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!
Photos to come!
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