lost in translation

2007-06-27T13:30:00.000-05:00

i have an assload of retro-blogging to do, but right now, i'm packing to leave here for good. it sucks. for the life of me, i have no idea how i'm going to get all this stuff back home. i know i should just dump a ton of it, but i can't.

anyway, as much as i complain that this place is boring and tiny, etc, etc, i know i'm going to miss it after i get on that plane tomorrow morning.

i'm lying here on my bed listening to music (i'm going to try to jam the speakers into my backpack and bring it as a carry-on) like i've done for a huge chunk of my time here, and i've realized that i have so many memories from these past two years. soo many. good and bad. hilarious and sombre. awkward and weird and surreal and exciting and peaceful. and these are just from my bedroom! (kidding. sort of.)

i'm not sure if i'll return--to vallarta in particular--i definitely want to go back to mexico city at some point--but i definitely don't regret coming.

2007-04-23T23:27:00.000-05:00

feliz cumpleanos to me and billy shakes!!!
(sliiightly buzzed right noww)

details forthcoming in the extremely near future...

2007-04-12T21:10:00.000-05:00

i´m currently in morelia, michoacan, the last stop on our two-week spring break haphazard tour of mexico´s central western areas, and boy do i have a lot of weird stories to tell. i haven´t taken many pictures (although i do have some funky vids from the d.f.), but i´ll upload what i have when i return to the pv on saturday or sunday.

further elaboration to come!

2007-03-21T22:16:00.000-05:00

allllriiiight. let's backtrack! rewind the time machine to dec. 31, 2006 and we'll move on from there:

- we spend new year's eve w/ some of dave's friends (sans dave, funnily enough) and party in polanco, a ritzy-ass neighbourhood in the df. it's a pretty good time and the ppl are nice. for the countdown, tj makes me do all these spanish-style superstitions/traditions w/ her, like wear yellow (money) and red (love) panties, and we eat 12 grapes, making a wish for each one after midnight strikes. it's silly, but fun.

- i spend the next couple of days hanging out in the condesa (it's kind of like the soho/greenwich village of the df), just wandering around and soaking in city life (i love how tj and i went on holiday in the city and returned to our resort town after our vacation)

- the first day we return to vallarta, we call up dave and head down to the malecon, cruising in his tie-mobile and blasting sirius satellite's left of center. we get completely trashed by around 7:30 p.m., thanks to 2-for-1 litre drinks. (can you imagine?! two flipping litres of cosmo!!) it's actually kind of nice to be back and hanging out w/ familiar peeps again. we go to ztai, this new-ish resto-lounge on the malecon (completely inebriated, remember), and manage to con the managers into letting me play some songs from my ipod. dave and i dance around like maniacs. it's a memorable homecoming.

- fast forward to february. after the mx beat music fest in guadalajara weekend, i help out w/ a teen seminar tj created for the kids at school. it lasts three days and takes place at villas vallarta, a hotel down the street from where we live. dave and i work the sound and "dj" during breaks. we play our fave indie stuff and some of the students really get into it (i've been making mix cd's for 'em since). it's a heavy seminar, and it may or may not have affected me physically.
lots of crazy junk happens:
my ipod, as well as tj's, go missing on the first day (along w/ tj's digital camera and an attendee's cell phone). i feel sick and queasy on the second day and end up throwing up when i get home that night. (i HATE puking!!! prior to this, i can only recall tossing my cookies once in the past 10 or so years!)
all this (and more--it was a week packed w/ sombre news) takes its toll on me, and i end up heading home after first period at school that monday.
things look up however, when tj tells me that the hotel management managed to recover all our stolen electronics (i seriously think i went through ipod withdrawl); they found everything in a men's washroom or something. weird. i really don't care what happened though, as long as my ipod and i are reunited!

- onto two weekends ago--
i make an insane weekend trip to the df to catch the capital's version of mx beat. it is awesomeness, and i feel totally conflicted for inadvertently supporting an evil tobacco corporation in the process. eh. i give the better answer this time when going through the registration/marketing info ordeal and tell the girl "yes" (well, "sí") when she asks if i smoke. i randomly point to the brands that i "smoke," and she proceeds to give me two wristbands you otherwise wouldn't receive if you reply "no" to the "do you smoke?" question (i made the mistake of being honest last time and totally got gypped). i guess i can console myself by claiming that i'm messing up marlboro's stats by lying to them. it's a covert-op from the inside! the wristbands are used to redeem two free packs of cancer sticks and a hip-looking free t-shirt that has all the bands playing the fests listed on the inside (there is also no overt marlboro marketing to be found anywhere on the outside of the shirt, which i like).
this fest has thought of everything; it's raining a bit, so complimentary ponchos are distributed.
we arrive when australia's architecture in helsinki are playing, and we love their zany-ish, multi-member & multi-instrumental act. hopefully i'll get to see more of them when i head down under this fall. tapes'n'tapes are raucous and messy yet good, and they play "insistor," which makes me happy. by this time i have positioned myself in the dedicated fan-girl front-and-centre position of the stage to catch spoon, who play next. they do not disappoint in the least. they are the reason why i made the crazy trek there in the first place, and they are tight as hell and basically perform like the quintessential indie rock band that they are. i sing along like a giddy teenager and secretly have a desire to spawn britt daniel's babies. (okay, so maybe i'm exaggerating a little. but just a little.)
alright, i'm gonna try to make this shorter than it's been so far, so i'll pass over some minor details and skip babasonicos' set (i saw them at the gdl fest; they're totally slick and professional and strike all the right rockstar poses; i also unintentionally got their setlist--thought it was spoon's) and jump ahead to a pleasant surprise--peter bjorn and john!!
i'd read rumours about them joining the lineup, but i didn't want to get my hopes up until i actually saw them listed on the set times board. they flew to the df directly from japan and didn't have any of their own gear w/ them, which explained the tacky-looking bass guitar they were using. to be honest, they started off kind of rocky and off-key, but they picked it up afterwards and won everyone over in the end. they basically played their whole album (w/ an acoustic version of "amsterdam"), and the crowd went apeshit when they played "young folks."
after their set i beelined it to the tent to catch some diplo. i'd already missed detroit's adult., norway's datarock and brazil's bonde do role. it was pretty darned full in there, and ppl were getting down like mad. by now, it was open bar. i loved the vibe and the euphoria in the air, so i headed towards the front and danced the night away.
mx beat, i love you.

- we're almost caught up! last thursday, tj took all of us teen seminar helpers out to dinner at cafe candela, this cool, slightly hard-to-find new hangout we recently discovered, and we filled up on woodfire-oven pizzas and got completely plastered on 2-for-1 mojitos (twofers are a real double-edged sword in this town). we proceeded to stop in at de santos where it turned out they were having another one of those "sound art" events w/ the blindfolds (and my dj friend played another live set, along w/ some german techno dudes i didn't manage to stick around long enough to hear). we then proceeded to the zoo, where i did manage to run into a former student as well as a current student in the span of 10 minutes. i didn't make it into school the next day, for which i am kind of ashamed.
st. paddy's day took place this past (long) weekend, so irish-descent dave & co. (consisting of mika, claire, mike, andi and me) dyed our beer green and went on a fruitless but gut-bustingly hilarious search for the super elusive and "exclusive" (or cancelled?) vallartapalooza. after we gave up, i drunkenly gave my dj friend a call and an impromptu dance party was set up at his radio co-host's place (it was intended to be an indie rock dance shindig, but in the end, it morphed into a funk/techno danceathon. eh. shit happens). it was a decent diversion and dave & co. had a great time, as they'd previously never been to any of these kinds of parties.
we had a kickass sunday brunch at kit kat in old town the next morning (french toast--yum!), and overall, it was a pretty relaxing weekend.

okay! congrats and have a virtual pat on the back courtesy of me--you made it to the end of this post!

2007-03-19T16:00:00.000-05:00

and now, a brief canadian music break from my mindblowingly exciting reports of life in vallarta:

i would like to introduce my new cyber crush -- rollie pemberton, aka cadence weapon. i'm a little late w/ this (cut me some slack, man--i've been living two countries away for the last while), but he had the greatest blog ever, and now he's given it up 'cause his own music career is starting to blow up. no matter. read the thing anyway if you haven't. his music taste is almost spot on and his writing style is breezy and easy. this dude is the perfect hipster/hip-hop hybrid.

2007-03-19T05:19:00.000-05:00

forget all the updates on weekends past and crap.
this is all i need to express:
nevermind this town--THIS WHOLE STATE IS TOO SMALL.

lisa and i went to de santos to pee tonight and on the way there, we ran into two of my students. that's cool. i'm used to that now. we get to de santos, enter the washroom, and there's another student. that's fine, too. whatever. after relieving our bladders, we agree to check out the rooftop just to see if anything's going on. SUCH A BAD IDEA.
half the freakin' school is up there. it's a mob scene. they spot me and start screaming like i'm in the beatles or something. i'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything--it's the damned scary truth. i try to jet it out of there like a mofo, but one of them stops me and tells me it's chloe's birthday party (her dad owns de santos) and i should wish her a feliz cumpleanos. fine. i tell them to go get her since i ain't gonna attempt to cut through the crowd, and she comes and i wish her many happy returns. she tells me that if i go to the back right corner, all her friends from the gdl are there, and they're all in their 20's, so we can hang out in that little student-free area. uh. no thanks. i kinda don't wish to hook up w/ one of my student's friends, even if they are my age (and even if they are probably attractive as anything).

cut to about 20 minutes ago--my flatmate brings a dude home. tj and i are talking about running into tons of kids downtown, blahblah, she tells me this guy looks kind of young, i tell her he better not be one of my students, she tells me he's from gdl but introduces him to me just to make sure; i confirm that i do not know him, i bid them a goodnight and joke that as long as he doesn't know chloe, it's all okay. she asks him if he was at de santos tonight--he says yes--she asks if he knows chloe--he says yes. i scream and slam my door shut and shout to nobody in particular that i need to get the hell out of here and proceed to write this entry.

i'm just going to sleep. unconsciousness is bliss.

oh, yeah--feliz cumpleanos, benito juarez, even if you've kinda been dead awhile now.

2007-03-06T20:34:00.000-06:00

i really should recount the occurrences of these past couple of months (for some reason i just wasn't in the writing mood--i'd start posts and never finish them), but for now, here are the
pics from my winter holiday in the centre of the country.
we ran into the ny couple we met in puebla again in the df. coincidentally, we were walking down the same street in the condesa--great minds think alike, no? maybe we'll meet up when i move to ny sometime in the next few years...

to get back into the swing of things, i'll just write about my last two weekends.

last week, i went to guadalajara w/ some radio dj boys to attend the mx beat music festival, which took place on the saturday. it was a pretty eventful weekend in general; on the friday, we drove out to the gdl from the university radio station at around 7 p.m. and arrived in the city a little before midnight. we met up w/ some friends who'd just come from seeing sonic youth live, and about an hour later, we found ourselves grooving out to a female dj spinning techno at la santa, the hip lounge/bar/house tj and i visited on our last trip (except this time it was still open, and it was packed w/ ppl).
however, promptly at 3 a.m., the staff proceeded to herd us out of there, and the night continued with an after-party at an abandoned building not too far away. i think i finally went to sleep at about 6 or 7 in the morning.

the fest the next day started at 3 p.m., but we didn't get there 'til around 6 in the evening. this whole mx beat deal was pretty insane: 12 hours of quality music, a pair of tickets cost 150 pesos (approx. $15 USD), beer was 15 pesos ($1.50), whiskey/tequila/rum drinks were something like 25 pesos, and for smokers, it was practically christmas--the whole thing was sponsored and run by marlboro, so they were literally giving away "limited edition soundfest series" packs of cigarettes.

getting into the fest was an incredibly eyeopening experience: there was seriously an endless row of computer registers, and before you could enter, you had to surrender your i.d. for the ppl behind the registers to scan, and then you had to give them all your contact info and answer a few survey questions. it was pretty brilliant; lure the masses w/ good music, cheap alcohol and free ciggies, and get a shitload of precious marketing info in exchange! everyone was ready and willing.

the venue was basically a huge open field, w/ one large main stage on one end, a big covered lounge area in the middle, and a huge, very deep rectangular tent for the hip-hop/electronic dj acts at the other end.

the musical lineup was pretty awesome: girl talk, spank rock, the pipettes and the whitest boy alive, as well as some mexican bands (that we missed since we arrived late) and a band from argentina called babasonicos (translation: sonic saliva...?!).

i'd have to say my fave acts were the whitest boy alive (they were the first act we caught, and i was in such a good space at the time, i could've just expired in bliss right then and there; they were tight) and girl talk. the pipettes were fun to watch and entertaining, but nothing really substantial, and spank rock kicked ass and got me to the front of the stage (the affiliated baltimore bass connection remixed peter bjorn and john's "young folks" and we all went wild), but girl talk actually got me on stage. yes--i, christina, actually danced--no, make that shook my wildly and uncharacteristically overly-enthusiastic booty--on stage with about five or six other girls to gregg gillis's ingenious mix of ass-shaking goodness which included, but was definitely not limited to, samples of no less than three different j. timberlake songs, some hot chip, and kanye's "goldigger" for good measure.

i've gotta say, i had not danced so happily to such a good selection of music (remixed version of the yeah yeah yeah's "cheated hearts"! "let's make love and listen to death from above" by CSS!) in waaaay too looong a time.
while i was doing the giddydance, some dude in a blazer came up to me and asked if i was from ny. i am loving this whole vibe i am apparently giving off; do i have a flashing sign on my forehead that says, "please ask me if i'm from ny"?!? i happily lied and said i was, and then proceeded to flippantly insult guadalajara, this guy's beloved city. i regret doing this now and feel badly about it (although i do still stand by my criticisms of the gdl). i'm sorry, gdl boy. you were nice and i was mean.

we went to an after-party at a "minimalist mansion" in some sort of gated community after the fest, and the female dj from friday's la santa turned up again, but the whole thing was pretty lowkey and we packed it in pretty early (well, i guess it was around 4 or 5 a.m., but still).

on sunday, we vegged out in front of the tv, watched tom tykwer's perfume: the story of a murderer at the cineplex (apparently, one of the guys i saw the film w/ was invited to be in the orgy scene while they were shooting in spain...i thought the movie was pretty mediocre--it was a cool story, but i don't understand why it was shot in english or why dustin hoffmann had to be in it), and watched the academy awards. (were they kind of early this year? was anybody else as bored as i was?)

monday was spent getting a chest x-ray for my australian working holiday visa (i took the day off school) and riding a bus for what felt like 6553350 hours to get back to vallarta.

this post is officially too close to getting too long (i doubt anything will ever rival that one i wrote about my finger in punta mita though). i'll continue w/ my account of this past weekend tomorrow.

p.s. i'm going to mx beat df this weekend. yes, i'm addicted.

2007-02-28T11:31:00.000-06:00

--this space will soon be filled with accounts of the past two months as well as this past weekend (mxbeat in guadalajara!)--

i have not fallen off the face of the earth!

picture tease:

2006-12-30T19:25:00.000-06:00

notes for now (will expand more later):

- spending our last night in puebla w/ the ny couple...getting drunk, laughing, talking talking talking

- seeing this distinctive couple (not the ny one) in puebla at the museo amparo three days ago and then again today at the casa de leon trotsky in the df

- spanish-speaking ppl asking me for directions to frida's house, and i am actually able to help them out!!!

- taking the metro! coyoacan! casa de frida and leon trotsky, plaza hidalgo, cafe el jarocho and a churro relleno con cajeta while sitting in the square. yum.

- the red treehouse and feeling like a local (well, as much as i can, looking so conspicuous) in the condesa

2006-12-28T18:22:00.000-06:00

a few more reasons why i like puebla:

- i passed by the radio global space again today, and they were blasting bloc party´s "this modern love" through the speakers! i immediately bounced inside and spoke to the slightly clueless volunteer guy or whoever standing there, and took a look at the playlist on the laptop...it looked like something off my ipod! josé gonzalez, beck...and stars!!! the dude played their cover of "this charming man" for me. i walked away w/ the lamest, cheesiest grin on my face. i wish i could´ve spoken to whoever´s playlist it actually was though, ´cause i´m 99% certain it wasn´t the volunteer dude´s.

- smoking survey guy approached me again today while i was sitting on a bench in the zócalo reading a book, and he got the vibe that i didn´t want to talk and was completely friendly and brief and cool with it. thank you, smoking survey guy.

- okay, so this one doesn´t have all that much to do w/ the city, but i guess we can stretch it and say i probably never would´ve met this couple if we weren´t all visiting here...last night, tj and i went for dinner at this amazing boutique hotel/restaurant that had an awesome, funky-yet-classy atmosphere, and we ended up talking to this couple from ny (the man was pakistani and the woman was originally from spain), and eventually, the conversation led to how i wanted to live in the big apple for at least a year sometime in the future. i asked the couple in which part of the city they lived, and they replied, "the east village," and i sighed in envy. then they exclaimed, almost in unison, "you´d love it there!" and "you look like you live there already!"
that couple is the coolest couple ever. if you ever want to compliment me, now you know what to say.

onto the d.f. tomorrow! we´re staying here.

2006-12-27T13:35:00.000-06:00

four or five years ago, about two seconds before john mayer became a radio/stadium phenomenon, i took an insane trip from k-town to ny via the t-dot to see him play an intimate sony employee christmas party at the village underground in greenwich village. i spent a day in the city wandering around on my own, waiting for my cousin to get off work. while riding the subway to canal street, an older couple approached me and asked for directions. isn´t being mistaken as a local the ultimate form of flattery for a traveler?
it happened again today in puebla--twice!
i was walking along the paseo bravo when a group of older men politely asked if i knew where the public washrooms were located...then a lady with her son in tow asked me the same question in the casa de la cultura...
this got me wondering--maybe these people were just so desperate to find a washroom that they didn´t even care whether or not i was a local?! or maybe they didn´t notice that i don´t exactly look like your typical mexican...
nevertheless, i couldn´t help feeling a bit guilty letting them all down with a sheepish, "no sé."

puebla is definitely giving me the city-fix i needed so badly. i wouldn´t exactly want to live here, but the buildings and the buzz and the streetwise people are precisely what i want to be surrounded by right now. this city has an interesting blend of both the colonial and modern urban feel, which is appealing to me. the weather´s a bit cold, which is perfect b/c i´m used to seeing people wearing scarves and winter jackets at this time of the year, although it´s a bit unsettling for tj (who´s lived in L.A. her whole life).

we arrived yesterday afternoon, and right away, in the zócalo, we found a mindblowingly-simple-yet-brilliant art exhibit called el museo peatonal / the passerby museum (there´s also a short description in the first paragraph of this review); i was almost giddy, and felt like we´d found the holy grail--culture!!!
just a few steps away was another funky-looking exhibit called radio global.
now here´s something random--across the way from radio global was a little shop teeming with newspapers and magazines...i felt compelled to browse (as i always do when i see these things), and at the very top of a magazine rack, i spotted the february 26, 2006 issue of the ny times magazine--the one that features the toronto music scene and broken social scene in particular. what the heck?! i bought it for 15 pesos (the man who sold it to me probably thought i was nuts), and proceeded to read it in the lobby of my hotel. i´d read the article before, as it was posted on stillepost (is that thing still alive?) even before it was published, but there´s something about the tactile and reading...in any event, it made me freaking miss toronto like crazy (yeahyeah, you cynical readers out there are all like, "bss and blocks and all that junk is so ten centuries ago," but i don´t care!)...i missed t.o. and so i decided to go out for a walk in my stand-in city instead. (actually, there are moments where i feel i could be in ny when walking in the zócalo here...)

i strolled around aimlessly (but carefully) for about 30 mins., marvelling at the well-lit, imposing cathedral (that can be found on the 500-peso bill), and just as i was about to head back to the hotel, two guys approached me and asked if i wanted to do a survey on smoking. they looked pretty earnest (and had forms to fill out and everything), so i said sure, but then they figured that i probably didn´t speak spanish all that well (which i don´t--i really do understand a lot more than i can say). i didn´t end up taking the survey, but we did have a nice little conversation about learning languages (one of the guys was learning english and he was actually better than he thought he was; he had the opposite problem of mine--he could say more than he could understand), and that short, typically urban, random encounter was all i needed to cheer up and be content with where i was.

[p.s. i want to put up some photos of my trip so far, but this computer isn´t registering my usb key, so i guess it´ll have to wait.]

2006-12-26T13:08:00.000-06:00

christmas in cuernavaca with christina

notes on cuernavaca:

we mainly chose to come to this place b/c we thought the heading ¨christmas in cuernavaca w/ christina¨ sounded really good.
unfortunately, this city is a tad boring.
we had a super-impressive dinner on our first day here, and an unbelievably pathetic night out afterwards (there are a couple of nice spots to have a drink in this town, but the music is absolutely fucking atrocious).
i spent the next day (christmas eve) wandering around the whole downtown alone, and found great peace and solitude in the grounds of a gorgeous 16th-century cathedral...a fitting setting for the season, even if i´m not really catholic anymore. there were moments of absolute completeness and pure satisfaction there; i sat in a courtyard listening to my ipod and just contemplated life for a while...i know it´s weird for some to comprehend, but i really do love just hanging out with myself sometimes--not all the time--but occasionally, it can be really, really nice to be alone.

cuernavaca is a city that was probably thoroughly charming around 10 years ago, but now it just holds pockets of charm and beauty in certain areas. pretty and sometimes even beautiful structures and homes can be found right next to run-down, unattractive shops and buildings in the historical centre. the juxtaposition can be a bit unsettling, but maybe some find this odd mishmash appealing?
another baffling thing--i´ve passed by vendors in different parts of town trying to sell heaps of electrical cords and plugs, piles upon piles of what i assumed to be car wires and other random parts, and very used porcelain dolls that look like they could star in their own horror movies ... who buys this stuff?!
i walked around everywhere...i even walked to the edges of what appeared to be the suburbs of the city and it all looked very pleasant, if you like that sheltered, two-kids-and-a-nice-family-sized-car (in addition to lots of money and a gated house) kinda life.

technically, however, we spent the majority of christmas day in taxco ("tacos & tostadas w/ tj in taxco"), quite a cute, charismatic town that used to be huge in silver mining. it was all winding streets going uphill and downhill and colonial quaintness. we even rode a swiss cable car over to a secluded hotel up on a mountaintop, which was not exactly what we were expecting to do on a christmas day in mexico...
there was a very photogenic church in the busy zocalo (main square), which was the focus of all the rooftop restaurants in the area.
we saved our appetites for a nice dinner at a swanky spot back in cuernavaca though. (i´ve eaten so much on this trip...i´d be a total chubby pudge-face by now if it weren´t for all the walking i´ve been doing!)
overall, it was a very lovely, lowkey christmas.

next stops: puebla, and then finally the d.f.!

2006-12-17T16:02:00.000-06:00

i'm so tired.
tired tiiired tiiirrred.
yet i'm not sleeping.

there's a lot to say, but i'm too *ahem* tired to type it all out. it's all been a jumble of people, parties, work and utter boredom. i think i need wednesday to come and a chilly holiday in the centre of this country to refresh myself.

happy holidays, all three of you reading this!
here's to 2007.

2006-12-08T19:45:00.000-06:00

a late report on last weekend's long weekend before this weekend officially begins:

i attended 3 films for the pv film fest; little miss sunshine (i know, i know--it was already out in theatres during the summer in canada and it's most likely available on dvd by now--nevertheless, i loved it and i loved the soundtrack); en el hoyo (in the pit), which was cool--it was a documentary about construction workers building a freeway in mexico city, and it was screened for free outdoors at los arcos, the arches on the malecon...they should have free screenings there every weekend...it was an awesome idea; the last film i saw at the fest was a documentary on leonard cohen that kind of made me all misty-eyed about cdn musicians...it was well made; a concert where the likes of the wainwrights (rufus, martha, their mother and aunt), nick cave, beth orton and jarvis cocker singing interpretations of cohen's songs was interspersed w/ interviews w/ the artists as well as cohen himself. at the very end, cohen sang "tower of song" w/ U2 as his backing band. pretty satisfying. the man is a genuine poet w/ a well-timed sense of humour, which in my opinion is one of the best combinations a writer could possibly have.

i still remember when i took that "intro to english lit" course in first year and one of the girls in my class announced that she was leonard cohen's niece while we were studying his song, "suzanne." my prof's eyes almost popped out of his head and he just about kow-towed before her. it was pretty hilarious.

what else...
on thursday, tj, lisa and i attended this avant garde-ish event called intimidad (intimacy)...it was a "sound art" thing where we were blindfolded and led to couches up on the roof of de santos where we sat and listened to different soundscapes (a girl screaming and crying, an underwater "captain nemo"-ish scene, the requisite sex sounds, jungle noise, etc, etc.) for about 30 mins.
my dj friend made some music for it and gave us invitations (that we didn't really need since the waitstaff there totally recognizes us by now and just let us through). the whole night in general was a good diversion--something a little different from the usual mundane nightlife motions we tend to go through.

friday was spent as a zombie recovering from the night before, having the consistently-good 2 p.m. brunch at kit kat in old town, and sleeping sleeping sleeping.

lisa and i spent saturday night checking out the two new resto-lounges in town while everyone else went to yelapa. our conclusions: azul is perfect for decent sushi (available 'til 4 a.m.!) that is consumed on a rooftop with a gorgeous view...the design of that place is quite impressive--lots of nice little details.
z-tai is a breath of fresh air when it comes to options directly on the malecon...we met the manager as well as the chef that night and everybody seemed very friendly and accommodating.
the music at both venues could be improved (some of it was random as anything--new order's "blue monday" followed immediately afterwards by REM's "losing my religion"? weird!), but at least now we have a couple of options other than freakin' de santos.

we have a week and a half left before christmas holidays begin...i think tj and i are gonna travel to places like cuernavaca, puebla and finally mexico city...back to the centre of this country!
it's gonna be my first christmas and new year's away from home. without snow. it's pretty trippy staring at palm trees here, fully knowing that it's december.

2006-11-27T22:08:00.000-06:00

dear apple macintosh computers and my ibook G4 in particular,

guess what? you have made my life a living hell. as much as i think your laptops are pretty and innovative, they keep breaking down on me and i don't think i can take much more of it. at this particular moment in time, i cannot even turn you on. i've invested a lot of time, effort and $$$ into you (and so have my friends), and now you've got all 80 gigs of my shit locked up inside and i've resorted to using my housemate's equally crappy dell to write this to you.

in short, i totally hate you.

you suck,
christina

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
long weekend #1:

lisa and i stay overnight in sayulita for two nights. we have great meals, meet some interesting characters and even manage some dancing on the beach. i buy two new bikinis that i can't imagine myself wearing anytime in the near future (which is a problem, since it is definitely time to retire my mom's suit from the '60s). overall, we get to see a different side of the town that we usually don't see during daytrips there.

long weekend #2:

tj, lisa and i get a ride from dave to guadalajara (a four to five-hour drive, sans traffic), the capital of the state of jalisco, in his tie-mobile.
we head out directly after our half-day of school on thursday (it was a 2.5 day workweek), which featured a surprisingly impressive talent show that consisted of such quality acts as mariano (math), jeff (science), stephan (substitute) and antonio (principal) playing guitar while dave sang "stuck in the middle with you," that song from the reservoir dogs soundtrack. i was the token tambourine/triangle girl. according to some, i was an essential part of the act. i'd like to think so, considering i worked out my part about 10 minutes before the show began. i'm pretty sure i've attended enough indie rock shows to do a pretty decent rockstar imitation though.

the guad, or the gdl, as i like to refer to it, was a good getaway. i was last there for a school-related workshop, so i really didn't get to experience much that time, save the centro historico and a bullfighter-obsessed bar called la maestranza. this time around, we hit the hip spots based on recommendations from friends.
the meals were yummy and their atmospheres were of the trendy sort--we patroned a thai fusion spot called i latina in a warehouse, a quaint and budget-friendly french/european-inspired deli named boca 21, as well as la moresca, a swanky italian eatery/lounge where there were no actual windows on the lower level and everyone wore a coat while they ate (it was CHILLY in the city at night).
we also checked out a few nifty bars, namely a place called red pub that has a whole london, uk theme; from the outside, it looks like your average british-style pub (it could be any one of the firkins found in T.O.), but once you get inside, there's a little alleyway that leads out to an open-air back patio that looks like a movie studio lot set up to play london. there's a fake harrods storefront amongst others, streetlamps, and washrooms that look like red telephone booths. the beer offerings are german and belgian imports as well as stuff on tap from local independent microbreweries. the night we were there, the music was a mix of top-40 britpop and '90s alternative grunge, and maan, was it crowded!
before we left, i ran into some guys from sayulita who recognized me from the previous weekend, and i got to try/mooch some of the local beer, called minerva. it was good stuff! i walked out w/ a half-pint glass.
another bar we got to take a peek at was la santa, which was actually a converted house decked out in lights. unfortunately, by the time we got there they were closing, but the nice manager guy let us take a look around, and the place looked like a hipster's haven.

the weird thing we discovered about gdl nightlife though is that there really aren't very many great places to go dancing. and boy, did we try (ultimately unsuccessfully) to find a decent place! the dude at la santa told us that, basically, tapatíos (gdl natives) like to sit and drink and talk. siigh. the ironic thing is that they all seem to have such great shoes! truly--i was staring at everyone's feet all weekend, and i loved everyone's shoes. i loved 'em so much that i went temporarily insane and completely blew my last paycheque on five pairs for myself. i've been living off about 150 pesos (approx. $15 US) for the past week (i'm now down to my last 25), but my feet sure do look cute.

well, i also spent a good chunk of dough on books from the feria internacional del libro de guadalajara (FIL). we honed in on the few english stalls there, and i bought:
truman capote's breakfast at tiffany's (loving it)
edwin abbott's flatland ("a romance of many dimensions"...gooo, geometry!)
james joyce's a portrait of the artist as a young man
and
vol. 2 of frank miller's sin city (a student lent me vol. 1 last year)

despite the cool places we saw, i still think mexico's 2nd largest city is more like a humongous suburb. it takes a great deal of effort to get anywhere since everything is so spread out, and therefore you really need to know where you want to go and be sure that you actually want to go there, since there is probably nothing else to do in the area if you change your mind. i really prefer just going to a neighborhood or certain section of a city and having a whole bunch of good hangout options nearby.

enough complaining. it was a good getaway. we have one last long weekend this friday before christmas break, and i think i'm gonna spend it in a dark theatre eating popcorn and nachos at the (kinda dismal) pv film fest.

2006-11-06T15:44:00.000-06:00

boy, do i love four-day weekends.
wednesday felt like friday, thursday felt like friday, friday felt like saturday, saturday felt like sunday...and sunday...felt like sort-of sunday.
so my parents arrived on friday, and i spent the day orienting them to the town and attempting to wear them out. we took a tour of my jungle of an apartment complex, a stroll down the malecon, a nice dinner all the way up at barcelona tapas, and then to end the night (for them, anyway), a salsa dancing class at the local salsa club.
after i dropped them off at their hotel, my night began. i felt like i was leading a double life or something. dutiful daughter by day, carefree partygirl by night. well, once or twice a week, anyway.

i recently met this guy who works at the university radio station here (the site doesn't have much on it right now). him and his friend co-host a program that lisa's been listening to for the past year (she didn't make the connection until a couple of weeks ago), and him and his roommate also make their own music with a pretty impressive studio setup in their apartment.
anyway, the radio station was celebrating its fifth anniversary on friday, and there were all these events planned, including a dj set by this friend of mine at de santos at night. i have never seen the place so packed before--we could barely maneuver our way around on the roof, which was where he was playing. the usual surfing videos they play up there were replaced with visuals made specially for his act (called cubenx--he plays techno-ish IDM...although the stuff he does w/ his roommate is more like electronic pop), and the place was packed w/ hipster-like folk (where the hell did they all come from and where do they usually hide?!) drinking the free booze available.
lisa and i met a ton of people (mostly guys hitting on us...and mostly hitting on lisa...but interesting people nonetheless), ran into a few familiar faces (school-related, mostly), and i mooched drinks off people offering them. i swear at one point i had some crazy vodka-tequila combo shot. i had to put down the scotch after that one.
frenetic dancing ensued--with some ppl even up on the sofas. the klepto in me that is usually kept under wraps until alcohol coaxes it out (hellooo bubba's poutine in k-town) was sooo tempted to steal the radio t-shirt off a dude, the stylin' pinstripey, dresspant-ish cutoffs off a girl, and the laptop off my dj friend (he has thousands of albums on that thing--no joke). alas, i managed to keep the urges contained. restraint!

the moon has been absolutely gorgeous these past few days, too.
i also saw a shooting star (the first real one i've ever seen in my life!) on saturday, while coming back from a dinner/show boat cruise thing with my parents.

last night, my parents met dave, lisa, and tj over the greatest dinner ever at a student of mine's impressive restaurant/home overlooking the town. it wasn't as embarrassing as i'd expected, which is saying a lot! i actually think my mom and dad are enjoying themselves so far...i'm taking the day off tomorrow just to wander around town w/ them. i'll introduce them to my students and co-workers on thursday, the day before they head back up to the cold. they've been sweating buckets here since they arrived, which is funny b/c they're originally from a place that practically has the same climate. it's pretty interesting to note how similar hk and the pv actually are--the same humidity, the same surroundings (pacific ocean, mountains...i guess the hk is a little more urban), even some of the food and traditions are alike (tamales and the day of the dead both sort of have their chinese equivalents).

we have two more long weekends this month--it's insane! i want to get some travelling in, dammit!

2006-11-02T19:18:00.000-06:00

"queremos halloween!" / dia de los muertos

so what have i done with my day of the dead so far? lounge in my room all day, downloading songs and ignoring the rest of the quarter exams i have to mark. we have a 4-day long weekend this year, which works out well for me since my parents are coming for a week starting tomorrow. let's hope it's a good visit.

on hallowe'en night, tj, her friend from seattle, and i dressed up as a trio of felines (tj--leopard, tj's friend--panther, me--black housecat) and hit the malecon for a few hours before they left to catch the bus for their trip to patscuaro, michoacan. we brought candy to hand out, and were surrounded by a mob of children--we almost got knocked over at one point. the candy was gone in about two minutes. we didn't even have to move.
a camera crew from televisa stopped us for an interview, and we proceeded to converse in "meows" and catspeak. random tourists took our picture. it was all really silly, but memorable, i guess.

yesterday, a student gave me a pair of tickets for a radio concert extravaganza at the local bullring, so lisa and i went to check it out. turns out it was the high school event of the year; mexican teenyboppers everywhere!!! my students, waving at me and screaming my name, from every direction! the acts made us want to gouge our eyes out, so we left early. all was redeemed by a nice italian dinner downtown afterwards.

tomorrow, i plan on taking my parents salsa dancing. does life get any more surreal?!

2006-10-29T10:59:00.000-06:00

i hate mispellings (people who know i was a copy editor for the queen's journal know this), but i'll leave the one in the post below as a memory of feeling so euphoric last night that i didn't even notice.

to elaborate on my weekend:

the school had its annual hallowe'en carnival on friday night. it's always a huge production; horserides around the track, a brincoline (a huge trampoline), games, food stalls, a disco, two haunted houses created by the grade sixes and the seniors. i had a lot of fun, even when i was "on duty." my costume this year was a little more planned out than last year's (i only found out four hours beforehand that i had to dress up last year, so all i could come up with was "hipster"--jeans, arcade fire t-shirt, blazer w/ little band pin, trucker hat, ipod), although the effort was pretty minimal. i bought a box of froot loops, stabbed it a bit with a butter knife, painted some white out around the stab wounds (milk), and stabbed a few empty cereal boxes and put them in a garbage bag (past victims). done. serial/cereal killer. apparently, it works in spanish, too--asesino serial/cereal.
a group of us went out afterwards, but retired pretty early. (early being around 2:30 a.m.)

during the day on saturday, i was in a funk-ish mood (not funky-cool--funk-funk). this guy i was trying to be friends with did a very inconsiderate thing, and it really irked me. i did get a good chunk of quarter-exam marking finished as a result, though! anyway, i needed to redeem my day, so dave and mike took me out dancing. all i wanted was to dance. i didn't want to get hit on by slimy guys, and i didn't want to see that "friend." so we avoided de santos and went to the zoo instead. the zoo is a dance club/bar on the malecon known for its "animal cage" (paris hilton danced in it) that plays r&b/hip-hop 'til about 3 in the morning, and then switches to techno/house 'til the sun rises. your average lowest common denominator resort town dance spot.
i loved it last night.
this is probably because i had a rum and coke, two beers, a tequila shot, and two free margaritas (some girls kept giving me and mike coupons). anyway, we danced our asses off, and i felt infinitely better. then a surprisingly attractive guy (obviously just visiting from mexico city) grabbed me to dance, and he was actually a pretty great dancer. we somehow managed to salsa/swing/undefinable-dance-genre to a bevy of generic club tunes such as "hips don't lie," "hey ya!" and a dance version of "sweet child of mine." i felt like we'd both been watching a little too much so you think you can dance? and dancing with the stars. i'm sure i'm exaggerating times a million here, but i'm convinced i was possessed by the dancing devil last night. i will try to confirm this with dave and mike today, just to make sure i didn't hallucinate it all.
anyway, it all had to come to an end eventually. i started to spot students, so it was time to head home (by then it was around 3 a.m., post-daylight saving time change, so it would've been 4 a.m. prior to that).
santiago and i agreed that if he's ever in the pv and at the zoo again, we will have to dance. i'll likely never see him again, but that moment was perfect; i'll never have to know him enough to find things to dislike--except for the fact that he didn't immediately propose marriage after that dance performance of mine!

2006-10-29T03:19:00.000-06:00

ahh, santiago.
my unrequited love.
we didn't kiss,
we didn't fuck,
but boy,
did we dance.
dance dance dance
you mexico city boys will be the end of me!

(yes, i've had a tad too much too drink.)

2006-10-09T19:56:00.000-05:00

i now refer you to another teacher's blog for a post about a party we threw this weekend. my friend dave came up with the idea, my flatmate tj put it all into motion, the teachers who live in this complex made it happen...
and i was the devil.
part one
part two

p.s. wow, now that i think about it, we didn't really have any actual reason for throwing the thing, but it was thanksgiving weekend! can we use that as an after-excuse?

p.p.s. i wish you all could've been there.

2006-09-24T20:30:00.000-05:00

evidence #234135156 that this town is just waaay too small:

the semi-psycho-seemingly-wealthy dude from last night? ended up with my flatmate a few hrs after we left him. he was over at our place this morning (luckily, i didn't come out of my room and actually see him...that would've been awkward, as we told him we had an "engagement" to attend this morning). tj told me about him later and we pieced it all together.
lisa and i almost coughed up a lung laughing.

2006-09-24T05:24:00.000-05:00

so it's almost 6 a.m. and i'm just getting in from another night on the town in vallarta. i don't know why i'm always surprised it turns out this way, but let's just say it was once again a bizarre and slightly frustrating experience. i'm too tired to type out the whole tedious story now, so here's the gist of it:

- it was (subtly) married-man night at de santos.
translation: men from guadalajara who openly admitted they are married (interestingly enough, only one out of about six that we spoke to was wearing a wedding ring), some even with FIVE kids, blatantly hit on us ("us" being me and my fellow asian-in-crime lisa) and actually believed they had a chance

-it was also seemingly-wealthy-yet-sadly-psycho guy night at de santos.
meaning? an obviously plastered dude who is apparently taking a two-year "sabbatical" from working, yet can still afford to drive a beemer, told us barely-coherent stories about doing blow and being wrongly-accused of terrorist involvement or something in canada. he gave us his number and implored us to call him as he drove away in the bmw

last weekend at de santos, we met two pretty cool guys who manage the local college radio station here and had pretty decent conversations with them. unfortunately, it turned out they were only willing to interact with us if there was some chance of romance, which we weren't really feeling. these guys would've been awesome hang-out buddies and fun peeps with whom to shoot the shit. but no. friendship just wasn't in the cards.

is it so hard to find some people of the opposite sex who don't give off a strong stench of desperation and utter psychotic-ness? apparently, the answer is yes.

obviously, we need to stop frequenting de santos as much as we do, but there really aren't very many other options, and those slim options are truly no better, and very possibly not even as good.

the solution? weekend roadtrips and cheap flights to mexican cities.

however--
for now?
to bed!

2006-09-13T00:56:00.000-05:00

pot pourri of potentially useless tidbits:

suddenly, a significant number of bands are putting mexico on their list of tour dates; bloc party, the strokes, pretty girls make graves and franz ferdinand have already made their rounds in the past month or so, and the new pornographers and the yeah yeah yeahs will be arriving soon. they're all playing the big cities, like the df, guadalajara and monterrey, and i've considered making the trek to catch one of the shows, but so far, i've let them pass on through. it'd be nice to see any of these bands, not really just because i'd enjoy the novelty of attending a concert in mexico, but because i've never seen any of these acts before. i guess i haven't been totallly gung-ho about going for certain though, since i'm not really obsessively into any of 'em--i just wouldn't mind seeing 'em live.
i'm realizing that what i'd really prefer to do is catch a show by a kickass mexican indie band. last year, i caught one show here in pv by a supposedly popular mexican rock band called qbo (at least i think that's their name) that was incredibly mediocre. i also went to a free show by another mexican band (live electronica--kind of like that french band rinocerose) called telefunka that was a bit more impressive (they performed outdoors for a music festival by the arches downtown). tj and i also "discovered" a band in san miguel de allende during our spring break trip that we may try to bring to vallarta; they're called pilaseca (banal piece of trivia: the keyboardist kind of hit on me) and they put on a pretty satisfying set. they have a popular enough sound to draw a good crowd.
anyway, i haven't witnessed a really mindblowing gig here yet, and i get the feeling i won't be witnessing it in pv anytime soon, so i'm willing to travel out to the cities to have that experience. i think i'm gonna place my bets on a band called chikita violenta (they seem to be big broken social scene fans), who are playing w/ the new pornographers in the df this thursday. unfortunately, i have school. it's also mexican independence day on friday and i have an evening boat cruise to attend.
some other time, i hope. dave and i are thinking of just going to azteca airlines and finding out which weekend has the cheapest return flights to the cities and plan a small trip based on that. (i also want to attend a professionalfutbol match.)

holy crap, that sure was a lot of blabber about music.

not much is happening on my end lately. all there is to do here is eat (or go to the beach, but mainly, i think it's eat). have i said that before? i spend the majority of my money on food. eating occupies such a big chunk of my life here, and as proof of this, i will actually admit that i keep up lists of restaurants and cafes that i have yet to try in addition to lists of favourite places that i've patroned. i'm currently on v.3 of the "restaurants to try" list (three establishments have been crossed off so far, with about 10 more to go--vallarta really is a culinary hub--there are literally hundreds of eateries here, not to mention taco stands!) and i'm pretty proud of my "top 10 places to dine" list so far. perhaps i will elaborate on these lists in a future post. right now, i'm feeling much too tired and lazy (i've been taking a nap every day after school lately, just like an old geezer).

so yeah, besides the good eats, i'm pretty bored w/ the pv right now. the nightlife here is unbelievably pathetic and frustrating; we frequent the same places every weekend, and this would be acceptable if the places were actually decent hangouts, but they're not--they're actually kinda slimy and touristy or pricey and slightly pretentious. there isn't a sneaky dee's or a red/green room, ya know? nor a cinematheque, nor a bubble tea house (okay, so the bubble tea i can live without).

i've figured that my honeymoon period w/ this town is now over. i still like the school and the kids that i work with and the ppl i've met, but they're all that make staying in this place bearable. the place itself has no real connection with me. yes, it can be extremely beautiful, but at its heart, i think this town is pretty shallow. or maybe hollow? or both. it takes some time staying here to realize this. i think the folks who've been living here for 20+ years see a different vallarta; maybe their perceptions of this place aren't the same b/c they knew this town before it changed--which it definitely has, even in the past few years. but even some of these ppl are realizing the current vallarta is not what they want, and a few of them have long-term plans to leave.

i'd love to see more of this country, b/c i know it has more to offer than just its resort towns. i caught a glimpse of that "more" during spring break, and i want to see as much as possible before i head somewhere else. i just need to figure out how i'm going to jam in all the travel this year!

2006-09-04T00:10:00.000-05:00

back to school!
(it actually began over a week ago, but who's counting?)

what i did during my summer holidays (tj came up w/ a great idea--kids should be assigned to write about what they didn't do for their summer vacations...that would be so much more interesting--i, however, will now be boring):

- went to the jose gonzalez/juana molina/psapp show at trinity-st. paul's (the acoustics were perfect!) the day after i arrived home
- helped throw a bachelorette shower & party for charmaine (many compromising pictures were taken of her w/ random dudes in the club--not that my brother got worked up about them anyway)
- bridesmaid duties at my brother's marathon of a wedding (had to give a dinner speech, too--worst thing ever--the day itself was alright though)
- attended various dinners and family gatherings (stocked up on my memory of chinese food for the next year)
- spent a fortune getting my ibook fixed (wesley & his dad saved me a ton though!), buying a new harddrive and battery for it as well as a new ipod--had to get a UPS (uninterruptible power supply); we think the flow of electricity is not of great quality down here, and that may be what was messing up all my apple products
- hung out w/ friends, had lots of dinners downtown (mostly sushi sans philly cream cheese!) and bubble teas
- took a roadtrip to chicago w/ some friends and witnessed the last day of lollapalooza in grant park (i love this city and broken social scene played their greatest set ever...also caught ben kweller, the shins, of montreal, andrew bird and wilco)

so now i'm back in the land of sun and psycho-rain, and it's been an easy transition so far; i missed the kids and i'm really liking the new kids, and maybe it's just b/c it's the start of the year, but the teaching part is seemingly settling in as well.

as for the hurricane, john didn't really hit vallarta after all. we had hurricane warnings on wednesday and eventually they cancelled school for thursday, so we were all psyched up for this thing to land (all the shops on the malecon had taped x's on their windows), but in the end, it didn't. dave and i slept over at jenny-the-librarian's house to keep her and her dog "wolfie" company in boca de tomatlan, which probably would've been hit quite hard if john had struck here, but all we experienced were a few dribbles of raindrops. i've seen tons of crazier thunderstorms than what we got on thursday.
yes, we must sound insane for being slightly disappointed that vallarta avoided a freakin' hurricane, but we'd gotten ourselves so worked up over it that it felt like we'd developed all that adrenaline for naught.
my students told me stories about the tailend of kenna hitting pv a few years ago, and how nobody really took the warning seriously b/c they didn't believe that a hurricane could ever strike here (the sierra madres and the shape of the bay protect this area pretty well). the whole malecon was destroyed and the shops' windows shattered and there was a ton of looting. i guess this time they decided to take precautions just in case.
i hope cabo san lucas is okay.

an exciting prospect that dave came up w/ today:
taking his AP art class on a trip to mexico city! the df is apparently the hip, new contemporary art capital of the world (according to three articles i've read so far), and then there's also the diego rivera-frida kahlo connection. i want to be the second chaperone!! we could go visit the blue house (frida kahlo museum) in coyoacan and the house kahlo and rivera shared in san angel (i just uploaded the pics i took to flickr -- i'm still uploading pics from my spring break trip!)...and the modern art museum in chapultepec park, and rivera's murals in the palacio de bellas artes...excited!!!
well, excited, if we get permission to go...and i doubt we'll get permission to go if these lopez obrador protests keep taking place all over the city...i really hope some kind of resolution is found soon. i was nervous about passing through the airport in the df heading back here, but everything turned out fine, so who knows?
another good destination for that AP class would be oaxaca. unfortunately, they have protests (that seem to be taking on a more violent nature) of their own going on. sigh.
mexico sure has a lot of stuff going on all over the place lately.

[addendum: the ny times article on mexico city's contemporary art scene]

2006-08-30T17:45:00.000-05:00

bring on hurricane john!!!
(more later.)

2006-06-21T13:45:00.000-05:00

it's over!
my first school year here, that is. it all flew by pretty quickly. i remember e-mailing the staff here asking them for advice while travelling through europe last summer, wondering if i should take the job or not--it doesn't seem like it was that long ago, but i guess i've been working amongst the people i was corresponding with then for almost a year now.

the graduation ceremony is on friday, and at night there is a sort-of gala dinner & dance for the seniors and their families. other than that, my duties here are finished until mid-august! it feels good to be free!

to quickly (and lazily) sum up my experiences here so far in a list:
1) witnessed a pregnant-looking woman fall out the back of a pickup truck on the road to mismaloya
2) had two boats chop off the tip of my ring finger with ensuing blood fest in punta de mita
3) caught pink eye, most likely from a student
4) amassed more mosquito bites than i ever have in the history of my life (yet, miraculously, have not caught dengue yet...a few others have in the past few weeks)
5) enjoyed the beaches of sayulita, yelapa, rincon de guayabitos (dave and i sped down the beach on a four-wheeler and were pursued by the cops!) and barra de navidad (in addition to the ones in vallarta)
6) went up a volcano near colima
7) travelled to the beautiful colonial towns of guanajuato, san miguel de allende and queretaro for spring break, as well as the ever-controversial and cosmopolitan mexico city (i've visited six of the 31 states, plus the federal district, so far)
8) ate my head off in the restaurants and at the taco stands here (food is all i spend my pesos on)
9) hung out with a bunch of crazy people who have more than their fair share of personality
10) attempted to become fluent in spanish (haven't exactly succeeded yet...i can understand quite a bit, but my accent is a total trainwreck)

i head home on sunday, and i'm looking forward to spending a summer in a bonafide metropolitan city. perhaps i'll be recharged and ready to face the rainy season here in vallarta again by the time i return for round two of my adventures in mexico.

2006-06-02T16:18:00.000-05:00

may was a blur of long weekends, my brother coming to visit (he adopted a puppy here!), teaching, marking and all the little dramas that occur in ppl's lives when you've hung around them for long enough.

i've been horrible about keeping up w/ e-mails (i swear i'll respond eventually--definitely when i've finished grading the everests of tests i've accumulated this week), but hopefully i'll be able to catch up w/ you all when i head back for summer break at the end of this month. i have a feeling i'll be pretty busy even back in canada, what w/ my brother's wedding, attempting to prepare for new zealand and/or australia in 2007-2008, and hopefully working on improving my curriculum for next year (i'm teaching AP calculus, and i'm scared shitless). regardless, we need to catch up.

also in my summer plans:
i want to do a roadtrip to chicago for either the pitchforkmedia music fest at the end of july or lollapalooza at the start of august (or maybe even both?)...is anybody up for it??? travelling to a cool city, listening to awesome music, and having me as company -- how can you refuse? ;)

2006-04-30T12:18:00.000-05:00

as succintly as i can, the rest of my spring break trip:

san miguel de allende grew on me after a while. by first impressions, i liked guanajuato more, but i started to see a different side to san miguel three days into hanging around there. i met a bullfighter. seriously. half of our colonial city group left, and the remaining two of us visited queretaro, which has impressive aqueducts (i can upload some more pics on flickr when the month ends) and a slightly-bizarre, yet admittedly entertaining easter tradition of hanging "judas" dolls in one of the town squares and blowing them up with firecrackers (i have video to prove it). we were told the papier-mache dolls are made to resemble mexican political figures.
by the start of the second week, my friend and i split in two directions, one heading to guadalajara, the other to el d.f. (distrito federal), one of the world's most populous cities (i'm pretty sure its population is two-thirds the pop. of canada).

mexico city was everything i'd hoped it'd be.
i saw everything i'd wanted to see: the castle and museum of history in the humongous chapultepec park; the zocalo (the ruins of the aztec templo mayor) and the historical centre of the city; the hip and pseudo-bohemian, yuppy ("fresa") neighborhood of condesa; coyoacan and san angel--important neighborhoods in the lives of frida kahlo and diego rivera (i visited the house they had made in san angel for their marriage; it's actually a cool, architecturally modern-looking two houses joined by a bridge...i also visited the house where diego rivera was born in guanajuato); the impressive ballet folklorico at the grandiose palacio de bellas artes (even the super-macho phys. ed. teacher loved it!); the aztec pyramids in teotihuacan (climbed both "the sun" and "the moon"); a personally guided, thoughtfully-condensed tour of the amazing anthropological museum (also in chapultepec park); an amble through the ritzy shopping street in polanco, where the chanel and louis vuitton shops all had a black-sunglasses-and-suit security guard standing at the door; and finally, a ride on the gondola-like trajineras on the floating gardens of xochimilco.
unfortunately, the walkmen concert at the hard rock cafe was cancelled. that would've topped off a nearly-perfect trip, but i really can't complain too much.

i met up with alex and jen for the mexico city week of my trip, and we stayed at my department head's mother's house (her american mother has lived there for around 50 years and my dept. head was born there). holy crap, was staying there an exercise in being pampered! there were cooks and maids and drivers and gated driveways. we were obviously in a very nice part of town, and we were certainly experiencing the privileged, safe side of life in the city. i guess it was a welcoming, if not a little sheltered, introduction to the place that has acquired such a good reputation for being extremely dangerous.

anyway, there were many times where i was tempted to defect and just not return to vallarta. i'm discovering more and more that i'm most likely a city girl. i like the culture and vibe of the metropolis. for what it's worth though, i will say that when i flew back to p.v. on my birthday, it was nice to feel the humid air (holy shit, is it dry and unbelievably polluted in the centre of this country!) and small-town familiarity of the town.
it's mindboggling to think that i've been living here for about 10 months now. i've got another year to go (although it's unbelievable how this school year is practically over already), and a heck of a lot more of mexico to explore.

2006-04-14T16:53:00.000-05:00

today has mostly been a day of lazing around. i've been hanging out in a san miguel internet cafe uploading some of my pictures and a video:

my one uploaded photo of barra de navidad

spring break travels
(sorry, i can't figure out why the "rotate" button for the vertically-taken photos isn't working...i'll fix it eventually)

this is a short video of the ballet folklorico performance we watched in guanajuato (i hope it works)--it was pretty cool.

enjoy!

2006-04-12T23:33:00.000-05:00

greetings from san miguel de allende!

we just spent 4 days in guanajuato, and i loved it there. a little small, but chockful of cafes, irresistible mercados, and colorful spanish colonial-style buildings. hopefully, i will get my ibook figured out and post some pictures sometime soon.

i'm going to spend the second week of spring break in mexico city, and i may even catch a concert (the walkmen) on the eve of my birthday!

i really should elaborate further on these travels when i have more time.

2006-03-31T14:47:00.000-06:00

my ibook has crapped out on me. :( seriously. all it does when i turn it on now is show a gray screen! i can't believe i've lost all the junk i had on it. i had almost a straight week's worth of songs on my itunes.

i have a few trips to write about, so i will have to hunker myself down in front of a staff computer at school sometime and just churn it all out. (mental note: yelapa trip, barra de navidad/colima trip, and most likely spring break trip, too)
i should probably attempt to upload the photos i've taken, too.

ugh.

one more week 'til spring break!

2006-02-06T17:07:00.000-06:00

this weekend i finally went back to punta de mita, the spot where i lost my fingertip about five months ago. it was actually kind of traumatic to walk down to where all the little boats were docked again; i definitely made sure not to put my hands anywhere near anything resembling the side of a boat this time.

we went snorkeling, saw a humpback whale (it's prime whale-watching time now) and fishies (they swam all around us 'cause our guide threw animal crackers out to them), dave and his friend dove off rocky cliffs into the ocean, and we just plain hung out on the coral-sand beach on one of the islands. it was niiice. definitely an emotional contrast to my last visit there. our guide also found me a small friend--pictures here.

what else...oh, some of you may have heard me rambling about how dave and i wanted to find a venue that would let us spin our indie tunes once a week. vallarta is seriously lacking a place that plays music other than top-40 r&b/hip-hop interspersed w/ throbbingly repetitive techno beats, and we miss listening to stuff other than that. one of our students' fathers owns a bar on the malecon, and he said we could pick any day we want to dj, other than friday or saturday. i'm really looking fwd to this! we're thinking of doing it on a wednesday or thurs, and calling it "headphone junkies." it'll be an alternative to the meatmarket-y dance clubs in the area for the throngs of tourists currently swarming the town, in case they ever get sick of the stereotypical resort town experience. but even if only our friends show up, i still think it'll be awesome. it'll certainly be a heck of a lot more fun than just me and dave blasting "left of center" from his sirius satellite while driving around in his car. i'll keep y'all posted.

2006-02-01T23:35:00.000-06:00

more musings later (i'm currently stressing myself out w/ unmarked exams and uncalculated final grades) -- for now, pictures from my new digital camera:

one corner of my room here. note pile of clothes strewn in an unruly fashion on top of bookshelf.

the wall to the left of the photo above when facing it. my door is located between the two pictures.

there's a gecko on my bed!!!

i didn't take a full pic of my bed 'cause at this particular moment, it's buried in clothes and i am ashamed of its current disarray...perhaps i will show the fourth wall when i've pulled myself together.

2006-01-22T20:22:00.000-06:00

i've been thinking a lot about all the places i went to last year. it's weird, but it's really only now that i've truly realized i travelled like crazy in 2005. i visited a dozen different countries (not counting the states or canada), and i've noticed that it usually took awhile for me to actually soak in the fact that i'd been to those places. i went to guatemala in february, and i don't think it really hit me that i'd gone until around april (i still miss those little toddlers i played w/ everyday); backpacked through europe in the summer (10 countries in six weeks!) and only now am i really finally beginning to reflect on the whole experience. i still find it kind of surreal when i find myself telling friends about the time i was in antwerp, or budapest, or zurich.

and now i'm in mexico. i really didn't feel the full impact of this fact until i was at home for the holidays. it just seemed slightly absurd that i'd been walking on sand by the pacific ocean one week, surrounded by mexicans (and tourists) and then the next, i was strolling down college st. bundled in a winter jacket and scarf, marvelling at the ethnic diversity we have in the city.

since i've returned to vallarta, i've frequently been pondering where i wanna go for summer vacation. i've already got spring break covered (guanajuato, san miguel de allende, maybe queretaro, and for sure, mexico city), so i'm thinking even further in advance.
i suddenly have a hankering to see buenos aires (the globe and mail article i read today in the travel section sure helped). or maybe i should explore more of canada; i've always wanted to visit the east coast, and halifax in particular. or perhaps i've been away from new york for too long and we need to reaquaint ourselves...or then again, maybe chicago and i need to be introduced.
my head is full of potential travel plans.

2006-01-19T13:05:00.000-06:00

my two-week vacation back home was a whirlwind of friend and family get-togethers, being chaffeured around the whole GTA in other ppl's cars (since my driving insurance was cancelled), and buying out the entire stock of rotate this! on boxing day. (i also bought a digital camera--so now i can take pics of my own and post 'em here!) oh, and my bro's engagement party. and acting like an idiot on new year's eve. and choosing a bridesmaid's dress for my bro's wedding (hooray--it isn't hideous). suffice it to say, it was busy and exhausting and now i need a vacation from my holiday.

but no. it's back to school, and i was totally phoning-it-in the whole first week we were back. i'm starting to ease in a bit more now, but i'm still not completely back on track yet.

alex and jen have decided that they want to head down to teach in australia next year, so they've informed our director that they won't be returning. it was a tough decision to make, and they were bouncing back and forth btwn staying and going for quite a while; every time i saw them, their decision would be different from the time i last spoke to 'em. i guess in the end, australia was just a more practical thing for them to do since they want to return to canada in about a year's time, and they really want to see australia. i'm sure they'll be missed here when they go.
besides those two though, i think everyone else is coming back for '06/'07. as for myself, i'm considering doing new zealand after i complete my two-year contract here. then maybe somewhere like shanghai, and then who knows where from there. all i know right now is that i have no real desire to do anything but travel and see some of the world.

so when are you folks out there who are also probably desperately in need of a vacation gonna come down here so i can show you around?? EH?

2006-01-02T03:47:00.000-06:00

fine, fine. so this is a little late. i'm back in the cold, semi-rainy, demi-snowy winter for the timebeing, but maybe that makes this memory of mexico all the more heartwarming.

that weekend. during the festival of guadalupe.

the three of us were strolling around downtown, aiming to find the sample-friendly stall from guadalajara in that temporary alleyway of good eats by the cathedral that was selling the fragant sugared nuts and sour-gummy beings that i'd been dreaming about and salivating over the night before. [complicated and rambling sentence, anybody?]

we casually detoured to a makeshift artisan market by the ocean first, and browsed its eclectic wares as we instinctively attempted to match up friends and family back home with their potential christmas gifts.

after our leisurely (and surprisingly fruitful) impromptu giftshopping spree, we fulfilled our intended mission in the alley, and even tacked on a brief stop at the hot-drink vendor.

as we made our way through the festive crowds who, like us, were basking in the celebratory blanket of feeling that had fallen over the streets of vallarta, i ran into a student and then a co-worker, and greeted them without awkwardness (a rarity, in my case).

it turns out we coincidentally went for dinner at the father of that student's restaurant, known for its made-to-order-right-in-front-of-you guacamole and fajitas flambe.

i could hardly imagine a more pleasant evening. i've had quite a few more like it down there, too.

[flowery and wordy.]

then i got deathly sick on sunday.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

2005-12-12T14:34:00.000-06:00

so now it just seems like i'm making this up, but currently, i am experiencing severe flu-like symptoms minus a cold.
i'm going to bed now, but i just wanted to put a reminder up here to write about how pleasant saturday evening was (but definitely not sunday).

2005-12-10T15:45:00.000-06:00

the posada last night was really fun. it was the school's first, and all of the staff was invited, including the people who do the security, the maintenance, the cleaning, and the cooking at the school. everybody brought their spouses and kids, and there were about a million pinatas for the kids to break. there was a raffle where prizes ranged from humongous tins of cookies to a colour tv. there was pozole--a mexican staple at large gatherings--which is a tasty sort-of soup/stew. there was a lot of spirited dancing (it turns out one of our maintenance staff is a talented dj!), and i think the only thing stranger than watching teachers and administrators get drunk is seeing them dancing.
from what i could gather, the tradition of posadas is that people are supposed to go from house to house singing a song, asking to be let in. it's supposed to mirror how mary and joseph went searching for a place to stay on the eve of christ's birth. a preappointed house (i think it's usually the third one--the first two are supposed to deny entry) finally accepts the people, and then they party. we kind of did our own adaptation of this last night; half of us stood outside the school gate and the other half were on the inside, and we all held candles and sang the song (or tried to--it was, of course, in spanish--and the tune was kinda hard to grasp), which was kind of a back-and-forth thing until the final verse, where everyone sang in unison, and those of us on the outside were permitted entry through the gate. i sure hadn't done anything like that before.

and who would've guessed (just attribute it to the unpredictability of mexico) that i would be marching in a parade by the end of the night?!
to explain: the first 12 days of december are called the fiestas de guadalupe, and they're spent celebrating the virgin of guadalupe, who is the patron saint of mexico. coincidentally enough, december 12 is not only guadalupe day, it's also vallarta's birthday, so it's very hectic around here at this time of year. during these 12 days, all of the businesses and associations in vallarta make a procession downtown towards the iglesia de guadalupe, where a small mass is held for each group. the bigger businesses and associations have processions that resemble parades, because they hire folkloric dancers and mariachi bands, and some even have floats.
our school librarian's husband owns two fine-dining restaurants in town, so his restos did their procession last night. kim, lisa and i got to join in b/c the librarian invited us while we were at the posada. it was nutso--we got to hold candles and balloons, and we walked alongside the rest of the restaurants' staff while folkloric dancers wearing getups that resembled caribana costumes marched ahead of us. a sort-of marching band played behind us, and every so often we'd stop walking and the dancers would do their thing. they must've done their dance around five our six times, and it took about an hour to get to the church from old town.

it was a night of experiencing mexican traditions, and although at times they seemed pretty bizarre to me (as i'm sure some of mine might seem that way to mexicans), it was kinda cool to be a part of them.

2005-12-09T17:29:00.000-06:00

this post shall be full of miscellany.

- one of my students had dinner w/ diego luna (y tu mama tambien, frida, the terminal) at the pv film fest last year. i am jealous of a 16 year old.

- i wanted to take a trip to china next summer (a student told me about a package deal that sounds really good: 2 weeks visiting something like 5 cities/towns, w/ 2 free days in shanghai for around $2800 CDN, which includes a return flight w/ airport transfers, all domestic flights, 4- and 5-star hotel accommodation, all meals, a tour bus w/ spanish and english-speaking guides, and all admission costs), but now i may have to postpone until the year after next b/c i'm to be a bridesmaid at my bro's wedding in july. anyone interested in joining me if i ever do pull off the china thing though? my parents just did the same kind of tour, and really enjoyed it.

- mexico is great for buying prescription drugs, mainly b/c you don't need a prescription to buy practically anything. you just have to write the name of the drug on a piece of paper, hand it to the pharmacist, y voila. the drugs are usually much cheaper, too. apparently, it's 52 pesos ($5.20 US) for a package of birth control pills.

- i've been reading a lot lately. there's a second-hand bookstore in sayulita that sells stuff in english, and everything i've picked so far has been good: melissa banks' the girls' guide to hunting and fishing (it's really not as fluffy as i expected it to be; it's actually quite well-written), ann-marie macdonald's fall on your knees (i expected this to be good), and now i'm onto david sedaris' me talk pretty one day (i've laughed out loud a few times). yes, i should've read this stuff years ago, but at least i've read 'em now! if you haven't read them yet, you should, too.

- last week, one of my students told me that i'm the only teacher they like that doesn't do what they wish i would do. i don't know how to take that, or exactly what it means (i think he meant i'm not easy on them?), but i think he meant well...?

- things i will immediately do when i get home b/c i miss them: taste lemon-flavoured things, like meringue pie and lemonade; get a good poutine from the fish & chip shop at the marketplace plaza; go out dancing to indie rock music; visit and stock up on CDs from soundscapes and/or rotate this!; catch up w/ friends (we need to meet up!); eat chinese food (they tell me it's not that great here, and i haven't worked up the courage to try it yet); take the subway!!!; and i hate to admit it, but i kind of miss driving.

- upcoming elections: blech. i really don't feel like voting, but i will. it's gonna be such a hassle doing it by proxy from mexico, too. eh.

alrighty, off to a staff christmas posada now!

2005-11-28T13:01:00.000-06:00

alright. i’ve come to accept that seeing students when i go out is inevitable.

last weekend, lisa and i went out for a really nice dinner at a place a co-worker recommended called archie’s wok. we were so stuffed afterwards that we walked the malecon about five times, and after we got sick of doing that, we decided to go to de santos, a swanky lounge-bar w/ a rooftop patio. as we were heading down the street towards the place, i spotted a grade 12 student standing on the balcony of another bar, and she saw me at the same time. she started shouting out to me, and this drew more students to the balcony, of various grade levels (the lowest being grade 9--they start drinking at around age 14 here). when the attention became unbearable (approx. 10 seconds later), we made a beeline for de santos. i personally wish we’d walked around the block first just to cover our tracks a bit, but lisa walked right in, so i followed her.
we headed up to the rooftop, and about 30 seconds after we’d been up there, i heard ppl calling me by my last name (seriously, it weirds me out to hear ppl calling me by my “teacher name” outside of school), so i turned around and there were three of my students standing behind me. they’d freakin’ followed me up there! they claimed i’d ignored them when they were shouting out to me from the balcony (truthfully, i hadn’t seen them; i guess the whole damned high school was up there or something), and they’d followed me to be properly acknowledged. so acknowledge them i did, and then they went away, which i will admit was quite nice of them, considering how they could’ve stayed there and made my night that much more mortifying.

i’ve also realized that this town really is way too tiny. yes, other ppl have told me this before, but it didn’t genuinely sink in until friday night, when lisa, kim and i were heading down to olas altas (a really cute street in the zona romantica) towards a martini bar that, believe it or not, some of my grade 12’s had recommended as having the best cocktails and martinis around (they also told me that they rarely go to that part of town b/c it has the stigma of being the church st. of vallarta, which made it even more appealing to me, since this makes it much less likely i’ll ever run into any of ‘em there).
anyway, as we were making our way down there, we ran into these guys that we met the previous night, and seriously, every five mins., we’d run into another group of guys that we knew. i think we’ve met all the local dudes that hang out downtown on weekends by now. there are no more. i’m going to have to become a tourist-shark(ette) soon.

this all brings us to saturday night, where alex & jen, dave, kim and i attended a millionaire’s wedding along w/ some other teachers from the school. the invitation said to wear white and not to bring any gifts. (what could you possibly buy a rich couple that they couldn’t buy for themselves, anyway?)
our taxi pulled up to the house (which is quite new; they’ve only lived there for nine months, and it’s supposedly for sale now), and the place seriously looked like one of the art museums i visited in europe this summer. there were pillars, fountains, and gold trimming. i think the little girl that invited us (she’s kim’s student in gr. 5, and the sister of the girl who spotted me heading to de santos the previous weekend) looked very out of place (but very cute in her white dress w/ orange-ribbon trimming) standing at the gate to greet us.
i like this girl very much; she was kidnapped from that very house and held for ransom at the start of the school year, and she handled it all very well (her father brought in some kidnapping experts from guadalajara and they managed to rescue her; it’s a long story). she was back at school two days later, and seemed barely affected by any of it. she’s a strong and smart kid (although i worry all the baggage that comes w/ being a rich man’s daughter will catch up to her one day) and she is in no way spoiled or bratty. i just think she may be feeling a little lost and confused about her life, and the reason why i think this is b/c she gave us a tour of the house and her room also looked like an art museum display, save the one humongous spongebob squarepants doll she had on her dresser. her father told us he was a big fan of the baroque period, and her room was chockfull of religious artwork and even contained something that looked like a shrine to some saint, but was kind of devoid of stuff a young girl would want to have in her room (her older sister’s room didn’t look much like a teenaged girl’s hangout, either). she showed us the games room in the basement and it had a wurlitzer jukebox that she didn’t know how to use. how could she feel comfortable in this home? it was very impressive (the kitchen looked like a restaurant’s kitchen, w/ the staff to match, and there were even small spiralling stairs that led down to the wine cellar; the guest bedroom was bigger than my whole apartment; the backyard had three bars, a swimming pool, and a lower-level lounge area that i think was set-up for the wedding) but didn’t seem very liveable.
i don’t want to feel sorry for her b/c i don’t think she needs sympathy--i just hope that she’ll eventually be able to figure out how to handle everything and be okay.
anyway, back to the event. it began at 7 p.m., and at around 7:30, the girls learned that there would be a ceremony. they didn’t really know what they had to do or where it was going to take place, so i’m guessing it was all kind of last-minute. either that, or they just hadn’t been informed about it for some reason.
the bride wore an orange dress that flattered her busty cleavage and the groom wore an orange shirt that matched it. (i guess it’s like what miranda from sex and the city said when she refused to wear white at her wedding: “i have a baby: the jig is up.”) the ceremony took place in english and in spanish (american groom, mexican bride) and was all kind of informal. many of the guests were talking and some didn’t even get up from their couches to witness the ceremony.
it was pretty sentimental, though. for the first dance, all the children were rounded up, and it turns out they’re kind of like a backwards brady bunch; the bride has two sons and the groom has three daughters. the eldest kids cut in and danced w/ their respective parents and then the next eldest took their turns and so on. i was surprised to see the eldest daughter had tears in her eyes while she was dancing w/ her dad, since she supposedly thought the wedding was going to be “stupid.” i guess a moment like that would make anybody feel emotional.
as for us, we hung out w/ the older teachers that were there (they all seem to have mexican spouses or partners) and took advantage of the open bars that were stocked w/ just about everything. we also lingered around some of the kitchen doors in order to attack any poor server guy carrying a food tray that walked out of them. for dessert, there was a table full of cakes, fruit pastries and chinese spoonfuls of creme brulee. there was also a chocolate fountain where you could drizzle or drench the stuff all over your skewers of marshmallows. yum.
dave got smashed and started dancing on the makeshift dancefloor outside by himself until some of us felt sorry for him and joined in. i ran into a few students that had been invited, and decided there was nothing i could do about it (except claim that i was only drinking “water”), so i accepted it and had a good time despite it all.
the PTA parents were dancing up a storm, and i have to admit that they were pretty fun to have on the dancefloor. they pulled me in to dance w/ them and laughed at how young i was. then they started doing crazy, yet hilarious dance moves that i’m sure their children would’ve cringed at, and when the dj started playing undanceable crap, they made us all stage a sit-in on the floor until he played something we liked.
oh, and there was also a mariachi band interlude and an impressive fireworks display (and it’s hard to have impressive fireworks when they literally have them every night here) somewhere in-between it all.
we ended up leaving at around two in the morning. it was kind of a surreal night, and i don’t think i’ll soon forget the sight of that jawdropping house all lit up and filled w/ people dressed in white staring down at us while all of us crazies from the american school burned up the dancefloor.
to be honest, it was kind of odd to be there, and it reminded me of this summer when i was in europe and went to see the vienna boys choir sing at a sunday mass. almost all of the ppl there were there to see a spectacle, and didn’t really seem to realize the actual meaning of the event (nor did the organizers of the mass seem to discourage the ignorance).
eh. i enjoyed myself last night. i guess i should leave it at that.

view from the backyard

serenaded by mariachis!

i know i keep intending to write about the males in vallarta, but i always seem to end up having too much to say about other things, and really, there isn’t that much to say about them. so here’s the gist of it:
- they all seem to marry very young here. most ppl my age have kids already
- they can be charming, but 90% of the time they’re not my type (it’s pretty hilarious to see what they come up w/ to say, though--from catcalls in the street to pick-up lines in bars)
- they can usually dance well, but i’ve never been good at that partner-style dancing stuff (unless it’s pre-choreographed!)
- i don’t think they’re trustworthy--99% of them, anyway (i actually got to have a pretty fascinating conversation w/ a cabbie once at something like two in the morning. we discussed the hypocrisies of male-female relationships here, and he was pretty candid about how he was married w/ children, but also had a daugher w/ another woman. he would never allow his wife to have an affair though, and doesn’t think she ever would. he was all so matter-of-fact about it, like it was almost normal, and to be honest, it probably kind of is here.)

2005-11-25T16:02:00.000-06:00

the weather here has really mellowed out lately. it's noticeably cooler in the mornings now, and the rain has stopped completely. there was actually one morning last week where i was ashamed of myself: i felt so cold that i wore a long-sleeved sweater to school--me, a canadian, not being able to stand above-zero temperatures!
i have a feeling i'm going to freeze to death when i head home for christmas break (which, btw, will be from dec. 22 to jan. 5). a teacher that used to live in canada, but has now lived in mexico for about 20 years tells me that my feeling is absolutely right. greaat.
it's funny how i haven't really been hit by an overwhelming bout of homesickness yet. i've never been away from home for longer than two months before, so this is the longest i've ever been outside of canada (almost four months now). of course, i miss certain aspects of home (some ppl, live shows, real record stores, lemon meringue pie), but i don't feel like i can't go on w/out those things. maybe it's easier to handle b/c i know i'll be home next month. or maybe losing the tip of my finger, being stung by a bee and catching pink eye have distracted me from feeling culture shock (or would they all just speed up the process?). who knows.
i do feel a little sad for my housemate though, 'cause i'm pretty sure she's been bit by the homesick bug pretty hard. i suspect it may have hit her harder b/c before moving here, she'd only been outside of alberta once, for a two-week vacation or something. hopefully, she'll feel better soon.

this weekend is a long weekend b/c the school is celebrating the U.S. thanksgiving. i've had two turkey dinners so far this year, one being the one that left me bloated for a week last month and the other was last night at a restaurant which a father of two of my students owns. both were delicious. it was cute to see my grade 11 student working w/ his dad last night, learning the ropes and preparing to take over the business.
truly, these kids are, for the most part, a very good-natured bunch. they're not the snooty, bratty, stuck-up children of privilege some ppl would expect them to be. it's true that some of them (the grade 12's in particular) are very immature and whiny, but i'm pretty sure i prefer dealing w/ that than a bunch of asshole-ish punks.

thursday was a half-day at school, and the second half of the half day was taken up by the high school talent show. the student council hosted it and gave it a saturday night live theme, sprinkling comedy sketches in btwn the talent acts. some of it was actually pretty funny. there was a spartan cheerleaders sketch, an appearance by hans & frans, and a weekend update which included a news bit about how my pink eye was beginning to fade and how my finger had "miraculously" regrown (it kind of has, too--the nail is almost fully back, but the feeling in the tip is odd and you can see the scar where the stitches used to be).
most of the talent in the show consisted of students singing showtunes or pop ballads in english or spanish to recorded accompaniment. two acts had live guitar accompaniment. there wasn't very much variety. only one duo did a dance routine. nevertheless, it was an enjoyable 90 mins, especially b/c a group of us (3 teachers, 8 students) sang "seasons of love" from jonathan larson's RENT (those of you who've known me long enough know i was OBSESSED w/ this musical in high school) to close the show.

tomorrow some of us teachers are going to the wedding of a father of three of our students. this man also happens to be a millionaire (perhaps even multi-?), and the nuptials are going to take place at his home, which i recently saw described as "palatial" in a local rag. i have to admit that i'm probably going to feel a little awkward and out of place there, but i don't think the opportunity to gape at the lush and lavish lifestyle of the rich comes along everyday, so i'm willing to trade in a little discomfort for a peek. i'll let ya know how it goes.

[i know in my last post i said i'd write about the testosterone-heavy gender this post, but i think i'll save it for next time.]

2005-11-15T15:40:00.000-06:00

so...
let's backtrack back to when i didn't have pink eye.

hallowe'en. i guess the american influence has reached this place after all (not that i didn't have an inkling, what w/ the walmart and mcdonalds and domino's pizzas everywhere). a bunch of kids in our complex came around to trick-or-treat, stomping around in a herd, wearing vague costumes and screaming, "QUEREMOS HALLOWE'EN!!!" they sounded like such a loud, psycho mob that kim and i were almost afraid to open the door for them.
afterwards, a few of us new teachers headed out to a hallowe'en party at a classy lounge spot downtown. i'd somehow missed the memo about the maxim magazine girls that were going to be making an appearance there. the place was madness; bright lights, photographers and video cameras were everywhere, and there was barely any room to move. it was a little too psycho in the mainroom, and the rooftop patio and restaurant sections of the club were swanky, but it all felt a little too soulless for me, and in the end, my friend and i ended up heading over to the new taco burrito king (the wacky thing is that this new franchise started in CHICAGO and decided to open up its third, but first mexican store in vallarta) down the street to gorge ourselves instead.

i forgot to mention that at the hallowe'en festival at school the kids made a gravestone for me that joked about my finger (which, btw, looks a tad better than it did before, now that all the stitches are out and the nail is growing). it was kind of endearing, yet embarrassing at the same time. i took a picture w/ it. ;) a group of us teachers also snuck out halfway through the night for a little beer break at the local hole-in-the-wall bar; i felt like a rebellious high schooler, which is kind of ironic, considering the circumstances.

last week, the 2nd annual puerto vallarta film festival came to town. i made good use of my ISIC and got a student pass (10 films for $150 pesos -- beat that, toronto film fest!) which i tried my best to use up for the rest of the week. unfortunately, i'd very unwisely spent my saturday night partying with my friend lisa until the sun rose and didn't get home until around 11:30 a.m. the next morning (it's funny how when it's 4 a.m., we think it makes sense to stay out until 5 a.m. so that the buses will be running, and then at 5 a.m., we think it's worth it to wait another two hours in order to have breakfast at the pancake house, which leads to stopping off to buy film fest passes afterwards, which leads to not sleeping and feeling like a zombie for the rest of the day...). this directly led to me getting sick and not feeling up to watching all the movies i'd wanted to see.
i did get to watch elizabethtown though, and despite the lukewarm reviews i've read, i liked it. cameron crowe is great at writing romantic-comedy roles. he makes the lead characters watch-worthy. the dysfunctional family stuff wasn't all that engrossing, but it was tolerable, and overall, i enjoyed it. not his greatest film (that would be either almost famous or say anything followed closely by singles), but not his worst, either (that would be vanilla sky, save the soundtrack). it made me want to take a roadtrip.
the festival itself wasn't all that exciting. the films were all screened at the cinema right by my place, so it was convenient, but there wasn't very much glamour or hoopla going on. mostly, it looked like a bunch of trendy, hipster lookalikes had magically appeared in vallarta and were congregating outside the theatres for that week. it was kind of odd seeing them there. sadly, it kinda felt like home at times.
even more sadly, diego luna nor gael garcia bernal showed up. at least i don't think they did, and if they did, i no longer want to know.

so, yes. last thursday, i woke up feeling wonky. i'd gone to see two movies the night before (the constant gardener: good, and roman polanski's oliver twist: loooong) as well as a post-filmgoing trip to subway. maybe i caught it from one of those places. who knows. but after first period, my eyes kept forming disgusting eye guck which i kept wiping away w/ a tissue, which turned my eyes red, and my students started chanting, "miss! you have conjunctivitis! miss, you have PINK EYE!!!" and they were right. so i missed school on friday and monday (there was a huge pink eye epidemic at school last year, so i don't think they wanted to take any chances), which in theory sounds awesome 'cause that made it a super-long weekend, but in reality it sucked 'cause i couldn't really do anything and i felt isolated from humanity the majority of the time and all i did was lie in bed and watch movies and complete seasons of sex and the city. hmph.

alright, this post has turned out semi-long and very whiny, so i'll stop for now. next time, a report on my take on men in mexico (well, i guess mexico is a little broad--maybe just vallarta, but i liked the alliteration).

2005-11-10T13:02:00.000-06:00

apparently, i have pink eye.
that is all.

2005-10-29T16:43:00.000-05:00

the bandage on my finger came off on monday, and i hate to complain about it, but i'm in a funk. the thing looks hideous. truly. the top of my finger looks like a stump that a bird shat on (the "bird shit" is a combination of stitches and dried-up cream). all my co-workers and students keep telling me that it looks a lot better than they expected it to and that it's fine, but i can't help but wonder if they're seeing the same thing that i'm seeing. obviously not, since the finger is attached to me and not them. oh, well. i'm gonna have to deal.

a hallowe'en festival was held at the school last night (mexicans don't really celebrate hallowe'en--they celebrate something on nov. 2 called dia de los muertos or the day of the dead--but our school's partially american, so we did), and boy was it a production. the PTA mothers organized a whole carnival-like event where attendees had to buy tkts to play games and go on rides. there were actual horses galloping around the racing track. there was a mechanical bull. two haunted houses. tons of food stalls. everyone got dressed up in hallowe'en costumes, and b/c i was only given 3-hrs' notice that i had to be dressed up as well, i improvised and went as a hipster (john deere trucker hat, tiny arcade fire t-shirt, black blazer w/ a little gentleman reg pin/button on the lapel, tight jeans, sneakers, and every hipster's essential accessory, the ipod). most ppl guessed that i was either a boy or a teenager. my indie music 101 class knew better though. my shag of hair that desperately requires a haircut kind of even looked like a mullet under the cap, which complemented my whole ensemble well.
some of my students' costumes were pretty ingenious--a grade 10 student dressed up as edward scissorhands and had some awesome, authentic-looking scissorhands (they could've put someone's eye out though!) and a grade 11 student went as a businessman caught in a powerful hurricane; he had fake glasses, ruffled hair, a turned-out, tattered umbrella, a suit w/ a tie that was suspended by a stretched coat hanger so that it looked like it was being blown by the wind, and a briefcase that had papers coming out of it that he'd glued together so it appeared as though they were spilling out. that's creativity, man.

i genuinely like all of my students--even the ones that drive me crazy--and i think it's endearing that many of them have known each other since they were in pre-kinder at the school. most of them have grown up together and have stories of how they broke each other's arms or pushed the other out of (stationary) car windows when they were little. they're so familar w/ each other that they're very likely sick of having to grow up w/ the same group of ppl all the time (they often act like they're siblings, and it seems slightly incestuous when they occasionally end up dating each other), but i look at the seniors and think it's sad that they're all going to be apart for the first time next year. they'll miss each other, whether they want to admit it or not, and i hope they realize that they're lucky to have so many ppl to keep in touch w/. i think there's a strong sense of community at this school, what w/ it being so small, which makes it vastly different from the huge high school i went to, where it was relatively easy to remain an anonymous face amongst the hordes of other students. i think these kids are in for a real shock if they end up going to large colleges where they'll become nothing more than a student # to the administration.

the other interesting thing i've noticed lately is how these students have grown up in a party town. they're used to going out and drinking (since the age of around 14, or whenever they looked old enough to get into clubs) and hitting the malecon every weekend and balancing that w/ schoolwork. alcohol isn't really a forbidden thing for teenagers here, and therefore loses some of its "off-limits" appeal. maybe these students won't burnout in college or university as quickly as hicktown frosh will b/c of this?

on tuesday, my parents' friends are coming here for the day on a cruise ship and i'm to entertain them after i finish teaching my classes. i have to admit that it's been kind of fun trying to come up w/ things they'd be interested in seeing here, but what i'm going to do w/ them is definitely different from what i'd plan if any of you from back home ever come (hint, hint). i'm kind of looking fwd to showing some familiar faces around.

2005-10-25T16:22:00.000-05:00

to add to the already-teeming list of quasi-traumatic experiences i've had here so far, i was stung by a bee at school yesterday. sure, that sounds like nothing, but i've never been stung by a bee before, and i didn't find out until yesterday that i'm allergic to bee stings (reminds me of that macaulay culkin movie, my girl...i don't think my allergy's that serious though...nor was i attacked by a flock of bees). the evil little bugger went under my skirt and got me on my thigh, and as soon as it happened, i could barely hobble over to the office to check my leg. it started to swell around the sting, and the nurse came to put ice on it. after a few mins, i was able to make it to the nurse's office where a doctor was waiting for me. he told me i was having an allergic reaction and recommended that i take a bum shot of antihistamine to combat it. i'm sick of having needles injected into my arse cheeks (i'd had two already due to the finger fiasco), but apparently it's a popular location for a shot. it hurt like hell and then it totally knocked me out. i had spanish class, and as i was heading across the campus, i started to get groggy and my students were telling me that i looked high. i completely zonked out during the class, to the amusement of dave and kim, and it took me all night to get out of the fog. the swelling around the sting has disappeared now, so i guess it really wasn't a big deal. guess it's just another amusing anecdote for the ever-growing collection about my life here.

addendum: i forgot to mention that jen swallowed a bee last friday. the bugger went into her drink and she took a swig and down it went. i really do think we're cursed or something.
addendum to the tabloid news: my students brought in their pictures of and with paris hilton yesterday. i laughed.

2005-10-23T14:49:00.000-05:00

before i gloss over the past three or so weeks of my life, the things that have been on my mind most recently:

- i pass the port in the marina while taking the bus to school every morning, and lately i've noticed that there is at least one cruise ship docked there a day, and sometimes there are even three. locals tell me that this is actually quite uncommon, so tourism here must be increasing. (last week i even spotted the dawn princess ship at the port--i cruised on it last summer to alaska...it was a sentimental reunion.) now that hurricanes have or will be hitting so many other resort towns in mexico, i'm thinking tourism is gonna get even crazier/busier here than usual. i've got mixed feelings about this; obviously, an influx of vacationers will be good for the businesses here and the town will benefit, but i think day-to-day life will suffer a tad. it's going to get annoyingly crowded and traffic will be insane. prices will likely skyrocket in touristy areas and i'll likely have more mexican locals trying to take advantage of me by overcharging, assuming i'm just on vacation and clueless.
it's funny how us new teachers act like locals and pretend we have a right to look down on clueless tourists when we spot them, forgetting that we probably look exactly like them and evoke the same disdain when other locals see us.

- i can't seem to get used to the sweet and spicy combination of flavours that locals here are obsessed w/. one of my students loves to make me try all the candies that are covered w/ chili flakes and have gum or fruit-flavoured centres, and i don't know what to make of the stuff! it just tastes odd to me. another student of mine loves to pour chili flakes onto her apples. it's common to pour chili flakes and lime juice onto mango and coconut slices here. chili and lime. it's on everything.
sweet and sour? yes. salty and spicy? sure.
but sweet and spicy? i'm gonna have to work on it.

random tabloid fact (oxymoron alert!): paris hilton was spotted partying in various locales around town here in vallarta this past friday, surrounded by an entourage of limousines and fawning boys. my friends and i avoided the hoopla on the malecon (which was further amplified by the likely debauchery that was the 20th anniversary celebration of carlos o'brian's, the local tourist-trap/meat-market dance bar and high-school student magnet--my kids offered me free tkts left and right last week) and hung out at a fun bar in old town instead.

so, three weeks ago:

- had a slight bloodfest w/ my finger. won't go into all the minute details, but let's just say i bled so much my sling was dripping and my co-worker who took me back to the hospital came thisclose to fainting at the sight of the blood sliding down my arm as the doctor applied pressure to stop the bleeding. i'm okay now. really! i am slightly peeved by how all my clothes seem to be soiled w/ blood stains though.

- this incident directly led to my not joining in on a weekend getaway trip to an extremely private beach house ("private" meaning no doctors or hospitals or phonelines or other ppl, for that matter, in sight) by boca de tomatlan which is owned by our school's librarian and her wealthy husband, where alex and jen got severely food poisoned by some bad chicken they'd brought and bbq'd. they missed two days of school b/c of it.
kim, my housemate, also got severely beat up by the ocean (and had the battle scars to prove it), as the waves were really rough that weekend. needless to say, i was kinda glad i didn't go.

two weeks ago:

- as the pictures from my previous post indicate, we released baby turtles into the ocean at the beach by the westin hotel in the marina. there were literally hundreds of turtles, so all the ppl who'd gathered for the event got to release around three or four turtles each. they were endearingly cute, and although some of them were special ed turtles and took a little more time to make it to the water than others (one ended up burying itself in the sand, poor thing), we oohed and ahhed and fawned over them unconditionally. more than half the turtles won't survive (there were already seagulls flocking towards them as they headed further out into the pacific; the crowds of ppl on the shore kept them safe for a little while, at least), but the ones who do will return to that exact spot on the shore in seven or eight years to lay eggs of their own.

- on the saturday, we held a canadian thanksgiving potluck dinner at alex's and jen's house, and it was a great time. we had a few honorary canadians (aka americans) at the event, and they learned just how awesome us canucks can be. unfortunately, there was no turkey, due to alex's and jen's recent bout of food poisoning and newfound disgust towards anything that resembles a chicken (that, and the fact that we have no idea where to find a turkey, dead or alive, here), but the hors d'oeuvres, salad & bread, veggie lasagnas, potatoes, stuffing, and apple and pecan pies more than made up for it. so did the wacky jenga games that took place afterwards. my missing fingertip has caused an imbalance in my jenga-playing abilities and i lost twice (or was it thrice? i can't remember--i blame the tequila) in a row before managing to pass along my loser crown for ensuing rounds.
on the actual thanksgiving monday, we made up for the turkey-less saturday dinner by splurging and treating ourselves to a 3-course thanksgiving meal (salad and turkey w/ stuffing and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes w/ gravy and PUMPKIN PIE!!!) at steve's sports bar, where we dined w/ other expats while watching the canucks game on the bar's many tv's. i felt bloated for a week after that.

- it was an eventful week. at school, for some inexplicable reason, my grade nines decided to google my name and found some articles i'd written for the queen's journal as well as some pictures of me (no, not those kinds of pictures--one from exclaim! mag and another from the journal site) and i never (and still haven't) heard the end of it. now the news has spread up the grades and the whole high school has cyberstalked me. hooraay. i will look fwd to the week where no students come up to me in class and say, " i saw you on the internet, miss."

one week ago:

- it was columbus day on the wednesday, but the pv school authorities decided to shift the holiday to friday to make it a long weekend. kim and i took our first overnight trip to tepic, the capital of nayarit state, which is the state north of ours (jalisco). we got to practice our spanish a ton, since we were literally the only freakin' gringas in the whole damned town and were stared at like rare museum pieces the whole time we were there. we bought a lot of stuff from huichol artisans and just to make myself even more conspicuous, i got myself a hot pink cowboy hat and wore it for the rest of the trip.

- last weekend was the last in pv for amanda, since she'd found a better job back home in texas and had decided working on a ranch where they breed champion horses was her dream job while teaching english here in pv to rambuncious mexican children for peanuts was not. we went out on thursday and saturday night, and on both nights i could not help but run into my senior students (i also later learned that my grade elevens were on the lookout for me as well) wherever i went. i've got to admit that it's pretty odd hearing ppl calling me "miss c" in bars and lounges at two in the morning. regardless, we had a great time dancing w/ all of amanda's housemate's gay friends from guadalajara and mexico city, and i'm really gonna miss having her around. she's the first friend we made outside of our own school, and she was a cool one.

this past friday, dave (the art teacher), kim, lisa (another teacher at the school) and i went to an art opening at a gallery that belongs to the parents of students who go to the school, and the two siblings got a kick out of seeing me there. i almost bursted out laughing when one of them told me that half the school was out looking for me on the malecon (i truly hope he was joking). this almost directly led to the four of us hanging/hiding out in old town that night. i jest a lot about the students seeing me while we're all out drinking, but i really am sort of uncomfortable about it, since i'm the youngest teacher at the school and therefore have the smallest age gap amongst them.

yesterday, a group of us headed out to sayulita for the third time, and i just vegged on the beach and geeked it out by doing math problems while jen, alex and dave went surfing and kim swam. dave and i hung out at an older teacher's house afterwards to watch the world series (my brother, WHO GOT ENGAGED THIS WEEKEND, taught me to love baseball) on his tv on a balcony that overlooked the whole town, drinking beer and eating the greatest sandwiches we've ever had (courtesy of the owner of the coffee cup, who is a friend of the older teacher and also a former teacher at the school himself).
it was a great game (the chisox deserved to win) and i hope the rest of the series follows suit.

and now i think this blog has pretty much caught up w/ all that's happened here lately! hats off to you if you made it all the way down here!!

p.s. i finally saw my finger on friday. i hadn't seen it for a month before then. needless to say, it was disgusting. perhaps i will elaborate more later.

2005-10-19T16:36:00.000-05:00

i was writing a very long and inspired catch-up post yesterday when the power suddenly went out. needless to say, everything was wiped away into nothingness and now i don't have the energy to try and reproduce what i'd written.

so until i do replace that post, some pictures in lieu of it to tide you over:

releasing baby turtles into the pacific...

it can get pretty sentimental watching them head off towards that vast, scary world of ocean...*sniff*

canadian (veggie-friendly and turkey-free) thanksgiving dinner #1:

p.s. the hand in the turtle picture is not my hand. it's actually kim's. wesley sure is one observant bastard, but my left hand currently has a chunk missing from the top of its ring finger and looks disgusting and is certainly not worthy of a picture!

2005-10-09T15:29:00.000-05:00

souvenir of mexico
(or did i give mexico a piece of myself?)

alright, here it is.

disclaimer: you may not want to read this if you can't stand talk of blood and gore, or don't have an eternity to read this entry that's probably as lengthy as a history of the world.

two saturdays ago, a group of us new teachers drove up to punta mita to spend the day on an island by there. we were going to hire a small boat (i think my students told me that it's called a panga or a lancha) that would take us to the island, where we planned to go snorkeling and just hang out on the beach.

all the pangas were lined up along the edge of the water, and as we got into one, i did something very stupid. i placed my left hand on the side of the panga, and while it was there, the panga parked next to ours bumped up against it and BANG! my ring finger got smashed. daytrip over.

at first, it all felt very surreal. the fact that my finger was seriously hurt didn't immediately sink in, and for a few moments i was telling myself that i was okay and that we were still going to head to the island. but then i started to feel some pain, and i looked over at my finger and saw it cut at the top, with fat sticking out, and blood was splurting out like a sprinkler onto my skirt and onto the panga. i proceeded to announce to everyone, "i think i hurt my finger."

for the most part, i stayed surprisingly calm. i turned my head away from the part of me that was split open, and i think my philosophy was "if i can't see it, then i won't lose it."

from then on, things seemed to go in super-slow motion.

alex, a fellow new canadian teacher, declared that we had to go to a hospital. jen, also a new canadian teacher and alex's girlfriend, let her first aid senses kick in and elevated my arm and put some of the ice from our cooler into a plastic bag and placed it by my finger. she then helped me out of the panga and escorted me back to dave's car (dave, the new art teacher from houston, texas via arizona and kansas, just got his car back from the mechanics a couple of days before). i was afraid i might faint, and at one point things got all spotty and i felt lightheaded.

it felt like years before we'd managed to pile everybody into the car (including one of they guys who was going to take us over to the island on the panga) and get going. we were really lucky that amanda, a friend of ours who is teaching at another school here in PV, speaks spanish fluently, b/c we probably would've been lost w/out her. the guy from punta mita directed us towards a doctor in the small town, but the place was closed (i think they were having their siesta), so he gave us directions to another doctor in another tiny town 15 mins away. while this was happening, we were trying to contact our school director on amanda's cellphone, but there didn't seem to be any reception from where we were calling.

the second doctor's office was open, so i was escorted in there, and while i was there, dave drove the guy from punta mita back. the doctor took one look at me and said i had to get to a hospital. unfortunately, we had to wait for dave to return w/ the car. the doctor gave us two options--we could either head to the hospital in san francisco (san pancho), which is a town about 20-30 mins away from where we were, or we could head back to PV (an hour away). we decided to go back to PV, since we knew more ppl there and they would be more familiar w/ which hospital and doctors i should use.

the doctor wrapped my finger up in bandages and put it in btwn some ice packs. he recommended i take a painkiller and gave me the option of either having it injected into my ass or swallowed in pill form. i chose the pills, even if it meant they would take longer to kick in. i wasn't really interested in having anything poked into my bum cheek.

we still couldn't call our school director b/c the town had no phonelines, but we decided that on our way back to PV, we would stop by his house to see if he was home. it was important to try to let him know about my situation b/c he would know best about what to do. the six of us that were there were all new to the town, so we knew squat about good doctors and hospitals in vallarta.

i think we waited about half an hour before dave returned, and i spent the time asking the doctor to distract me from thinking about my finger by telling me the nicknames for names (the equivalent of the anglo "dick = richard"), which was something that i was fascinated by at the time.
pancho = francisco
poncho = alfonso
chuy = jesus
lalo = eduardo
pepe = jose
lolita = maria delores

dave finally returned and we headed back towards PV. the ice for my finger kept melting, so we stopped by a little convenience store and dave ran in, yelling that a girl's finger had fallen off (slight exaggeration) and we needed ice. one of the workers in the store understood english and quickly gave the ice to dave for free.

despite the awful pain and bleeding, the drive was kinda nice, 'cause i got to pick all the driving music we listened to from my ipod and nobody complained about it.

we stopped in la cruz, which is a sort-of suburb, to see if jerry, our director, was home. thankfully, he was. jen, alex and i moved into his car and he practically flew us to the hospital. he had his wife call their doctors for us, and they met us at the hospital right away.

by this point, it was two hours after the initial incident, and i was paranoid about a few things:
1) i would somehow bleed to death (probably unrealistic and ridiculous)
2) i would get infected by something that was unclean and contaminated and die that way instead
3) they would not be able to reattach the piece of my finger that had come off and it would look deformed and hideous for the rest of my (possibly short) life.

fun stuff, huh?

at the hospital, they moved me into a little room and the nurses began to remove the bandages on my finger and sprayed it w/ antiseptic stuff to disinfect it. i've never screamed so many profantities so loudly in my life. jen (who took life sci at queen's and was also a con-eddie a few years ahead of me) stayed w/ me in the room and was nice enough to let me squeeze the heck out of her hands. she watched the whole thing, which even i couldn't do, and she told me about some of it later on.

my school director's doctor and a plastic surgeon (parents of kids at the school) looked at my finger and then they told me what they were going to do. that was probably the scariest moment of my life; at that point they could have completely shattered me--all the terrible things they possibly could have said filled my head and i almost didn't want to hear what they were actually going to tell me.

what they ended up saying was that the tip of my finger had come off, but it didn't go straight across--it went diagonally, the front tip of my finger and my whole nail was gone. however, the root of the nail was still there, so it would grow back eventually. the very tip of the top of my bone was gone (they did an x-ray) as well. they told me that they were going to pull the skin from my finger up to the top where the edge of my nail was supposed to be, and stitch it together. the length of my finger wouldn't change very much, and they said that my finger would look relatively normal after three months, with the nail grown back.

they injected anaesthetic into my hand to freeze it, and the doctor said i would only feel it for two minutes. "TWO MINUTES?!?!!" i freaked out. he actually meant two seconds, but he got mixed up, explaining that his english wasn't very good. (i don't recall minutes sounding like seconds in spanish, though!)
they rubbed iodine all over my hand, and i yelped in pain again, so they injected more anaesthesia. then it was okay.

jen later told me that the piece of my finger had been hanging by a thread of my skin the whole time, and that it had looked pretty disgusting. she also told me that the doctors had removed the piece completely when they were operating on me and thrown it straight into the garbage. i waved goodbye to it afterwards (i didn't actually see it though). she had been hoping that they would reattach it, but i guess it wasn't possible.

funnily enough, alex felt closer to me after this experience, since he lost the whole top of his right index finger six years ago by slamming it in a car door. i now have somebody to go to if i have questions. we're also thinking of starting a "nub club." while they were operating on me, he came into the room and told me that his biggest regret when this happened to him was that he never took a picture of the finger at the time. he was trying to convince me to take one so that whenever somebody asks me what happened, i can just whip the picture out of my backpocket and show it to them. thanks, but no thanks. i haven't even looked at my finger w/out bandages on since i turned away from it on the panga.

nothing like this had ever happened to me before. i guess i'd lived a pretty sheltered life prior to this...i've never broken or sprained anything in my life, and i'd certainly never had stitches before. this was the first time i'd have to have my arm in a sling or shower w/ a plastic bag wrapped over my hand. guess i was due.

they put me on five different kinds of medication, two of which were painkillers that made me crazy-nauseous for the next two days, leaving me bedridden. (kim took very good care of me though, making up for the fact that she couldn't do anything during the actual incident since she can't stand the sight of blood.) i missed two days of school, and when i went back, my kids all wanted to hear my story and then proceeded to flood me w/ gruesome stories of their own.

oh, and i couldn't even manage to stay away from getting a shot in the bum. after the mini-operation, they gave me a tetanus shot in the left cheek. hmph.

this is really freaking long. and i'm not even entirely finished yet. i'll save the follow-up for the next post, and then i have to catch y'all up on the rest of the last two weeks of my life.

let's just say for now that i'm okay, and i'm glad i've met such good ppl here who have treated me so well and helped me so much throughout this whole pathetic ordeal. i'm sorry i've kept so many of you back at home in the dark for so long, but really, my parents only found out a few days ago.

maybe i'll get a picture of my finger up soon!

2005-09-28T13:12:00.000-05:00

i can't really type much now (LITERALLY--you'll see, eventually), but a psycho story will be on its way as soon as i can. it may freak some of you out, but i'll keep you on the edge of yer seat for the time being. just wanted to give a little explanation as to why i haven't communicated w/ anybody lately. sorry--i seriously just can't write long msgs at the moment.
perhaps next week?

2005-09-18T15:20:00.000-05:00

so life in the pv ain't all fun and sunshine (and psycho-thunderstorm rainy). living here requires a herculean amount of patience. why, you ask? well, no matter what one may think, this is still a developing country.
a top-five list of things that have required my patience (since i suspect a lack of patience wouldn't get things accomplished any quicker anyway), if you will:

1. the first day i arrived here, i stood at the luggage carousel until there were no bags left to pick up and all the other passengers had left. my luggage was lost. i camped out in my apartment that first night in the clothes i'd travelled in. bienvenidos a mexico, me!

2. during my first week of living here, i had no hot water. the gas-run hot-water heater thing was broken. repair ppl came to fix it, but after they fixed it, flames would catch onto the wiring and the whole thing would set on fire. it must've been a sight to see me pointing to the water heater, enthusiastically shouting fuego! while the repairman looked on. luckily, it was hot as hell here anyway, so i didn't really need hot water that badly.

3. we still don't have internet at home yet. i'm currently writing this from my brand new second home, the 24-hr internet cafe down the road that has wireless laptop capabilities. in order to get dsl installed at home, we have to install a new phone line (we currently have some fucked-up phone card calling system at our place), and to do that, we have to get permission from the complex owners. after we get that, it'll take a while to get the line installed. i'll be happy if i can surf the web from my bed by springtime. but i'm definitely not holding my breath.

4. laundry. ah, laundry. it's normal to have it done for you here, and they charge you per kg of clothing. the manager of our complex gave us the number of a place that will have it picked up and delivered, so we've been using this place. i have no idea why we haven't given up on them yet, since every week something goes wrong. either they don't pick up the laundry when they say they will or they don't deliver it the day we expect them to. i've run into a lot of i-have-no-underwear-left situations in the past few weeks. this past week, their delivery/drop-off timing was perfect, only i was missing a very cherished bra that i stupidly gave them to wash. i really, really hope the laundry man is a non-existent-bra-size victoria's secret fetishist, since he swears the bra was never there, and i would bet my very-tanned left arm that it was.
one of the lovely library ladies at my school offered to have a TGIL-day (the "L" being laundry) w/ me where i can use the machines at her house, and i'm seriously hoping she was serious.

5. i still don't have a bank card yet. my salary is supposed to be direct-deposited into my bank account. i still don't have a bank card yet.
nor do i have my teacher's ID, which would allow me to buy my school uniform at a discounted price at the dept. store where it's available. i don't need to have a uniform, but i hate having to decide what to wear everyday. i'm considering just bringing in the issue of the newspaper where the faces of all us new teachers are plastered on the cover. that's as good as a teacher's ID, no?

and now here's a terrible joke i heard on t.v. this morning:
what did the mexican fire chief name his two sons?
hose a and hose b
GROAN.

post-post disclaimer: my intention is not really to be snarky or racist or snide or ungrateful in this entry. truly. despite all this mildly frustrating stuff (which even i'll admit is nothing, compared to my friend, who's been waiting something like three weeks to spend a fortune for his car to be fixed after having hit a truck that had a pregnant woman fall out of it), i'm still very much enjoying my time here, as my previous posts have hopefully conveyed.
i went to see a relatively new movie in a swanky cineplex for 30 pesos ($3 US) last night! beat that!

2005-09-16T16:54:00.000-05:00

viva mexico!

today it's mexican independence day, which means it's also the start of a loong weekend for all of us at school. celebrations began last night, and since it was also our school director's birthday, we went for a private boat cruise that left from marina vallarta and sailed by the malecon to catch the gorgeous fireworks and other festivities going on at los arcos (a little outdoor amphitheatre by the water with arches in the background). it was quite a beautiful night, especially since it didn't pour, as it usually does. they were telling us that it's rained for the past 10 years, so i guess we lucked out yesterday!
watching the rest of the school staff (and myself) get progressively more tipsy as the night wore on was quite amusing. i don't think i'll ever get used to seeing teachers partying and drinking and slurring their words, even if i am one myself.
two cuba libres, two tequila shots and a few coronas later, and i was pretty tanked.
i was so carefree when we docked at the port back in marina vallarta that i approved the decision to head to the malecon and dance at one of the notorious tourist-trap dance clubs where we'd agreed never to go b/c our high school students hang out there, and we don't want to see them when we go out. [going off on a tangent: my gr. 12's and 11's have already asked me where i go on the weekends and have offered to take me out and buy me drinks, and i've refused. i explain that i would like to have a private life, and they laugh at me and remind me that i'm living in vallarta and this place is too small to keep secrets. they may be right, but i will persevere on no matter how futile my attempts appear to be!]
a group of us new teachers hardcored it out and cabbed over to this previously-forbidden club while the rest of the staff went home. it was a fun night; nothing too scandalous happened, and to the surprise of us all, we didn't run into one single student! maybe they were all away for the long weekend?

i've been hanging out with a group of new teachers for the past month, and we've become quite good friends during this time. we go to a beach every weekend and check out cover bands and go dancing on saturday nights and watch sunsets on the malecon and just plain talk. we're all very different from each other, personality-wise and life experience-wise and whatnot. we're all in our twenties, but i'm the youngest, of course. perhaps we hang out together so much out of necessity since we don't really know very many other people here, but we always have a great time, so maybe the reason why we're together doesn't really matter (although i suspect we actually do really all like each other--otherwise, i don't think i'd have a problem becoming a hermit). i've also learned waaaay more about these guys and girls in four weeks than i have about some other ppl i've known for longer back home.

i hate to get all touchy-feely sentimental (especially on a stupid blog!), but i've realized that i'm genuinely glad that i came here. yes, it's very different from home, and i have a feeling that i may always be a metropolitan city girl at heart (even though i actually lived in a suburban hellhole that calls itself a city), but i think i really need to be having this experience right now. coming out here on my own and making it (although the "making it" part has yet to be determined, i guess) is something that is helping to define me more. my interests and knowledge of useless things defined me back home, and i guess they possibly always will, but i think i need more than that to become an actual, well-rounded person. i feel i'm almost living a real _life_ now. does that make any sense?!?? eh. enough of this.
if you're reading this blog and actually know me from back home, i'm not saying that i don't appreciate you! now come visit me, dammit!

2005-09-14T13:28:00.000-05:00

my students are superconnected!

at school, there is something called a "selective" class every thursday during seventh period, and the teachers offer "fun" courses that the students sign up for, like "movie appreciation" or "trivia club" or "beginner's italian." it's a good way to see the students outside of the regular (math) class setting.
i'm doing an indie music 101 class (with a not-too-subtle emphasis on the canadian music scene). we started last week and did an intro on song analysis and discussed stuff like song structure and time signatures. i explained how probably 99% of all pop songs will have a 4/4 signature and played them a few examples (stars' "elevator love letter," the stills' "lola stars and stripes") and then showed them 3/4 (matt barber's "sleep in peace"). then, to shake things up, i showed them how original and interesting it was to have a 7/4 signature by playing broken social scene's "shoreline (7/4)."
these kids have some pretty fine taste in music. one guy told me he owns all the radiohead albums (a kindred spirit) and some of the others were recommending stuff to me. one girl had a mix cd w/ a tune by a band they all wanted me to hear on it, so i played the song, and it sounded exactly like my kind of thing. instrumental, moody...reminded me very much of the high school band i caught at hillside last summer called motion picture cinema. this band's called austin tv, and they're from mexico city.
i got very excited about an actual music scene existing here, but the students all reassured me that nobody would ever play puerto vallarta. guadalajara--yes, but pv--no. oh, well. i'd be willing to take the bus up there to catch a live act. these kids are gonna teach me a lot. we're going to have a mexican-canadian (and american, i guess) cultural music exchange. i've asked them to bring in songs they want to discuss, and i'm going to play stuff that i love for them as well. i can't believe i get to do this at school!
my lofty goal is to somehow convince a canuck indie band to actually come down here and play a show in pv. but for now, i'll settle for catching a hot mexican indie band that doesn't just play covers.

one of the girls in my class told me today that she'd made me a copy of austin tv's new album that hasn't even been released yet. i asked her how she'd managed to get her hands on the unreleased album, expecting her to say it leaked on the internet or something, but it turns out she knows the band and used to date the bassist and whatnot. she also told me she'd bring in a song by another mexican band that also plays in 7/4. really, these kids amaze me.

this school kicks some serious ass and i will leave you now w/ a photo that has a view of the secondary side of the campus and what it looks like in the morning when we arrive there.

2005-09-09T15:04:00.000-05:00

miscellaneous mexican musings:

- the little geckos that crawl all over the walls here are incredibly cute

- all the bands in this town only play covers b/c they try to cater to the tourists, but my students tell me there are some good bands from mexico city that tour in guadalajara (a 5-hour bus ride from here) and i'm considering making the trek just to catch a real live show (i'm gonna miss the k-town and toronto music scenes...actually, i already do)

- we have iguanas wandering around the fields of our school campus and they have been known to fall out of trees because they nap in them and then lose their balance

- vendors on the beaches and on the malecon hate that a gringo's favourite spanish phrase is "no, gracias"

- the beer here is incredibly cheap. pacifico, sol, corona, tecate, dos equis--you can buy them all in grocery stores and when you go out drinking, they're all usually under $2 each

- tacos truly are a staple snack food. i've tried fish, shrimp, pork, chicken, beef and unidentified meat varieties so far...not sure if i'm up for the cow's head and other more "exotic" kinds yet

- many men here seem to feel it's their duty to catcall and wolf whistle to women walking past them, even if they're on their own and no one else is there to witness their acts of machismo

- i would never, ever, want to drive here. i already don't like to drive, but driving here is 3204185235 times more insane than anywhere else i've ever been

- the sunsets here are gorgeous, even if it is the middle of rainy season

- i've had quite pleasant conversations w/ some of the timeshare ppl crawling all over this town; you just have to tell them you live here, and they can't harrass you into taking a meeting

- when riding the public buses, sometimes you'll be lucky and a mariachi or two will hop on to play guitar and sing a song in exchange for some pocket change

- we recently found a bar called steve's that's owned by a former vancouverite, and they have POUTINE. this place kicks ass.

- limes! everything here has lime in it (or is spicy, or both). even the lemonade is lime(ade). a student told me that my idea of limes is like their lemons and vice versa, but i'm still confused.

- continuing the lime and spice theme--chips! i really love and really loathe some of the chip flavours here. the doritos are better than back home 'cause their nacho cheese ones are also a little spicy, but there are just way too many flavours w/ unexpected hints (or sometimes just big honking obvious nuclear explosions) of lime in them.
to simplify:
canada/u.s. flavour : mexican flavour equivalent

ketchup = ketchup w/ spice
nacho cheese = nacho cheese w/ spice
sour cream and onion = sour cream and "spices"
salt and vinegar = doesn't exist
something that looks like very spicy nacho = LIME LIME LIME

that's all fer now;
the virtues of having patience in mexico and some stories from school to come!

2005-09-06T13:51:00.000-05:00

so i was planning on writing this long and crazy story about my weekend two weeks ago, but i'm just much too busy w/ school to do it justice. so i won't do it justice. i'm just going to point-form it. sorry.
i also waited 'til after this past weekend just to see if insane weekends are the norm here, and i'm relieved to say that they aren't. alright, here it is:

- friday: uneventful. my housemate and i go for a TGIF drinking get-together (i think my beer intake will be upped SIGNIFICANTLY this year--yiiiikes) w/ the staff and then watch t.v. for four hours straight after work

- saturday: not very eventful. kim and i explore downtown a bit more, have lunch (2-for-1 daiquiris on the isla cuale--this town is going to kill me w/ alcohol), get a little lost, and then it's confirmed that people are fascinated by my ethnicity (a man working in a travel agency literally gets up from his desk, walks across the shop and out the door after us to ask me if i'm japanese or chinese and to--yes, i am serious--reach out and touch my eye...i slowly back away...i swear this is true--a couple of days later, i'm taking the bus home from school and another random man gets up from the seat in front of me and turns around, smiles at me and says something like "bonita" and touches my chin!!! is this going to become a common occurrence?!)

- ahh, sunday: holy shite. a quartet of us (all new teachers) decide to go exploring and agree to take a little daytrip south to mismaloya, where night of the iguana and, get this--predator (the sign there proudly proclaims this)-- were shot and explore a few other towns as well
- one of the guys brought a car down, so he drives. we pass through a tunnel (we're driving through mountains) and then we're about to enter another tunnel when the pickup truck in front of us loses one of the people it's carrying in the back. seriously. this middle-aged-looking woman literally flies out of the truck and rolls onto the highway.
it sort of went in slow motion from there--
i could see the woman lying on the side of the road, unconscious (she looked really pregnant too, btw), and i could see the truck stopping suddenly in front of us, and immediately i could tell that we were going to smack into that truck. there was no way we could've breaked in time. we braced for impact, and i remember hearing the sound of the glass from the left headlight smashing.
fortunately, none of us got hurt. unfortunately, there seems to be no such thing as car insurance here (at least it's not mandatory), so my friend will have to pay for the car damage himself (the whole front of the frame is all banged up). he was afraid the radiator was busted and the car would die, so we actually fled the scene and made it back to the boys' house. i have no idea what happened to the woman. we did see ambulances heading towards her though.
we've since heard that if you're involved in a traffic accident here, they arrest everybody, whether it's your fault or not. at first i felt guilty for leaving the scene, but now i have mixed feelings.
so, yes.
that was quite a day.
and it didn't end there.
believe it or not, we eventually took the bus up north to sayulita (beach town good for surfing) for the rest of the day.

ha--and sunday was also the day we discovered that a picture of all the new teachers at the school was published on the cover of the town newspaper. our faces and names, plastered on the front page. greaaaat. this small town thing sure is gonna be interesting.

there's a lot more to say, but i'll save it for later. SO BUSY here. gotta head to a staff meeting now.
i caught a cold from the students, too. ugh. i'll survive.

for now, i'll leave you w/ my housemate's pic from the malecon (the one above is from sayulita).

2005-08-27T13:12:00.000-05:00

i was backpacking through europe earlier this summer, and right at the start of my trip, i received a couple of e-mails from my university´s placement office asking me if i would be interested in teaching at a school in guatemala city or at one in puerto vallarta, mexico for the upcoming school year. since i´d already been to guatemala earlier in the year (i know--i´m such a jet-setter), i decided i wanted to find out more about the school in puerto vallarta, and by the time i was in switzerland, an interview with the school´s director had been set up.

while standing at a payphone in a zurich youth hostel, i interviewed with the director of a small, fairly prestigious bilingual school in PV for the position of high school math teacher.

so now it's august, and here i am, writing this from an internet café in vallarta (on the central pacific coast of mexico, surrounded by the ocean and the sierra madres), a block away from the jungle of a complex that will be my home for the next two years. it´s hot and humid here--it feels like it´s 35-40 celsius, everyday, and the temperature contrast between my air-conditioned bedroom and the non-A/C bathroom is insane--my glasses completely fog over every morning. we´re in the middle of the rainy season right now, so it usually pours during the evenings. the thunderstorms are wicked; i´ve never heard thunder sound like this in my whole life! i literally cringe when i see lightning; it´s like a pavlovian reaction where i´m consistently bracing for the ear-splitting sound of air exploding.

everyone is telling us that this place turns into paradise by november--no more rain, cooler, spring-like weather, supposedly no mosquitoes (i'm being eaten alive!), and i really hope they're right about everything (but especially the mosquitoes).

i´ve been here for about two and a half weeks so far, and i´m still not used to the sight of rows and rows of palm trees lining the streets.

school started on thursday, but i´ll save commenting on school for further entries, since i´ve really only taught for two days so far. for now, i will say that i feel very comfortable with the staff, and i already feel like i´ve known some of the students for longer than two days.

there´s tons more to write about, but i guess i´ll address everything eventually.

now i´m heading off to find the house richard burton bought for elizabeth taylor and their torrid love affair while he was here filming john huston´s the night of the iguana!