Back To School

Guadalajara, Mexico

It's my last month at work and I have very few responsibilities. Due to management politicking and my impending separation from the company, I have been removed from my development team and exiled to a desk in the corner of the office. For the next four weeks I will be paid quite a bit of money for my availability to answer questions.

So instead of doing any capitalizable work, I am looking at a map of Mexico and Googling the cities I find there. Apparently there's a city in Mexico called Guadalajara, and it's the second largest city in Mexico. Seems as good a place as any to start.

*

¿De dónde eres?

I'm miserably ill in the office of a language school administrator in Guadelajara. It took me one whole day of a Latin American diet to contract turista, a.k.a. traveler's diarrhea.

¿Por qué quieres estudiar español?

I'm taking a placement test to determine which Spanish class I will attend. The school is an unremarkable two-story rectangular cement building crammed between others of similar appearance in downtown Guadalajara. There's a mezzanine level inside where lovely Latina school employees do something or other on computers.

¿Y cuánto tiempo estarás viajando?

*

Every day after class there's an optional hour of "conversation" where students from the Spanish classes and English classes get paired up to talk about a topic. Today I'm talking to a blind Mexican man about Christmas in America. Por tres meses antes, todos los restaurantes y tiendas tocan música molesta.

After class a bunch of us go out for lunch at a local restuarant. Diners include:

• Kayla - an attractive and engaging 20-something woman staying at my same hostel

• Ryan - a funny laid-back Aussi who has been telling bad jokes in Guadalajara for months

• Livio - a charming French wine connoisseur

• Javier - a friendly alumni of the English classes who is excited to show us the restaurant 7 Pestoles

Turns out this is the restaurant I ate at the other day that made me sick. I don't mention it.

*

I'm sitting in a small arena with Ana, a local lady. We're watching Lucha Libre, a professional wrestling showcase. I'm sipping on a bigass michelada. My date is standing up in her seat and yelling at the fans in the balcony. This is, it would appear, the central entertainment.

From what I can tell, they are mostly yelling homophobic slurs at each other and occasionally at the wrestlers. Most of it is unintelligible to me. Tu son parejas I know means you're a couple. Ana tells me the chant to the tune of un pueblo unidos means something along the lines of kill the gringo.

I'm sitting on a bar stool having a post-fight beer and whiskey while Ana gets her bootyshake on with some girls in the bar. This is only slightly less uncomfortable than the trip back downtown on our party bus, in which I employed false grins and chuckles in lieu of any dancing or partying whatsoever, much to the chagrin of Ana. I'm not much of a dancer, and she's not much of a talker. Entonces...

*

It's 7am and I'm jogging around Parque Revolución, listening to Mischief Brew on my iPhone. I'm quite certain there's some irony there.

There's a bone-thin Asian woman in a surgical mask who's always out here possibly panhandling. The one time she approached me I didn't understand her Spanish. She sure frowns a lot for a panhandler. Could be she's an heiress and only proselytizing.

Besides the medically protected woman there are also señoritas in plaid skirts on their way to school, señores in collared shirts on their way to work, hungover 20-somethings feeling each other up on park benches, police with rifles, and one portly dog who I'm led to believe has it out for my ankles.

It gets up in the 80s during the day here but around now when the sun's just coming up over the downtown buildings it's nice and cool.

I am a leader, but you will not follow me!

I ain't no preacher for I'm full of blashpemy!

See you in hell boys!

*

I'm at a fancy hotel failing miserably at Salsa lessons with my classmate Renata from Kazakhstan. The basic steps are simple, but once we start with the spinning and turns I'm always tugging the wrong arm or somehow facing the wrong direction. Renata is not a strong dancer either and the two of us together are quite a debacle. She politely bows out to go so say hi to our other classmates before the free dancing begins. I head back to the hotel bar to talk to some pompous businessmen.

After salsa lessons several of us leave for a cheaper bar in the hip neighborhood closer to my hostel. Ryan and I are the only gringos here. Seems I have had 5 or 6 more drinks than everyone else. Don't know what I was thinking trying to dance. Of all the ludicrous notions. I get a whiskey with my beer here, since we were so long in transit and I was starting to feel hungover.

After the bar closes, Javier's friend Jorge offers me a ride home, but I'm all drunk and want to ride a city bike back. I say my goodbyes and take off in a hurry, walking in the wrong direction, only to find (eventually) that the city bikes are inaccessible after midnight. I think Ryan told me that earlier. No matter, it's only a mile or so. And I'm drunk and in an unfamiliar city. Seems as good a time as any to go for a stroll.