This will be my second-last night in Puebla. This city has grown on me somewhat. I now do not regret being here two weeks as this is how long it has taken me to get to know Puebla a little bit and actually enjoy my time here. I still stand by my evaluation that this is primarily a working class town with not much to offer in the way of sophistication and glamour but this is part of Puebla's charm. Still, beautiful heritage architecture alone does not a liveable city make. This place lacks in green space and apparently in social and community services, hence all the old ladies and women with children you see begging on the narrow sidewalks here. But this is Mexico and although this country has come a long way in recent years it still has a long way to go. One is not going to transform a highly hierachical and conservative society overnight into the Sweden of the Americas and this likely is never going to happen. I have heard from reliable sources that corruption is so endemic at every strata of society, often getting worse the higher you go, that it would not be realistic to see much positive change here, at least not for a few generations, which is sad because the heritage and history of the Mexican people is so rich and vast and this country deserves a decent government and these people, at every social strata, deserve a much better quality of life. I certainly cannot see myself ever living in this country. Realistically, I would have to be upper income or a very gifted entrepreneur or would have to have such academic and professional credentials as to make my presence here necessary to the well being of the country. Besides which, Mexican society is very insular and family oriented so that even if I were to successfully immigrate here it would be at the risk of chronic social isolation unless I were to become part of any of the resident communities of Gringos, and I did not go to all this effort to become fluent in Spanish for that.
It has been an enjoyable day, very art-focussed as I spent prodigious amounts of time in two different cafes while working on my current drawing, both very beautful places in their own right. I have already written about them: the All Day Cafe with the beautiful waterfall fountain with a statue of Buddha, and the York Cafe up on top of the hill with the magnificent view of Puebla. Eventually the wind picked up while I was inside the York Cafe and began blowing in storm clouds and I knew it was going to rain soon, so I left early and hoped that I could beat the rain to the restaurant where I had dinner. No such luck, but it did not rain very hard so I wasn't soaked once I finished the two and a half mile or so walk to the restaurant where among other things I had their version of Greek salad. Not at all Greek really, the cheese was wrong, the olives were wrong. I was remembering the first time I ever ate a Greek salad. It was back in 1975 when Greek food was still considered exotic in Vancouver and it was made by a Greek. I was nineteen at the time and hanging out with friends who lived communally in a big old house in Kitsilano, back in the days when a lot of people shared big houses at cheap rent and no one seemed to mind sharing a bathroom. How times have changed, eh?
It is going to be different being back in Coyoacan in the same guesthouse as before. It's going to be kind of a trade off actually. There is no tv in my room in Coyoacan, but my radio works fine there so I can listen to local radio in Spanish during the evenings. My radio in Puebla does not pick up the signals very well. It has been interesting watching tv in Spanish here, especially the Simpsons, and also a lot of movies. I am not going to miss the cockroaches in the bathroom. I will miss the guests' computer here at El Hotelito, but there is a decent cyber cafe in Coyoacan with decent rates and piped in clasical music so it woun't be a total loss.
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