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Flush it!

I was helping S admit a patient. The patient's cousin was in the room.

When was the last time you had a bowel movement? I asked the patient.

This morning, she had one this morning, the cousin responded.

Wow, your cousin sure knows a lot about you, I said.

Well, the cousin told me, she forgot to flush it.

Cheezburger Break

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Cuernavaca Journal: Day 3

When we get to breakfast this morning, Neil is already at the table. I haven't had a chance to speak to him very much at school, but he is in all of Kenny's classes.

We all greet each other with various levels of Spanish and Kenny and I begin to eat our fruit. Steaming Christmas mugs full of coffee show up in front of each of us. Merry Christmas! Neil tells everyone in Spanish, toasting in our general direction with a Frosty-the-Snowman mug. Chelo laughs and walks back to the kitchen.

Oh Senora.....Neil calls out. I have been wanting the milk, please. Some of Neil's sentence constructions remind me of David Sedaris essays -- especially the one where he goes to the doctor in Paris. I immediately capitalize on Neil's request and pour some milk into my coffee. Chelo goes back into the kitchen.

Oh....SenOOOOra....Neil calls out. I am breakfasting on how many eggs today?

Two, everybody gets two. Would you care for more? Chelo asks him.

No, thank you, this is just fine, but my wife will be wanting to know when I get home.

Over the next few days, Neil will turn out to be a near constant source of comic relief. But both Kenny and I are uncomfortable with the way he treats our hostess. He has been staying with the family exactly one day longer than we have. Listen, he tells us on the way to school, I paved the way for you people. Before I asked, there wasn't even any 1978 margarine for the dry toast!

In class, I start to realize that I am watching the clock. How ridiculous am I? I chose this vacation. I am paying for it. I am HAPPY to be improving my Spanish. Yet, apparently, my amazing capacity for dread trumps all of this. I spend a moment secretly evaluating my classmates. Are they looking forward to the break? To the comida? To after school shopping, touring and beer? I go back to my work and try to be in the moment...and in Spanish. In the Spanish moment. Every once in a while, the merriment from Kenny and Neil's class will interrupt ours. Their teacher, Marilu -- who also teaches one of my classes, has a very charming way of saying super...or super duper. Soooopair doooopair, she says. Also, apparently, Kenny has accidently told the class that he and I ate each other for breakfast instead of we ate breakfast together.

Today, back at Chelo's house, there is a big party. Because it's Wednesday. Every Wednesday, everybody related to Chelo in Cuernavaca eats comida at her house. This explains the 3 dining tables and two kitchens. Chicken mole will be served. I tell Chelo again that Kenny is allergic to nuts -- she tells me that she will have something else available for Kenny. Nuts are not a traditional ingredient in this particular mole recipe (many mole recipes do call for nuts) but she buys the paste already made -- so she can't be 100% sure about a total absence of nuts. The mole is wonderful -- served with crusty bread, iceberg lettuce, beans and salsa as always. Kenny gets a delicious looking chicken milanesa. Our classmate, Chislan, is there because he is staying in the home of Chelo's daughter. Chislan and I talk some in Spanish while Cesar, Chelo's son, corrects us. It turns out he used to teach at a different school -- like 30 yrs ago. That is how he met his American wife -- who teaches at a local Catholic school. Chelo has told me that she had all of her children (either 4, 6 or 7 of them -- I didn't understand the story completely) in this house with no more anesthetic than a cup of chamomile tea. But, in order to do this, you will need very strong tea, she tells me.

After comida, we hop a taxi to Las Mananitas -- an unbelievably expensive and beautiful hotel and restaurant. We just plan to have drinks in the garden. The garden is patrolled by a variety of peacocks and other tropical birds. It is really a beautiful place. I have a Negra Modelo with lime and snack on the complimentary tray of spicy peanuts, pepitas and potato chips with sour cream dip while Kenny has a $12 flan with a double expresso. The waiters are gracious and act as if we are very important even though we are in our sweaty school clothes and obviously not eating dinner. Mexican people, in general, are just very courteous. They are polite to each other and they (for the most part) treat visitors to their country with painstaking hospitality.

After our treats, we walk a couple of blocks, then take a taxi back to our neighborhood. While we are downtown -- in el centro -- we see the Palace of Cortez, which is now a museum, but we don't go in -- it's too late. Back in our own neighborhood, we walk by the taco family. Tacos? They ask us. Tomorrow we tell them. Tomorrow.

It is now day three for both of us without a bowel movement.

Cuernavaca: Day 2

Nobody in Cuernavaca has a front yard that you can see. Houses are built, in some form of fashion, all the way out to the sidewalk. Last night, as we were walking back to Chelo's house after our beers, we walked by an open garage. A huge grill had been pulled out to the sidewalk. Several youngish Mexicans are gathered around the grill and busy in the garage. Beef is being grilled, tortillas are being heated, smells (oh, the most wonderful smells) are being created. Tacos? They ask us. No, we say. Another time. We are scheduled to have cena (the light evening meal) with Chelo in a few minutes.

We arrive back at the house, let ourselves in through the gate, and go up to our room. We had opened the windows in the room to let some air in and now we are being punished for it. Although the evening air is somewhat cool outside, the room is a virtual oven, or at least a virtual bun warmer. We each take cold showers, change our clothes and go downstairs

Chelo is making quesadillas with flour tortillas and cheese from Oaxaca (sorry, Suebob). Everyone always eats corn tortillas in this part of Mexico. I had told Chelo at comida that I was from Texas and that my family always ate flour tortillas -- as the people of northern Mexico also do. (I love corn tortillas, don't get me wrong -- but flour tortillas are the tortillas of my heart.) We tell her that we don't need her to walk us to school in the morning because we have passed by it during our evening walk (I attended the same school several years ago.) The quesadillas are delicious and I am touched by Chelo's gesture of getting some flour tortillas to make me feel at home.

Upstairs, the room is still hot enough to warm buns. Kenny and I take two more cold showers. We strip down to virtually nothing and lie in the dark each of us on our own bed. I have wet wash cloths strategically placed. The fans are on high. I take half an ambien and a benadryl and pass out almost immediately to the sound of a ceiling fan in need of repair. Cuernavaca is known in Mexico as the city of eternal spring -- and when I visited in the past (in December and January) it was very springlike. Now, with global warming, I think it may have graduated to the city of eternal summer.

The air in the morning is crisp and cool - springlike, indeed. As we walk into the main house for breakfast, a wall of hot air hits us. Breakfast is a plate of cut up watermelon (the fruit in Mexico is a miracle of ripeness and freshness and taste -- and worth the risk of diarrhea), toast and a tub of margarine that looks as though it could have been purchased in 1978, and a plate of scrambled eggs (tomatillo salsa on the side). We eat and head off to school for our placement tests. The school is in what was once a house. It is a lovely property. Kenny and I are each handed placement tests. Kenny, smiling, writes his name on the top and then hands it back, confident in his total lack of Spanish knowledge. I struggle with mine. Subjunctive? Conditional? At one point or another in my life, I have mastered (on paper) every Spanish tense, every mood. Unfortunately, lack of use has driven all of that information from my mind. Now, at work, I rely on simple present and simple past to communicate with my patients. The test frustrates and embarrasses me. After the test, we each have a brief interview. During the interview, it comes to me (in that weird, free association way that realizations are made at inappropriate times) that I had told Chelo that Kenny was allergic to bones (I was trying to tell her that he is allergic to nuts.)

Kenny and I are assigned to our respective classes: Kenny to the beginner class and I to some kind of intermediate one. There are three other people in my class and one of them has the same name as me! We trudge through some grammar (the conditional tense) and make up sentences to say to each other using our new conjugation. My teacher looks a little like Jennifer Lopez. I love the slow clear way she speaks Spanish. Each word is distinct. Over the next five days of class, I will appreciate her amazing teaching skills more and more. I will also start to feel guilty that I am benefiting from these skills -- she wouldn't be able to support herself if she taught Mexican children.

The other students I meet:

Sandy and Maureen. Two well-off white women in their 50s from the midwest. They are having a daring adventure.

Neil. He is staying in our house. He is a travel writer and is actually on assignment.

Mark. Heavily tattooed, mid twenties, from the deep South. Came to Cuernavaca 4 months ago unable to say hello in Spanish. He is leaving in a few days. His grammar is atrocious, but he has a fluidity to his Spanish speech that I envy. He tells me that he dreams and thinks in Spanish now. He seems like his heart is breaking at leaving Mexico.

Anna. A recent law school graduate from the mountain time zone. Is thinking about taking a job in personal injury law in the South.

Chislan. A French Canadian guidance counselor -- he is very fit, in his fifties, and talks about Jack Kerouac at every opportunity. It will take me three days to realize that the reason that he is so hard for me to understand in Spanish is that his first language is French.

By lunch time, Kenny is in a foul mood. He is unused to being a novice in a field of study. The day has been an exercise in frustration for him. He is the least experienced Spanish student in the school. We go home to have a comida of cecina with our family (I'm still not really sure what cecina is -- a sort of wet, cooked beef jerky -- better than it sounds) Then Kenny and I head for the air conditioned mall on the other side of town. We watch August Rush (in English) and then go to Sanborne's for beers and coffees. On the way home, we get caught in a delicious rain storm. The taco family offers us shelter and tacos, but we're full and delighting in getting wet.

When we get back to the room, we find that it is much cooler at night if you close the room up tight during the hot part of the day. We have done this. After cool showers, we head to bed.

Neither one of us has had a bowel movement in Mexico yet.