Why It Helps To Know Some Spanish

Just by the sheer amount of people that walk the streets of Guadlajara each day, it is easiest for me to compare it to New York City. Both places seem to be full to the brim with culture, style, and stories. In NYC it can be hard to get the real interesting stuff out of people, whereas here all you have to do is speak a sentence or two of Spanish to somebody and they suddenly become intrigued by your foreigness want to know more. What really makes staying here worthwhile is using the language for more than getting directions or ordering off a menu. In order to truly immerse yourself, you´ve got to use the words you know more like flippers than water wings, so you can dive down deeper and find out what people really want to see and hear. Here´s three stories to illustrate how various levels of Spanish can facilitate interesting and interactive traveling.

¨SURPRISE ON YOUR BIRTHDAY¨

Looking at a menu is one of the most common challenges for a non-spanish speaker. It helps to know your tacos from your enchiladas, but with so much good food to eat I like to give all the options a thorough review. Doing just that at a restaurant/bar called ¨La Epoca de Oro,¨ an old-west themed place, I saw the words ¨Sorpresa en tu Cumpleaños.¨ Having insufficiently celebrated Joel´s birthday on the miserable ferry ride, I figured a surprise was in store. A simple gesture and a couple words to the waitress was all that was necessary to set the following series of events into motion:

A waiter clad in mariachi attire arrives near our table with the waitress at his side. The waitress throws a tray to the ground with a ¨WHAP,¨ and the waiter puts a referee whistle into his mouth, screeching away and catching Joel´s attention. Before he has a chance to figure out what is going on, the waitress has a green cloth napkin wrapped around his head, blindfolding him. The man stands behind him, holding a small glass half full of pink liquid. As the waitress holds Joel´s head back, the waiter puts his hand around Joel´s throat and pours the concoction into his mouth. After it goes down, the man gives Joel´s head a vigorous shake and then, grabbing the back of his chair, swiftly tilts him backwards onto the ground. As the man takes the napkin off Joel´s head and helps lift him up from the floor, I could see that I was significantly more entertained by these events than Joel was. From just a few words came one of the funniest and surprising spectacles I have seen on the trip thus far. At Sean´s suggestion of posting more videos, I am considering returning to the restaurant for my birthday, so Joel can catch the birthday surprise with his camera. We´ll see...

Clowning It Up

On my way back to the hotel room after running an errand and shooting some photos, I run into a plaza full of people gathered around in a wide circle, taking up almost the entire plaza. As I approach, I notice a clown in the center, and, seeing an opening to catch him entrancing the bystanders with his foolishness, I pull out my camera for a picture. Putting a fountain between the clown and myself, I took a moment to look around and take the camera out of my bag. I snatched the following photo right as the clown was alerted to my presence by a man next to me who whistled and subtly pointed in my direction.

It wasn´t as much the blonde hair or green eyes, but my boldly obvious Chivas jersey that allowed him to suck me into his act. He had been wearing the blue and yellow flag of Club America, the rival of Chivas, and he had been trying to rile up the more abundant Chivas fans. Raising his voice, he asked me if I like Chivas, to which I responded with a whole-hearted ¨Si! Chivas arriba!¨ With this simple terminology, I instantly gained the approval of the crowd, which erupted with people throwing their hands into the air and shouting ¨Chivas!¨ This gave me a little boost of confidence, but I was still a little shaky and taken aback when the clown yelled back in english, ¨What is your name?¨ As I responded, an older man who seemed to be drunk or confused wandered up to me and put a cowboy hat on my head. Taking it in stride, the clown then asked me where I came from, to which I replied (in Spanish), ¨from the United States,¨ and, seeing an opportunity to clown it up, I put my arm around the man, continuing, ¨with my dad!¨ Seeing I got some laughs, the clown then invited me into the circle with him, where I managed to play along with his act for what seemed like an hour but was probably more like 15-20 minutes.

I must give this clown credit for the amount of trickery he had up his sleeves, how he managed to put me in so many humiliating situations, and how he managed to keep me (and the audience) engaged in his act. For example, after answering ¨yes¨ to whether I liked Mexican women, he then tricked me into fake making out with a very large woman, kissing an older woman on the cheek, and then struggling to make a heart out of a long balloon, which I was then instructed to give to the most beautiful girl I could find in the crowd. A little later he called over a nearby trumpet player, and I danced a little jig while people clapped along to the beat.

Then the Spanish really started to come in handy. Another clown popped onto the scene, and, acting as if the other clown had taken some change from his hat on the ground, the original clown told me to translate his English as we interrogated the newcomer. I never thought I would have to use phrases like ¨put your hands in the air!¨, ¨spread your legs, man!¨, or ¨where´s my money, clown!?!¨, but I was spitting that stuff out like rapid fire right in this clown´s red nose. After the original clown gave me a little lesson, I then proceeded to beat the crap out of the new clown using half a fun noodle, with the crowd going crazier the more I went after him.

I was really starting to enjoy the rush of being in front of so many people when the clown went into a brief monologue about how its important to be nice to tourists. Seeing my exit, the clown gave me a sincere thank you before I got in one last yell of ¨CHIVAS!¨as I broke through the circle of cheering onlookers.

Manu Chao Might Start A Revolution

So last night we made it to Manu Chao´s first return to Guadalajara in two years. A middle-aged, reggae-rocking Frenchman who sings in five languages (but mostly Spanish), this man´s appeal spans many cultures. To be able to see him in one of the largest cultural centers of the Americas was worth far more than the $25 ticket price. Upon arrival it seemed that, more than anything else, people came for the love of music, as was obvious from the crowd of people dancing away to a percussion band outside before the show. Once Manu came on though, I started to wonder whether it was the vocals underlying the instrumentals that carried so much of his artistic integrity. By American standards, hes a bit of a radical, but down here he got the crowd psyched by hating on George W, chanting ¨Cuba!¨, and waving around a Mexican flag with Che Guevara´s face on the front. I couldn´t tell half the things he was singing, and I kept on wondering about all the things the people packed in the sold out arena were trying to relate to in his words. From the lyrics I do know, the message is often times very political and very strong. It might be what keeps him out of the mainstream in the U.S., but it gets him on the front page of the paper down here.

Ms. Bergman introduced our Spanish class to Manu Chao back in junior year at GHS with an exercise listening to the lyrics of ¨Clandestino¨ and trying to decipher the words. Having memorized the words in countless listens since then, I just about went hoarse singing along to the song. Without a doubt, it was probably the best direct benefit from a Spanish class ever. What made the concert so spectacular though was that I could tell he was putting his heart into it. This was rather obviously and entirely figurative as he ended his first set tapping the mic to his heart, creating a ¨Thud Thud¨ to the rhythm of a heart beat. What intrigued me the most though, is that this crowd, which I had thought would be quite demographically dissimilar to the Chivas crowd, managed to get him back on stage twice with the classic soccer chant, ¨OLE!!! OLE, OLE, OLE! OOOOLE, OOOOOLE!¨ That Spanish class taught me a bit about what Manu Chao had to say, but the concert allowed me to hear it in a whole different way.

Just to see if anybody is reading this far, here´s a little contest. The first person to correctly respond to the following question wins a prize, to be delivered upon our return. ¨What artists´ murals are on the walls at the Palacio de Gobierno in Guadalajara?¨