Archive for the ‘Locations’ Category
Finally, some of our American expat friends are beginning to wake up to the ranting and raving I’ve been doing about living in Guanajuato. Now, if you’ve been reading my columns on a regular basis you know from time to time I lose my mind, rather totally, and go all Pancho Villa about life in Guanajuato.
Mind you, I am not talking about normal Mexican things. I am not talking about things like stores never opening when they say they will. I am talking not about the traditional, provincial Mexican custom of never showing up on time for anything. I am not talking about never offering so much as a “How-Do-You-Do” when the kindly Mexican is asked why he didn’t call to cancel an appointment by his good anal-attentive American pal. That’s not what I mean.
I have been talking about things in my columns like getting shoved off the sidewalk into the path of a bus manned by someone who thinks he is a racecar driver. I am talking about calling for the bottled water to get delivered only to have it finally come after you’ve died from thirst and your body was shipped back to the States three months ago. That’s what I mean.
My friend sent me a story today. She is one who has finally admitted that perhaps my wife and I see this sort of stuff, and she doesn’t because she and her husband, in typical American expat fashion, stay pretty much holed up in their lavish estate (it isn’t really an estate but I am adding this in case she reads this-and she occasionally does) until they need something. When they venture out, when they pull themselves from their American TV channels beamed from space via satellite, they drive everywhere. They rarely walk so they seldom have the pleasure of being run over by a bus when a kindly Guanajuatense pushes them into its path.
Our friend went to the Mega Superstore today. Yes, gentrification has begun in Guanajuato with a superstore, on the scale of a Super Wal-Mart, to totally destroy a way of life and ancient culture in Guanajuato. She was in a line with just 7 people in it. A Mexican woman, with no groceries, was in line in front of her. When “her turn” came, she whipped out her cell phone and called her large extended family–comprised of several generations–to get up from the coffee shop and come up front to check out. So, here came her family, about 30 of them, with shopping carts full to overflowing, to cut in front of our friend and check out. Our friend did the “Guanajuato Shove” and cut in front of this woman saying, “Con Permiso” and checked out before she would have surely been thrown, shoved, and elbowed out of the way.
“In general, Mexicans are polite and formal when dealing with foreigners from the North. Newcomers from the States often take this treatment as friendliness, but it is far more complicated than that. Mexicans and other inhabitants of Latin America often wear a mask that
covers their true feelings.” – Ken Luboff
All sympathetic ranting and raving will be entertained and appreciated by phone or e-mail.
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“Tonight a dream has come true”, said G.A.P Adventures CEO and founder Bruce Poon Tip. About a year ago he and a few of his team members at the Planeterra Foundation, G.A.P’s non-profit organization, sat together and brainstormed about a big fundraising event until someone said “Let’s throw a circus”.
Well, and a circus they threw last night?.. Zero Gravity Circus provided 2.5 hours of jaw-dropping colorful and amazing entertainment, the more-than-capacity crowd at the Hall at Toronto’s downtown Steamwhistle Brewery was in absolute awe and cheering wildly.
When I got there at 7 pm things were a little more sedate. The stage was still being set up, and the bar area where the silent auction was going to be held had been set up already and a few G.A.P employees were around, finishing last-minute touches. The Silent Auction include a variety of fabulous items:
- G.A.P Adventures trips to Costa Rica & Peru
- A round trip air ticket Toronto to Lisbon with Air Transat
- A Stratford Theatre Get A Way – 2 tickets to the Stratford Theatre & overnight stay at Bentley’s
- Professional Chef services – a gourmet 4 course dinner for 4 in your home by Vanessa Yeung (Bistro at Home)
- A Fuji film digital camera -S3000
- A gift Certificate for a pair of Blunstone boots
- A framed Guatemalan Market Photo – by Paul Teolis
- Diesel Fitness Memberships
- Personal Training by Tranz4m Inc.
- Platinum Seats to an upcoming ACC event
- Hand Crafted Jewellery by Tanya Tkachenko
- Peruvian Woven Table linen made by The women of the Ccaccaccollo Community, weaving book &aArt piece by JJ Nicol
- A manicure & pedicure at the Beauty Exchange
- A Sky Dive from SWOOP – Independant Jump
- Dinner for 6 at the Bright Pearl Restaurant
- Dinner for 2 at Thuet Restaurant
- Dinner at Focaccia Restaurant
From about 8 pm onwards people started rolling in and the steady stream of onlookers didn’t stop. A violinist on stilts and two other colourful elevated characters were entertaining the pre-show crowd.
And when the show got going at about 9 pm, every seat in the house was full and people were standing on the sides and in the back of the theatre. In his welcome speech, Bruce even tried to persuade members of his staff to give up their chairs in return for a free beer at the Steamwhistle Brewery, that’ s how full the theatre was.
Bruce is certainly an icon in Toronto. One of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs, he came from humble beginnings as a child of a Chinese-Trinidadian immigrant family who settled in Calgary. Blessed with a keen sense of adventure and entrepreneurial talent he left for the greener pastures of Toronto and in his early twenties he started G.A.P Adventures, now one of the world’s leaders in small group adventure travel and a company dedicated to social causes and environmentally sustainable travel. Bruce has won many prestigious awards for his entrepreneurial achievements and his dedication to social and environmental causes. No doubt he is a charismatic figure and the media’s extensive coverage of him attests to Bruce Poon Tip’s ability to fascinate a crowd.
After Bruce’s introductory words, we saw a just released film on the big screen about Planeterra’s initiatives in Cusco. The local director of the drop-in centre in Cusco spoke about the street children and images graphically illustrated the poverty of these children and the fact that this organization makes such a difference in these children’s lives by housing, feeding, educating and providing them with psychological support.
Then the big event was ready to kick off and the MCs, Foo and Feso, two theatrical clowns from Zero Gravity Circus, came out to welcome the crowd. Throughout the entire performance Feso never spoke while Foo talked a mixture of French and extraterrestrial gibberish, with the odd comprehensible English word thrown in to help the crowd get her point. Foo mainly relied on voice inflection, facial expressions, gestures and body language to make herself understood and the two provided a wonderful humoristic duo guiding the audience throughout the show.
At one point Foo called for a volunteer from the audience and a young man with a t-shirt saying “Bite Me’ got up on stage and joined the two MCs for a trick with a spinning plate on a stick. At various times during the show Feso juggled or did fire tricks and at some point he even included a running chain saw in his juggling act.
The first official act in the show was a Hula Hoop Act featuring a beautiful Oriental woman who at some point had in excess of 6 hula hoops twisting around her body at the same time. Her lithe body contorted itself in all sorts of virtually impossible shapes while she kept the hula hoops spinning, always with an angelic smile on her face.
Fire artists were next: 2 young women with lit fire boxes on wires were twirling their illuminated tools according to their choreography and came together in perfect unison. An aerial rope artist came out next and performed unbelieavable stunts, often suspended in the air by only one foot. A duo of plate spinners then had the crowd in awe when at some point they had 6 plates spinning on sticks that were mounted on a table, and 6 additional plates spinning on the table’s surface in between. Every few seconds they had to go back and re-spin the plates to make sure they wouln’t drop.
A real crowd pleaser was about to come up next: 4 young men, two dressed in red, and two dressed in dark colours came up and the stage was set for a mock gang fight. The crowd was certainly enthused about the macho performance that was about to unfold. Each duo performed floor acrobatics and break dances, summersaulting through the air, breakdancing on their backs or on one arm, and the mock confrontation of two imaginary gangs resulted in the total delight of the audience.
The next performance was called “aerial silks” and a woman was performing all sorts of aerial stunts on a red sheet of silk that had been lowered from the ceiling. After all this excitement, a brief 15 minute intermission helped to calm the crowd down and as people were filing out from the Hall into the bar area, I was listening to the audience’s amazed comments. Everyone enjoyed the show and was in awe at the unique high-quality of the performances.
When the crowd had settled in again after the intermission, Bruce and Elinor Schwob, one of Planeterra’s fundraisers, did a draw for door prizes. Tilleys Endurables had sponsored a door prize, G.A.P had sponsored a prize pack as well as the top door prize: a trip to the Galapagos Islands which was happily won by a woman from Cambridge, Ontario.
The show continued with a young acrobat that had an audience member toss him a volleyball which he caught and balanced on a stick that he was holding in his mouth. He then asked for another audience volunteer and a young woman reluctantly came up from the crowd, upon which he asked her to lay down. Then he picked up a metal ladder, climbed the ladder and balanced himself perfectely upright using little steps. And with these tiny steps he approached the young lady lying on the floor who was getting more anxious with every second. The acrobat successfully walked over her on the ladder without falling over or stepping on any parts of her body, but the tension and suspense was palpable.
A group of 5 gorgeous women was next, four of them, barefoot and dressed in purple gowns, performed a choreography on the floor while one women, dressed in striking lime green, performed acrobatics hanging from a red hoop. This was a very visually striking act as the group performed with perfect grace and harmony.
A contortion duo with candelabras was next: 2 young exotic women, one had already ratpured the crowd with the hula hoop show earlier, performed floor acrobatics with lit candelabras on their heads, in their feet and in their hands. They twisted themselves into impossible body positions while always maintaining the lit candelabras upright. At certain points they were balancing four lit candelabras each: one in each hand, one with their foot and one in their mouth. It was as if they had bones and joints made of rubber.
The senses were being teased at every turn. Three men dressed in blue silky uniforms performed a variety of stunts and acrobatics, and at one point one of the men was balancing the two others on his shoulders and they completed the stunt with a jump down on the floor and a tumble.
A male and a female performer on a trapeze and in gorgeous skin-tight suits performed a very sensuous trapeze act and melted into a variety of positions suspended in the air, an appropriate end to the official part of the show, when Foo came out and invited all the performers out on stage. The crowd clapped and cheered wildly and every time the performers took a bow the audience spontaneously erupted into another round of enthusiastic applause.
Bruce and Elinor got up one more time to thank the audience and thanked Zero Gravity Circus for donating their performance free of charge to the cause of Cusco’s street kids. They also indicated they were going to do a singing duet. Unfortunately, none of the microphones cooperated so they postponed their singing premiere to G.A.P’s fundraising ball at Casa Loma in October. When the microphones finally came back on Bruce joked about having to fire the sound company.
The crowd was invited to stick around for a meet and greet with the performers and it seemed like hundreds of people stayed behind to chat and to take advantage of the fruits and the chocolate fountain. I chatted a bit with Paul Teolis, a photographer who I had recently interviewed who had also donated a beautiful photo of a Guatemalan street market for the Silent Auction.
By this time it must have been 12:30 am, so Paul and I said goodnight and a big thanks for this great event to Bruce who was swarmed by this time by a crowd of appreciative supporters. Paul and I rode the subway back into Toronto’s east side and we both commented on what a wonderful event it had been.
In total, an amount of over $20,000 was raised for Planeterra’s Cusco initiative from ticket sales, the silent auction and the sale of water bottles, popcorn and jambalaya. It’s amazing what can be achieved when a group of people with determination, dedication and good will come together.
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I am currently staying at, “La Nuestra”, a comfortable bed and breakfast with 4 guest rooms, a private swimming pool and an outdoor breakfast area complete with microwave and fridge, which has a rather interesting story. It is co-owned by two women, Andie Grater and Nancy Gray, who are both originally from the United States.
Originally from Brooklyn, Andie had lived in Atlanta for 20 years and become an expert in advertising production and management while Nancy, on the other hand, had been involved in the screen printing business. Nancy represented several American companies in the Latin American market and spent quite a bit of time in Latin America, including Cuernavaca, and this was the beginning to their Mexican adventure.
Andie’s comments shed light on the decision to relocate to a foreign country and the inevitable issues of culture shock and psychological adjustment that go along with the move to a strange land. Her story will also illustrate coping mechanisms and the fact that the human spirit will indeed adjust over time.
As Nancy had been spending more and more time in Mexico, Andie and Nancy were starting to think it might actually be nice to live somewhere else. Cuernavaca might be a good destination since it was close enough to easily go back and forth. Andie had attended a Spanish course at the Cetlalic Alternative Language School and had a chance to meet a lot of people from Cuernavaca’s local gay community and Cuernavaca increasingly looked like an interesting destination.
Both women thought that it might be a good idea to move to Cuernavaca, a goal they decided to accomplish in the New Millennium. So Andie decided to give up her job in advertising which was made easier by the after-effects of 911 which had severely affected the advertising industry.
Andie worked for a month with the previous owner of Villa San Marcos to gain some practical experience running a bed and breakfast. So the women put their furniture into storage in Atlanta and after their arrival in Cuernavaca they first lived in a furnished apartment. They later moved into an unfurnished condo, a rather bare place, which Andie describes as “graduate student living”. Andie admitted that as you get older these types of transitions get just a little harder.
Prior to their purchase, their B&B had been empty for five years. Once they acquired the property, they invested another year of renovations into La Nuestra. Building a clientele from scratch is always an issue for new entrepreneurs and Andie indicated that their clients mostly find them through the Internet and through word of mouth. In addition, Andie sent many news releases to independent booksellers and feminist book stores to request that the information about their B&B be put on their bulletin boards.
As new B&B owners, Andie and Nancy also decided to advertise on three web sites, two sites about Mexico and one site dedicated to gay travelers. Andie stressed, however, that their target market is not only the gay community, but people from all walks of life. Travellers come from the United States (California, Minnesota, and various places in the north), but also from Canada. In addition, they also host many weekend guests from Mexico City. Many of their guests don’t even move when they come here, they just relax in the beautiful garden by the pool and say this place feels just like home.
I asked Andie to elaborate on this process of cultural transition which they went through after they first relocated to Mexico. At first they felt excited, the place was new, they were learning the language, and there was this general feeling of newness that made everything so interesting.
But as the newness wore off, feelings of culture shock started to settle in. Andie experienced frustrations as she had to adjust to the Mexican concepts of time and reliability. Adjusting to the much more relaxed concept of time was difficult, especially since Andie had been living her life in Atlanta with a strict agenda. The unreliability of workmen and repair people was also a frequent source of frustrations. Andie told me a few stories of her renovation project and mentioned that workers might show up a day later or sometimes not at all.
On the other hand she was impressed by the easy-going attitude of local Mexican people and commented that they are very helpful when you make an effort to speak Spanish. Traffic can also be quite bad in this city. On the issue of cultural adjustment Andie said, that one of her friends commented on how great it must be to live in this new place while Andie admitted that many times this adjustment phase was really tough on her, especially at the beginning. She was missing her friends, her culture, her familiar environment.
Now things are much better. Andie runs an organization called the Newcomers Club which is an association of recent, mostly English-speaking residents, of Cuernavaca. The club had been in existence for 15 years, but had not been very active. Andie became president about four years ago, and the club now has around 170 members, ranging in age all the way from their forties and up. The oldest member is 91 years old.
The Cuernavaca Newcomers Club has a number of functions:
- It welcomes new English-speaking residents and helps them find their way
- It publishes a service directory every 2 years
- It provides a buddy system
- The club hosts a variety of social events throughout the year
- Speakers are invited to the club’s meetings and speak on various topics of interest, such as ecology, globalization, alternative health, investments and many more.
- The club is involved in a variety of charity projects as well.
The Newcomers Club holds two big social events a year: a cocktail party in September and a holiday party around Christmas time. Evening events include guitar concerts, talks on topics of interest and a “studio crawl” where the group visits different artists’ studios around town. An increasing number of social events will be held over the summer months as well, which used to be a quieter time.
One of the Newcomers Club’s most important involvements is in philanthropy. At Christmas members are encouraged to adopt a family in collaboration with the Episcopal Church. The club itself is non-denominational, but the church provides a list of 15 of the most needy families. Then, with the help of donations, the club purchases boxes of basic items that are given away to these needy families.
The Newcomers Club is also involved with a Mexican Charity called “Caminamos Juntos” which was founded by Susan Smith, a Canadian woman. Caminamos Juntos para la Salud y el Desarollo dedicates itself to helping one specific Mexican village in the state of Guerrero. This village has many problems: the water supply contains a toxic level of arsenic, there is a lot of poverty and alcohol abuse. Every month Caminamos Juntos asks for different supplies, e.g. in September the charity requests school supplies, in December it requests blankets, and at Christmas the charity request non-battery operated toys.
Andie indicated that the average age of newcomers to Cuernavaca is in their 50s. She added that dollars go a lot further in Cuernavaca than they would in Florida or the Caribbean.
In addition to volunteering with the Newcomers Club, Andie also donates her time to a local library called the Guild House. She volunteers four Friday mornings a months, two in the library, two with the Newcomers Club. Together with her work as a B&B owner at La Nuestra this keeps her busy.
Nowadays she still goes to back home to the United States about 4 to 5 times a year. Nancy and Andie still have a small apartment in Atlanta where they stay when they go home. Andie and I had a great conversation about her travel experiences in Israel and Spain, and about Latin machismo which also manifests itself on the road (a woman cutting a man off on the road will definitely incur his wrath, while the opposite is just considered normal).
I am one of these people who thinks that one day in my life I’ll probably try to spend 2 or 3 months of the year in a warm place, and Andie’s experience in Cuernavaca has given me some valuable insights about the decision-making process, the cultural adjustment phase, and the rewards of getting involved in a local volunteer organization.
For the entire article including photos please visit
http://www.travelandtransitions.com/stories_photos/cuernavaca_7.htm
