#a constant battle to maybe be comparable to an average english speaker

[bumblebeehug]

not a very positive post but i hate, hate, not being fluent in english. i wish so bad that i could write in english as well as i can write in swedish, and it's exhausting knowing that it'll never compare. and writing things in swedish makes the target audience so much smaller than i want it to be. i wanna write great books that people all over the world can read and enjoy, and with english being such a wide spread language, that would be the preferred language to write in. but as soon as i read actual books, or just other fanfics as well, i realise that my vocabulary is incredibly small (i search up words to translate all the time - even in this post i forgot the english word for "målgrupp", which was target audience) and i also realise that i lack understanding of how real english speakers use words and sentences. i can write by text book, but my writing will never be exceptional in the way i'd love for it to be.

[trippingonroads-blog1]

Getting Controversial en el Centro Historico

El Huequito lived up to the hype and then some. The al pastor melted so effortlessly in your mouth, you needed the onions in the taco to remind you that you weren’t just drinking a delicious meat smoothie. Lindsay got two al pastor tacos, I got one, and we split a burrito con al pastor, cheese, guacamole, and salsa. And we also got a bistec gringa (sort of like a quesadilla), a chicharron taco, a campechano taco, and a bistec taco. We ate a lot.

We also didn’t speak a word of English to the waitress, which was a new first. For one meal, we were a 10th-grade Spanish textbook, nailing the key phrases and vocabulary of ordering a meal in Mexico. (We will conveniently forget about our lunch today at La Casa de Tono, an inferior restaurant that moved so fast that we had barely said a “Perdon?” before our waiter found the one guy at the restaurant who spoke English and insisted on doing so the rest of the meal.) 

I’ve found that I can actually read the language fairly well and understand maybe 40% of what people say to me, which would be a point of pride if I didn’t take eight years of Spanish in school, including two semesters of college-level Spanish. My level of comprehension compared to schooling is shameful and my communication ability is like four-year old Mexican child level. I started learning Spanish in 6th grade. Lindsay won’t let me blame the school system so I guess I’m just going to have to admit I didn’t work very hard at Spanish in school.

Lindsay didn’t study it nearly as much as I did and she’ll occasionally give me a look when someone is talking to her to see if I caught something she didn’t but by and large, she’s on it. She can communicate well enough when she needs to and she’s been more willing to ask people for help in broken Spanish than I have, probably because of the crippling shame I feel for being so underachieving.

Today got a tease with La Casa de Tono so let’s get back to the itinerary. We spent the day in el Centro Historico, both the most well-preserved historic area of the city and the most modernized. Sort of a weird dynamic actually, as the conflicting influences of Spain and America were in tension everywhere. Zocalo, the busiest commercial and tourist area of el Centro Historico, is comprised of beautiful, long avenues of buildings built in the colonial Spanish style and it feels a bit like you’re walking through Madrid or Salamanca as you traverse by the fountains and grassy knolls of Alameda Central, down a cobblestone road towards la Plaza de la Constitucion. However, the avenues are wide, heavily trafficked by pedestrians and vehicles of varying wheel-counts, and American businesses like Starbucks, Nike, Burger King, McDonald’s, and Carl’s Jr. are everywhere.

When we walked into la Plaza de la Constitucion around noon, it felt busy but not excessive and we could find a place to take some pictures in peace. This area really looks like Europe, surrounded by massive, entire-block 16th-century palaces that today house the Mexican government, and a Catholic cathedral on one end because religion and government have gone pretty hand-in-hand in the Spanish-speaking world.

El Catedral Metropolitano is, well, more grim than your average cathedral. Whereas most of the cathedrals I’ve seen in Europe seem to plainly celebrate God and the glory of His conquest, El Catedral Metropolitano made me think of a centrist Republican wearing a MAGA hat. It’s built in the same ornate Gothic style as many 16th-century cathedrals but the stone was a fair bit darker than say, Notre-Dame, and the abutments, buttresses, and spires seemed to drip, even as they reached toward the sky. Felt like watching an excess of grey paint dry by puddling on top of itself in contoured layers of desperation. The side chapel appeared unfinished, with exposed, deep-red stone that rippled and cracked like dried blood. As Lindsay noted, the place just had a bad energy. 

Inside, it was like any other cathedral, with glorious apses, gargantuan columns, and ornate altarpieces. Except that there was an active mass, which was a bit uncomfortable since God clearly saw me sneak in a plastic water bottle and Lindsay put her sunglasses on inside. (He did not, apparently, think to alert security.) What did strike me, however, was the relative absence of color. Sure, the altars were gold, and the depictions of saints and Jesus were painted but the windows were plain and the altars in the side chapels were dimly lit and austere. One wasn’t painted at all; just a bunch of exposed wood faces resting in a floral arrangement. I’m not religious but I tend to feel the power of God, or at least of the Church, when I visit cathedrals. All I felt in there was shame, for my own deliberate rule-breaking and for the oppression that built this conflicted holy place.

I mentioned Zocalo is heavily trafficked. This is a gross understatement. Disgusting. Despicable. Lindsay said Zocalo reminded her of Times Square. It reminded me of Times Square, too, only six times the size and four times as crowded. After popping in el Catedral and walking around the exterior — maybe 30 minutes removed from the street — the entire area was mobbed. There wasn’t three square feet of freedom to be found anywhere. This is maybe a slight exaggeration for effect but not a huge one. La Plaza must be half a mile square and it was virtually impossible to walk across without zig-zagging and bumping into people. Worse yet, street vendors line virtually every sidewalk, squeezing the pedestrian chorizo into a cocktail weenie sleeve. At one point, we were lined up in a mass on one sidewalk waiting to cross the street and realized that the other side had amassed a small army to challenge us like a medieval battle. It was stressful, to be honest. Moving around there is slow, sweaty, and deeply uncomfortable. Zocalo’s reputation for being a pickpocket haven wasn’t exactly making us feel great about that crowd, either.

Lindsay and I both definitely pondered some prejudicial bullshit, getting irritated by the constant barrage of vendors, bemoaning the lack of personal space, cringing at the occasional gust of garbage and sewage wind, and feeling particularly vulnerable to crime since there were surprisingly few gringos walking around. For me, it’s been amazing how few people speak even a word of English. Many businesses sport English names and have English menus or translations, English language music is everywhere, and the American commercial influence, especially in food (hamburgers) and sports (lots of Patriots gear!), is ubiquitous. And yet we had a hell of a time finding a bandage today for a burn on my finger because I didn’t know the word. This is the American imperialist in me talking; I genuinely expected to use English more than we have down here. You spend so much time hearing America is the center of the universe, you start to believe it a little. That’s why traveling is important. You get out of your comfort zone and you realize that life is so easy for someone who speaks English as a first language. Even when people don’t understand what you’re saying, there is infrastructure in place to facilitate communication. Being able to speak and read English is a huge, huge boon no matter where you go. Visiting Berlin has gotta be a fucking nightmare for a Mexican person. If you can’t admit you’ve been given a huge advantage simply by your parents speaking English, you are an asshole and an idiot. English speakers have it easy but I’m not so sure that justifies all the ethnocentrism. I acknowledge my guilt.

We’re taking a break at home now and Lindsay is asleep on the couch next to me, which is probably why this got so long. It took us two hours (counting a lunch break) to get out of Zocalo and back to Roma Nte. We’re both exhausted from being on our feet so long (7.5 miles) in the sun. Dinner is going to be an adventure again.