Nahautl Navidad

The savanna stood vast and stoic as the sun slowly slipped below the horizon,

Stoic, like a bronze Miguel Hidalgo standing straight and tall,

Vast, like the millions of Mexicans remembering and revering their Father for raising fight and feat of the conquistadors de Espana.

El sol: sinking slow and deep into the tierra creates anvil clouds and a sky like a pastel picture of Christmas.

This is the solstice.  This is the solstice of in a un campo de Mexico.  This is the memory of Mexico.

The sound of the solstice is crickets and cuetas and brass booming beyond the vastness-
Celebrations, fiestas, festvities and felizidad-
Posadas y parades-

La Navidad de Mexico

Now for something Nahautl:

Nahautl is la lingua that about 1.5 Nahua natives know; la idioma indigenous to Mexico and Mesoamerica.  It gained prestige when the Michoacan Empire expanded into what is current day Mexico City, became a literary language when the Latin alphabet was introduced and in the 16th and 17th centuries, works including poetry and even codices were written in what was stated as being one of the most well-documented and studied languages of the Americas according to this.  

If it weren't for Nahautl, we might have been stuck handing out brussel sprout bunnies on Easter.
 
Can you imagine what kind of world we'd be living in if everyone went around claiming they were addicted to brussel sprouts?

I navigate your attention towards Nahautl not because we'd cry without avocados and tomatoes and coyotes (all also derivatives), but because we'd cry if we didn't have a language with which to express ourselves as humans.  That's what we do.  We relish in self expression and the verbal language.  Babies cry and laugh and smile and drop things because they have yet to develop the skills to communicate through the expression of language that the rest of us can comprehend.  Slowly they begin filling their beautifully woven basket of brains with vocabulary they remember from their surrounding environment.  Finally, after about a year or year and a half, they retain and recall an expansive vocabulary of six whole words on average, according to this.

From the moment I stumbled upon teaching English as a second language about one year ago, clouds muddled the clear blue sky but created an image of a long, narrow tunnel with tracks built for the language locomotive.  Although it was pacing upwards of 200 mph, I hopped aboard and held on for dear life because from the moment the clouds muddled into a tunnel of tracks for the language locomotive- from the moment I felt the fresh wind on my face and comb my hair with its teeth, there appeared an illuminating lading leading the way.  It was as much of a light at the end of a tunnel as I needed to recognize an unrecognized rapture of the profession of teaching.

Fascination holds no comparison to "calling" and if everyone is patient, in time, they will find their true name.

Spoken language is truly a fascinating commodity even though it is quite obvious from the very get go if it is English or if it is Greek.  Why is it then that it is so difficult for us to say what we're really thinking?  I mean really really?  What are we thinking about at the same time we're thinking about that elephant in the room?  Then again why is it so easy for us to say and do everything else?  Why do we want to declare everything that makes up the one thing we're really thinking but leave out that one thought?  Fortunately, this social worker knows the answer.  Thank goodness I didn't have to say what I was really thinking...

The last couple of weeks have been spent learning and a lot has been learned.  The incredible thing about traveling to a different country and experiencing a different culture from your own is that proverbs exist in every single language.  Here is another one in ours: there is more than one way to skin a cat.  This means that there are multiple ways of doing a single one thing.  I traveled to Mexico with one of my Oklahoma roommates to take a break from teaching and visit other Okies who relocated to a country who has a history and colonization countries away from ours. 

Mexico is amazing.  It's a country with a history as rich and delicious as its food and I can't wait to return.

Finally, this Christmas granted the gracious gift of Grandpa recounting Ave Maria on the clarinet by Chopin and Bach.

Next up: a new year!