How to Bury a Fly Named Chester

During my 8th grade advisory period (sometimes called homeroom at other schools), I was leading my students through an extremely important team-building activity...clearly. While this was happening, one of my students was chasing a fly around the room. After repeated attempts from me to get him to stop, I finally said, "Joe, that fly is the reincarnated spirit of my childhood pet dog named Chester. Do not hurt Chester the Fly. Join us at the table!" What did he proceed to do? He pointed his rubberband at the fly and WHAM! He got Chester! The poor fly's guts exploded on the ceiling.
Students swormed around the scene of the crime, swaddled Chester in tissues, and claimed tupperware as his temporary coffin. Then, students set up signs and made a little alter in the corner where Chester had died. Funeral arrangements began immediately. It just all happened so quickly.
The next day, I asked each student to write on a sticky note what they had learned from Chester the Fly. Even Joe. Some replies: "To not be annoying or else you'll get rubberbanded." "I learned that even a fly can be entertaining during Ms. Fitz's boring activity." "Even flies can have funerals."

Then, I brought my whole advisory group behind the school with the remains of Chester the Fly. We found a good tree and began digging with spoons. Our beloved swaddled Chester was laid to rest with the lessons he taught us entombed with him.

Chester taught me a lot, too. Life is short. Celebrate it.

New Orleans Marks and Remarks

During a weekend party, I met a couple who were trying to find a ride to New Orleans. Before realizing what was happening, all of the party-goers had publicly agreed on our behalf that I should offer my car and we should head South. So we did. Within 24 hours, two strangers, soon to be "friends for life", were at my door with road trip groceries in reusable bags identical to my road trip groceries in reusable bags. It was the beginning of a series of signs that us hardy souls were meant to be hurdling down to the swamplands of Louisiana prepared to sleep on yoga mats in a friend's shotgun house. It also helped that we were ready to don costumes at a moment's notice.  We drove the 17 hours from Chicago to New Orleans through the night, getting to know one another. The whole brassy trip - from music in the streets, to drinks on balconies, to strolls through the cemeteries - confirmed once again that whenever possible, just say yes. Above is a strategically obscured page of markings I created while on the trip. Below is a famous tomb full of markings. The people, the music, the architecture, and yes, even the smell. Gosh-wow, I just love New Orleans.

I touched lions and dinosaur eggs. Now what?

I’m not a PETA member or an animal rights activist per se. Maybe it’s time I step up to the plate. I do love animals and cuddling fluffy puppies...or baby tigers as the opportunity arises. I’m a vegetarian primarily for health reasons but of course, support and appreciate fair treatment for all animals.  While there are so many issues worth fighting for in regards to the rights and dignities of humans, the way we treat our animals is also a sign of how we treat each other. Thank you, Upton Sinclair, Howard Lyman, Julia Butterfly Hill and countless others for pointing out the sick relationship we have had and continue to have both biologically and mentally with our eco-systems. I try to avoid soapboxes on my blog but I thought about all of these issues rather intensely this past weekend.

I wrote to my sister when I safely got back into Oaxaca last weekend... “I went with my Swiss classmate to visit this really wealthy man's house and spent the night in his mansion. He owns a private zoo. It was the strangest past 24 hours of my life. One for the book.” My sister has suggested I write a book.

So here's the story before I adapt it to the book:
My friend from language school was invited by this wealthy Mexican man to visit his home. They met on a weekend excursion to see ruins outside of town the weekend before. Red flag! Where have I seen this before? Right, the other stranger's house in Mexico. Read here: http://heartjean.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html
  My Swiss friend was willing to go if I would join her. It wouldn't be so strange if there were two of us going, would it? I've done far riskier things. We decided to accept his invitation to stay at his home for one night. I think we had an exit strategy...like, if it was really awful we could always stay at a hotel or something.
We took a 3 hour bus to the town Tehuacan in the state of Puebla. Our new "friend" picked us up at the bus station in a fancy car with his niece and nephew riding along. Nope, nothing strange here. A few minutes later we arrive at a large gated home.
As the gates opened to his driveway, a bullet-proof-vest-wearing-guard shooed the scores of chihuahuas out of the way of our car pulling in. The wealthy man sells chihuahuas on the side. Good business, he says.

We entered the house filled wall-to-wall with taxidermy-- (I was assured all animals died of natural causes on his property). While the wealthy man and his nephew attended to some business at the dining room table, the niece brought out a baby leopard for us ladies to cuddle. At this point, I have no idea where this animal came from. The nephew and wealthy man were still talking about something at the table so the niece started opening cabinets and showing us fossils, dinosaur eggs, pre-hispanic-mesoamerican artifacts. We passed them around like we were shopping for a good centerpiece at The Pottery Barn.
The wealthy man found us in his office a while later fondling artifacts thousands of years old and posing with stone tablets with mysterious inscriptions. The occasional flamingo could be seen sauntering past the office window in the backyard. The wealthy man openly admitted he bought his pieces on the black market. He wanted to start a museum one day. Fascinating, right?
Well, as you can imagine, we had many questions! Number 1: Why did he invite us strangers to his home? His round-about answer suggested that he enjoyed sharing what he had and that he trusted foreigners in his home far more than his fellow Mexicans. Hmmm. After leaving our things in guest bedrooms, we went for a ride to the local shopping mall for sandwiches with the wealthy man and his niece. You're right, this isn't in the guidebooks.

Nighttime had fallen on the house of enchanted black market treasures...so what to do?---- That's right!...say goodnight to all the exotic animals in the backyard! So off we went out the back door of the house: myself, my Swiss friend, the niece with a baby tiger on a leash, the nephew and two guards following behind walking with flashlights.  We followed closely behind as the wealthy man clanged on the cages with his flashlight and cooed at his cats.  By cats I mean, lions and tigers...and bears and zebras and monkeys suddenly emerging out of the darkness!  The feeling of walking down a pitch black pathway and then realizing you are within inches of a white tiger's face is a sensation to remember.

My Swiss friend and I later retired to guest bedrooms to quietly whisper our private reactions to these strange environs. "Um, why are we here again?" "Was that really a dinosaur egg?" "Does it matter?" "How many foreigners are buried in the backyard?" "Just kidding, haha!" "I think I walked through monkey sh!t...or was that from the chihuahuas?" "How does the wealthy man have money again?" "Look at the pretty marble floors in the bathroom." "He was married to how many European women?" "Which Mexican political party's campaign did he support again?" "Is that his nephew or a cousin? Are you sure that's his niece? No, I heard niece." "What kind of laws are there for having tigers in your backyard in Mexico?" "Is this what you imagined when you met him last week?"

The next morning I couldn't eat the cow intestine soup served for breakfast but my Swiss friend said it had interesting texture. I had quesadillas and we sat surrounded by jade skulls and arrowheads discussing what mountains the wealthy man had climbed and how much he likes Russia. It was a largely male dominated conversation with the nephew and wealthy man at the heads of the tables with us four girls quietly chewing our breakfast, speaking in rapid Spanish and using sprinklings of choppy English. Soon thereafter we went to see all the animals in the private zoo in their full daytime glory. The wealthy man often opened the metal doors so we could take unobstructed photos of the amazing creatures.

The wealthy man says that his cats have a huge rate of reproduction. More "mainstream" zoos don't understand how he does it with such a small space. He says it's because he loves them and the animals have fun looking at each other. At one point, I tried to tactfully ask about how he learned to take care of so many animals and if he has a lot of legal obstacles. His short answer was that he just started reading about animals over time and that he has to keep microchips in all of his animals so that they are accounted for by the government. 
So what to do with that information? Well, in that moment, you can only feed marshmallows to 7 foot grizzly bears and pet the fine silky black coats of jaguars. We had our choice of the stuffed ones inside or the live ones in the cages.
After  hours of being up close and personal with dozens of species in the wealthy man's zoo, we went for lunch in town and were dropped off at the bus station...without a scratch.

He was a nice enough man but I was ready to scratch under the surface a bit more. Luckily, others have scratched here before questioning whether these animals should be confined as they are. There have been petitions to move the animals to a better habitat. There is also a short film investigating its ethics as well. I'm not sure what to do next. But writing about it is a start.

Learning to see the subjunctive.

Back in a Virginia cemetery in...2008, was it?

 In the words of my former Spanish classmate: "The cemetery is a great place to learn the subjunctive." "May you rest eternally in peace...We desire that you go with God... May you fly on wings to heaven where I would one day meet you..."  I was pretty psyched to improve my Spanish in the cemetery, particularly the elusive Spanish subjunctive, because we all know how much I already love the cemetery. You might recall the great road trip to Virginia with my dear friends, Natasha and Stacie. We played a few tunes in front of the Stanley Brothers graves...oh, and don't forget that I made a whole calendar of Famous Chicago Graves. Oh, the memories...See them all at my now obsolete-"gathering-cyberdust"-blog here: http://jeanfitz.wordpress.com/category/cemeteries/
OK, back to Mexico.
I did, indeed, dip my toe into the subjunctive while browsing the rows of graves in the local cemetery here in Oaxaca. For the extra curious, you can gawk at my largely out-of-focus photos on Facebook, capturing some of the great parades, festivals, and art everywhere you look this time of year.

What I really want to talk about though is learning a language and how getting sick abroad is HARD.
It might not be "getting pepper sprayed in the face" hard but...it's hard. Just when I thought I was getting over the epic Guatemalan adventure with bugs and feeling normal, I started to feel crumby again. My same eye started to itch and get puffy again, too. My Spanish teacher recommended that I try an ointment that was supposed to work wonders. I took her advice and went to the corner store. I immediately applied the cream, Terramicina, onto my eye as directed by the sweet lady behind the counter who is probably not a pharmacist. After a shallow internet search later that day, I learned that in the U.S., Terramicina was only approved for cats and dogs by the FDA. In California, you need a prescription to give it to your pet.
In Mexico, you just need 80 pesos.

Essentials

In the next couple of days, I woke up with the tell-tale signs of pink eye. I did not rationally conclude: “I have pink eye.” Rather, I assumed that the mythical bot fly had burrowed its way behind my eye and began eating away at the part of my brain reserved for conjugating verbs in the Spanish subjunctive. Either way, I resolved to seek legitimate medical attention. I went with my proverbial tail between my legs and my actual doggie eyeball cream regretfully in tow to help describe my saga. So you know how it can be difficult to communicate how you feel to a doctor in your first language? Well this doctor visit in a foreign language, my friends, is when all of my Spanish was put to the test. These were no longer pronoun exercises and small talks on your favorite movie stars in Spanish class. This was a "What are these drugs going to do to my body and why?" kind of chat. I think we communicated the essentials. Whether this second ailment had any connection to the bugbites in Guatemala remains unclear.

So I got the drugs and returned home. From there, I passed the time reading about international pharmaceuticals and video taping lizards crawling across my ceiling. I also brushed up on my tenses and began comparing English and Spanish tenses from an evolutionary standpoint. Did the future perfect continuous become necessary for our survival as a species?
- I will have been eating that dead wooly mammoth when the lions try to eat our children. -for example, is a rather complex but perhaps vital statement to communicate. You don’t want your fellow tribe member to assume your action of eating has finished and you are in any shape to protect your offspring or do the next important survival skill...like the Spanish subjunctive.

What I do know is that thousands of years later, this lady called Saint Lucy became your go-to gal for all your eye problems. I just learned about her in the museum the other day. Maybe if you put a few pesos in the hole carved out of her chest, she'll make sure your eyeball problems get better. Man, I wish I had known about her BEFORE I bought the doggie eye cream or got bit in Guatemala. Here's looking at you, Santa Lucia! I'm thankful I still have my eyesight!!!

Just a couple of eyeballs on a plate belonging to Santa Lucia, patron saint of eyeballs.