Current mood:	ecstatic
Entry tags:	catholic, christian, church, mexico

Biblia Bilingue
A few months ago, I decided I HAD to get a bilingual Bible. I actually have two Bibles in Spanish, but after seeing another person's bilingual Bible (even if it was a Protestant one), I knew I had to have one. It hadn't even hit me that such a thing existed until I saw it, and then it was all like YES! I WANT IT.

I tried to just find one in Chihuahua, pero es no va (no go). After a bizarrely long time, it occured to me I could order one online, but all the ones I looked at were rather expensive, even before the international shipping costs. (Note to US vendors - quit giving shipping breaks to Canada and not Mexico, you racist capitalist swine.) And at last I thought of my new favorite online bookstore, Better World, which not only has a good selection and inexpensive shipping (less than $4 per book, anywhere in the world), it also gives part of all sales to literacy funds and rescues used books from extinction. Huzzah! Get good and make good.

So I went ahead and ordered a very nice-looking leather-bound Catholic bilingual Bible from them, and began to play the waiting game. This is the part I hate, because every time I order books, I want them NOW, and every day I am in a fever of anticipation and mild fear that they won't arrive. Or that when they do, no one will be around to accept them and they would get to the downtown post office and require all sorts of wheeling and dealing in order for me to get a ride down there to retrieve them. Or get hung up at customs for no particular reason (Guangzhou never did release my $50 copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). You're so vulnerable when you're in love.

Every day for the past three weeks, I've danced around the mailbox trying to catch sight of the book or a "pick up" slip, but every day, nothing. Until today! Hooray, it has arrived!

Thus, I must sing a song of praise to Spanish and Mexico. I've already covered Better World Books. Dig 'em.

1. Spanish is connected to Latin in a much purer way than English is, and I love it when Spanish words for things are like the more high-level English words. Example: yesterday, one of my adults classes asked me what "behavior" meant. I gave my usual sort of stuttering explanation until the light dawned. "OH," one of them said, and wrote down in his notebook, "Comportamente".

I love that.

2. People in Mexico are WAY more polite than Americans, and, strangely, Korea. Everyone, and I mean everyone, greets each other with "Buenos dias" or "buenos tardes". Men hold the door openfor women. If you drop something on the floor, someone else rushes to pick it up for you. All conversations start with inquiries into how you are feeling and how your family is, and people are genuinely interested. And something happens in Mexico on a daily basis that I saw maybe five times the whole year I lived in Korea - men give their seats to women on the bus, even teenage boys. Doesn't matter the age of the woman, males get up and offer their seats with a gentlemanly flourish. I saw this happen maybe five times in Korea, and always to old or pregnant women.

3. Mexico - they work hard and they play hard.

4. La comida! I know I've praised Mexican food before, but you can never praise it enough.

5. Menudo (the boy band) WAS NOT FROM MEXICO. In a related note, Bruce Lee was not Japanese.

6. Rosaries a'poppin'.

7. Mexico has day care centers, children's hospitals. extended close-knit families, babysitters, etc., but Mexicans never seem to be under the impression that raising their kids is ultimately anyone's responsibilty but their own. They're not always looking for ways to blame the school or teachers for everything their kids do, and they don't scream and threaten litigation to get everything their own way for their own needs, all other people be damned. Ejemplo: I was doing an activity with a high-level class in which they had to imagine they were hotel managers and had to come up with solutions to some problems in their hotel. One problem was there was nothing for kids to do and they ran around the hotel aimlessly. i did this about a thousand times in China, and my students there came up with good solutions involving hiring nannies, building playgrounds, etc. - pretty much what I figured were the "right" answers. But my Mexican students, all women with children, unanimously came up with ideas to educate people on how to take care of their own kids and how to spend more time with their own families. Bravo!

8. The kids I see in Mass are the most well-behaved kids I have ever seen in church. Ever.

This has gotten a bit away from my Bible, hasn't it?