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Someone stole our family dog.
The (brand new) washer in The Dupe unit B is on the fritz.
The airconditioner in The Dupe unit B is dying.
BUT, I got the best fortune ever after chowing down on some very yummy chinese food with friends.
“You will be traveling and coming into a fortune.”
I can live with that.
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[1] Yes, life DOES take VISA!
Diagnostic to determine that Shorty Rock (my car) cannot be fixed? $78
Installing alarms on The Duplex due to weekend break-in? $700
Still feeling like the luckiest chic on the planet? priceless.
[2] Jorge left Andrea and I in Cuernavaca one Jack Daniels drenched morning at 4am to head on to Acapulco with a bunch of random new-found friends. I didn’t cry. Mostly because he was tipsy and kept naming the 3 frogs on my t-shirt after the three of us in a hiccup-riddled state of inebriation. Andrea and I caught a bus back to El DF (Mexico City) where we had to split up and head to different bus terminals to get to our respective destinations (Ecuador for her, Guanajuato for me). We both cried as we hailed separate cabs at the station, clutching hands and starting sentences we couldn’t finish. Finally she just got in her cab and that was it. I’ve since heard from both of them and they are well. No longer the stars of this here blog and the center of my international social life, but no less missed.
[3] I was startled to find that I was both excited to get home to the states and blue to be leaving the life I’d been living the last 3 months. Even after being back for a month (I got back in early June) I am still equally excited about being home and anxious to get back to Latin America. Though I’m enjoying focusing on some of my non-travel related goals, I am also plotting my return to Mexico (October depending on the free-lance contract situation). I am also realizing that though I dubbed this my “one year off”, that I’m falling in lurve with the lifestyle itself and one year won’t be nearly enough.
[4] Dream Big. If there is something you dream of doing, something so crazy you don’t even say it out loud but you often think “If I could do X….” then get started, life waits for no (wo)man and you deserve your shot at bliss as much as anyone. Good luck, God Speed and Stay Tuned. It really wouldn’t have been the same without you.
“I’d rather die on my feet than live a lifetime on my knees.”
– Emiliano Zapata
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I was deathly ill for the trip to Cuernavaca, so I don’t remember much but here’s the run down.
The Good: Because I was quarantined for three days, I had ample time to finish reading The Chronicles of Narnia (774 pages!), 100 Years of Solitude, and The Memory of Running (a new personal favorite).
The Bad: I had such a bad fever that I had to put on every item of clothing I had brought with me when I went to bed. I haven’t had a fever like that since 1977. It was that bad. A Canadian nurse that we ran into said there was some type of virus going around.
The Ugly: I sweated through ALL of my clothes in two days and had to stumble around in my exhausted stupor to find a llavanderia (laundry)Â to have all my clothes washed when my fever broke (3 days later).
When I was finally fit to move among the living, I caught up with Andrea and Jorge at the local spot on the Zocalo only to find that I shouldn’t drink because of the virus. So I watched everyone else drink the (literal) buckets of beer served at the expat hangout. Jorge and Andrea were with 5 others that I didn’t know but was quickly introduced to as the “third amigo†I feel bad saying this but this bar was my least favorite place we had ever been to and I realized it was because it was PACKED with Americans! I mean there were even a dozen African Americans in this place, it was like little Chicago up in there. Fortunately Andrea got us the hook up (yet again) and this dude gave us wrist bands for free drinks before midnight at the club down the street if we made it there by 10:30.
The Good: Andrea’s hook up got us free drinks and we didn’t have to stand in the line outside!
The Bad: Jorge’s idea to spring for the VIP lounge and a bottle of Jack Black at a club whose tagline is: “The Sunny Place for Shady People.” There was no way anything good was going to come of this.
The Ugly: Getting dry-humped and kissed by a VIP interloper (Edgar, pictured above), who I then determined to be rather cute and fairly intelligent so I quickly foisted him off onto Andrea. They made a connection and hung out for the next 3 days until it came time to say tearful goodbyes and she cursed the city of Cuernavaca and its men.
*Bonus: What the hell kind of dance is that Jorge?Â
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