All My Friends

It's been a rough week, but somehow, I'm still feeling oddly pleasant (chipper, even). Where to start.... so I made Teressa a mix CD of my favorite American indy rock bands (yeah, I have my nerdy/tacky moments) and she promised to return the favor with a mix of her favorite Mexican rock bands. She delivered on that, sliding it under the front door of my house. Unfortunately, the gift came with a letter.

Typed and in the same slightly-broken English she talks with, it explained to me that her ex-boyfriend, who had previously been out of the country (she has a thing for foreign guys) had re-entered the picture and complicated things. She explained their complicated history, how sorry she was to hurt me, and pleaded for me to forgive her and accept her proposal to continue our relationship as friends. It was very flattering, actually. It reminded me of the kind of break-up note I would have received in high school, if any girl had actually been willing to date me to begin with.

It's not like I can be resentful. I'm leaving this country in just over two weeks(!) anyway, and I have yet to reveal to her certain truths about my similarly complicated romantic situation. But for all of that, it still stings thinking of her with someone else. Everyone has the right to be dramatic sometimes, right?



Of course, my idiotic reaction to all of this was to get outrageously drunk and try to rebound with some unsuspecting Mexican flower, which - of course - resulted in minor disaster. For one thing, I started drinking at 5 p.m. in the Cafe de Las Rosas (the location of both of the above photos) with Life of the Party Guy (aka, Evan) while his native girlfriend corrected my essay on the Mexican economy. For another, I have apparently yet to learn that I can't mix sangria, tequila, beer, and gin (in that order) without losing the ability to function as a human being. Needless to say, my romantic pursuits were really doomed before they even began.

I did manage to have a nice time at XO, the posh disquoteca, dancing with Evan's girl (who I might have a minor crush on) and some of my classmates like Liza and Anne, who are the type of down-to-earth American girls I have no problem spending time with. But once John and I went on the prowl (John's Mexican flame, who introduced me to Tere, left him as well), everything went downhill. I've never been a master of pick-up tactics to begin with, but when copiously intoxicated I tend to only embarrass myself. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, out of the blue, a (moderately attractive) girl grabbed hold of John and left me twisting in the wind. Drunk, bitter, and lovesick (XO was the site of our first kiss, after all), I got the Hell out of there as fast as I could and drowned my sorrows in sweet, sweet sleep. I've been nursing the consequences of my foolishness all day, but it's OK. Luckily, I have the most important cure for the Just-Got-Dumped Blues: I've still got my friends.

Four Long Days

Well, that was underwhelming. I'd been debating all week whether to make trip to Ethan's beach house in Troncones this weekend, and once I discovered that a) Paulina was flaking out on visiting me *again* (she had to go to New York City for her job) and b) Teresa couldn't hang out either (she had to go to Mexico City for *her* job) it was all but settled. Unfortunately, Zander pulled out at the last minute and the bungalow we stayed in, while nice, was virtually teaming with insects and a $20 cab ride away from any place worth going to. To top it all off, my camera ran out of batteries just before we left (I did get the above picture from the roof of Evan's house just prior, though), meaning that I have literally nothing to show for the whole excursion but literally hundreds of Mosquito bites, which now cover me like some kind of biblical rash.

I did get to bond with Evan though, who I previously referred to as Life of the Party Guy. While still the life of the party, Evan has proved to be a much more interesting and sophisticated dude than I initially gave him credit for. Unfortunately I also had to spend the weekend with Cute Flirty Girl who, while still both cute and flirty, has proven to be even more annoying than I ever thought she could be. We spent a lot of time ditching her to go swimming (and at night, getting lost) on the gorgeous Troncones beaches, which were basically deserted except for us.



All the same, I would have rather stayed in Morelia, if only to catch up on my school work. Our midterm grades came in last week, and let's just say that my joke about failing Sociologia just stopped being funny to me. I wouldn't care too much, but I need a B-average in this program to get to Spain, and there's no way I'm changing my plans for the next year due to a grade I receive here. However, that means that I need to buckle down this week and make sure I do a phenomenal job on my presentations about El Pipila (pictured above) and Mexico's economic structure. My dad is making his first trip down to Mexico to see me next weekend, and Paulina swears she's coming to visit me then too, so Lord knows I have to get all of my busy-work done now or never.

'Cross the Breeze

Guanajuato: almost too beautiful for words, but man, it takes it out of you. Because of its historic architecture (even the roads are still cobble-stone), none of the main city has been changed significantly for literally centuries, which means there are almost no driveable roads and you have to walk *everywhere*. It's not exactly a huge city, but doing this all day is not my idea of a vacation. Speaking of which, not only did our teachers give us a list of places we apparently had to go, but there were 17 of them. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

We did make it to some of them, though (four, to be exact), with no small effort, either. You would think Diego River's house would be well-marked and easy to find, but instead it was nestled behind a dump truck on one of the few streets being renovated in the entire city. We passed it three times before finding it, only to discover that Rivera only lived there until he was *six*. Something tells me his best work came later.

Others didn't disappoint, though: above you can see Zander, myself, John and Ross (left to right) facing the Pipila, which is a giant statue of a revolutionary hero of the same name on top of a huge mountain overlooking Guanajuato (below is what the town center looked like from up there). There we met a random, friendly dude from Montana who directed us towards many a bar, all of which ended up being completely lame.



Speaking of which, turns out that Guanajuato has absolutely nothing for a nightlife when the city's university is on vacation, which happened... exactly a week before we showed up. So instead of sacking Rome it was more like sacking Palo Alto...in the summertime. No joke: despite plenty of people walking the streets, we spent what felt like four hours scouring the city for a decent bar on Friday night, only to find every single one empty. Thoroughly discouraged, Zander, Ross and I headed back to our hostel, where we thought our night would end uneventfully. If only, if only.

A word about sharing hostels in Mexico: make sure your roommates aren't creepy old dudes pushing 50 with no plausible explanation for hanging around a hostel. Case in point: Zander wakes up to this Creepy Old Dude leaning over his bed, asks him what he's doing, and feels the guy's hand grope his bare thy beneath his blanket before telling him to go the Hell away. Creepy Old Guy retires to the bathroom for an ungodly amount of time (let's just pray he had eaten a bad torta or something) and decides to spend the rest of the night sleeping naked, mooning the entire room. Zander didn't sleep for the rest of the night, and since I had to sleep on the bunk bed above Creepy Old Guy, neither did I. The Irish girl we met at our hostel said she's heard similar complaints about him, which made us wonder why this pervert was still allowed to stay in any non-jail setting, but no matter. On the plus side, our hostel did have some nice hammocks:



We fared (relatively) better the next day after changing hostels and getting a fresh start. We rendezvoused with those girls we had met in Ixtapa, who were as confusingly flirtatious and aloof as always. As you can see from the picture below, they met us in Guanajuato (a forty-minute drive from their native Leon) looking quite lovely and spent several hours with us drinking Sangria in a cafe. They promised us they would get *more* dressed up for us in Leon before returning to Guanajuato for a night on the town, but never showed. Experiences like this are making me wonder: are all Mexican girls this flaky, or did one of us do something to piss these particular ones off?



Luckily, our new hostel roomates were a) not pedophiles b) really funny German characters. We tried introducing them to some of the more beautiful girls in our program (that ship has sailed for us anyway by now) but they didn't have quite the touch American girls tend to appreciate - one of them grabbed my friend Eliza's ass, and things went south from there. However, they redeemed themselves by showing us to a bar with actual people inside, and most of our class (including legally-blind Justin, who *never* goes out) had a grand old time dancing together to all the techno-electro-rave staples that, by now, we all know by heart. It wasn't a memorable night exactly, but after our experience with Creepy Old Guy I was actually thankful for that.

Actually, the best cap-off to the weekend I could have possibly hoped for came in the form of Batman: Cabellero de la Noche, which is the coolest movie I have seen in...God, has it really been that long? Anyway, I won't spoil too much, but Heath Ledger not only upstages everyone else in the movie (that includes Christian Bale, by the way) but he makes even Jack F'n Nicholson look like a chump. But the real treat was just how magnificently Christopher Nolan managed to hold the intricate plot together for nearly three hours while maintaining that edge-of-your-seat, action movie adrenaline. I'm already dying from anticipation for the third installment. It's a good thing, too: after a thoroughly underwhelming Guanajuato experience I couldn't take another disappointment.

After Class

I just finished the last of my midterm exams, and though I may fail Sociologia (just kidding, mom!) I feel as though an immeasurable weight has just been lifted from my shoulders. After spending more than three hours trying to analyze antiquated, ambiguous poems (in Spanish, no less) and then engaging the complete brain-melting exercise that is "uses of por vs. para" I'm definitely ready to cut loose this weekend. Good thing, too, because my class and I are going to Guanejuato this weekend, which has even more majestic colonial architecture than Morelia and an even better bar/club scene, from what I can remember from the time I went there in January. Needless to say, we're planning on rampaging throughout the city like the Gauls sacking Rome (thanks, Wikipedia).

But before we go there, I thought I'd talk about my rather eccentric and awesome group of teachers who have guided my education through half of a summer session now. I'll start with my literatura teacher Rochi, who will be guiding our little excursion this weekend and is probably the easiest grader, which definitely earns her points with me. Rochi's probably the oldest of my teachers, and her benevolent poise and infinite patience with our stupid questions makes her appear in my mind's eye as the Mexican grandma I wish I had. She also has this funny thing she does that I've noticed other lit teachers do where she gets on a little bit of a random tangent and makes herself chuckle slightly before realizing that we're all totally lost. It's very funny in a charming way.

Also quite funny is my professor of Sociologia, Pepe. Along with Rochi, Pepe taught both Lorencito and Shayla (my host siblings) French, and he's repeatedly reminded us that's "one of the best French teachers in Mexico." Pepe always wears shirts of an average color range with bright, neon-colored, corduroy pants, usually in either blue or orange. This has lead to one of my classmates dubbing him "The Corduroy Conquistador," which is pretty much the best nickname I've ever heard. We're all pretty sure that he's gay, and his pithy, self-amused manner of talking certainly further fits into the profile. But he's extremely witty (maybe too witty for us, since most of his jokes fly over our heads), and he's very good at pointing out the blatant contradictions about Mexican society that persist to this day. He's also very found of drawing crude pictographs on the white board to visualize what he's saying, which usually just makes it harder to figure out what the Hell that may be if you haven't been paying close attention.



I'm also quite fond of my historia professor, whose name is Pichi (pronounced like you were saying "peachy keen!"). Pichi lives very nearby me in el centro, and many times she passes me walking to the bus stop and gives me a ride in her hilariously orange car. Pichi's class has been moving a little slow (we've been talking about the prehispanic indigenous groups for four weeks straight), probably because she always gets side-tracked on passionate rants about how racist and misogynist Mexican culture can be. She definitely has her take on history, and she never shies away from giving it to us straight, which I like. She also has lots of hilarious stories about when she lived in Kentucky and had to teach lots of Southerners how to Speak Spanish when she couldn't understand a word of their English.

Last and most certainly least of my teachers is Beatrice, who talks way too loud and kind of sucks. Beatrice teaches us Spanish, which you would assume to be the most important class in which to make sure that everyone is up to speed and knows what's going on. Apparently not to Beatrice, who obviously wants to rush through her lesson plan as quickly as possible and go home. Recently my buddy John asked her to give him a small list of commonly used Spanish words that he could practice to improve his speaking, and she just Xeroxed him the first page out of a Spanish-English dictionary. Half the time when people raise their hands to ask a question she "conveniently" doesn't notice and moves on to the next poorly-conceived language exercise. It doesn't help that she also seems to have the worst taste in music out of anyone I've met here: for one in-class assignment, she had us translate the words of "Llegaste Tu" by Mexico's answer to 98 Degrees, Sin Bandera. Yeah, that's right, their name is "Without Flag." Other groups need a flag, apparently.



Lastly, I thought I would share this photo of the Combi I ride to school everyday, which I took simply because it was the first (and only) time I've ever seen one of these things empty. Far more common is having oh, twenty people packed into the space you see above, with another two (and the driver) up front. You see, Combi's are not really buses in the classic sense, but Volkswagen buses retrofitted to act as public transportation in Morelia's notoriously cramped, winding streets. Speaking of cramped, you learn very quickly why Mexicans care so little about personal space when you have to hunch into one of these things pressed firmly against four random strangers.

That being said, there is a pleasant camaraderie to the Combi's that you just don't find in American public transports. Depending on time of day, everyone says either "good morning," "good day," or "good night" when they get inside, and when it's crowded the person sitting close to the driver passes everyone's change up front to pay for their ride. Often times the people sitting will offer to carry your bags for you if you're standing, and everyone gives the elderly a hand to get on board if they're having trouble. They don't run on any kind of schedule and have no set stopping points, so you have to ask the driver to stop when you want to get off. Like many aspects of life here, it seems both ridiculous and dangerous at first, but once you get adjusted its got a uniquely personal charm about it.

Best of Times/Worst of Times (Part 2)

Once again, my life has simultaneously become better and maddeningly more complicated in the span of a few days. Still stinging from Paulina's unwillingness to visit me without a chaperon, I dedicated my newly freed-up weekend to hanging out with Teressa, who is probably the coolest - and the prettiest - girl I've ever sort-of dated. She's quirky and a little timid, but she's also carefree and a true sweetheart in every sense. Her English isn't as good as Paulina's, but she always takes the time to explain what's being said to me so that I don't end up as the awkward gringo in the corner who thinks he's the butt of every joke. She also smokes like a chimney, but nobody's perfect (especially not me).

On Friday we met up at Zacharia's, which is a nice bar that has two-for-one drinks on Wednesdays and Fridays (I told you beer is is the official religion here). But as soon as the place got crowded, on came a WAY-TOO-LOUD live band (a staple of Mexican bars) so we headed up to the dance club/bourgeoi nirvana known simply as Ego, where Zander and Ethan were supposed to meet us. Ego is high up in the mountains (right next to that gargantuan Mexican Flag I talked about before) and has a killer view (you can see it behind me and Teressa above). It also has a chic outdoor area with controlled bonfires surrounded by plush couches, where we waited (in vain) for Zander and Ethan to arive:



The only problem with this paradise of conspicuous consumption is that a)when it rains incredibly hard everyone crowds under the tiny covered area and b) Ego has a plethora of douchey Mexican guys who try to start fights with any gringo they see courting one of "their women." Seriously, after enough hairy eyeballs and passive-aggressive shoves, even a pacifist like me starts to get ornery. After we finally get tired of waiting for Zander and Ethan (they had crashed a random house-party and became the surprise guests of honor) I decided I'd had enough of Ego and took Teressa to the the vista point I'd been to with Lorenzo. Needless to say, that was much drier and a lot more pleasant.



The next day we saw Wall-E together, which is probably the ideal movie to watch dubbed in Spanish because more than half of it has no dialog whatsoever. It was also a fun date movie with its Chaplan-esque underdog hero and central story of robot love. If only we could have seen it without the countless babbling kids who talked the entire time, including the one sitting behind us who stole Teressa's hairpin right off of her head. I know it was a kid, but seriously, who does that?

Afterwards, met up with Rosia and her cousin Julio (pictured with Teressa and I, above) at a nice bar seated atop a shopping center with a magnificent view of the centro and its centerpiece, an ornate cathedral. Rosia's a spunky girl who is dating my good bud John, and she's also the one who introduced me to Teressa. Through out the night she found clever ways to make fun of my Spanish and feeble attempts at dancing. Together we all watched the weekly fireworks ceremony that illuminates the cathedral, which I caught in another somewhat-arty picture:



Eventually we made it to yet another bar in the centro, complete with yet another WAY-TOO-LOUD bar band and not enough tables. Zander showed up with a pretty girl he'd met at that house party and so did John, who seems to attract the attention of really obnoxious drunks in every bar he steps foot in. Sure enough, two American dudes our age started talking with him, and the embarrassingly-toasted one immediately tried to pull Teressa away from me. She made me feel all warm and fizzy inside, though, when she told him in no uncertain terms that she was with me and that he was wasting his time. Drunk American Guy and his less drunk friend felt bad enough about it that they ordered a bottle of Barcardi White Label rum for all of us to share. But seeing as he needed no more alcohol that night, it wasn't long before Drunk American Guy thrust his pelvis in the face of one too many frightened Mexican girls and the bouncers swiftly tossed him out of the club. There are times that I'm proud to be American, but that wasn't one of them.

As the night lingered on Teressa and I somehow started talking about religion and even though she's a good Catholic girl (every female in this country is) she didn't seem to mind that I'm not religious at all. She said I'm not like most American guys that she's met, which I took as a great compliment (especially in lieu of Drunk American Guy from before). And even though I lived pretty close to the bar we were at, she gave me a ride home and a good night kiss. I slept off the hangover the next day instead of going to that family picnic/volleyball game. I'd say it was worth it.

The View From the Afternoon

For the first time in three weeks, I'm spending the weekend in Morelia. The plan was for Paulina to come visit me, but her friend Javier couldn't make it, which prevented her from coming for reasons that still elude me. Either way, the downtime has allowed me to think about my experiences thus far. I'm certainly more adjust to the Mexican way of life, and I've learned to accept the good parts of this country (the savory food, sense of community, etc) with the bad (widespread corruption, suffocating Catholicism, etc), which has made much happier in the long run.

I've also learned to get along with most of my classmates, though Phoebe-From-Friends Girl is still pretty obnoxious (she though Angelo was me until three days ago). In fact, I may have spent *too* much time with my American buddies, because I need to practice my Spanish more. Luckily I'm going to a picnic/volleyball game too meet the entire family of my host mom, Rosalinda (who was the oldest of 11 children, by the way). I had wanted a trial by fire for my ailing Spanish skills, and I guess this is it. Mexican family parties are great because: a) everyone is invited, b) everyone brings food c) everyone brings liquor.



Since I've been doing it for about a month now, I've also had time to think about my experience blogging, which has been a big part of my enjoying my time abroad. I've started to suspect myself of subconsciously ripping off the writing style of whatever author I happen to be reading: up until a week ago it was Vladamir Nobokov's Lolita and since then Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, so I'm probably just flattering myself. I've also had time to reflect on what it is I like about blogging in general, as I've recently started reading some blogs other than my own, most of them relating to music. I thought I would share some of my favorite ones to read:

Fluxblog is music blog featuring Matthew Perpetua, a former NPR employee and a contributor to Spin magazine as well as countless blogs. But it's obvious from reading Fluxblog that he's just a really enthusiastic music fan. Everyday he writes about one or two new artists, covering everything from esoteric indie rock and hardcore rap to commercial pop and r&B, and he approaches all of it with the same level of dignity and curiosity for what makes the tracks work. He also makes every song available for free download, which is great for a music fan who can't find anything in Mexican record shops but Hoobestank and the Jonas Brothers.



The Deerhunter Music Blog is another great one: it's essentially a stream-of-consciousness look into the fragile, neurotic, endearing psyche of Bradford Cox.

The frontman and principal songwriter of Atlanta's psychedelia punks (and my favorite modern band) Deerhunter, and his laptop pop side project, Atlas Sound, Cox is also my generation's most earnest embodiment of young male angst. He has a rare form of dwarfism that makes him appear deathly anorexic, which he compounds by performing in drag. He is openly gay. He has revealed his unrequested love for his best friend/songwriting partner/Deerhunter guitarist Lockett Pundt. And for a year he has posted all of this on his blog, along with more great, forward-thinking rock music than most bands ever come up with (Atlas Sound began as a pseudonym for his home recordings). Cox has made his outsized personality inseparable from his music, which fixates on bodily decay, sexual perversion, romantic tragedy and proscription drug addiction. But what makes Cox so compelling is that, beneath his music's layers of guitar drone, digital ambience and found sound, there's a fully-formed and sympathetic personality. Above you can watch him and Deerhunter play two thoroughly awesome new songs from their forthcoming album "Microcastle."

To The East

I'm tired, sore, and slightly-peeling from a hectic weekend on the Atlantic coast, where I was also without internet. Since my buddy Brian requested I "Update more!", I've decided to unload the extra post I penned in-between passing out on the breathtaking beaches there.

Speaking of which, there's a reason Red chooses this area to escape to in the Shawshank Redemption: the twin cities of Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo are easily among the most beautiful sights I will ever take in, and luckily they have yet to be discovered by American tourists. I feel especially lucky to have experienced a beach town as charming as Zihuatanejo, where the water is warmer than it gets in my shower back in Morelia and various exotic animals and people alike laze about the street, too tired to move from all the humidity. For example, it took me and Eric half of our breakfast to realize these parrots were relaxing next to us in an outdoor restaurant:



However, the influence of our filthy capitalism can certainly be felt in the sleek private resorts that line the beaches in Ixtapa, all of which now feature countless perpetually-grimacing security guards who stalk the private beaches like pit bulls outside of a crack house. We somehow aggravated all of these professional party-poopers by hanging out in hotel-owned beach chairs and keeping to ourselves. Not to have a hippie moment or anything, but commodifying the beach crosses a threshold of cynical profit-mongering I'm just not comfortable with. I mean, do we really have to discover the market value of a sunset before we finally say enough's enough with this shit?

One said security guard, named German, kept asking us to leave only to give up every time when we acted like we couldn't understand him. Eventually we agreed to start buying the hotel's over-priced drinks, but we quickly outfoxed him by filing up our empty cups with Rum and Coke when he wasn't looking. We had a wonderful time at his expense, letting the towering waves toss us around and relaxing in the sweltering heat. It wasn't until we encountered German later that night, at a bus stop getting ready for a ten-hour shift driving a taxi, that I felt bad for giving the poor guy so much grief.



Quickly, we moved on from sad German to a club called Senior Frog's, which was full of girls dancing on the bars which doubled as stages, and where waitresses with whistles walked around offering people shots. I just followed Eric because he was on the prowl, and we ended up talking with a group of really pretty girls who kept acting bored with us but wouldn't let us leave them alone. When I was just about to give up hope of dancing with aloof girl named Laurena, she lured me onto the dance floor with a coy gesture.

Eventually John was dancing with her friend, Eric somehow had two girls dancing with him at the same time, and Angelo was laughing at the lot of us pretending like we knew what we were doing. It only got better when Eric and he girls (each on one of his arms) ended up on stage with every gay guy in the club when "YMCA" came on, and being the sport that he is, he went with the choreography. The good-natured party vibe of the club fizzled a bit when a certain girl not only took her blouse off while dancing on one of the tables, but did so *in front of her mom, who was chaperoning her.* When Mexican girls let their hair down, they don't mess around.



We found out what hotel our lady friends were staying at so the next day we headed back out to Ixtapa to use their room number to avoid getting hassled by the beach rent-a-cops. However, those same girls happened to be out on the beach when we passed by, so we spent some time swimming with them (more wading; they were too terrified of sharks to go very far out) and getting as many of their free drinks as possible.

We met up with Zander and Ethan (who is a fellow Los Gaton *and* Berkeleyan) and headed to Ixtapa to meet up with Laurena and Co., but they ended up skipping out on us and leaving us to wander the streets in search of a (semi-affordable) good time. Such a thing did not exist, unfortunately, and we ended up returning to Zihautanejo where argued over what else to do for the rest of the night until we all decided to pack it up. It was kind of a cheap way to close out the trip, but we are all so exhausted by then that I think it was kind of inevitable. In fact, I'm still paying the price for such a deliriously fun weekend, feeling the wrath of Montezuma's Revenge and the scorching hand of the sun.

Midnight In A Perfect World

I’ve realized that in telling the tale of my misadventures here I’ve only given passing references to the various characters I’ve met, and even then new ones have since emerged that proved to be far more interesting than my pseudonyms for them would suggest (well, except for Flirty Girl and Older Person).

For instance, Serious Art Girl is a fellow Los Gaton and actually played drums in a band called Krugenpantsen’s Tea Party, who played several shows with my first band, Reckless. I didn’t recognize her, but Mikayla (I think that’s how you spell her name) asked me about it one day and, like most seriously arty girls, turned out to be much warmer and fun to be around than her chilly demeanor would suggest.



Then there's Angelo (pictured above, next to me) who I mentioned before as Shaggy Hippy Dude. Angelo is actually a really laid back, unpretentious guy (in college parlance I’d call him “chill”) who gets a lot more ridiculous (in a good way) when he gets drunk, which we’ve been doing often lately. Angelo also has a girlfriend in the States who he is very good at being faithful with, which means he’s always free to give me knowing grins when we’re in the midst of some debauchery and I’m not living up to such ideals (more on that later).

Also a notable character is Eric (pictured above, far right), who I could have easily dubbed Intense Military Dude if I’d met him during my mean-spirited nick-naming phase. Like most intense ex-military guys (he went to West Point for two years and bolted for UC Santa Cruz(!)), Eric is really funny in a manic kind of way and, as such, a blast to get blasted with. If I’m coming off as a drunkard to anyone, FYI, I’ll just say this: I’m in *Mexico*, where beer is often cheaper than water at any given restaurant.



Another notable figure is Zander, pictured above, left. Zander is also laid back, whip-smart and always seems to have a slight smirk like he has his own private joke. Zander is also going to Barcelona, and has tons of connections that will provide us with a scooter, beach bungalow and other perks. Needless to say, he’ll be a recurring character.

The other girl in the picture is Alejandra, who is in the English club at our school and was a lot happier to be hanging out with us than that picture would suggest. Actually, I felt bad for her because after convincing her to help us polish off some gruesome tequila (anything in a plastic bottle is guaranteed to taste like death), and getting her into a sleazy, snooty dance club called XO (like the kissing symbol, get it?), we both ditched her for other girls, (luckily, her younger sister Amparo was there, trying to court blissfully unaware Angelo):



Speaking which, this is Teresa. I had met her a week before through Rosi, the girlfriend of John (who I somehow left out earlier). I had contemplated calling her since then and the trip to Guadalajara had made the situation clearer for me. As fond as I am of Paulina (pray she doesn’t find this blog), she’s understandably hesitant to commit to me right now in lieu of my impending departure across the Atlantic. What’s more, it’s rapidly dawning on me that being here Mexico, meeting new people each day, is really the wrong situation in which to have all the constraints of a girlfriend and none of the (forgive the term) benefits.

So I had a great time talking with Teresa, smoking her cigarettes, and exchanging tender kisses for what felt like an hour on the edge of a raised platform where we were visible to pretty much everyone in the giant club. Mexican hot spots like XO look like Studio 54, have more security than the airport, and play a schizophrenic mix of Regaton, trancy techno and traditional Banda music, which is why I’m glad I never felt obligated to dance. Eventually we all had to feel our ways to the exit and share cabs back to our homes, riding the high of the night while trying to forget the looming agony of class in the morning.