I asked an American looking woman in the courtyard of the Biblioteca Pública of San Miguel de Allende if free Wifi were available there. She responded, “Yes,” and I detected an accent so I asked her where she was from. She told me she was from Quebec on the border of Ontario. In fact, she lived in Ottawa, Ontario but had always identified as a Quebecoise. I immediately switched to French and we talked for an hour.
She retired six years ago from teaching philosophy at the college level. She spoke of having dyslexia which was undiagnosed when she was a child, which made learning to read and write French and English very difficult. It also made learning Spanish as a senior citizen a challenge. I imagined that her own learning challenges gave her a lot of insights into her students’ learning issues and likely motivated her to provide tools for them.
She and her life partner, Pierre, had planned to stay at SMA for two months but they just extended their trip for an additional month. Their 30-something son and partner also came with them to SMA because they are self-employed and can work from anywhere on the Internet.
Pierre is an amateur photographer who loves to do photographic studies of all kinds of objects and people. I met Pierre just before I left the Biblioteca and enjoyed getting a glimpse of how he viewed his surroundings through photos.
I had the good fortune of getting together with Jacqueline twice before I left SMA. She introduced me to the colonia or neighborhood of Guadalupe where we spent a couple hours on foot admiring the murals and street art there. The colonia reminded me of Bushwick in Brooklyn because of the celebration of colorful, thought-provoking art everywhere we turned. Our last delightful adventure involved visiting the Mask Museum which is an artistic and anthropological treasure.
