Day 1: I'm here!

8:30pm

My first night in San Miguel de Allende, and I think that I have already fallen in love.

But first things first. I woke up at 3:30 this morning... pretty painful considering the Girls State hangover and all. The Houston leg of my flight was uneventful, but the leg to Mexico City, I had two little girls behind me who alternately kicked the back of my chair and sang Las Mañanitas and The Itsy-Bitsy Spider at the tops of their lungs (bilingual preschool anyone?). Remarkably, I was still tired enough to sleep through most of it. When I got off in Mexico City, they told me to go claim my bags, take them through customs, and bring them back. So, imagine my surprise when the last bag was claimed and I watched the carousel grind to a halt... and my bags were nowhere in sight. You would all be proud of me. I did NOT panic. At least, not quite. As it turned out, I had to go through customs in Queretaro instead, and my bags were going straight there. So. I checked in with my other airline, found my gate, and when they called for boarding, I climbed down the stairs (jetways seem to be mostly dispensible here), and I found at the bottom of the stairs... a bus. A slightly smaller, slightly dingier version of the 100 bus to the airport in Austin. That was a new one. But I went with it. The bus wound in and out of the normal jetway traffic, between taxiing planes and abnormally long luggage trains... I tell you, that ride was enough to make anyone religious. At least we didn't try and cut in front of any planes that were taking off. Finally we got to the other side of the runway, and our plane was the singular smallest commercial plane I had ever seen. It was mostly empty-- there were nine people on my flight and they told us not to move around... for balance reasons. It was a very bumpy and scary flight. Kind of like the Rattler, without the shoulder harness. And then, the Queretaro airport was the singular smallest airport I have ever seen. Two commercial flights per day. The luggage train was an overgrown Radio Flyer, and the baggage carousel was mostly manually driven. But I had my own private little customs area there, and the semáforo fiscal wasn't going to let its one daily customer by without an inspection-- I got red-lighted and had to open up my bags in front of a bunch of men. But the two guys who brought me to San Miguel were cool-- they insisted at one point that we stop off on the side of the road for roasted corn. The driver paid. The corn sellers mostly walk out their back door and through the cornfield in the morning, picking stalks as they go, and then they set up their tarp on the side of the road and sell roasted corn with lime and chili powder for the rest of the day. At one point, a car cut us off and the driver threw the "Hook 'em" sign at the slow car as we passed. I thought of Sebastián. There were donkeys, horses, entire flocks of sheep, all grazing unattended and unfenced, dangerously close to the road. Buildings painted in bold, bright colors, as if the brightness could hide the fact that a new coat of paint was the only repair done on the buildings in years. Then, finally, we arrived in San Miguel de Allende, the self-proclaimed heart of Mexico.

Then, it was straight to work. We had a discussion, which began ten minutes after I arrived, about the Zapatista movement worldwide. When that was over, I ventured into the town with some of the other girls to find some bottled water and a money changer.

The town is amazing. I got the chance to explore it just a little this afternoon, but I already know that this town is going to hold a special place in my heart for a very long time. My room is on the third floor of the compound, and I have, not one, but TWO rooftop balconies straight off my room. There is a courtyard with bouganvilleas in full bloom, which is where I am sitting now, and a hummingbird just flew past. (There will be pictures on this blog at some point, I promise.)The building is very uneven, as are the extremely narrow cobblestone streets of the town. But everything is painted in very bright colors, and my Spanish is a lot better than I thought it had become in the past few months. I live on a street called Calzada de la Luz, which means something like Street of Light. But since calzada actually means something closer to pavement, it seems to me that the street is named after the fact that it is paved with light... you know how they always say that in the land of plenty, the streets are paved with gold? There are many people here who don't have much. But I would say that the streets of San Miguel de Allende are paved with light. Today, all I saw was the quiet and still golden light of the afternoon on the streets. There were children playing alongside stooped old men, enough Americans that I didn't feel self-concious to be there, and two-way traffic flying by pedestrians on a street that should only safely hold one car across. I don't know much about the town yet, or everything that's going to happen here, but I have a feeling that it's going to be great. Today, as I was walking back from the market with two of my new friends, a $2 pineapple in one hand and a huge smile on my face, I suddenly realized something.

I am all alone in a foreign country.

But, best of all, I am not afraid.



PS. I love you and miss you all! If you want to write to me, send it to this address in Laredo and they'll forward it here. ¡Vaya con Dios!

Center for Global Justice
9902 Crystal Court Suite 107
BC-2323
Laredo, TX 78045