Wednesday 27 February 2013

Frustration and the City

OH Mexico City: a fun but most frustrating weekend. My credit card was blocked and I stupidly left my other card in GDL, so spent far too much time out of my already fleeting trip trying to get cash out and trying to contact my bank. But- I saw the place, at least.

I left GDL main bus terminal at 8am and arrived at the north terminal in MEX 7 hours later. The coaches are pretty good here- not cheap, but comfortable, safe and I even got a free sandwich. I then spent almost an hour trying every single ATM in the building along with a queue of other people having similar problems. Eventually, i set up camp by a tourist information desk and waited for the attendant to return from her lunch. The most depressing thing was that a ticket for the metro was only 3pesos (15p), but I only had 70 cents left in my bag... But just as I began to have visions of living on the streets for the weekend and having to sell my shoes for water, the attendant returned and emptied her purse of coins, insisting that I take them all and get the tram. Weirdly enough, when I got on the tram, the driver shouted a lot of things at me that I couldn't understand, before waving to me to get on for free... I couldn`t complain.



So I made it into the centre and found my hostel, still sans cash but with shoes still in possession. My hostel was amazing, actually: really cheap, modern ensuite rooms and free breakfast and dinner on the roof terrace. I also met a lot of great people, including a girl from New Zealand who had just left her life in Australia and decided that from Mexico she would move to Canada and find a circus-related job.. There were also two German ladies in my dorm, one of whom apologised to me as soon as we met, because ¨most of the world hates Germans¨; the other had done my route through Central America in reverse, and could confirm that she felt completely safe and that it was all ¨a piece of cake¨. I also met a nice Russian man, who told me not to go to Colombia because they have too many invisible drugs, and that Europeans were idiots for believing in 9-11.

On the Saturday, I did a lot of walking. I explored the area before using the very last of my coins to get to the huge Chapultapec park, which felt a little how I imagine Central Park, NYC to be. It has a massive, free zoo in the centre of it, a boating lake, and is surrounded by museums. Having recovered from the stress of failing to get through to Halifax that morning, I set out to find a corner shop where I could try topping up my phone and calling again. My card did seem to let me pay for transactions on and off, I just couldn´t take any cash out... so when the cashier at the corner shop had already added on 100 pesos to my phone and my card was declined, I thought this might be the moment I had to sell my shoes and possibly my dignity in order to get home in one piece. Before I knew what had happened, the guy behind me in the queue had paid my bill for me! It was only 5 pounds, but that´s a lot of money in Mexico. I was really touched (and relieved) and pretty amazed at how kind people were in this supposedly unfriendly city of drug-fuelled decapitations and gangs.
National Theatre

After another failed phone call, I set out to meet a journalist-friend from London, who now happens to be living in Mex. City. I got pretty lost. I got extremely lost. But we found each other eventually and went to a tapas bar in the boho-artsy area of Condesa. Journalism Man lent me some cash to get me through the weekend, and Sunday was a more successful day.

With globe-trotting New Zealand girl, I saw the Diego Rivera murals in the Palacio National- an impressive building with a heavy slant to it, due to the fact that everything in the city is sinking (by 3 inches a year!) having been built on really soft, aqueous ground. The theatre used to have steps leading up to it, but now has steps leading down... Pretty crazy. One can´t help but feel that one day the city will all be swallowed up by some kind of swamp monster, and completely disappear underground. The murals were amazing, but I have to say I still prefer Orozco`s in Guadalajara.
Diego Rivera murals

Later we went to the museum of Anthropology, located in the main park. Museums are free on Sundays in Mexico City, but this one still charged non-Mexicans. I wouldn't have minded so much, but the security people picked us out of the queue before we'd even spoken to them on the assumption that we were foreign. Yes, obviously we were actually foreign... I will never be able to disguise myself as Mexican. But I did wish I could speak fluent Spanish at that moment just to shock them.
Me holding up the Aztec calendar

I planned on getting the midnight bus back to GDL, so that I could sleep through the journey, and killed time at the bus terminal by watching the Oscars in spanish with 100 other Mexican travellers and bus drivers, before having a good old wash in the public toilets just like a tramp (and not for the first time, either.) Annoyingly, I found that my return bus was a lot newer than the one I had spent half a day on when arriving- this one had TV/computer screens on the backs of seats like on a plane, and so I spent most of the night watching mediocre spanish films rather than sleeping. Actually, none of the films were half as terrible as "Runaway Train" which was playing on my bus trip to Puerto Vallarta- it's a train, it's running on rails. If Denzel had just snapped to it and cut off the electricity the problem would have been solved within 20 seconds.

Again, it was nice to get "home" to Guadalajara, but I'm trying to tell myself that once I'm travelling properly I won't miss it.

In other news I'm famous in Felixstowe (as if I wasn't before...) and have had a couple of articles published online and for the newspaper. The links are very handily copied into the "Portfolio" page of this blog. Self promotion and accepting the fact that the world can see and judge my writing is a lot easier when I am 5684.61 miles away from home.

Wednesday 20 February 2013

I'm really very cultured, don't you know

The power cut out again last night(!) so I went to see a film called Deuxieme Souffle, as part of the ongoing free arts festival to celebrate the city's four-hundred-and-somethingeth anniversary. The film was in french with spanish subtitles- I'm not quite sure what I was trying to achieve... maybe some kind of franish learning experience. It was also two and a half hours long, which is something I didn't realise until I was there... I stuck it out though. Surprisingly, I understood more of the spanish than the french, most probably because french gangsters talk too fast and the spanish words were there for me to read. I think it was a successful learning experience, although being a pretty standard 1960's style action film complete with dependent, stilletto wearing blonde, the result would have been just as easy to grasp in Swahili.

Two and a half hours of triple translating seems to have helped me somehow, as I discovered today at the newspaper, when given the task of translating all of the day's local papers into english and re-writing the arts and entertainment sections. I managed it, and felt pretty proud (but no I did not read 200+ pages word for word...). I wish that mexican people came with subtitles. Maybe they could appear automatically across the person's forehead.

In terms of reading, I have finished The Power and the Glory by Graham Green, which I found in my room left by the ghost of tenants past, and would highly recommend. So then I came up with the crazy idea that I should buy a novel in spanish to translate, and at the market in Chapultapec on Saturday night I did just that. Not just any novel, in fact- but a Gabriel Garcia Marquez one... just to punish myself. I blame Cake Boy, who also insisted that I haggle to reduce the crazy price of 30pesos (one pound fifty)... I thought I gave a pretty convincing argument but the seller just laughed at me, eventually knocking 5 pesos off out of pity, I think. Laugh, he may have done, but I was definitly the winner that evening because those extra 5 pesos bought me a bookmark with Hitler's face on it to go with my book, which I bought because... well, I found it just a little bit funny.

So far, I have read two pages. There is a corpse (cadaver) and a boy who is wearing green chords, which are too tight for him. Prizes to anone who can guess which book I have... because I still can't work out the title of it. Or haven't got round to it. Shh...

Other new words I learnt today through translating articles include:

encuesta (survey)
desnudo (naked)
and camello (camel, and also drug-pusher!)

Such useful vocabulary.

Sunday 17 February 2013

Tacos

I don't feel healthy today.

I went to a party last night in Chapultapec: the studenty-social area of the city. On Saturday evenings, the main avenue of this area is closed off totraffic, to make way for art sellers, musicians, food stalls, dancers and even a pop up cinema screen. The atmosphere is buzzing; families, couples, friends and dogs all meet to hang out until around midnight when small children will finally be taken home to bed, and others will move on to nearby bars, clubs and house-parties.

Our party was thriving- it was a huge old house split into studio flats and ensuite rooms, a garden with what was once a pool but is now an empty pit and extra party space. A few (really good!) live bands played, and we salsa danced. Some of us not so well as others. I left at around 4.30am and the party was far from over... I needed to sleep, but primarily I needed food.

Which is the source of today's discomfort- not alcohol, but tacos. People don't tend to binge drink here- or even get very drunk, but then it's impossible to compare anywhere else with the drinking culture we have at home. Apart from tramps, of course. When they're not so high they're kung-fu fighting trees on the street.

The 5am taco run is Mexico's equivalent to the greasy British kebab, although a lot healthier I should think. Most of the time... This particular stand was offering various parts of cow to eat in tortillas, including lip, brain and intestine. I'm pretty sure I got simple beef steak kind of beef, but you never know when a dodgy taco will strike. It may just have been a bug picked up from somebody serving them. It can't have helped that somebody put the hot chile salsa on my plate and set my mouth on fire... Maybe the man threw in some cow eyeball or rectum just because I was foreign. Either way, it turned out badly and I have not achieved anything very prouctive today whatsoever.




This is a picture of a taco stand which resulted in a happier experience. It's known as the "gay" taco and I'm not sure I want to know why.

Pretty much all the street food here is good and fresh. Tacos usually cost around $7 pesos (30p) and consist of a double layer of tortilla, meat of choice (chicken if you're lucky; intestines if you're not) served with onions, herbs, radishes and dressings. The salsa is there to catch people out, I'm sure. There is usually at least one red and one green, but it's a gamle as to which is hot and which is mild. And the hot will definitly be that.

Most taco stands will have little stools and makeshift tables. It's a pretty pleasant social experience, and pretty much guarenteed not to have the stereotypical kebab shop drunks falling around, sitting on the floor and drooling into their polystyrene take-away boxes.

It still might take a little while before I fancy tacos again.

After all this talk of my digestive system, here is a picture of an amazing dog I saw as compensation:


Friday 15 February 2013

Free Love, Free Wine, Free Furniture

It´s been a busy few days, Mexico-side. On Monday, another tenant arrived to rent out Rosie´s top floor room. He is American and has a Polish girlfriend who is staying for a few days... I assume. That or she lives here as well. But I´m not totally sure Rosie and husband know either. I was far too excited about the prospect of another english-speaker living in the house, but so far all my attempts and conversation-making have failed. For example:
          Me: So where abouts are you from?
          American guy: States.
          Me: Cool...
          *silence...*

Rosie´s youngest son, Alex, moved out yesterday. It´s a shame- I like Alex, although the house was feeling pretty full what with all the people coming and going at various times of night, loco dogs racing through the house and a whole amalgamation of anonymous toothbrushes in the bathroom (aaaargghhh). I have also inherited Alex´s old bed, which is a bonus- before I was in a bunk bed which I hit my head on every morning.

Rosie seems really sad, and spent most the day sitting on the sofa watching TV. Then the power cut out again, and she sat there watching nothing. It was making me feel really sad for her, but later developments suggest that she might actually have a stomach bug as well. So maybe she´s not that sad, she´s just ill. Or maybe she´s really sad and really ill. Either way, Alex is 33 and it´s about bloody time he moved out of his parents´ house.



On Tuesdays, newspaper bossman drives down to Lake Chapala to catch up with the newspaper contributors who live there. This week, he said I could go with him and take some photos for advertisers, which was exciting, and we arranged to meet at the office at 10.30am.

At 2.30pm, Bossman showed up, ¨real sick¨ from a barely existant man-cold. I will restrain myself from complaining too much, but suffice to say I was irritated and by this point starving hungry. After an hour´s drive to Chapala with the car windows down, I arrived irritated, hungry and complete with a lion´s mane to match my mood. By this time it was close to four, and to my relief Bossman kindly took me for lunch at a really nice restaurant, which I have to say was worth the wait.

Chapala is a beautiful place: one of many towns with surround the huge lake, which in turn is surrounded by mountains. It is also home to the world´s largest population of American ex-pats, a few of whom I had the pleasure of meeting as I took photos of their various businesses for the website directory. I also met a woman named Cecilia: a bit of an ageing hippy originally from Hertfordshire. She had lived in several weird and wonderful places all over the world but had now settled in Mexico with her huge ginger cats and a house full of soveniers from her extensive travels. I wouldn´t be too suprised if I were to turn out like her eventually...

So the lakeside was a good day out. I´d like to go again one day and see some more of the area, although I have to say there is always something a little bit strange about ex-patriate communties... Chapala reminded me a little bit of the town in the film Big Fish- the place where they steal Ewan McGreggor´s shoes in the hope of forcing him to stay, and nobody else ever leaves and everybody wears a huge creepy grin? Yeah...

And onto Valentine´s Day, which in Mexico is referred to as ´El Día del Amor y la Amistad`, meaning ´The Day of Love and Friendship´. Mexicans tend to go all out for days like this, and the town was full of people carrying balloons and flowers. In the evening, restaurants and bars were packed out not only with couples, but with families and pairs of friends sharing dinner and presents too, which is quite nice really and not done so much at home. Single people in the UK seem more likely to sit at home in their onesie, sulking.

Needless to say, I had Valentine´s plans. Yes that´s right, I am a woman in demand... I was sent to the American Society of Guadalajara to write an article about their Valentine´s themed lunch. If anyone has seen the episode of Parks and Recreation, where they all have to go along to an OAP Valentine´s dance, you´ll have a fairly accurate representation of my afternoon.

I met a lot of interesting people, some of whom had been retired in Mexico for 20 years or so. Pretty much everyone asked which state I was from, and when I replied "England", they would look at me for a minute and say "no, what state are you from?.." One woman I sat with got quite excited when she learnt that I was British, and said "Oh! I lived in Malta for three years!" as if they might be the same place...

Everyone was really friendly though. I was given lasagne before being shown all around the building, including the roof to see their new solar panels... quite an experience.

When I got home from work, the power was still out. Everyone was sitting out in the street with candles, which was actually really nice. There is only so long one can sit on a step with a candle however, and I went to meet Cake Boy and his friend to see a free performance from the city orchestra.

Every year, Guadalajara celebrates its ´birthday´ through this week with free performances, exhibitions and street shows. This particular evening was held in the old city museum: a beautiful old building with an open square-centre. The place was packed out and the music was superb... as was the free wine afterwards. The first Mexican wine I´d drunk actually. It wasn´t bad.

This weekend will be another of MA application writing and possibly some shopping. I also want to plan a trip to Mexico City soon... I love Guadalajara but driving to the lake on Tuesday brought back that itchy feeling of wanting to travel around again. Maybe I´ll give up the MA apps and buy a caravan instead. Or a donkey and cart... yeah...

Sunday 10 February 2013

Car-Park Rap Battles and Casual Mexican Racism

Last night, I experienced my first car-park party.

It was better than it sounds.

I've become quite friendly with a guy who sells cake on a trolley. Which is also better than it sounds. When I first saw him pushing the bizarre invention down the road, I was standing outside my house, looking for my keys. He called out, asking if I wanted to buy something. When I didn't respond, he said it again in several languages until he worked out that I was english- fairly impressive. Having bumped into him a couple of times after that, I bought some cake and we got chatting. He invited me to a party with his friends, to which I agreed to go, figuring that I could always back-out later once I'd assessed the rape-ability levels.

Of course when Saturday came, I didn't feel as if I could say no... I asked Montse if she wanted to come with me, thinking that if I were to be raped and murdered, I'd rather it be with someone else I vaguely knew, but Montse was working and couldn't save me.

I thought it all through and decided to just go. Cake Boy seemed like a genuinely nice person, and was probably the first I'd met who didn't seem overly fussed that I was foreign, which was refreshing.

Needless to say, I was not raped or murdered. After collecting me from my house, Cake Boy and I went to meet Cake Boy's friends outside the 7-11, where local youths a-plenty were taking their used beer bottles to be re-filled at a discount price. (Pretty clever-why don't we do that at home??) From there we went to another friend's house, which was full of students, crazy-bright art-work on the inside walls, and possibly the most stoned kitten in Mexico.

Everyone I met was super-nice and laid-back. Most spoke some english, but I did have quite a good conversation with someone who spoke none- it would seem that alcohol improves my spanish tenfold! I spoke to a couple of guys from Chiuaua, who told me some pretty horrendous stories of the violence up there. I also learnt why Guadalajara is so safe:  it's because all the mafia's cchildren go to school and live here... so they want to keeep the place trouble-free. How touching(!)

After a drink and another house, we moved on to find a party in a local parking lot. It was actually an organised  thing- local people set the place up for a party, with a beer table, music etc. and anyone from the area could pay a small fee to get in. It was a strange feeling- a bit like being in a club, but then I'd look up and see stars. I was delighted to  witness a rap-battle, followed by some guy throwing fire about in a professional manner, all of which took place as a couple of graffiti- artists covered the car-park walls. Pretty different from the croquet-garden parties that my friends hold at home... but I had fun.

I had a couple of funny conversations where we mentioned skin tone or the fact that I was foriegn and how people react to it. The guys I were talking to kept stopping to think of how to say things in a non-offensive, non-racist way, which was hilarious and very strange to be on the other side of ethnic minority. They asked if people had shouted "gringa" at me, which is pparently offensive, but I'm pretty sure the people at the newspaper name us/them as gringos almost affectionately. Perhaps "gringo" is the white person's version of the N word. I still don't feel very 'street' though, unfortunately.


Casual Racism in Mexico
  • I have actually started responding to "Werita", which means "white girl".
There is an old beggar-woman in a wheelchair on the church square near me. She gets pushed around all day by her long-sufering daughter, and the two of them ask all the peoplein the cafe for change. I tend to go to this cafe a lot for drinks or salads on the weekends, and the grizzly pair obviously recognise me. The old woman will ask me for money ("pesos, weritaaaa"), I'll shake my head and say sorry, and the daughter wheels them away, both muttering, probably about how stingy I am, while looking back at me and tutting. Sometimes, I almost consider giving the daughter some money simply for putting up with her mother all day. I get a scary role-reversal image in my head of having to push my 90 year old mother around one day for free...

Otherwise, I get "werita" shouted at me all over the place. Usually from taxis or truck-driers, but sometimes someone passing me on the street will just stare at me out of interest and say "werita!" in a factual tone. They don't mean to be rude, they're just surprised to see me.


  • Being mistaken for a prostitute.
Yes, really. When I was in Puerta Vallarta, a group of us went to see a salsa show at a hotel. One of the girls has a boyfriend who was in the show, and every week she would go to watch him. Every week, she gets stopped at the gates and mistaken for a prostitute. Sure enough, we missed the beginning of the show, because the security guard refused to let us in until somebody could confirm that we had not been summoned by a drunk hotel resident. Just because we were all white!

I dress pretty modestly in the city- far more so than most of the local girls. Somehow, it's normal for them to wear something backless, or a tiny skirt (along with their great big anorak and scarf), yet when I wear a knee-length dress, the truck drivers react as if I've stepped outside naked. It's just not fair.


In other news, I went to Tonala market today- It's about 40 minutes from the centre and the usual 6 pesos (<30p) to get there on the bus. The market was HUge. You could buy anything from jewellery to furniture, to food, knives, puppies or brightly dyed chicks... I didn't buy anything apart from enchilladas, although I was tempted to buy all the neon chicks and shave their feathers before setting them free... They were pretty cute though. And no wonder everyone has pets here- ther are far too many baby animals for sale.

Montse went to sleep after work, but heard me come in at 4 and decided to get up and find a party. As one does. When I woke up this morning, she had just got back and was puking. Mental.

Saturday 9 February 2013

What News

This week at the newspaper was quite interesting: the article I wrote about the gas explosion in Mexico City ended up on the front page, which was a nice suprise. Funny how easy it is for me to write headline news on these work experience placements (!) No, I am not smug at all.

There was also a fairly gruesome story about a local girl who had a baby, supposedly aged 9. The world's media picked up on it, including the Daily Mail, who flew a reporter from New York straight out to meet us about it. I say "us"- I am sure he had no desire to meet me at all, but I was taken along for drinks after work, which was thoughtful.

He was a nice guy, you know, for a tabloid reporter. He had moved from the UK to Brooklyn, NY, to work for the expanding American Daily Mail website. His life seems pretty desirable, but he repeatedly asked me why I wanted to go into journalism, and repeatedly told me that I shouldn't... but then I am yet to meet anyone who has told me "Yes, do my job," (of various types) "I love it and every day I wake up happy to be alive". I still kind of think that if I end up working for National Geographic or similar, then I will in fact be one of those people. So I remain undeterred.

As far as the baby-story goes, it's become understood that the mother is most probably about 15 rather than 9, but lied about being 9 due to a dodgy birth certificate... It's all very dodgy, and also very sad because there are most probably hundreds of similar stories from the area, and yet the only reason the press have picked up on her is the fact that she may or may not be 9.

There are a few horrible stories about at the moment, particularly regarding Mexico and travellers. I won't name them here just in case my mother is yet to discover them and worry, but my point is, despite all the gore, I'm still confident about travelling next month. I still believe that most places are very safe, as long as one knows what not to do and where not to go. I actually think a traveller is less likely to find trouble if they are travelling solo, because when one is alone they are less likely to take risks, go out at night or talk to strangers. I am sure that most girls both home and abroad are more likely to humour a stranger's drunken conversation when out with a group of friends, because being in a group gives them a false sense of security and feeling of invincibility. If those same girls were walking home individually for instance, they would avoid a talkative stranger like the plague.

Personally, I'm very good at ignoring people to the point of rudness- probably because I'm British. So I'm not worried and neither should anyone else be.


On Friday morning, I woke up to no electricity, gas, hot water, internet or purified drinking water. This was not ideal, seeing as I was very much looking forward to washing away the remnants of alcohol and in desperate need of re-hydration. I'm still not sure why there was a problem, but when I left the house (after having had a cold shower and reluctantly drunk a glass of milk), I saw several dug out holes in the street and pavement, along with small groups of Mexican men scratching their heads, which I assumed must have something to do with either the root or the solution of the problem, or both. All is ok again now, though.

This weekend's adventures will hopefully include a bus trip to Tonala, where there is a huge Sunday market.

Rosie and husband told me that I could stay with them forever if I liked. I am quite tempted. They suggested I ship over my parents and my dogs- Rosie said that they would be my surrogate grandparents (at least I think that's what she said...) I told her that was a nice thought, but that she is actually the same age as my mother. Then I told her that I have a 92 year-old grandmother and she nearly passed out from amazement. They are such a nice family and I am really happy to be able to stay with them.

Thursday 7 February 2013

The Danger of Strawberries


It would make my life an awful lot easier if everyone in Mexico were to speak Spanish. Or English, of course, but recently whenenever I try to create a phrase out of nothing, my brain primarily tries to make me say it in french. I struggled with french in school, but now I don't need it as much, it won't leave me alone...  Last year I also did a crash course in Italian, which deserted me as soon as I landed in Venice, but now that I don't need any of it, has come back with a vengence to confuse me even more. The result of all of this is that on days like today when I am super tired, I start to speak in a kind of language which I like to call 'Fritanish'. Forsinstance: "Je voudrais un poquito mas de pollo en mi... sandwich please." That's a made up example. Usually my desperately poor smatterings of languages are more sneaky and mix up the linking words or ponunciation: Lots of words are very similarly spelt in spanish and italian, but have very different pronnciations... Tomorrow I might try communicating everything I want to say through a series of interpretative dance.

That said, it is quite easy for me to speak in English at the newspaper office. Which probably doesn't help matters at all. There are two editors, one American and one English, but their accents seem to have merged to form a non-descript 'ex-pat' accent. The more English editor is currently in the UK, so I only really hear his voice over Skype. There is also a Bulgarian woman, who conforms to the stereotype. No more neeeds to be said. Her ability to flip between several languages however, is most enviable. Then there are several Mexican emloyees, most of which understand English apart from one lovely but slightly crazy and quite terrifying lady who goes on and on at me in Spanish at a very rapid pace, while I stare blankly and nod. I have a feeling she is confessing her life's secrets  me, comforted by the fact that I cannot respond.

Yet.

So the newspaper work is going well. I wrote an article on the Mexico City gas explosion, but then spent most of today and yesterday re-sizing photos for their new website. Pretty tedious, but I don't really mind; such is the life of an intern. The only thing which really does irritate me about working in American-English is the date system. I spent the day selecting photographs from date-organised folders... it probably took longer than it should have because I just cannot get my head around the american datings. "October 2", rather than "the 2nd of October". Which makes it 10-2-12 rather than 02-10-12. Silliness!!

In other news, there is a new member of the household. A Mexican girl called Montse (as in Montserrat...) is renting Rosie's spare room. It was a few days before I caught sighting of her, but  since then we have had a couple of roof-top chats, and she is really ni ce. She goes to the university just down the road and smokes a lot. She once rented a room across the road, so she knows the area really well. We bonded over our shared annoyance by the bar across the road playing really bad music. She told me a charming story of how some drug-dealer got shot just outside a few years ago. I asked her if all the shoes hanging on telephone wires outside meant that drug-dealers still lived there. "No," she replied, "that's just when people get bored and throw their shoes over the wires".

Today Montse told me all about how strawberries are dangerous because they carry so many little bugs and apparently Meningitis, too. I'm not quite sure how that works, but I politely declined anyway. I'll stick to peelable fruits.

Monday 4 February 2013

Billy-no-mates´ Big Adventure

I've been having some problems with Blogger- sometimes it just won't let me type, which is a bit of an issue. I'd be posting a lot more otherwise. (So perhaps it's for the best...!)

I have just receieved my first mosquito bite. After over two weeks here with one weekend at the coast, I shouldn´t really complain, but I feel angry at the little sod for catching m unawares by hiding under a desk.

I went into the newspaper office at 11 on Friday to learn how to upload the articles to their website, pretty simple really. After a couple of hours the work was finished for the week, as Fridays are their distribution days. I can´t help but compare the newspaper to the one in The Rum Diary (one of my very favourite books) just because everyone seems so relaxed... but then I think that´s just Mexico. I´m sure the children go to school at some point, but there always seem to be teenagers hanging around in town at all hours of the day. Similarly, I´m sure most people must have to go to work at some point, and yet I don´t really see it.The day quite often doesn´t start until after lunch- which can be anytime between one and three pm... It´s a very different routine to home.

I just killed the mosquito.

On Saturday night, I did something very brave. I went to the cinema... by myself! Isn't it tragic that I had absolutely no fear of flying to a country on the other side of the world, where I knew no-one and didn't speak the language, yet when it came to asking for a single ticket to see a film, I was terrified?

I have a friend at home who admitted to me that she'd been to the cinema by herself one Saturday afternoon. Of course my immediate (and bad) reaction was to laugh at her for it, joking that she was a billy-no-mates. In reality, I knew there was no problem with it- nobody polite sits chatting to their friend in the cinema anyway- in fact, there's nothing very social about the whole experience at all, so why not go alone? But it is just a bit weird... There's the overhanging fear that people will assume that you simply have no friends to go with.

Well, I am in Mexico and I actually had no friends to go with. But "flip it," thought I, "It's a Saturday night and I'm going to the flipping cinema." 

I considered going to see Life of Pi with spanish dubbing- this was an educational experience too, after all, but then I discovered a place where it was showing in english, and all my 'educational' intentions were thrown out the widow. I practised all the right spanish phrases ("One ticket to see Life of Pi, please", "Is it English with Spanish subtitles?", "That's perfect"', "Where is the bathroom?") only to discover that my ticket vendor was the first english speaking youth I would come across. "Hey, you're a foreigner! Only one ticket?" he asked in an annoying American twang, "Yes." I growled.

To make matters worse, I walked into the screen to find it totally deserted. Through the ordeal, I had forgotton that Mexicans rarely show up for anything on time, let alone early, Even if it is a film they have just paid to see. So I sat, totally alone, watching the trailers, right in the middle of the seating, imagining that this is what life would be like having survived a zombie apocalypse. At that point, I broke another cinema rule: I opened my crisps before the film had started. In fact, I ate them all. And they were cheesey. And once my neighbours showed up they probably hated me for it. But I just didn't care.

The film was ah-mazing. I ws so absorbed that I temporarily forgot that I was in Mexico, and once the lights came up, felt a little irritated, remembering that I had to struggle on in spanish once again. But I'm glad I went. I am probably even more of a Strong Independent Woman for having conquered solo cinema-going. I might put it on my CV.

Rosie isn't obliged to cook for me on weekends (which allows me time to stock up on vitamins and create space in my internal sugar-stores for the coming week), but as I walked in last night she presented me with a bowl of rice pudding, because she knows we have it in England. I was touched, and ate the whole thing (even though I kind of hate rice-pudding).

This morning, I struggled to get up, after dreaming about being in a boat all night. I caught up with a friend, followed by the parents on Skype- who announced that they are off to South Africa for three weeks, when really they ought to be sitting at home crying over me having gone... 

After a chicken salad and orange juice on the square for lunch, it was Sunday Adventure Time. I'd been getting the number 51 bus to the newspaper office: a journey which was less than ten minutes, but I knew that all the city buses run in a loop and thought I'd sit on it for the full ride to see where I ended up- the whole journey was only 25p, after all. 

The bus left the familiar central roads and wound through the residential suburbs. The further we drove on, the less fanciful the areas became, until we were driving on cobbled roads past houses made of stones, houses with no rooves looking eternally unfinished. The piles of rubbish grew on the street corners and the people hopping on and off the bus watched me with increasingly untrusting eyes... I didn't blame them really- I was a slightly sunburnt blonde girl sitting on a public Mexican bus, far away from any hotel, restaurant or Starbucks- and I was taking photos of them and their litter. I was probably a pretty funny sight to see.

We finally came to a point where the road ended and a dirt track took its place. The bus stopped to cool off before returning to the city, and I hopped out, glad for some air. Then I looked around, properly: the view was amazing! We had reached the very edge of the city and stood right in front of mountains, up which I could see tiny settlements and cowboy-hatted, cowboy-booted men (actual cowboy-men?!) riding horses. That felt like real Mexico.


Tomorrow is a bank holiday, which means that there are lots of excitable Mexicans dancing in the square outside tonight. I  popped out to find some tacos or something for dinner, and walked into a huge market with music, dancing, food and crafts for sale. I bought a spinach and feta crepe, as well as the best piece of chocolate cake I have ever had, which I sat and ate whilst watching the crazy dancing.

Photos to come!

Friday 1 February 2013

Return of the Chicken

...My aforementioned amazing lunch was not destined to stay down for long.

I don't think it was anything to do with the chicken, though- I went to a cafe that afternoon where lo and behold, they served black "tea". When it arrived, I spent a good while examining the liquid, which looked and smelled more likehot chocolate, yet...wasn't. I drank it anyway, preoccupied with mentally congratulating myself at being able to hold a semi-conversation with the barman. In hindsight, the drink was only luke warm and possibly made from tap-water. Suffice to say, I spent a lot of the next day in the bathroom. Nothing too drastic, though.

ANYWAY.

Yesterday was my first proper day at the newspaper. As I walked in, I was offered a beer(!). I politely delined, saying I could do with some caffeine first. Most excitingly, I was told there were black teabags downstairs and that I could help myself. Which brings me onto a couple more Mexican oddities:

1) There are no such things as kettles. Anywhere.
             I've seen people sitting in the square with ipads, and yet the common way for Mexican people to make tea or coffee is in the microwave. WHAT?! It makes even less sense that using the stove. But cold water, a teabag and 2minutes of radiation is how it's done, apparently.

2) It is seemingly impossible to buy shower gel.
The beautiful cathedral obscured by the ugly and bizarre outdoor ice-rink
            Everywhere I've seen just sells bars of soap, mostly. Makes sense I suppose, just a bit... rustic.

3) Mexican "winter".
           It gets hotter every day and I'm sweating like a beast after my 'shortcut' into town, and yet I stumble across... a outdoor ice rink.


Anyway.

The day was good; I proof-read the entire newspaper, training myself to think in American- English (the wrong way!) and then decided that since it was a balmy evening and not quite dark, I would walk home.

Half an hour later,I turned back and got the bus.

I do this a lot: yesterday (once my digestive system had recovered), I decided to walk to town a different way. Since Leon and the road into the centre are (in my mind) parallel, it makes perfect sense to get to the centre by walking along Calle Leon.

It is impossible to walk to the centre along Calle Leon. And yet I keep trying...

I did however bump into the museum of journalism and graphic design. I wandered in (most places have free entry here, which is great) and attempted to translate some old telegrams until I got a headache. Upstairs was an exhibition by a photographer called Felix Marquez, who specialises in war photography. There were some incredible photos from behind the eyes of a sniper (presumably in Mexico somewhere) as well as some rather poiniant shots of children drawing ´the government´ in a classroom- the kind of obvious our-government-is-corrupt message which seems to pop up everywhere here.

So it´s good to get lost sometimes.

The sugar intensive diet continues: more often than not, my morning cornflakes are replaced with Frosties; my fruit drowned in sugary pink yoghurt. A couple of days ago, dinner was replaced with pancakes and honey. The 8-year-old inside me is loving it, but most of me craves spinach, lentils, porridge and all those bland but super-healthy things which I secretly love and which usually allow me to balance out my chocolate and red wine binges. Oh well. At least the sugar replaces the lack of caffeine, which I would usually need to get going in the mornings.