a little bitta dis and a little bitta dat

alright, gang...

it has been a few days since my last entry so this one is gonna be a good one.

(deep breath) here goes...

the past week has been a little bit of everything. a little bit of learning, a little bit of fun, a little bit of frustration, a little bit of sickness and a little bit of health. a little bit of drinking (not a little, but a little more than a little) and a lot of good stories. this entry consists of a some short stories and some observations I have had in my short time here in mexico. i am going to extrapolate a little on some baseball metaphors and a funny little Dilbert comic strip that i saw in the paper back when i was in the states.

the language school has been great! right now there are only two students at the school and we are in different classes. Devin, aka Hector, is here until December. We hang out a little bit but we talk too much english. more to come on that later. my teachers have been very helpful and i think i am improving each day. the more i practice the more better i get.

now were cooking! the recipes that i am learning are simple, delicious, and impressive. last week i made chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, huevos a la mexicana, and picaditas. mmmmmmm, good food. when i get home im gonna cook for my friends and lady types and wow them with my delicious skills in the kitchen.

the past week has been just a blur. i stayed in for most of the week but decided to go out thursday with my buddy Hector. We went to La Plazuela and enjoyed the 2x1 priced beers (about 1.25 per 12oz beer.) La plazuela is situated between a set of buildings and has a similar feeling of Omaha´s Old Market. The pear shaped area has lots of 20 somethings, a warm atmosphere, live music, cobblestone paths, and lots of hole-in-wall bars that sell beer and beer. We enjoyed a coupla beers at one bar and then i noticed there was a open table with a group of ladytypes next to it. We quickly paid the bill and moved in. I introduced myself to the ladies and we started to chat. I think American guys or any foreigner has a better chance of meeting ladytypes because we are something this is a little bit different than the norm. But anyways, we started talking and the girls invited us to the bar next door to hear some live music. Hector decided to split because the buses were going to stop running in a coupla minutes. And then there was one. I felt the eyes of every single person on me as i entered and sat down. Not only was i about a foot and a half taller than everybody there, but i was also the only white guy in the bar. i should get a sign that says "take a picture, itll last a little longer" but it goes with being the stranger in a new place. I better get used to it on this trip. The girl I initially spoke with went to go talk with another guy so the other girls in the group of six invited me to sit down at their table and we chatted about stuff over the live music. I am a fan of live music, even if i cannot understand the words and am the only person in the bar NOT singing along with it. I now understand how my Colombian friend, Andres feels sometimes when he goes to the bar with me.

The night ended up a success because I exchanged numbers with three of the six and they invited me to Harrys on Saturday. I took a taxi home and it was all good. It was all good until I had to wake up six hours later with a little bit of a hangover. This is prolly the first time in a long while that i have had a hangover and had to go to class the following morning. not good. my teacher noticed my condition and asked me what i did last night. i told her about my adventures and she then began to tell me about her favorite drinks. please note, when i have a little bit of a hangover, alcohol is the LAST thing that i wanna speak about. my body was alternating between feeling great and feeling very hot and sweaty. not good. but i did not get sick. i politely asked if we could change the subject and the teacher did so. phewwww! that was a close one.

Saturday was a fun day. i did a little homework, walked around a little bit and prepared myself for the weekend. Hector and I went to a movie at the Cine Morelos and saw "Walk on Water" this is a foreign and was pretty good. itll be in the States in a few months, i might pick it up on DVD. After the movie we were dying for some food and headed to the McDonald's and enjoyed some great food. I even wrote a little poem while i ate, that poem is down a little bit further. Harrys is the place to be on saturday night. since Harry was going to close for remodeling the next few months the bar was packed for the last night. harrys is a pretty expensive place to be. Hector and I met up with one of the girls we met the past Thursday and decided to split after about an hour. the girls were going to move the action to a karaoke bar that was not nearly as dense as harrys was. I was glad to go. The nite ended up being a success after Hector took off. right now i am a little agitated with this fella because more than once he swoops in after i lay the foundation with the ladytypes. his is like the vulture in baseball or The Topper from Dilbert because both cause frustration.

Lemme extrapolate a little bit on this term because this is similar to experience I have had in baseball. It is called the vulture. Or a vulture-win. A vulture-win is when the starting picture comes out of the game and the reliever enters. All the reliever has to do is hold the other team and prevent them from tying the game or surrendering more runs. The reliever earns the vulture-win because he has surrendered the tying run but his team comes back to win the game. The starter does not receive the decision he deserves and the reliever gets a cheap win. the cheap win is known as the vulture-win. The starter has done all the work but doesn't get the credit he deserves...and this is very frustrating. Hector has been doing this more than a coupla times, I talk to the ladytypes but he swoops in and dominates the conversation. grrrrrrrrrr. Its a little like the baseball vulture and a little bit like The Topper in Dilbert. But when Hector left it was all good, I met a cool girl named Ive and we talked for a bit outside of the bar. Tomorrow we are gonna go grab some tacos and chat.

I arrived home at around 430 Sunday morning and slept well. At about noon i awoke and prepared for the rest of the day. I walked to Mass, hung out at the Jardin Bordin and then walked back to my house because I was gonna have coffee with a friend's host family's sister, Montse. Montse is a beautiful Mexican women with all the right proportions. Not so much as an hourglass shape, but more of a guitar shape, and its all good. We went to starbucks and chatted for over an hour. She invited me to hang out with her friends next weekend. im excited to go out with some of her friends because they do not know a single word of Spanish and i get to practice practice practice.

when Montse dropped me off i was ready for a nap. but it was very hard to sleep because there was a soccer game going on and the entire neighborhood sounded similar to Able Hall during a NU touchdown. The entire neighborhood erupted when the Mexican national futbol team won over Brasil. Mexico is very passionate about their soccer, prolly more than NU fans are addicted to the Huskers. Ear plugs solved the problem and i drifted off to sleep.

who let the doggs out. no. seriously, who let the freaking dogs out! every where you go there seems to be a dog or two in the street. now these are not your typical fluffy, lovey-dovey, come over here and give mama a smoochie type dogs. many of these dogs have no owner and roam the streets looking for food and intimidating tall gringos, such as myself. more than once i have been scared by these dogs late at night when im walking to el centro. its prolly something i gotta get used to. oh well...just dont bite me, fido.

you really dont know how tall you are until you run into things or sit down at a table and it feels like you are sitting at the kindergarten table (where your knees come up to your elbows). last saturday i went with some ladytypes to a canta-bar to do some mexican karaoke. (i didnt sing `cause there wasnt any dolly parton, thank you very much). we all walked upstairs to the bar and entered through the door except me. i more or less stumbled into the bar after hitting my head on the ceiling when i entered. I dont really feel that tall, i feel that im pretty normal...that is except when i stand next to people in fotos and dwarf them when i look at the picture . everybody is pretty normal, i guess im just pretty tall. the streets here in cuernavaca are lined with trees that are maintained well and shaped similar to a lamp shade. these are realy nice trees except for the fact that i hafta duck quite a bit when i am walking downtown. (sigh)...such is life

one thing i have noticed here is the unedited american music. the following is a entry i wrote when i was a little tipsy at a McDonald's. All the trays at the MacDeez have a piece of paper on them asking customers to write there favorite McDonald's memory. Mis mejores momentos lov viví en McDonalds...and here is what i wrote.

"My best memory was when I was in a McDonalds en Morelos, Mx. It was late at night and i was dying from some American food. Viola! There wasa MacDeez in sight and los BigMacs were on sale for only 20 pesos. mmmmmmmm...delicious food was within our reach! we sat down with our food and enjoyed a BigMac and a McPechuga McTrio Meal Deal when JaRule began playing on the restaurant sound system. Wow, there is nothing like eating a BigMac and hearing the classic JaRule tune, Murda-Murda in the cozy surrounding of McDonalds. We sat down, enjoyed our wonderful, nutritious and McDelicious meal while soading in the unedited sounds of JaRule, Shaggy and Eminem. This was my best memory of McDonalds....ps, the internal cd player kept on singing, so we never really got to hear the whole song."

chicken beer. i was in the supermercado the other day and i actually saw a brand of beer called Gallo draft. this reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where the Yankees sign a contract with Tyson Foods for a fermented drink they were going to sell at Yankee Stadium. The beer really isnt from chickens, but the can has a pretty cool picture of a hen on it.

car seats...there are very few...one thing that i have noticed is a lot of people carrying their kids on their laps when they are driving around Cuernavaca. There are little babies that are riding shotgun with their parents. its very common. Im a little shocked to see this.

oh, i am teaching my host family´s son how to juggle. He is about 10 and is really eager to learn, i am giving him lessons for about 15 minutes a day. and he is improving! He is going to be almost as good as my buddies Dan and Jesse.

well, im getting tired...thank you for your time and drop me a comment after you get done reading this. i hope this made sense because i was doing a few things at the same time. oh, well.

catch you all on the flip side!

jp