BBQ

Sometimes, you need to get opportunities when they come up. Saturday was a day like that. I’ve got an invitation from someone I don’t know (haaaaaa couchsurfing again!) to a BBQ at someone else’s house. I had to get ready in less than one hour with something to drink and something to eat. I’m not really saying I’m doing surhuman things here, but the easiest solution would have been to keep sleeping and to cure my hangover. But two things I’ve learn from this month (already!) in Mexico are: Mexicans are super welcoming and as much as they are welcoming, they are not so much reliable. It’s a cultural thing, really. Someone could organize something some days in advance, but then you got no news at all and your crazy Saturday night turns into a loosy ones, eating ice cream in pajama and watching Dirty Dancing (no, I don’t feel gayer saying that, or just a little).

Lesson number one: try to plan as much events as possible on week-ends, cos’ half of it will be cancelled and a quarter will simply disappear into someone else delirium tremens.



So, Teresa (as picture below) picked me up (how nice of her as she leaves at a walking distance of the place!), and I had my first barbecue of the year! Obviously, there were lots of meat, cheese tortillas, alcohol and guacamole. From what I saw, nobody bring any meat, it’s the host duty. It’s relatively cheap (5 Euros per kilo) but from an European perspective, it was unexpected. Be warned, Mexican people, if you dare going to a BBQ without expensive pieces of bleeding animals!

 

No one was hurt during this special effect montage

I had the chance to talk with truly interesting people at this party. The first funny one was Japanese whose game was to cite as much artistic materials as possible. It started with music, where he flooded me of unknown bands (for me, but that doesn’t count because I don’t know much anyway). As I wasn’t very responsive to his “attack”, he switched to painting (bad luck on this one too, I count barely recognize the neo-cubism from the future drawings of my nephew). But then, he changed to movies, where I could show how big was my … knowledge. My mistake, I couldn’t stop him from reciting the list of the best movie of all time. One hour later of this non-sense, we changed for tv-shows and as he spoiled me the end of “How I Met your Mother”; only then I could pretend the urge for an alcoholic beverage and fly away.

There is two different way socially acceptable for going away from this sort of situation. First one: keep going on in the process to be wasted, and second, going to the bathroom which will help the first point. Apart from that, you will be seen as a rude and senseless person (fortunately, I’m French, so I’m already seen as someone like this, which give me room for pretty much everything).

The next guy was the host and the only person I picked up the number from. He explained me briefly what was his philosophy: the Taoism. In few words: Balance, energy and acupuncture. I guess I’ll be soon on a table with tons on needles on my back. Once again, there is two things that pop up in my head from this kind of discussion with people like that: They all had a very down moment in there lives that pushed them toward radical changes and they all claim still working of those new lives. I don’t know if those claims are truly sincere (for me it’s always difficult to truly realize how far you are from a result, inside of me, I have this voice telling me you are not doing THAT bad), but it open the discussion to new perspective and the openness of those persons is indubitable.



Yes, it was falling buckets of water from the sky again

Finally, last but not least, this German looking Mexican with his serious attitude; as always, for guys, it’s easier to talk deep topic with unknown people. Girls may not get that, but the perspective to not see someone again opens a lot of doors for us. The pressure of fucking up the conversation drop down into “I don’t care” land and we can finally speak freely. All topics are available: religion, racism, politics, family, etc. Therefore, we talked genetics. He could be a very interesting guinea pig, I tell you, with the topic being: “Are our personalities made by our environments or by our genes (or both)”. I would say the tendencies, those days, is to believe in a very open world where everybody are build by the environments with a small intervention of the genes (if none for some people). It is very not politically correct to points out characteristic made by genes such as the ability in sport, intelligence or the violent behavior. I’m not going to state anything here, as I’m really incompetent on this field. I will solely report his story.

Quickly after a subtle starter of conversation (cheeeers mate!), I directly attack him on his look:

- Man, you look nothing like a Mexican.

- Well, I lived in Mexico all of my life.

- And both your parents are Mexicans?

- Yes.

-Are you sure there is not a German “factor”?

In fact, he was 50% Spanish, 25% Mexican and 25% German. But those last percentages took some weird proportion in his life. Not only he inherited from a serious and deep thinking look, but his whole behavior would differ radically from “basic” Latinos. One of the first things that struck me in Mexico was the way people can stare at you. They look straight at you, at your soul, from the first moment. They also tend to get close to you, touching and interacting. I would say that’s a very Latin way of talking, but he was different. As we talked, as he was explaining me how different he was from the other of his country, he wasn’t looking at me (or rarely). His body language wasn’t close but it wasn’t open either. He really reminded me of my German and Dutch friends I met through my European experience. Not only that, he is a very punctual person, doing working maters “by the book” and being annoyed by his coworker not doing exactly this.

In comparison, his cousin was here, all smiling, opened up to anyone: very Mexicanish. The differences were huge!

The night finished really nicely (by the great victory of Mexico over USA in the golden cup: 4-2 after being at 0-2), and I really hope to see all of them very quickly to see a match of lucha libre!

I can see there isn´t much comments here… Hum, what could I do to interact with you guys? I have 2 or 3 topics in mind for a future post, but I’m not so sure about the priority. What do you think: The cars, the food, Taoism or Lucha Libre.

I will certainly end up doing all of them, but you can force me to work on one, more than others. Give me hints of what you’d like!

Taboo

As I was about to write those lines, part of me was all “FTW! You’re not gonna tell something like this!

NO WAY

! What about your fine reputation? What about the people who think you are some kinf of superhero? What about me?” but my other part was all like “but it’s funny… Come on…”.

I won’t continue this strange dialogue as you already know how it ends up. The victory of funny-me over shame-me was partly due to great amount of alcohol and by the fact I may be eaten alive by a catcher of “lucha libre”, and then, it won’t matter, would it? (“Lucha Libre” is a sort of American catch, but here, everybody is masked. So, imagine DareDevil and Spiderman fighting in a ring. I’m hoping going to see that soon).

But I digress. Let’s back to the shameful topic.

Last week was pretty tough for me (well for my stomach I would say) and as I was religiously taking my pills against a classic tourista, I had some… side effects. But I didn’t turn green, that would have been just too awesome. No, I had something you can’t really come up with in a conversation with strangers. The thing is, I’m surrounded by them!

-“Greetings, dear foreigner from Europe –To be said with the English aristocratic accent, otherwise it ain’t funny –. What can I do you for? –They aren’t so good in English, you know-

-“Well I’m having a huge hemorrhoid crisis up my ass, would you be kind enough to check it out to see if it’s not only the ISS stuck inside?”

So, from this point, it wasn’t so funny (for me at least). Now imagine I could barely walk, or sit and every “alone time”, I was almost crying. Here comes the funny, no?

Anyway, my roommate is a doctor, but even with the medications he prescribed to me, it was getting worst and worst: I had to go to the hospital…

At this point, it was hurting enough that I was imagining breaking some kind of record. My future doctor would call up all the noobs to show my ass off and I would end up on a table, surrounded by Mexicans laughing diabolically at the damage of their chili foods.

Let’s put of the chronometer here:

T0: I entered in the Hospital.

T0+1min: I had a little ticket to wait.

T0+10 min: my pants were down.

Maybe I was lucky… But I prefer to believe that seeing the white ass of an European is some kind of a reward for the best employee of the month: that explain why it was so fast, you see.

When I first seen my doc’, I almost laughed.

Remember the guy of “Machete”? It was his brother.

No kidding, straight from a western movie where he is obviously the bad Mexican guy. You know the one who won’t die with 59 bullets in his body, but you have to wait the very end, when he is hit by a train at full speed armed with razor blades and then disappeared in some kind of lava. But even then, you never know…

That one.

He basically gave me the same stuff than my roommate, just stronger (I’m relieved I didn’t go through all that for nothing, you see…).

It wasn’t so grievous at the end and I can tick “doing a full moon at a stranger” from my to do list. J

Tropical

The weather has been hot and humid most of my time, here, in Mexico. Last Saturday, it seemed a reasonably nice idea to go take some pictures of the Gay Pride. After all, Guadalajara is the capital gay of the country, right?
You would expect people to be super open to these sorts of things here, but not so much. Or at least, not as much as I thought, because when I was saying ('still' in my pretty bad Spanish) that I was about to go to see the "Marcha Gay", people would narrow their eyes looking for some sign of homosexuality in me.
They all remained super nice to me, but there were this "is he?" kind of look sometimes.
Anyway, I went to this celebration and after a nice meal (Thanks Fer!), we were on our way.
There were A LOT of people, and we waited, waited... waited...
I think it was like 1 hour and half, but nothing could be seen (yet). For the happiness of all, the sky gave us some drops at times; it was so hot everybody enjoyed it. Even the slight rain which followed.
As you know, each human being is made of sugar and when it rained for real, some had to go over the shelter (and missing waiting for another hour for nothing? Fool!). Eventually, the wind started to blow, then more water, more wind and... wait, is that possible to have even MORE water?

All of a sudden, the 3 little drops of the beginning change into a storm and without knowing it, we were all under the shelter wandering if it could really be that bad.

Therefore, we thought the gay pride would not happen... But it did, a bit. Surely they had to cancel some things, but it went well. The ones present looked even more happy with the rain and the party could kick in :)

The fight

If there is something I’m good at, it’s putting myself in complicated situation. Today, as I feel tired and badly wounded by some chili sauce of the day before, I’ve decided to buy a coconut. And it was the first time of my life!

Fortunately, I also know how to reward myself and my sense of priority.

How many fingers will I loose? Will it be good? Do I need to call my mom to help me? Will I cry? So many questions!

Getting the water of the coconut wasn’t so complicated as the designer of this thing conceive 3 backdoors easily opened and the juice, joyfully drank (no, really, not only it's good but to drink it like a cave man/Tom Hanks in "Cast Away" make the experience even better). But I know the battle wasn’t over. The white stuffing of the coco was mocking me through the little hole.

 Don’t ask me how I got in possession of a SWAT knife (made in China); I just had it in my right hand when the stabbing started (please DO NOT try to reproduce this at home). There was no sound, but anybody could tell the coconut was suffering. Actually, there weren’t anybody else. Whatever the issue, I knew I’ll have my Magnum, with the taste of coconut, or not.
Finally, it gave up its last breath and the pulp: it was mine!

THE END

PS: Somehow, I didn’t have any major problem, here, during my trip. I’m kind of disappointed, I was very prepared, I’ve learned how to say to a kidnapper I had an electronic ship in my body, how to survive a brutal chili sauce made by some Germans or even how to not choke in your own vomit. But no, nothing. As it seems you have some bacteria problems in Europe at the moment, don’t hesitate to send them at:

CIRCONVALACION AGUSTIN YANEZ 2542 8

ENTRE LOPE DE VEGA Y FCO DE QUEVEDO

ARCOS VALLARTA

5 días en Cancun

I haven’t being doing so much in Cancun for the moment and I’m already going away...
We planed (me and my cousin) to come back anyway. I feel I’m still a bit jet lagged because I wake up every morning between 6 and 7. I guess it’s also because of the hot but things are getting better now and I’m getting use to it.
I’ll be very busy the next few days in Guadalajara, looking for a place to stay this summer, so I probably won’t be able to post anything before I do. Therefore, I prepared for you some pictures I took in Cancun.

On this sign you can clearly see the government planned to kill people here. They are just warning the drivers that people will try to cross here, running for there lives. Do you notice how uneasy is the guy on the sign? It’s because he knows that if he fucks up, there will be Fajitas all over the place. I don’t know how old persons do here, really: crossing the roads IS an extreme sport by itself.

Walking around in Cancun, and you might see some Iguanas! This one could take the dog of Magda (my former flatmate: very old and grumpy that you can picture in your head as this) on a fight and win (see in the pictures below the kind of ugly dog she has).

 That's all for the moment, don't forget to take a look on the flick'r page, there might be new pictures!