English muffin

I just remembered this other bit of cultural conversation from yesterday, when we were having a snack.

J: Why are English muffins called English muffins?
R: I think because they have muffins like this in England.
J: But this is not really a muffin.
R: I agree.  A muffin is more like a cupcake without frosting.  But in England I guess this is a muffin.  [musing briefly]  Except I am pretty sure that this, in England, is not called a muffin at all.
J: What is it called?
R: I think it is called a crumpet.
J: Crumpet!  Like a trumpet!
A: Too too too!
R: Rhymes with trumpet.  And they put the butter on the top, instead of cutting it in half like we do.  But I think they still toast it.
J: That is funny.  Crumpet.  Why don't they call it an English muffin?
R: Well they're already in England so they don't have to call it English if it's already English.
D: We don't call this "American asparagus."  We already know it's American.
R: And what we call French fries are called something else if you're in France.  Not French fries, because they know that already.
J: What are they called?
R: Frites.  Which means fries.
J: Just fries?
D: Pommes frites, right?  Fried potatoes.
J: That makes sense.
R: And you know what, in England they call French fries even something else than that, not French fries or frites.
J: What?
R: Chips!
J: Chips?!
A: Potato chips?
R: Right, but they are not what we call chips!  We call it chips when it's potato chips, the thin crispy kind, but they call it chips when it's french fries.
J: [laughing his head off]  That is so funny!
R: You know how sometimes you order fish and chips at a restaurant and you get fish and fries?  That's because it's an English food and they call fries, chips.
J [looking very surprised]: That's why!  I didn't know that!  I was thinking I would get chips!
R: You did get chips!  But English chips!
J [dissolving in laughter]

Prime Minister Moses

(I still owe a post about Bryce, but I wanted to get this down.)  Getting ready for school today:

J: How many continents are there?
R: Seven.
J: Why are there only seven?
R: How many do you think there should be?
J: Like twenty.
R: Why?
J: So that more people could be president.
R: Oh.  Actually a president is the leader of a country, not a continent.  There are lots and lots of countries, so there are lots and lots of leaders.
J: What?  What's the difference between a country and a continent?
[I paused the conversation to go dry my hair, which gave me a minute to collect my thoughts.  When we got out the door:]
R: Okay, Jordan, I thought about your question some more, and here's what I have to say.  A continent is a big piece of land surrounded all around by oceans.
J: Right.  I know that.
R: A country is when a bunch of people agree that they want to have all the same rules and laws and be on the same team.
J:  OHH.  Okay.
R: Mostly, so far, when people have decided to have the same rules and laws and be on the same team, it has not been all the people on a whole continent.  Just some.  And the others on the same continent make a different team, which is a different country.
J: I get it.
R: There is one country that I know of that is a whole continent.  Australia.
J: They all decided, the whole continent of people, to make one country.
R [sweeping a couple centuries of colonialism and so on under the rug]: Right.
J: So they have one president.
R: They have one leader.  I don't think they call their leader the president though.  I think they call their leader the prime minister.
J [laughing]: Prime minister.  Like prime rib.  Grandpa ate prime rib at that restaurant.
R: That's funny.  Do you know what prime means?
J: No.
R: It means number one.
J: Oh.  So Grandpa had the number one rib and the leader is the number one minister.  What's a minister?
R [bogging down again]: Um.  A leader.
J: Okay.  [walking a minute]  So Moses was a minister.
R: Um.
J: And in fact he was a prince too.  So I think he was the prime minister.  Of the Jewish people.

Very logical.  Fortunately we arrived at school at that point, so I could not dig myself into a yet deeper hole.  It turns out I am all wrong about Australia, anyway; they do not have their own prime minister, but rather a Governor-General, who normally does what the Prime Minister (of Britain) says.

The real point ought to have been that political distinctions may be different from geographic ones, but who knows what Jordan will find most compelling.

Zion Canyon

Here's what people really come to Zion for.

The way the giant walls and towers of rock loom over you on all sides is really hard to convey with photographs.  Everywhere you go, in town or in the park, these giant red and brown and orange and white striated craggy cliffs are in your peripheral vision.  They're staggering.  I feel like they are watching me.

The whole thing used to be dunes, part of an enormous ocean of sand the largest the planet has ever known, larger than the present Sahara.  The sand was pressed into sandstone under its own weight.  This region's sandstone is special in that it is infused with iron, which gives the rust-red colors, and calcium, which makes white streaks.  Today the Virgin River continually reshapes the landscape, carving and re-carving its way through the path of least resistance, mostly during the violent flood season.  

The rock is porous.  In a surprising number of places, water soaks into the rock up high and drips out far below, creating "weeping rocks" that feed hanging gardens of ferns and flowers.  Not what you expect to see in the desert.  There are also plenty of waterfalls.  This one fell over a large sheltering overhang.

Here are several tourists gazing upon a Weeping Rock.  Aaron did not wish to be wept upon.

After learning that there were supposedly no buffalo in Zion, Aaron said, "But I see a buffalo head right there," and pointed out this astonishing rock formation.  How about that?

Our usual routine is to get up earlyish, load up at the breakfast buffet, hop on the shuttle, and take easy hikes all morning.  We range from age 3 to 70 so we don't try anything too ambitious... our pace is about one mile per hour, and it's easy for some among us to get too hot or too tired.  We find our way back to town for a late lunch, rest in the afternoon, and do another walk or activity in the evening.

People do crazy stuff here... one of the most popular hikes, the Narrows, involves being actually in the river multiple times - wading back and forth and even swimming across, unpredictably, because the river changes the route all the time.  That "hike" is closed right now because the high volume of water in the river threatens to sweep away unsuspecting tourists.  I didn't want to go anyway.  Plenty of people do the Angels Landing hike, so called because the original explorers were sure that only angels would have a good way to get there:  the last stretch has you traversing a sheer fin of sandstone with a 1400-foot drop on each side, though hey, there are now anchored support chains on some sections of the trail.  No thank you.  The really certifiable ones, according to the rangers, are the rock climbers who scale those vertical sandstone walls.  They are referred to as wall-nuts.

Zion National Park

We are in Zion on a family vacation for a week, our second annual national park visit (last year was Yellowstone).  We elected to go now, in May, rather than wait until school is out for the kids, because in July the heat is really limiting.  This week's weather has been marvelous; about 80 during the day, cooler in the mornings and evenings, one brief fresh drizzle of rain.  (In Seattle, meanwhile, it's cold and raining every day.  Sorry friends!)

We are staying in Springdale, Utah, a little town at the entrance of the park.  It's very pleasant.  It's actually in Zion Canyon, so it is surrounded by much the same stunning scenery as you get within the park; almost all the businesses are small independent shops, restaurants, and inns; and the transportation to the park is very easy.  I wasn't expecting much from our Best Western, but every room has picture windows with views of the towering red cliffs, and there is a lovely back porch for evenings, as well as a pool and a big lawn for impromptu soccer (very important to Jordan and Aaron).

To get to the park, the easiest and most common thing to do is to take the free, propane-powered shuttle. The "town shuttle" comes by every 5-10 minutes, stops at several locations in town, and drops you off at the visitor center in 10 minutes.  From there, you enter the park on foot, then hop on the "Canyon Shuttle" (also free and frequent) to ride as far as you like up the Zion Canyon.  There are eight different stops to deliver you to various sights and trailheads.  You get off wherever you like, and then when you would like to go somewhere else (either further up the canyon or back home), you get on the next shuttle.  We haven't set foot in the car since we arrived here.  Private vehicles are not allowed past a certain point in the park, and with a system this easy and convenient, there's really no temptation.

The shuttle system has been in place since 2000 and it seems like a wonderful improvement over driving yourself.  Dale was here as a teenager and has vivid memories of stressful searches for nonexistent parking.  Rangers tell us that there used to be 4000 cars in the park every day competing for 450 parking places.  Often people were forced to just drive through rather than hike anywhere, because they just couldn't find anywhere to put the car.  With the new system, not only is it much quieter, easier to enjoy for a longer time, and less polluted, there is more visible wildlife.  

Okay, bit of a joke there.  But in fact wildlife is not a major feature of Zion.  There are mule deer and lizards.  There are peregrine falcons and California condors; these are exciting from an ecological perspective (peregrines were critically endangered but have recovered, condors are still in trouble but are part of a successful recovery program), but we haven't seen any.  Dale, spotter extraordinare, saw a gray fox, but did not manage to photograph it.

Regarding flora, there are many many cottonwoods blowing their fluff all over the place, which the boys find thrilling when it piles up on the ground.  There are also beautiful yellow columbines, pink cactus flowers, and "moon lilies" (first picture below), also known as sacred datura, a poisonous/hallucinogenic plant.  The second flower below is a yucca.

What you really come here for is the geological scenery.  Next post.

Spanish

Living among Spanish speakers for even a few days has been consciousness-raising for me. Having grown up in San Francisco, I always had Spanish around, but my friends didn’t speak it (my neighborhood had mostly Cantonese and Russian). I was mostly hearing Spanish on the bus. In the class I taught here, everyone spoke at least a little English, but some only a little, and I thought it was more important that they learn the course material than practice their English so I encouraged them to speak Spanish when they were collaborating among themselves. Thus, for three days, I was surrounded by Spanish as the professional language of scholars I came to know and respect. It’s a very different sensation from hearing it on the bus.

For someone who never had any Spanish instruction more formal than Sesame Street, I do pretty darned well. I can read signs fairly reliably (my good knowledge of French helps) and I can even read a paragraph of accessible text if I have a minute. For example, in my hotel there was a card on the bed with advice for a good sleep: “Practice exercise with regularity.  In the night avoid stimulants such as coffee, nicotine, and drinking much liquids.  Listen to music channel 41 on your television while you prepare to sleep. Lie down, place two pillows under your feet, and take six deep breaths, in and out.” I can speak some too; my accent is very good, I am told, and if I am prepared, I can do things like ask the breakfast lady to charge the breakfast to my room (“Desayuno a la habitación, por favor, doce-cero-uno”) and even respond sensibly when she says “Caliente o frio?”  In Starbucks, I ordered in Spanish, and she rattled back a question to me about "crema" so I said si, and "para llevar" to which I also said si.  But I am easily tripped up, because then she seemed to be asking for my number.  Huh?  Oh, right, nombre is “name.”  See?  I am not very good.  And then taking a taxi to the airport, I found myself needing to ask if the university had already paid for the taxi, and if not would he take a credit card.  I was completely stuck.  I didn’t know the word for “paid,” or the past tense, and the “already” seemed very important but I had no clue about that, and come to think of it would this question even make any sense to them conceptually?  I thought Tec had arranged for this taxi, but I wasn’t certain, and paying for a taxi in advance is not normal in the US, and, um, help?  In French, I would have been all over this (“Est-ce que Tec vous avez déjà payé? Si non j’aurais besoin d’un banque, s’il vous plait.”).  But here they had to call down a manager from the hotel to talk to me.  I was embarrassed to be so helpless.  I think it almost makes it worse that I can almost participate in Spanish.  If it were Thai, I wouldn’t even try to go past hello and goodbye and counting to three, and I wouldn’t worry about it.

In class, I integrated what Spanish I could, really just for politeness and because I like learning languages.  When we were dealing with technical terms I would have them teach me the Spanish equivalent.  When I wrote an announcement on the board I would get their help writing it in Spanish.  For example, “TARDE: Presentaciónes.  15 min incluyendos preguntas.  Equipo grande – 45 min.”  Here is a map I made of the classroom in which I was assigning different topics to different tables:



As far as understanding people when they spoke, I did well when I had a lot of contextual help.  Watching the people in the class talk together, I often knew the kind of thing they were talking about already (because I knew what question they were answering or what data they were looking at), and by paying attention to their prosody and gestures (which is funny, because that was part of what the class was about) I could track their conversation to a pretty good degree.  I assume I was missing all the interesting details, but it was still fun for me.  Sometimes I could respond to what I thought they were talking about.  Mostly I just listened; if they needed me, they switched to English.  On social occasions (such as dinners out), it’s amazing how much you can figure out partly by knowing what kind of conversation it’s likely to be:  I know they are trying to figure out what time to meet me for dinner, so it’s easy to hear the bits of conversation about what they need to do before leaving campus, how long it will take to get to the restaurant, etc.

Similarly, at the conference I attended on the last day, there was one speaker whose slides provided such good contextualization for his talk that I felt like I was understanding every word he was saying, even though he was talking a mile a minute.  I was briefly very proud of my receptive Spanish.  But then the rest of the meeting was panel discussions (no slides), or talks whose slides were a blur of small technical text going by too fast, and I understood nothing.  I didn’t even get the gist.  I saw that they were presenting a methodology and saying what population was studied, but I had no clue what their methodology or population actually was.  I felt completely awkward.  I want to take this as lesson for talk preparation:  Prepare slides that a Spanish speaker with elementary English could understand.  Surely it is good for the speakers that share my language, too.

Monterrey campus

I gave my plenary talk today.  I made a sincere effort to speak slowly and clearly, and apparently I succeeded, because I ran out of time!  I told my hosts that it was because there are no clocks anywhere.  After my presentation I was honored with a certificate and a gift, a beautiful coffee-table book called Un Oasis Verde: Campus Monterrey.

It's true, too.  The campus has made itself a haven for plants and animals that flourished here before there was a big city.  The first ones I noticed were the Mexican ducks.  These are maybe a little on the ugly side, and have irritable personalities (or so I hear).  There are also scrawny cats that hunt the ducks; I didn't document those.

There are also peacocks (los pavos) all over the place, and deer (ciervos).

I like the public art and the architecture a lot -- modern, big shapes, great use of color.  This building is called The Blender (la licuadora).

This one looks like two buildings but is actually one; it's two giant slabs, face to face but at an angle to one another.  It is called the Napkin Holder (and I don't know the Spanish.  Servilletero?).

Grad students

The Mexican graduate students took me to dinner tonight at the Sierra Madre brewpub, a big, very American-like place that served hamburgers and pizza, but with Mexican additions like guacamole on the hamburgers.  The beer was good and it was fun to go out with them.  I asked what life is like as a graduate student here, and one of them said, "Do you read PhD Comics? Exactly like that."  PhD Comics being an all-too-accurate sendup of the US grad school experience, I guess things are pretty much the same world round, or continent-round at least.

I also learned, just out of curiosity, that most of the grad students drink tap water and think nothing of it, unlike my hosts.  The only one who doesn't is from Veracruz, in the south of Mexico, where she says they "don't have the tradition" of drinking tap water.  I also learned that in Mexico City the water has the reputation of being less safe.

People say hello and goodbye here with one air-kiss on the right cheek, the way we would have a quick hug.  I find this charming but hard to remember.

Prehispanic foods

Monterrey people keep a schedule that is strange to me:  class starts at 9am (but the start time is very casual so people are still drifting in at 9:30-9:45), lunch is 1:00-2:30 (again with the extended return time), and we are back at work until 6pm.  The normal time for dinner is 8 or 9 pm.  My hosts have been taking me out earlier than that (right after class), and at 7pm the restaurants are still empty.  Even so, what with the traffic and the leisurely meal, I don't get back to my room until 10pm or later.  Fortunately I don't need to do any work to be ready for tomorrow.  When do people get anything done around here?  Answer:  3am.  Seriously.  They wake up then, put in a few hours of work, and sleep a little more before rising for the day.  Just like my husband.  I had no idea there was a whole city full of people with his sleep habits.

There are no clocks anywhere that I can see.  Not in the classroom, not in the hotel room.  I still know what time it is, from my computer or my disabled phone, but I can't glance around to see the time.  One of my hosts said now that I mention it, he has never seen a clock on the wall here; the other said "Oh, I have a clock I have been meaning to bring in, it runs counterclockwise." In other words not a clock that you could actually read, I said, and she agreed, seeming to think nothing of it.

Tonight's dinner was at a lovely, classy traditional Mexican restaurant.  My favorite dish was the little blue-corn tamales stuffed with goat cheese and poured over with zucchini flower sauce.  I also ate cactus (with oaxaca cheese, inside a crispy crust, so it was a little like a chili relleno), shrimp tacos, and a delicious spicy sausage rolled up in tortillas.  Those were the fairly normal (though exceptionally good) things.  Then we had to have some things that I would not have anywhere else, referred to on the menu as "prehispanic" foods.  Grasshoppers are well known here, prepared crispy, with salt and chiles.  There is also a larval worm.  I passed up both of these (my hosts are not fans of them either) but I did try the ant eggs.  These arrive in a little dish looking almost like small corn kernels, and you eat a spoonful on a rustic tortilla with guacamole and lime.  The flavor is very mild.  The other interesting food I ate was huitlacoche, corn fungus, also in a tortilla with embellishments.  It is unappetizing to look at (black and globby) but has a pleasant taste, like a mushroom.

The little goat

First day of class was great.  The participants are very hardworking and enthusiastic, especially the graduate students, and that makes it fun.  Here is a picture of everyone in the classroom.

For dinner my hosts took me out for roasted baby goat at El Rey de Cabrito, a very famous restaurant, everyone who visits Monterrey has to go there.  The goat was very tasty.  You are served a big portion of meat, more anatomical than I am used to, and you eat it like fajitas, on tortillas with onions and tomatoes and salsa and lime.  I am stuffed.

Afterwards, we were welcomed into the kitchen to take photos with the roasting goats.  These are in the front window of the restaurant so I think they are not actually being roasted.  The gentleman in the photo is my host; his wife took the pictures.  They have been very hospitable.

I have found out that local people don't drink tap water; my hosts frowned and said "Oh no no no" when I asked about it.  They do, however, drink iced drinks, and eat raw fruit and vegetables, so it's not like when we were in India.  I am trying to play it safe.  The graduate students were more liberal about it; they drink bottled water because it is convenient and everyone does it, but they think it is probably okay for locals to drink tap water more than they do.  They explained to the older adults that in the US, tap water is completely safe to drink.  The adults looked very skeptical.  "They have stricter standards," the students insisted.  I backed them up, and said actually these days there is an effort to have people drink more tap water, because of the waste from all the bottles.

Rachel in Mexico

I am in Monterrey, Mexico on business for a week.  I've only really thought about the work part of why I'm here, which is super fun and interesting (teaching a three-day intensive course on qualitative video analysis to physics and math faculty and grad students).  Now that I'm here I'm more sort of realizing that I'm in a foreign country.  My Spanish is okay for signs and simple courtesies, but totally insufficient for normal talking.... I can sort of get the gist of what someone else's conversation is about, but not enough to respond, even if I knew what to say.  My hosts were kind enough to pick me up at the airport, and though I fancy myself a resourceful traveler I am very glad they did.  I didn't have to change money, find my way around, locate a taxi, tell a taxi where to go, worry if I was actually being taken there, etc.  Monterrey is very safe as Mexican cities go, but still.

Monterrey is a big, rich city, more Americanized (USA-ized?) than most cities in Mexico.  My hotel is next to a mall (I can't tell how big) with a Starbucks and a Carl's Jr.  I will still need to avoid the tap water; I don't know yet whether locals do that too, but even if they drink it, it might not work for me.  There is a liter of bottled water in my hotel room, marked $34, which confused me because I didn't know they use the same sign for the peso as we do for the dollar.  That turns out to be US$2.89.  That feels like a deal, but of course I have no clue what it sells for in a store.  The weather is what they consider freezing cold tonight, which is 60F and a little humid... balmy warm, to me.  A couple days ago it was 110, which is more what I was led to expect.  My hotel is on campus so getting to class in the morning will be easy.

On the drive from the airport I asked my hosts about regional foods and they said that much of the food is typical tex-mex kind of stuff, but this particular part of the country enjoys a lot of meat.  "Carne asada," they said, "I think to you it would be barbecue?"  They added, "The one thing that might be a bit new for you is the little goat."  I had read up on this (leave it to me to prioritize the food over the currency) and said I was looking forward to trying it.  It's called cabrito, it's slow-roasted, and it's an emblem of the city.  They were pleased that I was an adventurous eater, especially when I said I like spicy food just fine.  We'll see how I do.

Symbols

Last night we had one last (belated) Passover, with friends who were in Europe for the last half of April.  Jordan was feeling scholarly and impressed everyone with his knowledge about the holiday.  I was especially entertained by his explaining that this and that item on the seder plate are symbols that represent other things; he was being very pointed about the vocabulary, suggesting that the whole concept of symbolic representation is interesting to him right now.  Then on the way to religious school this morning, we had this interchange:

J: Infinity is not a number.
R: I would agree with that.  What are you thinking it is?
J: Infinity means that numbers never end.
R: That's what I would say too.  I would say infinity is a symbol.  It reminds us of that idea, that numbers never end.
J: Right.
R (walking on a little): I was thinking about our late Passover last night, and how you said the shankbone is a symbol.  Funny to think of infinity as being sort of like a shankbone.
J: Infinity even looks a little like a shankbone.  They're both round on the ends and thin in the middle.
(This cracked me up - the physical resemblance is so not what I meant.  But I didn't say anything.)
J: A color can be a symbol, too.
R: Oh yeah?
J: Like the pH thing we do with the fish.  The color of the water in the little tube tells you how much acid there is in the fish tank.

The pH indicator thing seems to me to be a different kind of thing than infinity or a shankbone.  The colors on the test strip stand for numbers, and that's probably what Jordan was thinking about - one thing standing for another different kind of thing.  But the colors on the pH scale are an indicator of quantity (of acid), pretty much just like the numbers they are substituting for; whereas infinity and the shankbone both indicate abstract ideas (of the nature of numbers, or divine protection).

On the other hand, maybe we live in such a symbol-laden reality that there's no point in making such a distinction.  Written numerals are symbols of mathematical objects (numbers), which are used to represent quantity; all language is symbols; etc.  When we arrived at religious school the kids were making an Israeli flag, which Jordan and I identified as a symbol of a country.  The six-pointed star, in particular, Jordan identified as being not only a symbol of Jewishness but also a symbol of the shield carried by David.  So I think that I will not try to get him to differentiate different kinds of symbolism.