# 20 Orquidea - Week 1

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country -- Pablo Neruda

Here I am in Mexico! A new town, a new job, a renewed sense of life. “One must close the book, rise, walk alongside Time, gaze at the flowers, and hear ambiguity,” Sohrab’s words rang in my ears throughout the trip. I cannot tell you the exact reason why I’ve come here. I’m constantly in a state of euphoria, making instant decisions, which led my friends to take my plan to teach English in Mexico with a grain of salt. Quite frankly, I have not just come to teach English, learn Spanish, explore a different culture; I have come here to hear “ambiguity,” to grasp and appreciate confusion more profoundly, to gaze at “flowers” on this side of the world, to “walk” alongside Time. And already, though my clothes remain strewn on the floor, I have realized that here flowers are the same, and simultaneously extremely different. I find myself somewhere in the middle, at times I don’t find myself.

Los Reyes is a small town in the green state of Michoacan eight hours from Mexico City. The town is rusty and uninteresting at first, but its charm grows once one explores its waterfalls, narrow streets at nights, its small, cozy downtown, its market, and if none would do, speaking with the locals will always bring a foreigner a sense of joy and embrace. Though I have to admit the locals’ fixed gaze out of fascination can be intimidating. My Irish roommate has become quite a celebrity in no time with her fair skin and light hair. English teachers reside in # 20, Orquidea Street, and every one in neighborhood knows that. No matter where you’d want to go, locals will direct you to # 20 Orquidea Street. I’d be eating breakfast, walking down the street, chatting with someone, and locals would be gazing at me. In the U.S, your existence goes unnoticed, here I have come alive. But wait! No judging yet, in a few weeks, I will possibly be attention-smitten!

I’ve not brought much. A manual on teaching English, the anthology of Contemporary Afghan Poets to translate, a basic Persian-English dictionary, the educational memories of Mohammad Bahman-Beigi, McCullers’ The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and The Scarlett Letter. The smiling picture of Sohrab and a picture of Shiraz decorate my simple, rusty room. The window is broken, and butterflies and mosquitoes keep me company all night. And no, I don’t wake up by the roosters’ cries, rather by the construction workers’ ruthless hammer. I visited the English school today. It’s a charming place. It reminds me of my own English school in Shiraz, which brings me to a state of nostalgia. Who would have thought…

I took a big step today. I went to the market, bought tomatoes, green peppers, apples, and quesillo (Oaxaca cheese). I’m cookin’. At the cheese store, one of the locals took a bag of tortillas and gave them to me. He felt I needed them. I liked his feelings for me. In the United States people don’t have tortilla feelings for one another. I call Mexico home by choice and with utmost pleasure, this country is wonderful! I do miss my family dearly, my lover, my grandmother! But I feel as though detachment will bring a lyrical rhythm to my life.

Eshq,
Aria