Clausurado Por Violar la Ley!

This morning I hauled myself out of bed at 6.30 (it's early when you teach until 10pm the night before!), took the dog out, got dressed, and finally was awake and ready for 7am spinning. So imagine my surprise when I realize that the front door is locked and all the lights are off--usually there are at least twenty people there by 7am in the morning. I walk around the corner and on the gates to the parking lot see the telltale yellow sign: CLAUSURADO POR VIOLAR LA LEY. My gym has been shut down!!!

Being "clausurado" in Mexico seems to be a fairly common thing, and I can't quite figure out if it's the deathknell of a business or a common annoyance. A government official arrives, tells you that you are being shut down, and pastes large yellow signs over the entryway to your business such that to enter you would need to remove the sign, which is also illegal. You can get closed down for all kinds of things: not showing up for permit hearings, not paying taxes, serving underage drinkers, allowing smoking... and also, it seems, for ticking off powerful neighbors. They shut down restaurants, gyms, cafes, nail salons, schoools, and it doesn't seem to matter whether you are a hole-in-the-wall run out of your mother's garage or a fancy fresa hot-spot. Some places seem to be closed for a few days and back in business. A lovely art cafe and restaurant nearby that I've always been meaning to try, which has been shut down for several days, has an eloquent letter posted on its door defending itself against what it says are fraudulent charges and pleading that every day it remains closed makes it less likely to be able to reopen. (Unfortunately for them you must still pay your bills while you are unable to operate.) The beauty salon of luchador Shocker, which is a couple blocks from our house (yes, he lives in Coyoacan, and yes, I saw him once on the street!) was clausurado twice, apparently for not paying taxes, and didn't reopen again.

So my gym, whose monthly membership we have paid and which is just a block from our house, is closed. Next to the clausurado sign is posted a number you can call for information; we'll see if this is just a minor annoyance of not paying a permit or if it is a bigger problem... Meanwhile, it's back to the Viveros for me!

The End of Hot Yoga

Well, today is day seven, my last day with the voucher, and no more hot yoga for me. I went faithfully three times in a row; then arranging to have the car or get a ride and block out two and a half hours of the day (getting there, taking the class, getting home, immediately taking a shower--I ended up with my clothes sopping wet so no sitting around for me!) just became too much. Did I set my life on fire? Maybe if I had stuck it out the final four days. But as it was, I am glad I tried it, I don't feel like I need to do it again anytime soon, and I am reminded that I should try to do a little more yoga a little more often...

Fiesta de la Inmaculada Concepción de María

The section of Coyoacan in which Antonio and I live is called la Conchita, short for Barrio de la Inmaculada Concepción de María. (Conchita, as the priest later put it, is our warm nickname for the term.) Last Sunday afternoon (December 7), while sitting at my computer working, I suddenly heard trumpets, horns, drums getting louder and louder coming towards our house. Turning to look out the bedroom window, I see two enormous paper mache figures and a statue of the Virgin Mary glide by, followed by a banner and a marching band surrounded by a large crowd, many of whom were carrying spears of gladiola. Antonio and I ran out to watch.



The procession had originated from the little chapel in the center of the plaza; in this ritual, part of the celebration of the immaculate conception, the parishioners carry the Virgin Maria up and down the main street of the barrio (which happens to be our street) accompanied by a noisy brass band, singing, and repeated cries of "viva la Virgin."

Three or four times the crowd came to a stop in front of a house that had been decorated, the Virgin was set down, facing the house, and a line formed of people waiting to pray in front of the Virgin and touch her face. (Antonio and I assumed that these were the homes of the biggest patrons of the festival--the large banners in the plaza announcing the events for the day made it clear that the fireworks show that spectacularly closes each day of the festival would only be possible if enough donations were made.)


The procession travelled a few blocks past our house and then turned to retrace its steps back to the church. The door to the beautiful chapel had been framed with a kind of floral headboard, its yellow and pink matching the large sand painting that decorated the plaza immediately in front of the church.




As the band took their seats under the tarp to the right of the church, the men carrying the Virgin set the statue down in the middle of the sand painting and began to clean the statue of all the flowers and petals that had been heaped on her during the procession. Children and dogs were running around shouting, the band was playing, and the bells of the church were ringing wildly; it was that kind of festive chaos that we don't seem to have often in the States that strikes just the right balance between headache-inducing and fun.

The Virgin was lifted again and carried into the chapel for a mass.


At nine o'clock that night, we returned to the plaza where a large crowd had gathered to watch the fireworks, or the "toritos," as they call them. In front of the church, an enormous three-tiered scaffolding had been set up with elaborate cords and tubes running all over it. A standard fireworks shot would be fired into the air above the church (after the show we realized that the launching pad for the fireworks was right in the middle of the plaza, about fifteen feet behind us--again, something else you don't see in the States!), and then one section of the scaffolding would be set on fire in a dazzling display. I remember when fireworks displays were a little unusual and exciting, but today it seems like the huge explosions in the sky have become so common that they have lost their wonder. A castle built up in front of a church that burns up bit by bit, accompanied by the deafening sizzling of the explosives and the applause of the crowd, however--that was fun. Each section would explode into spinning white lights, and slowly those would burn off to reveal colored images that would spin in their little circle. As the explosives burned off, bit by bit the spinning would slow and the image--seahorses, starfish, elephants, horses, crosses, a crown, and finally the Virgin--would glow and then slowly fade out. It was fantastic.









The next morning Antonio and I woke up early to go to the morning mass marking the official day of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. There to wish the Virgin happy birthday was an 8-member mariachi band, standing in an arc facing the statue of the Virgin and the altar, playing and singing away in her honor. We arrived at 7am just as the horns of the mariachis started up and found a seat towards the back, but fifteen minutes into the service I turned around and the crowd was lined up standing in the plaza. Perhaps it was devotion, or perhaps they already knew what we were delighted to find out--all church-goers were invited to breakfast (a tamale and champurrado, a hot drink made from corn that looks like the consistency of bean soup but is delicious) in the plaza after the service.

Hot Yoga: Day Four

I was planning on going for yoga in the evening, but I had to drop off my grades in Polanco, near the center of the city, and spent an exhausting three hours fighting traffic (take a city with a population of 25 million, add major construction projects on major arteries of the city, Thursday afternoon, holiday shoppers, and 5 million pilgrims for the Virgin of Guadalupe, and it's a mess). By the time I got home at 7, starving (hadn't eaten enough lunch), I couldn't face it. I did, however, try to do deep breathing and stay calm and focused every time a driver cut me off or stopped dead at a green light to buy a reindeer antler headband. (Well, the antler incident did get to me, but I tried to quell my rage as quickly as possible once the purchase had been made and correct change found.)

Hot Yoga: Day Three

I was actually kind of looking forward to going back for day three, when as I checked myself in at the front desk the yoga instructor from day one--the one who kept shouting for us to compress our celulite--runs up to buy himself a new pair of tiny little yoga hot pants. I felt a bit of a sinking feeling inside. I don't know if it was him or that the class was at 11.30 and I hadn't had much breakfast (as opposed to the evening classes, when I already have two meals in me), but I spent most of the second half hour sitting or lying down to fight back waves of dizziness. With his hour and forty-five-minute class, however, that still left me plenty of time for grueling yoga. Again, I did feel good afterwards, clothes sopping wet, body all stretched out, but I can't say I like feeling light-headed.

Hot Yoga: Day Two

So I just woke up after day two of hot yoga. Still sore and stiff, still couldn't get out of bed, but I don't think I feel worse than I did two days ago. On my way to the studio last night, driving myself there, I began to wonder what I was doing and started dreading it--no Megan, perhaps no Carolina, and my standing there on the mat trying not to fall over or faint while a pratically naked man shouts at me to compress compress compress squeeze my cellulitis away... But day two was much better. First, the class was all women, including the instructor, so there were no men in speedos (but the woman standing in front of me was wearing a bikini--I still sort of think yoga is for shorts, at least). And while we did the same twenty-six positions, each one repeated twice, the class had a totally different tone--more relaxed, less physically grueling (I only felt like I was going to faint once as opposed to about five times the first day), much more yoga-y. We held the positions for less time and spent much more time recuperating (I needed it) in savasana, and the hour and a half class actually ended in an hour and a half, not an hour and forty-five minutes (which makes a difference when you are twisting and pulling your body into unnatural positions in 100+ degree heat).

Anyway, I don't think I've turned on my life yet, but the stretching is probably doing my body some good. Onto day three!

Hot Yoga Challenge: Dedicate One Week and Turn on Your Life

Or at least that's what the promotion says. I've never been a true yoga devotee, but I like a class here and there, and I've always wondered about "hot yoga," so when I realized that there was a Bikram Yoga studio open near me offering a week's worth of classes for 220 pesos, I decided to check it out. Megan and her friend Carolina agreed to join me, so Monday night we showed up fifteen minutes early for the 6.30pm class to register ourselves.

Trying to find yoga in Mexico has been a bit of a challenge for me. Megan has a studio she loves, but to join it would be too much on top on my gym membership. The gym offers a couple weekly classes, but my one experience with the teacher grabbing my shoulders and cranking me into a twist, telling me in response to my "ow!" that "pain is a necessary part of yoga; to grow, to stretch, to change, is painful," scared me off. (I was also offended by the mantra at the end: "A flexible mind means you have a flexible body; an inflexible body means you have a closed mind.") I'm certainly not going to join the hot yoga studio (I think twice-weekly classes would be more expensive than my gym membership! plus I have to drive to get there) but why not try it for a week?

My impressions from day one: The room is hot. Really hot, and humid. Like stepping into a sauna. The floor has two rows for yoga mats marked with masking tape, which seems quite orderly, really, and there are boxes of kleenex scattered around the room (for your sweat). The instructor, who stood on a little podium in the center of the room and had a headset on, wore a kind of euro version of a speedo and nothing else. A couple of the women in the front next to the instructor had obviously been going for a while and seemed to put themselves into contortionist postures with little effort. The instructor spoke rapidly and constantly, describing the positions and shouting at us to push ourselves much further, much further (he also mentioned positions that were compressing our waist to burn fat and compressing our thighs to treat celulitis--I don't think I buy any of that). At several points in the class I felt kind of dizzy, and towards the end I found myself so lightheaded that I needed to sit down and rest. Also, the class was not the 60 minutes I expected, but rather an hour and a half, which actually became an hour and forty minutes. My clothes were sopping wet an hour into it. It was extremely difficult, and I wouldn't say that I enjoyed it.

But afterwards, once I had drunk enough water, I must say that I felt good. I don't think I would ever become a true devotee, going on a daily basis for a month at a time, but why not try it for a week (and get my money's worth!)? I did sleep very hard and I did have a hard time getting out of bed this morning--my whole body feels stiff and heavy. Megan has already decided that it is not for her, and I'm not sure what Carolina wants to do, but I'm going to try to keep at it for the week. Or at least go twice.

El Grito

We celebrated Mexican Independence Day last night by wandering around the center of Coyoacan, eating our month's quota of grease (pozole, flautas, churros), sipping tequila, and buying nationalistic souvenirs. We didn't stay for the grito in the plaza, though, but decided to watch the national ceremony live on tv instead. Viva Mexico!!!

Pescado Zarandeado

In los tianguis de los martes there's a fishmonger Antonio and I love. It's un mercado sobre ruedas, an informal "market on wheels" where vendors drive into certain streets on designated days and set up stands--kind of like a farmer's market except that the stands are not necessarily organic and it's the most economic place to shop. These little markets are all over Mexico City, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood depending on the day of the week. On Tuesdays, there's a market in Barrio de San Lucas, about five or six blocks from our house (this one is Lucy's favorite and she says has the best prices because the people who shop there tend to be domestic employees, as opposed to the markets on Saturday and Sunday when the senoras shop). There's a different collection of vendors at a larger market on Sunday across Miguel Angel de Quevedo, about five blocks in another direction from our house, and the largest market of all is on Saturdays on the street America. Every market has stands of household items (pots, pans, sponges, things to scrub with), accessories for hair, clothes, maybe some pirated cds, and then stands of fruits, vegetables, chicken, beef, pork, cheese, breads...

On Tuesdays, there are two fish stands. At one, I've never seen anyone buy fish. The other is always so croweded that there is usually a long wait to be helped. It's a mother-son couple, and they sell salmon, red snapper (huachinango), filets, whole fish, whole octupus, shrimp... What they don't have you can order and ask them to bring with them to their market on Saturday. Until this weekend, Antonio and I had only bought fish from them on Tuesdays--filets of salmon or tuna, something easy to prepare on a weeknight. But this Saturday we ended up at the market and decided to be more adventurous. We bought whole filets of huachinango, which looked just like this:

The fishmonger cleaned them, took off the scales (they went flying and a couple ended up on Lola's ears like little sequins), cut off the fins, took out the entrails... The mother gave us several recipes to try, all of which begin by marinating the fish in garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil.


Antonio wanted to try to recreate a dish we had loved in Puerto Vallarta: huachinango zarandero. He used pibil, chile, oranges, and tomatoes to make a salsa, wrapped the fish in tinfoil packets, and baked them. Fittingly (Tuesday is the national Independence Day), we served green rice and cauliflower, so our plates featured all the colors of the Mexican flag. The fish was amazing; I'm prejudiced, but I think it was restaurant quality. The only problem was that the little bones made eating it a little awkward, but I think that this is just a problem of eating whole fish.

Cultural Differences; or, Having a Pet

One is prepared for cultural differences in the expected categories: religion, social greetings, eating habits, child rearing, parties, holidays. But I suppose a true cultural difference is one that you don't even consider as something cultural until you are confronted with it. As I sit here waiting for our dog trainer to arrive to take Lola for her first lesson, I've been thinking about how surprisingly different it is having a pet in Mexico as compared to the U.S.

1. Many people think we are cruel to use a kennel. (But Lola loves it and likes to hang out in it on her own--see photo.)



2. When we tell people that we just had Lola spayed, many--even the dog trainer!--give us looks of horror mixed with distaste. Most people don't spay their animals here.

3. Yesterday while walking Lola, a driver pulls over her BMW, rolls down the window, and asks if we want to breed our dog with hers. And this is a common request. At least four times in the last two weeks we have been asked by passing drivers, pedestrians, and shop owners if we want to mate our dog with theirs.

4. That we wanted to give our dog some type of obedience training surprised most people. (This, however, should not have surprised me had I thought about the majority of dogs I encounter in the street or in parks.)

5. The kind of dog training I am used to--where you take your dog to a weekly class under guidance of a trainer--is very difficult to find in Mexico. More common is a boarding school-type training, where you send your dog off with his food for two or three weeks and then pick him up at the end of it. Another option was to drop Lola off from 8am -3pm every day for school-type instruction. We went with what seemed to us to be the best option--our dog trainer will come to our house every day for two to three weeks, or until Lola has mastered the basics of basic obedience--and take her out for a half an hour lesson. We can watch the lesson if we like, but the trainer does most of the work, at least at the beginning. It's a little strange to me, but we'll see what happens...

Update on Ritualistic Animal Slaughter

The mystery of the beheaded animal continues.

Lucy and Filiberto saw the dead animal from the window of their taxi--they had gone to school with their oldest daughter to watch her present at a school assembly, and she fainted at the end of the program, so they rushed home in a taxi to take her to the doctor (she's fine, and the doctor said it was just hormonal fluctations normal in adolescents). The taxi stopped right in front of the body and the driver announced that the cuts were perfect so there must be a shaman in the neighborhood. Filiberto thinks it could have been a cat, but Lucy and I are sure that its body was too big and its coat was too thick to be a cat.

Today Filiberto told Antonio that he thinks maybe the spirit escaped from the beheaded lamb/cat and entered his daughter, causing her to faint. Antonio disagrees. I think maybe this is connected to the mystery of why we cannot keep a plant alive in this apartment.

Ritualistic Animal Slaughter?

This morning coming home from the gym, turning onto my little street across from the Frida Kahlo park I saw what appeared to be a stuffed animal lying in the street. I slowed down to get a better look and realized it looked like a stuffed lamb--its body was much rounder than a dog, and it had this strange woolly coat. I thought that lamb roadkill was a strange thing to find here in the middle of Mexico City. Later Lucy told me that she had walked by it this morning, and the animal looked like a lamb except that it had a long tail. Apparently its head and feet had been cut off and then the animal had been dumped in the street. Very creepy. As Lucy said, "Nothing like this has ever happened around here before."

Another landmark moment in Mexico City

Today I had three Mexico City experiences all at once: making an illegal U-turn (so common you stop noticing); getting stopped by the police for the illegal turn (uncommon); and being asked for a bribe (apparently fairly common).

I was driving Antonio from the dentist to ITAM as part of our plan for me to adapt to driving myself around Mexico City. He told me to do a U-turn on Division del Norte, a major artery of the city, to which I replied, "But it says no left turn." Antonio assured me that a left turn was prohibited, but just doing a U-turn would be just fine. I said, "Well remember that this is illegal in the United States." Apparently it is in Mexico as well, because we were instantly flagged down by the police. I explained that I was American and just learning how to drive in Mexico, and I thought it was illegal but my husband told me it would be fine. Antonio said it was all his fault and explained what happened. The officer took my license and looked at it and gave it back, and then took Antonio's driver's license and registration and asked him to get out of the car "y luego le explico." The explanation was yes, it was illegal, but he was tired of writing tickets so instead Antonio could just give him whatever money he thought was appropriate and they could solve the whole problem now. Antonio told him that he had never given a bribe in his life and was not going to start now, so just to write up the ticket. Then the officer said that he could not write me a ticket because I had a California license, so he would have to confiscate my license (which apparently is not true) unless Antonio gave him money. Antonio then suggested that the officer just write Antonio the ticket, since it was his fault, to which the officer replied in shock, "but you were not driving, so you are asking me to do something corrupt?" Antonio said this country is never going to change if it works like this, and the officer replied we can't change this country. They continued arguing for about ten minutes, and then the officer announced that they were never going to come to an agreement and we should just go.

The moral of the story is:
1. Honesty is the best policy.
2. Trust your instincts when your husband encourages you to break the law.