Suspension is necessary:
One pre-collegiate graduate's serious case of senioritis
As my ears were full of the catcalls and whistles from the mine workers sitting next to me, I began to feel a bit uncomfortable. Even though I did not have an extensive knowledge of the Spanish language, I was still able to make out the distinctive tell tale noises a rather undignified man can make when a pretty woman passes by, or any woman for that matter. Thankfully these explicit words were not meant for my ears; instead they were directed towards the women that we happened to pass by on the crowded streets of Guanajuato, Mexico. The right side of the bus was the livelier bunch, possibly due to the fact that the sidewalks we passed were on our right. I was lucky enough to have picked a seat on the front left side of the worker bus next to a polite older man. We had a lovely conversation that was filled with utter silence as he glued his gaze out the other window, away from his shameless coworkers and the American girl sitting next to him. In such circumstances, it was possibly the best I could get. I began to ponder how I arrived in this situation, on a bus full of Mexican men.
As a young girl travelling across the United States with my family, crammed in between my two older brothers in the back of my dad’s truck, I was inspired to venture out and discover what different parts of the world had to offer. From the four corners of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado to Yellowstone National Park in South Dakota, my dad would insist on driving to our destination, stopping only to stretch his long legs, fuel up, and check his map. My mom on the other hand focused more on what to pack for our excursion, insisting that everything needed to be brought along, just in case you know? She would keep us entertained after my brothers and I asked, “Are we there yet?” about five minutes after we pulled out of our country drive. Looking back it’s easy to see how my travelling style is a careful combination of my parents; my father’s well thought out planned itinerary and my mother’s insistence on being prepared for anything.
My adventures left the states, when I decided to study abroad in the fall of 2011, my junior year in college. Tucked into the lush hillside, Harlaxton College was located in an old picturesque British manor house based one hundred miles north of London. Harlaxton served as the perfect jumping board to other European countries. Travelling with five other girls on three day weekends required a bit of extensive planning, which was generally tackled by me. Booking hostels, checking planes, trains and even ferry schedules multiple times, as well as printing out several maps of the cities, I became accustomed to careful travel preparation. My friends jokingly referred to me as the soccer mom as I would guide them through the streets of Europe. The truth is I liked the control I could enforce over the situation through careful planning.
The only thing my mother couldn’t insist I prepare enough for, no matter how hard she tried, was graduation. Now as a twenty one year old senior in college, graduating in five short months, time seemed to have flown by since freshman year. The questions started as my senior year began in the fall of 2012, mainly coming from my loveable mother.
“What do you want to do after college,” she would ask.
Followed by my grandma’s inquiry, “Where will you live, do you need to go to a graduate school?”
Again my mother, “You know, you really should start looking for a job. You’re graduating in five months.”
The questions’ frequency rate multiplied over the December holiday break. All of this wasn’t new to me; I knew the in next five months I would begin my “adult” life. I would have to get a real job and find a new place to live, but like most of my college assignments, I procrastinated.
So what did I decide to do instead of searching for a career post-graduation or applying to a graduate program? I chose to take a travel writing course that left the states for ten days in Mexico, four months before graduation in May. Travel writing was offered during Interterm, a three week period in January when students have the opportunity to take one class for a few hours every day or continue their break before spring semester. The class was to travel to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato, two cities located in the central region of Mexico, far from the border as many friends and family might have warned me about. They were reassuringly safe cities, deemed so by my professor KVT, who had previously travelled to these cities last year on her sabbatical. So with our safety secured, before we left I decided I wanted this trip to be different than my venture through Europe. I wanted to be able to relax and not have a planned out itinerary of where to go and what to see, so my unpreparedness was planned to some extent.
Nevertheless, in the days leading up to our departure to Mexico, I was anxious and couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned the night before, in my bed that was nearly as old as me and I was filled to the brim with anxiety. The reason for my unease was partly due to my uncomfortable zebra striped lump-of-a-bed, the uncertainty of what was to come in the following ten days, and what I would do after my flee to Mexico ended. But also, I had done almost no research for the trip, only receiving my guidebook a few days before the plane would leave U.S. soil. My lack of preparation was even further proven by my last minute trip to the mall for clothing and other necessities the day before our flight. This failure to plan was uncomfortable for me.
As the morning of our departure finally came to, I made my way to the airport with my mother, arriving with well enough time to check in. We stopped along the way for an early breakfast and at least one comment was made about graduation but I ignored it. My mother and I waited for the rest of my fellow travel writers to arrive, giving her plenty of time to bring up the subject again but I forced the conversation elsewhere. Just in time, the other girls came rolling in with their luggage and we checked in for our group flight.
“Don’t you cry,” I told my ever-worrisome mother as she gave me a hug before I went through Wichita’s security check, but she did. I waved goodbye before rounding the corner and began my in-transition phase to Mexico.
The flights were fine, suffering only minor turbulence along the way and providing me ample amount of time to flip through my guidebook. We arrived into the sunny Leon International Airport, a climate quite different from the frigid January air in Kansas. All of our bags cleared through customs, except KVT’s, our teacher. The six of us girls waited on the other side, as she was given the Spanish inquisition about the apple she was trying to smuggle across in her bag. Knowing perfectly well that everything would be fine, I couldn’t stop my over-strategizing brain from flipping through various scenes in which she would not come through the checkpoint. Wishing I would have at least written down the address of the hostel in San Miguel that we were to stay at, I halted my brain’s neurons from firing and let my thoughts rest. I looked up to see KVT appear from behind the glazed security window-wall and the seven of us girls boarded our shiny blue van that we had hired to take us to our destination.
The sun went down as we made our way through the hilly terrain towards San Miguel and we drove on through the night, stopping at random places throughout the road for speed bumps. There were hundreds of them in what seemed the strangest locations. I didn’t know prior to coming to Mexico that a good suspension system was necessary. Being able to adapt to the ever changing steep-inclined roads ahead required a good set of brakes and an even better shock system.
“How often do you have to change your brakes,” KVT asked.
“I have to change them at least once a month,” our driver admitted, adding “these I changed last week.”
These speed bumps and the constant brake changes seemed metaphorical to me; they reminded me how this related to my current situation in life, the necessary slow down, to get over a bump in the road and to speed off again. Maybe I needed to take a breather (or escape to Mexico) so I could figure my life out and accelerate into a new section of my greatest journey.
The seven of us travel writers spent four days walking on the steep cobblestoned sidewalks of San Miguel, generally ending up around the bustling main jardin. San Miguel is a cultural mix with American, Canadian, and European residents and tourists being accommodated by the predominately Mexican city. Having many neoclassical/baroque architectural features, San Miguel attracted artists to inhabit its colorful buildings. The principal jardin was a square with steep, slick stairs at all four corners leading up to a plaza full of manicured trees, benches and a gazebo groups of mariachis would sing in at night. Along the four streets comprising the jardin was the parroquia, the tourist information center, little tourist shops, restaurants and banks. The plaza was full of white-haired expats in their khaki pants adorned with fanny packs, a few Mexican couples, and men selling newspapers and colorful inflatable rattle toys for children. I enjoyed how my time in San Miguel allowed me to spend part of my day just sitting in the jardin observing people. It was a prime location, to view the grand pink parroquia and let my mind take a break from graduation thoughts by people watching. There was one boy in particular who rode around the plaza on his shiny red bike. Dressed in his green tracksuit school uniform with a white collar further emphasizing his exuberant smile, he would ring his bell as he circled the gazebo, giggling as he did so. The boy cycled through the jardin for an hour until his mother called him over. Later in the day I observed a little girl, barely old enough to walk, wearing a little pink dress covered by her leopard print coat outlined in a fluffy white trim. She stumbled around in her little black boots playing with her pretty pink inflatable rattle cat, pulling it by its leash and fixing her pink bow occasionally.
Like the little girl, I stumbled around the streets of San Miguel with Marcy and Melissa with no map of the city. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, since none of us had the address of the hostel, but due to the overabundance of expats I felt safe even if we managed to get lost. After the first two days of wandering, we thought having a map might come in handy as we were venturing a bit outside of the city to the botanical gardens. Taking the advice from the red skinned classmates travelling with us that decided to hike up to the gardens the day before, Marcy, Melissa and I decided to take a taxi up the nearly vertical route to the nature conservation. Unlike the buildings in San Miguel, the gardens were a bit lacking in color fascination due to the fact that the state of Guanajuato was a desert climate, so the conserved landscape was covered in prickly variations of cacti. Yet the gardens were beautiful in their own right and very peaceful glancing out over the city below, allowing my mind to briefly take a break from thinking about what I would do next, here in Mexico and after.
The next six days we were in the younger college town of Guanajuato, the expat population was replaced by young Mexican couples holding the hands of their children. The sidewalks more even but the streets or sometimes just stairs imitated a child’s swirly scribbles. With Guanajuato being nestled into the side of a mountain, the inclines were a little steeper here than in San Miguel. The first day of our arrival after wading through the busy and narrow streets we came upon a parade led by men cross-dressed up as flashy women. They were followed by men, women, and children dressed up in traditional indigenous clothing. Donned in ornate headpieces and elaborate feathers, they danced to the music played by the waves of different marching bands behind them. The groups consisted of adorable young children barely banging their drums to the beat, to old men taking pride in their precise march. They were in all shapes, sizes, and outfits, all playing the same tune. It was by mere chance that we found this parade on our way back to our hostel. If I had planned to do anything the day we arrived, I could have missed out on this wonderful opportunity to see a glimpse of Mexican culture.
The next morning our class was off to Escuela Mexicana, to take Spanish classes for a week. As we filled out paperwork, Juan Carlos, a bubbly joyful man came to advice Marcy and I on which classes to sign up for.
“I’m more of an intermediate and she’s more of a beginner,” is what I told the kindhearted teacher as we wrote down our choices.
Marcy opted out of a brief examination to test our level of Spanish speaking ability, but unfortunately I did not. I followed Juan Carlos out of the dining room, into the patio and up the soft stone gray stairs into an office. I sat down and he began asking me questions in Spanish immediately, throwing me off guard.
“Did you just ask me what my name is and where I’m from”, I asked in English.
“Si,” he smiled with his round cheeks.
“Well my name is Amy and I’m from Lindsborg, KS,” I continued in English. He asked me another question in Spanish and I again replied in English. “Oh wait, you probably want me to answer in Spanish right?”
He laughed, “Si”.
As my cheeks began to fill with a sharp red flourish I continued my awful attempt to answer his questions in the little Spanish I remembered. Who knew that after six years since my last Spanish class the only words I would remember mainly consisted of colors, numbers, and a few inappropriate phrases? Needless to say after Juan Carlos was through with his questions, I quickly hurried out of the room a little embarrassed that I considered myself to be an intermediate. My written exam waited for me as I returned to my seat in the dining room next to Marcy. Parts of the double sided sheet were easy and parts of it were left blank. I knew about the exam before coming to Mexico but put it in the back of my mind to refresh myself on the Spanish language since during Christmas break I was being questioned about my graduation plans, not how to form a proper sentence in Español.
Marcy waited for me as I finished the exam and we rushed back to our nearby hostel for a semi-quick breakfast. My first class was in twenty minutes but I ended up being twenty minutes late. Forgetting a decent sized notebook for class and coming in late, I was trying to keep up with the verb conjugation on the board. Lucky for me it was tener (to have), something I remembered from Ms. Springer’s Spanish class in high school. My next class was conversational Spanish, not my strong point in the least. Alejandro differed from my former teacher Mariana, a friendly upbeat woman in her early twenties like myself. Alex was around the same age and had a smart fashion sense, but he was very strict in his teachings so with my background lacking, I kept quiet as much as I could.
After the first day of classes and we were back at the hostel, I downloaded a Spanish dictionary app on my iPhone that didn’t require an internet connection. The next few days went well with Mariana and Alex warmed up to the class, but made a mental note of my silence. On the last day of classes, we were going around the room answering questions one by one starting with Joana, a loveable Canadian woman who had quite an extensive knowledge of the language, nearly fluent. As the question moved to the cute Canadian couple, Len and Darlene, to KVT sitting next to me I began to type in words in English in my handy app, trying to form a sentence in my notebook to read aloud and act like I knew what I was saying.
“Y tu Amy? We haven’t heard much from you all week,” Alex announced, calling me out.
“Umm,” was all I could get out, looking at my travel writing teacher for help.
I eventually mumbled out some jumbled words together that pleased him for the time being and we began another round of questions. Conversational Spanish does not allow for any type of careful preparation other than studying the language. With my iPhone in hand, I was still unable to form a proper group of words into a cohesive sentence in Spanish, but I received a diploma for my efforts.
Throughout the week in the vibrant and youthful Guanajuato, with graduation still looming in the near future, my companions would catch me lost in my own thoughts with a pained expression on my face.
“Are you okay Amy,” KVT asked as we were eating our enchiladas mineras during lunch.
“Oh, what? Oh, I’m fine. Just thinking about things,” I replied while I was painfully debating what I wanted to do after college.
As we were walking through museums with our young, all-knowing guide for the week Jorge, I would be thinking about back home from time to time. An advantage of my overactive brain is that I’m a great multi-tasker, being able to think about tens of things while listening to someone talk, walking on an uneven cobblestoned sidewalk, you name it. Yet the downside of this is hyper synapse capability is not fully being in the moment.
As the worker bus halts to a stop on a crowded street, overflowing with numerous children in red tracksuit school uniforms, I wait for the next man to leave the bus.
“Para centro,” yells the bus driver.
I drift my eyes over the men sitting on the right side, “Para centro! Para centro,” again comes booming from up front. I look behind me and see Jorge and KVT nodding that this is our stop so I quickly scurry out of my seat and exit our free ride from the Valencia mine.
Even though I’m still not prepared for graduation looming in the near future, our class leaves Guanajuato tomorrow. I’m not ready to depart from this place to which I’ve fled and discovered a few new friends, but my diploma is calling. I know my time here in Mexico was necessary; it has been my slow down before I climb up the steep and uneven cobblestones to my graduation. I have known all along what I wanted to do after graduation day, but it took ten days in Mexico to rediscover it. Regardless of what career I stumble into in four months, as long as I’m still able to continue travelling to new places and make a few new friends along the way, I’ll be fine.
Watch Amy read her story here