MexiCanadian

Mom, Dad, Brian… I know you were very nervous about me going to study in Mexico, but I want to assure you all that the only real danger that faces me is the possibility that I will be fed to death before I come home.

Tonight I enjoyed what was easily the best meal I’ve had in Mexico… and the largest. My friend Karla invited me over to meet her family and have dinner with them. Meals are no joke over here. You bring your fork and your elastic waist pants and you eat like a famine is coming. Not only did I enjoy rice, corn tortillas, chillis, two different kinds of beans, eggs, a steak, and about 6 desserts, but Karla’s darling Mum also gave me leftover tamales, green beans, and a bag of oranges to take home “in case I was still hungry.”

Yup, I’m definitely not going to starve to death here. But I may need to invest in a pair of maternity pants and stop weighing myself for a little while. 

I have never been an exceptionally punctual person and my parents, teachers, and employers have often reminded me that this is a characteristic I should strive to erase if I’d ever like to succeed in “the real world.” One of my New Years’ Resolutions was to be on time more often and I’ve come to realize that in Mexico (with few exceptions) nobody gives a crap if you’re a few minutes late. In fact, sometimes when you’re five minutes late, you’re actually 15 minutes early.

So after arriving to my kickboxing class 10 minutes late for the third class in a row, my friend Karla said to me, “Sarah, estas diez minutos tarde! Eres casi mexicana! (Sarah, you’re ten minutes late! You’re practically Mexican!). This is the best compliment I have ever received, and this basically means that I have no choice but to stay here forever. A culture that appreciates cheese AND tardiness?

Sign me up.   

My new nickname might as well be Goddess of the Hot Plate, Queen of the Kitchen, or Princess of Prepared Food. I am feeling exceptionally generous today, so I thought I’d share another one of my original recepies that I’ve invented here in Mexico.

I call this one, “Instant Strawberry Oatmeal and Corona Light in a Red Cup.”

The timestamp on this photo, according to my camera, is 9:37 p.m. on a Thursday night. I feel that this fact alone makes any further explanation about the origin of this dish unnecessary.

I don’t even know how to start this post, except to say that I will remember Carnaval in Veracruz for the rest of my life. Even if I succumb to Alzheimer’s or Dementia one day and forget my name and how to use the washroom, I will still recount to the nurses who change my bedpans about the time I went to Carnaval when I was 22. It was really that awesome.

A 1.8-litre bottle of beer cost 16 pesos, so if we follow this math, 3.6 litres was only 32 pesos. That is $2.59 in Canadian dollars. I got drunk at the biggest party in Mexico for less than the cost of a BigMac while I danced in the street with strangers, ate candy thrown at me from beautifully decorated floats, and was nearly blinded by millions of lights in colours that I didn’t even realize existed this weekend. 

Here is a quick overview of the weekend:

12:00 p.m. The road trip begins! Dear mom, please note we are all wearing seatbelts :)     

2:00 p.m. (ish) The lovely drive continues and we stop for lunch.

4:00 p.m. Arrival! I break a branch while trying to climb a tree in a feeble attempt to feel like a kid. Several hundred ants lands in my hair and I spend the next half hour trying to brush them out and kill them. Lesson learned.

5:30 p.m. I buy my first 1.8 litre beer. 

5:52 p.m. I finish my first 1.8 litre beer.

6:00 p.m. I need the washroom, badly.

6:45 p.m. After explaining in Spanglish that Canadians (and the Polish, for my friend Ola’s sake) have small bladders, we both finally get to use an outhouse.

8:00 p.m. The parade begins. Sarah buys another comically oversized beer.

8:29 p.m. Sarah finishes her comically oversized beer.

8:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Sarah dances with a baton twirler, a salsa dancer, and pretty much everyone else in the vicinity.

11:00ish p.m. My camera batteries start dying, and as I get ready to put it back into my purse, I managed to take this RAVISHING self portrait.

11:00 p.m. onwards: I witness a successful robbery, a failed robbery, much public urination, revelry, merrymaking, buy an entire pizza, eat most of said pizza, have a 3-hour nap, and then get back on the road to Puebla.

I’ve decided I can’t come home until I dance with every single person in the country. Starting now.

Before I left for Mexico I had to attend a mandatory pre-departure session on Culture Shock, learning to be tolerant of strange new customs, and finding strategies to cope with feeling overwhelmed by the unfamiliar. What I’ve come to conclude is this: sometimes other cultures suck and the people don’t deserve your tolerance. Yes, I realize exactly how that sounds, and before I go on I’d like to say that so far my experience in Mexico has been extremely positive. I’ve met so many fantastic people, visited wonderful, culturally rich places, and enjoyed the best music and food I’ve ever had the pleasure of trying. 

However, like every other female exchange student here, I’ve also been subjected to disgusting catcalls, whistles, and comments on the street that have been difficult to ignore. What makes me even more upset is that whenever I mention it, I’m told to shrug it off “because it’s just part of the culture!” I really can’t believe that any culture would accept such embarrassing treatment of women.

The epidemic of machismo in this country is also kind of confusing to me, because I really don’t understand what men are expecting me to do when they yell out “Ohhhh mamacita,” or make a comment about my body. Am I supposed to confess that all my life I’ve been waiting for some creep hanging out the window of a rusty truck to inform me of how dashing my bottom looks in cargo shorts? Or how I’ve always wanted to hook up with somebody who addressed me by individual body parts and not my name? Or how those sloppy kissing noises you make when I walk by in pajama pants are a huge turn on and I MUST HAVE YOU NOW? I have no idea, really I don’t.

Based on my experience (and some of my friends’) I would like to offer the following advice to those very special men who have no idea how to talk to women:

1) Practice polite greetings. “Hello, my name is ________” and “How are you?” are good places to start. “Hey baby, watcha doin’ toniiiiiight?” or similar comments will ensure that you have many lonely, boring evenings.

2) Keep your hands to yourself. Just because a girl might be talking to you, it doesn’t mean she wants you to touch her. 

3) Be mindful of age limits. If you’re old enough to be my dad, remember that I actually have a dad who wouldn’t be too impressed that you tried to touch my legs right after you told me about your 4-year-old daughter, Mr. Taxi Man. Show a little respect, okay?

4) Respect other people’s relationships. Regardless of area code, my boyfriend in Canada is still my boyfriend, yes, even if I am in Mexico.

5) Respect your own relationships. If you have a wife/girlfriend/babymomma/child(ren), you may want to mention this before flirting with other women.

Mexico, I love you so, but (some of) your men need to smarten up.

Photo credit: www.funnyjunk.com

Cooking has never been my strongsuit, but since coming to Mexico I’ve started to get a little more adverturous in the kitchen. Well, as adveturous as one can get when their only means of preparing food are a microwave and a hotplate.

It is with pride and humbleness that I introduce my first original dish, which I’ve named “Leftover cold vegetarian pizza, watery instant mashed potatos, with 3/4 of a tostada that remained intact after being dropped on the kitchen floor.” 

The best part about this dish is that its name is also pretty much the recipe. Enjoy!

I think the phrase “When in Rome” was invented purely to bully people into doing weird stuff when they travel. I’ve never been to Rome, and I’m actually not sure what the Romans do (but I extend an open invitation to anyone who’d like to tell me).  What I do know is that every time I hesitate to try a new food/drink/cultural activity, someone will pipe up and say, “Well, when in Rome, right?”

So, when in Oaxaca…

…eat Chapulines (grasshoppers!) Truthfully, they taste pretty good but it’s a little disconcerting but seeing legs and antennae poking out of your food.

…and drink Mezcal…which pretty much tastes like poison and makes you instantly drunk. I never thought I’d choose eating bugs over indulging in an alcoholic beverage, but here we are. Never let anyone tell you that travel doesn’t teach you things about yourself. Apparently the Romans never turned down dares, and neither do I.

There is a very specific reason this post will not be accompanied by a photo: shame. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, other times it’s just more evidence of my terrifying lack of rhythm, coordination, and grace.

A few weekends ago, during a trip to Oaxaca City, I went to a salsa club with my travel mates Tiff and Marie. And the unthinkable happened: somebody actually asked me to dance. He was well-dressed and good-looking, and I turned into a giggling 13-year-old girl, while bashfully insisting I had no idea how to salsa and that he’d have to teach me. He said he was up to the challenge…poor guy. 

I spent the next five minutes looking at my feet, steeping on his feet, and wildly jerking my hips around trying to keep the beat. At the end, he thanked me for the awkward Jr. High dance and returned to his group of friends. I sat back down with Tiffany and Marie and tried to assess what I’d done so horribly wrong and I came this conclusion that there are two reasons why I will never be able to dance with a partner. 

1) I don’t like it when boys tell me what to do. 

2) My usual style of dancing usually involves throwing my limbs around so violently that it’s actually kind of a safety hazard to stand close to me.

Miguel, if you’re out there, I’m really, really sorry about the size 8 converse prints on your nice leather shoes. Thank you for the salsa lesson, and please call me if you ever want to learn the bird dance or the electric slide. Drinks are on me.

I must say, I was a little concerned when I first arrived here and realized that cheek kisses are the standard greeting among friends and sometimes people meeting for the first time. It’s hard to explain, but something about kissing a stranger is so beautifully hilarious to me that I had to stiffle my laughs the first few times I got an unexpected peck on the cheek. Now that I can do it without giggling directly in someone’s ear, I’d like to offer a tutorial for the uninitiated. Ok. Here goes.

1) DO THIS.

2) DON’T DO THIS.

That’s pretty much it, actually. For the record, things are now really awkward between the pineapple and I. I think we’re going to start seeing other people.

Now that I’ve been away from Canada for almost a month, a tiny bit of homesickness has been creeping in. I never thought it would be possible to be homesick for waist-deep snow, frozen boogers, and constant touque-hair…but here I am.  

Luckily, there are still many things here that remind me of home in Mexico, and what I learned this week is that there are exactly three things that are true everywhere.

1) Your cellphone provider, no matter who they are, will suck.

After the unfortunate loss of cellphone #1 (who passed on tragically at the tender age of six days old, R.I.P.), I bought a replacement cellular from Telcel 10 days ago. I was so stoked to have another phone that I neglected to check if it was working before leaving the store. I won’t bore you with the long-winded details, but I ended up visiting SIX different Telcel stores (including their special customer centre) and making three different calls to their service line before I got the phone working. I now officially hate four cellular providers across 2 coutries. Telcel now joins Telus, Bell, and Solo on my mobile shit list. Congratulations. 

2) People will complain about the government.

Found graffiti in central Puebla.  I wish I could explain a little bit more about why this spray paint artist was so cheesed off, but I don’t follow politics in Canada, and I’m certainly not going to follow them here either.

3) Justin Bieber will have preteen girls (and me) all googly eyed.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that somebody at this coffee shop wrote a special note on the front in PERMANENT INK asking preteen gals (and me) to kindly not remove the Beebs from the premises. Clearly this has been an issue before.

My mom has been sending me photos to let me know what I’m missing at home.

Yup, that’s my car under a foot and a half of snow. And this was apparently taken before it got “bad.”

Maybe I’m not too homesick yet.

As I am now living in a culture in which cheese is its own food group and a part of almost every meal, weight gain has become a concern. To keep an eye on things, Tiff and I decided to purchase a bathroom scale for our place. The best thing is that it measures in kilograms, so for the first time since sixth grade, my weight is once again in the double digits (fistpump!). After doing our conversions into pounds, we both realized that we’ve lost some weight… or the scale is improperly calibrated. Let’s stick with the first one.

To celebrate, we made Mug Cakes. Without a shred of hyperbole, I can say that they have changed my outlook on everything and immeasureably improved my life.

Step 1: Make cake batter.

There are a bunch of recipes through the link above, but we just used a store bought mix.

Step 2: Spoon into cups and microwave for 3.5ish minutes.

Step 3: Decorate and eat your Mug Cake. Sing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” but replace “prayer” with “Mug Cake.”

Yup, I’m glad we bought that scale, but I’m definitely not getting on it again any time soon.

I really struggled with how many details I should include in this post, especially since fifty percent of my readership is my mom. I decided that since she spent the first few years of my life changing my diapers that no poo story I could possibly tell would make her love me less. Hopefully the rest of you are as forgiving.(Kendra, if you’re reading this, I wish you could have been here).

Warning: While there are no pictures of actual poo in this post, there are some graphic details. If you’ve just eaten or are about to eat, maybe read this later.

Ok, it starts like this: Canadian immune systems are kind of like 5-year-old laptops. They’re not very good at doing several things at once, they get overwhelmed easily, and sometimes for no reason at all, they shut down (ERROR MESSAGE 39284728947: would you like to continue?). Despite my best efforts to get vaccinated, avoid street meat, and drink bottled water, my pipes have been a little quite really loose since I got here. In case you didn’t get the euphemism, what I’m trying to say is: I’ve had constant diarrhea with no end in sight, and have come close to ruining jeans I’m rather fond of. More than once this week I have very seriously considered purchasing Depends, but decided it would be too damaging to my self esteem. Maybe after I finish this story it won’t matter anymore.

The Mexican sewer system is a little underdeveloped, so you’re not supposed to flush toilet paper, only pure waste. Any paper products need to be put in the garbage can next to the toilet. Although I had been remembering to put my toilet paper in the garbage, I neglected to do the same with my tampons, and our apartment toilet got blocked up yesterday morning. We did not have a plunger. It was the caretaker’s day off. Not the greatest combination.

After returning from my classes, I realized that I needed to use the bathroom. Badly. Holding it was not an option. In in a swift, single motion, I dropped my pants, dove toward the toilet, and landed gracefully on the seat. For the next ten minutes I prayed to Gods from every religion that my discomfort would end. When the coast finally seemed clear, I proceeded to flush the toilet. The blocked toilet. I watched the water rise and rise, but by the grace of Jesus, Allah, Buddah, and three of the Spice Girls, it stopped before overflowing. I considered running out and buying a plunger, but my roomate was out for a run, and I didn’t want to go out and try to find one/buy one alone.

I did the only thing I could think of to do: I covered my forearm in Wal-mart bags and decided to try to unblock the commode manually. Around the time I was elbow-deep, I felt like I had finally found the offending blockage. I tried to close my hand around it and pull it out. And then the bags ripped. My entire forearm was covered in well, shit. I abandoned ship and soaked my arm in bleach and disinfectant until my skin hurt to touch. 

When I returned to the bathroom, for some reason the water level had fallen dramatically. I figured I must have cleared the blockage, so I tried to flush again. I held the handle down, and somewhere in the top of the tank, I heard something snap. The water started rising again. I opened the tank to find that some inner part of the handle had broken off.

Did I mention it was the caretaker’s day off?

Tiff came home from her run and I related the news to her very carefully. Being that she is so awesome, she said, “Don’t worry. We’ll just pee in it.” This is the part where I had to fess up that the blockage was my fault, and that my current intestinal situation might not allow me to go a night without a bowel movement. She proceeded to share her own embarrassing poo story (which I won’t share here), and I have to say, I felt a lot better. All that poo talk had us pretty hungry, so we went out for burritos, accidentally walked in a guy in the washroom having his own poo problems, and then we came home.

This morning our bathroom smelled like a combination of burnt hair, underdigested Mexican food, and regret. I opened the bathroom window and let it air out a bit, but there was no disguising it. Day-old poo is day-old poo. After pleading with a guard at the gate, he promised to send the caretaker up to our room as soon as he arrived. He came around one in the afternoon and fixed the broken handle in minutes, but when it came to unclogging the toilet, he just shook his head and handed me the plunger.

“Es tuyo (It’s yours),” he said.

A minute of aggressing plunging later, the blockage cleared and the toilet had its first successful flush in 30 or more hours. I also finally started taking the antibiotics my doctor gave me, and now all is (relatively) quiet on the poo front. 

The final thing I’d like to leave all of you with is this: émbolo. It’s the Spanish word for “toilet plunger.” Who knows? You might need it one day.

For the most part, I feel pretty safe about where I live. My apartment has armed guards 24 hours per day, university is close by (and also has guards), and I carry very little cash. However, the other day when I was at the bank with my roomie and our Aussie neighbours, this caught my attention:

Here are the WANTED posters for the ten most recent bank robbers at this Scotiabank. To be honest, I’m not as shocked by the number as by the fact that their disguises are pitiful. Maybe all the smart criminals rob HSBC?

The view from the top of the Cholula Pyramid

& Sunset

Tiff and I met up with Elly (one of the Aussie exchange students) today and decided to climb the Cholula Pyramid and watch the sunset. We made a quick run to the corner store to grab some beer (you can do that here!) so we’d have something to toast with as the sun disappeared behind the Cuexcomate volcano. As usual, I was quickly reminded why Gin and Jack Daniels are my drinks of choice.

Exhibit A:

Here I am, attempting to open a beer on the side of a church older than dinosaurs.

Exhibit B:

A second shot at opening the stupid beer using my belt buckle.

Exhibit C:

Tiffany, who was smart enough to buy a can, is already enjoying her Corona Light.

Exhibit D:

MUCHO SUCCESS!

Lesson of the day: Beer may be cheaper than water here, but it doesn’t make it better.