The conference

This morning I gave my paper in this building, La Casa Presno, the location of some of the social science departments of BUAP. The conference room opens to the left of this central courtyard. Climbing the stairs took me into a world of gold leaf and potted plants that I don't usually associate with the social sciences.
The historical center of Puebla is full of buildings that have been renovated from private mansions into official, commercial or educational spaces. I have enjoyed the openness of the conference. Usually, the scholarly conferences I attend are held in convention centers or hotels: this one took place all over the city. In between sessions of the conference, we got to go outside, breathe fresh air and participate in street life.

I'm glad I made use of my first days in the city for photo wanderings. This ice stand is right outside a cathedral, and when I asked if I could take photos, the saleswoman told me when the cathedral opened. She was very surprised that I wanted to photograph her selling ice. Of course, I'm not so good at explaining what I'm doing, but she said it was ok.

This is the building on the corner next to my hotel, where I am now resting on my last afternoon in Puebla because I am sick. I have such a delicate digestive system. Sigh. The little "H" on the right marks my hotel.

I guess I'll have to cross Puebla off the potential-places-to-retire list after all.

Everyone has been very nice to me in Mexico, from the airline counters in San Antonio to the waitcaptain at the banquet who took the time to listen to me explain in baby Spanish that I didn't feel well, and could I please have some yogurt (most expensive yogurt I've ever eaten, I imagine), to the bellmen who thought I really liked my room in the hotel and wanted to stay in it even though they were preparing to fumigate that floor with pesticide. They went out of their way to get permission to let me stay there in spite of my willingness to move to a room that would not be fumigated.

I still haven't mentioned anything about the content of the conference. I know readers will be really interested if they get this far and keep clicking...

I was one of 15 participants in a seminar on the theme, "This is not your home." The topics ranged from my consideration of Anna Politkovskaia's reporting on the Chechen war to the reconstruction of Berlin, building at the site of the 9/11 attacks, South African fiction that interrogates the notions of reconciliation and truth, fiction about the German invasion and occuaption of France during WWII, the apartheid wall in Israel/Palestine, poetry about the Israeli invasions of Lebanon, illegal immigration into Western Europe from the East, German fiction about Mau Mau (revolution in Kenya), a novel about the genocide in Rwanda, Orhan Pamuk's novel Snow and a Palestinian novel of resistance.

I found all the papers fascinating and have a lot of literature and scholarship to add to my summer reading list. You'd think with intellectual interests such as these, I would have a stronger stomach.

Gym Source