puedo sentarme contigo?

- man sitting alone at a table behind me at dinner today

After tossing my bag in my hostel dorm, I wander out looking for dinner. I sit down at the first place that could fix a good, cheap meal. Consome de pollo, pechuga asada, y arroz. Couldn´t go wrong. As I´m eating, a man sitting alone at the table behinds me asks if he could sit with me. Como? No, I say dismissively, and though he respectfully turns back to his meal, what I really want to ask is Why? What makes you think I would say yes? Do you always ask women eating by themselves if you can sit with them? Would you ask a Mexican woman? Is this how Mexican men approach Mexican women? If so, what makes you think that I, a foreign woman, would think it acceptable? Or do you think because I am alone and clearly not Mexican, that I would not think it´s not unusual for you to approach me with such an invasive request?

It´s not just here, though. I´ve been similarly approached in Morocco, and I recognize it more as a consequence of being a woman, traveling solo, really, than anything else, because I have no other explanation. It´s not that I´m naive about motivations, which I know that, although they can even be multi-faceted, are rarely mutual if I am the one being approached (or so goes my general rule), nor is it that I am necessarily offended. But I really want to know what they are thinking when they do approach me. Where do they get the idea that this would somehow be unrejectionable in my mind? Is it TV? Is it other Euro-American women? Does foreign automatically mean easy or naive? Do American men talk to solo foreign women this way?

These are questions I don´t know if I´ll ever get the answers to, because the lines between what are gender vs. nationality-based perceptions are blurry, not to mention the various backgrounds of my solicitors. At least, it reminded me that I´m not home.

impresiones primeras

I expected to find Mexico City with 1) at least twice the cars, 2) at least twice the people, 3) 5 times as many motorcycles, and 4) insufferable air quality. Al contrario, on the way from the airport, I had to ask the taxi driver what was going on that the city was so quiet. The people have not left work yet, he told me. At 6 p.m. it would be crazy.

My first impression is that I don´t feel that I am in Mexico as much as I would feel I was in say, Colombia, when I was in Colombia. It is still a big city, but it´s not hot, not as congested, not as polluted as I was told it would be. As my first impression of Mexico, it didn´t seem like a place that thousands of people would risk their lives to get out of every year. People walk with the same airs of purpose as they do in Philadelphia. Working, shopping, etc, which I suppose you could expect in a downtown area. As for myself, I really feel like I blend in, I want to say, more to the credit of the city´s cultural proximity to my home country than to my own fitting in. I didn´t feel people´s eyes on me as much as other places. On the other hand, for all I know, I may just be getting used to Latin American cities. Maybe if I go back to Cali, Colombia, it won´t really be as congested as I first remember it. I can´t really be sure if it is myself or the city that is different than expected.

To be honest, happy as I am with how comfortable I feel here, I am glad that I did not plan to stay here for long. You could almost say that I´m unimpressed with how impressed I am. First thing tomorrow morning, after breakfast, is to take the first bus I can to Ciudad Oaxaca.

Mexico City preparando para el dia de la Independencia, Sept. 15

diaspora

For the past couple weeks, reality has been suspended in a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland-like dream for me. After over 10 years in business, my restaurant closed its doors for good earlier this month. B___ was a sort of Hotel California, a place you could never simply leave for good, and always waited for you to come back, because you knew you could always pick up a shift or 5 a week when you needed. That's how I stayed there for 5 years. Now, the spell has been broken, and I feel like one of a diaspora.

My plans to travel to Mexico pre-date the closure, but the timing has turned out to be just about right. The idea was to look for a new job once I came home, albeit, a new primary, likely restaurant, job, while keeping B___ for a shift or two a week... you know, just in case. The point was, after waiting a year to see if change would come through my e-mail inbox in the form of an acceptance letter, I could not wait any more to pursue it on my own. I would start by going to the city, away from the cultural dead zone that is the Philadelphia suburbs, and bank entirely on the holiday season in a place where you weren't as complacent about making less than $50 a night because you were so comfortable there, and then... well, the only goal, after sealing all my grad school apps, was not to be here in 2010, not waiting another year for the world to come to my doorstep.

The only surprise is that Mexico will be more of a continuation of this all-play, no-work dream, than a gap in the grind. I should say, a rich intensification. I actually want the dream, I mean, the sense of shifting reality, to continue well after my return, and I will be working toward that. Many things are changing, inside and outside. Life is becoming a series of experiments, and getting to the right places will require a persistent questioning of comfort zones as well as anarchy. This trip will be a great segue into the materialization of these approaches. For the record, I will be in Mexico for 2.5 weeks, and this will be my longest planned "solo" trip ever. My external intentions are simple. Exploration, meeting people, and growing my Spanish.