Monday, August 16, 2004

The Life and Times of a 6'10" White Guy in Mexico Day 2

It felt great to sleep in, and as I woke up I was ready to explore my new home. I lived in a neighborhood called the colonials de la normal. It wasn't the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but it had a lot of character. The people in the area were very friendly, and it wasnt dangerous because there were always little kids hanging out and dancing and skateboarding. There were a lot of little stores, restaraunts, and arcades around so there was always something to do. I would go exploring all the time and find new things. This is the day I started to talk to my family and figure out who was who. Family is huge in Mexico, and we had a whole lot of family jampacked in our little casa. It took me almost my entire trip to figure out how all these people were related to each other and why they all stayed in our house. Here is a family tree describing the Mexican portion of our family.

Mari ++++++++++++++++++++ Paco
/''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' / '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''/
?¿?+++?¿?_____ Fabiola++??__ Chimo
`` /'''''''''''''/--------/''''''''''''''''/
Oliver _ Kati --- Christian _ Dese

Add to that three girls from California, and the three of us from USC, and you have one huge family of 14 people with only two toilets to shit in. Bathroom time became a huge conflict in this house, and because you don't flush your TP in Guadalajara, resulted in a smelly mess. Plus one of the bathrooms was way too small for a man of my stature to fit in, and there was ceramic death traps set up all over the place. I spent about 15 seconds in that bathroom before I broke something.

I wasn't here even a day before my 14 year old cousin Christian starts begging me to go play basketball with him. So, Silvio (Brazilian who goes to USC), Bach (another guy who goes to USC), Christian, and I go off to the park. We have to go to Gigante (spanish Kmart, they have actual Walmarts in Mexico) to buy a basketball because Christian can't find his. We get the ball, stop by the pet shop to look at the monkey, and continue our journey to the park. Everytime I walk through the streets it becomes a huge spectacle, so imagine what it would be like when I start playing basketball. Its really not even that fun for me because I am like Billy Madison playing dodgeball against the kindergardeners when I attempt to play basketball with the Mexicans. Its bad enough playing with scrubs in the U.S but in Mexico, they not only our scrubs, but scrubs who smell like they bathe in dog shit. So I carry our 3 on 3 team until they start triple teaming me (keep in mind that there are only 3 players on a team) and we get upset sending the opposing team running off though the park screaming like they just won the World Cup. Im tired as fuck so I don't even want to wait to play again and we walk home.

A couple of the girls from USC somehow manage to find our house number, and they call us, and come over so we can go out. We take the bus downtown, and as soon as we step on the bus it starts pouring. By the time we step out of the bus the streets of Guadalajara are flooded and we our stuck here in the middle of a river not knowing where the fuck we are. So we run to there appears to be peole at, and ask them where the bars are. They point at this street and tell us four blocks this way. By the time we get there we are soaked. We find a bar with this bald 5'5" guy at the door, and feeling that this man would easily take care of potential terrorist threats, we decide to enter. We walk up the stairs and they escort us to a table to begin the drinking festivities. I've been in places with paintings of Jesus before. Ive also been in places with paintings of naked women before. But this is the first place I've been into with these two images side by side. But I wasn't in this place to look at paintings, I was in this place to drink, and drink I did. After a few tequila concoctions, we all headed to the dance floor. I start dancing with this hot Mexican chick, as the girls I with get jealous and start grabbing my ass in an attempt to throw me off my game. I remain unfazed and continue to dance with this girl, but I do not talk to her. I can not talk with her because I am drunk and don't remember any spanish, except how to ask to go to the bathroom. Shortly thereafter, the male dance contest begins. I had already witnessed the female dance contest earlier that night, and I was not excited about entering this thing and winning the grand prize of being allowed to dance on the balcony by myself. Thats right, I would win the opportunity to dance on a balcony alone and show everybody how gay I would be for winning this dance contest. So what else would I do, but enter this ridiculous exhibition. In fact, I was the first one to enter. I ran up the steps and it would be minutes before someone else joined me. When it actually started there were like 8 guys in the contest, and because I was the first guy to run up the stairs, I had to go first. They start playing some terrible mexican song that I had never even heard before, and I had no idea how the hell I am supposed to dance to this shit. So I start doing the robot. I was eliminated in the first round, but I really felt like I was cheated. I do one hell of a robot, and I should have at least advanced for creativity. Everybody else did basically the same thing. Anyways, the rest of the night was much like earlier in the night: me getting drunk, dancing with that mexican girl, and speaking broken spanish. I had to get up early tommorrow morning to go to the ballet, so it was a relatively short night.

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