk last night I realized how downward my gaze had been all along. I am happy to leave like a turtle is happy to swim back to see after laying its eggs: its functional purpose fulfilled sans climax, and mostly grateful for the shell on its back.

(That last metaphor is ridiculous, but I did see an enormous turtle go back to the ocean after laying its eggs while I was in Puerto Vallarta and I can´t tell you how epic it was. I kept trying to touch it as it entered the sea and it kept jolting away. Those slimy-looking stumps have immense strength.)

Okay, all that is part of the truth. Two other parts of Guadalajara were great - the four days I spent with Dora and her family involved me seeing just about everything Guadalajara had to offer, and undoubtedly eating everything it had to offer. (Try guanavana, a fruit that tastes like manna from heaven; avoid Tehuino, a drink that I guess is made of spoiled corn but is utterly inexplicable to me and my face.) My first-ever Spanish conversation (albeit horribly broken and at least half-English) was had with Dora´s Tío Jorge over some breakfast tacos, and he even helped check me into my hostel after Dora flew back to Colorado. Check out our glamour shot.

The other thing is that I met a guy from Melbourne named Todd while eating delicious chicken molé alone at a birriería near my hostel and had a ton of fun exploring the city and its nightlife with him for three days. Main highlight? Going to a Chivas (Guadalajara´s team) soccer match. I have a video of Chivas scoring a goal on a penalty kick - I don´t have enough time left at the internet café to post it, but I´ll do it next time I´m here.

Also don´t have time for more pics, but I´ll put up one with my favorite faces - the people on the bench at the Guadalajaran Cultural Center are me, Dora, and the newlyweds (Dora´s sister Veronica and her husband Christian). More pictures forthcoming, as well.

So Guadalajara was pretty much as exciting as it was painful, and useful as it was pointless. As it is for a lot of things in my life, it seems, I just needed enough distance from it to realize that.