A Visitor and a Resident

It’s been a busy week. One that took me to Tlaquepaque, el Centro, a Tequila brewery, two malls, three markets and numerous cathedrals and parks; that found me venturing out to Tonala not once but twice, sitting in the second row of  my first Mexican wrestling match, stepping through the doors of at least three museums, eating out  for all but a few meals and discovering that tacos are a little bit different everywhere you go. 

My closet grew with the addition of two new peasant blouses, my patio gained two new clay pots, my bedroom one ceramic one, and I walked so many steps that, if I had a Fitbit, it would have thought it was on someone else’s arm.

You guessed it – out of town visitors. This week I’m recovering.

One of my favorite books is “Apple of My Eye” by Helene Hanff. A resident of New York City for all of her adult life, she accepted a job to write the copy for a book of photographs of New York, only to realize that she had visited just a few of the “Must See” sights that the book would cover. Thus, she began a “tour” of her own city with another lifelong resident who had similarly never managed to make it out to the Statue of Liberty. “Apple of My Eye” is about their experience.

I get it. When I lived in St. Louis, Missouri, I ventured to the top of the Arch for the first time only when visitors came to town. And when I lived in Washington, D.C., I walked through Arlington National Cemetery for the first time in my adult life when different out of town visitors took me along. 

I’m trying to do better here in Guadalajara. But it’s always a balancing act. Do I want to experience the town as a visitor or do I want to live as a local? And do the two have to be contradictory? I’ve decided not.

I’m going to take my hint from Helene and her traveling companion who had a grand time exploring their city. They lived as New Yorkers, but gave themselves a wonderful two month holiday to discover more of it, ending it in a very New York way, a crowded subway ride home.

I’ve got two years. With just a little more rest, I’ll be ready.