What I've learned (part 1)

A few lessons from an exhausting, stimulating first week:

1. When traveling in a foreign country, one should never dispose of English-language reading material, no matter how heavy one’s backpack. Before leaving Mexico City and coming here to Tapachula, I thought I would lighten my load by tossing out an issue of the Economist. This left me with only one magazine. Admittedly, it is the New Yorker, and the double anniversary issue at that, but even so, I am nearly finished.

2. We can land a man on the moon, cure polio and run a 4-minute mile, but we have not yet figured out how to consistently mass produce a decent pillow. Though I have come to expect it by now, I am still amazed at how many absolutely awful pillows are found in so many hotel rooms, no matter their price or location. My room here has two pillows, one with about as much give as my hardcover high school chemistry textbook, the other an odd mass of coils that resembles a nest of snakes. I went with the snakes, but put a towel over the pillow in case one of them tries to bite me in the night.

3. American music has a farther reach than other export, cultural or otherwise. In Ciudad Hidalgo yesterday, a dusty jumble of a town on the Suchiate River, bordering Guatemala, I stopped in a convenience store for a bottle of water. What I heard was James Blount’s “You’re Beautiful,” a song so ubiquitous it cannot be escaped even in the deepest corner of Mexico. And earlier this week, on the subway in Mexico City, a man boarded the train carrying a small stereo playing a cover of the Lucksmiths’ song “I Started a Joke.” (For those who would point out that James Blount is British and the Lucksmiths Australian, I would only say: Get over yourselves. You know what I mean.)

4. Crossing into Mexico is easier done than said. I took my passport along for my trip to Ciudad Hidalgo and Talisman, so that if I wanted to cross into Guatemala, I would be allowed back into Mexico. I thought about also bringing my FM3, a work permit I got from the Mexican embassy. Instead, as the photo above shows, you don’t need so much as an Eddie’s Sandwich Club card to enter either country. The woman above is jumping off a raft onto Mexican soil. She paid the operator of the raft 10 pesos (1 cent) to pull her across the shallow, narrow river. A few well-armed Mexican soldiers watched as hundreds like her entered all day long. No papers needed.

5. The universe has a way of righting itself. I might have learned this from Lost, but anyway: Early for an appointment at El Colegio de Mexico this week, I sat on a boulder outside the school, positioning myself so my laptop would get a good signal from the college’s free Wifi. Feeling vaguely guilty about stealing Internet access, I was about to close up my computer when I heard a splat! and saw, covering the Y and U keys, a pile of black-and-white bird poo. I wiped it up with a tissue, but some slipped between the cracks and I think my U key is permanently stained.

This was not as bad, however, as the time I was in Oakland, walking to an interview, and felt a wet, warm glop on the back of my neck. Bird poo again, and it slid down my neck onto my shirt collar. After glancing around to make sure no one had noticed my humiliation, I rushed back to the hotel for a shower and change of clothes. This laptop, though, will have to hold out for a few more weeks.