Mexico, tequilas & wicked bus rides.

My Mexican audience watched me in disbelief .
Surely, it was a misunderstanding. Surely, what I really was trying to say in my broken Spanish was: " I can not possibly live without it".
I repeated one more time, sheepishly: " yo no tomo tequila" (I do not drink tequila).
If you have ever spent some time in Mexico, you would know that such a statement is as bad as saying :" In my spare time I enjoy hunting baby squirrels, hang them upside down and  burn  them in front of their mothers".
In Mexico, you MUST drink tequila. If you like gin instead, you might as well pack your shit and leave the country  by night. You, buddy, are a traitor.
I discovered that is better to be a liar than a traitor. When I'm offered a shot of tequila (one every 8 hours, on an empty stomach, like some sort of medicine that will cure all aches and pains), I aim for my mouth but then shoot it my eyes then say :" oh, dear, I thought it was contact lenses solution!"
It burns like hell, but at least I won't have to leave the country by night.
I am just hoping that nobody realises that  I do not wear contact lenses after all.

I was born a worrier. I worry about absolutely anything. I always did.  I mean, during the Gulf war, I was the only teenager (well, outside of Iraq ) who kept an emergency suitcase under the bed. I worried some bomb might end up somehow in Italy. I worried I would have no time to pack my Nintendo Gameboy,  that the end was near. I wrote my will. That's how much I worried.
Since I ve been living in Mexico, I'm struggling to find things to worry over.
I used to worry about how my hair looked. Now I don't, because I know that no matter what I do to it,  with 100% humidity, my head will always look like an artichoke left on a bbq for too long.
I used to worry about make up. Now I don't. And not because I magically turned into Cindy Crawford after clearing customs. It's because any powder you carefully place on your shiny forehead, within minutes turns into mashed potato, sliding into your cleavage. The worry of having to explain to people why the hell I walk around covered in mashed potato is too much too handle.
I worried about my weight. Then I moved to a country where men call women "gorditas" (literally, "cute fatty") and the women take it as it s the nicest compliment, for God's sake.
Can you imagine the men in your own country addressing women in a club by saying :" Hey, Fatso, fancy a dance?".
To Mexican standards, I'm severely underweight. I worry they would see me as a traitor, so I'm trying to fix the problem by eating tacos for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Before I know it, I will be called "gordita " too!

One of my favourite activities (when I'm not drinking gin served in tequila glasses), is to go on bus rides. I sometimes go on a random buses, end up in some sort of far away Mexican slums and have to get an expensive taxi home. But the thrill! Oh, the thrill!
Buses are exactly what you would expect in a third world Country. Drivers often race with other bus drivers and as a passenger you worry for your life (but that could just be me).
In such distress, what is comforting is to be surrounded by all sorts of religious paraphernalia, reminding you that you are in good hands.
 "Jesus is with you" written on a sticker on the windscreen,  can have a very calming effect, especially when you worry that your head might soon be smashing against it.
But bus rides are not gloomy! They are fun! And they come with entertainment!
In Europe we have beggars. People who ask you to share your hard earned wage with them, offering nothing in return. (If not the illusion that karma will pay you back).
In Mexico, you have artists, who are happy to share their artistic skills with you, in exchange of one lousy pesito. I feel the need to add that most of the times these "artists" are utterly pathetic, but it s really not the point. It s the idea of "exchange" that I find inspirational.
The past three weeks on the R1 bus alone,  I saw a poet clown (the make up was not very effective, so I didn't give any spare change); an old man with a guitar playing the song "Bamba" (awfully out of tune, no spare change there, either) and then my personal highlight: the Mexican rapper. Usually the performance only lasts as long as the distance between two bus stops, but this dude stayed on rapping for 35 minutes.
To this guy I paid the entire bus fair. So he could get on another goddamn bus and rap somewhere else. Not only because he was utter shite. I worried he might distract the bus driver.
A race was going on, after all. I HAD to be on the winning bus.