I had been so tired, but I didn't feel it any longer once I arrived in Monterrey. I was too excited. Excited by the fact that I was there in the back of a car with my beautiful girlfriend in my arms, excited by the fact that I was actually able to hold her again, excited by the fact that she was chatting with her sister in a language that I had only just started to learn, so I still had no real idea what they were saying. Seriously, they could have been complaining that I looked and smelled terrible for all I knew (It was a 24 hour journey so I wouldn't blame them!), but I loved it! For once again, I was in an unfamiliar place, and it seems to be in those unfamiliar places where I feel most alive.
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| Monterrey, the city of mountains. |
Monterrey is located in the North-East of Mexico in the state of Nuevo León, and is the third-largest greater metropolitan area in the country, with a population of over 4 million (humans obviously. The mosquito population is probably in the billions). The locals call the city
La Ciudad de las Montañas, which of course is Spanish for "The Father of Montana". The actual meaning would be obvious to anyone traveling through the city - there were mountains EVERYWHERE! On the East, the West, the centre, under a rug, everywhere! I had always thought there was only one big mountain, so I was pleasantly surprised at the city's beauty.
We took the "scenic" route back home, meaning going through the city centre. Mexico is a country of contrasts, in terms of the old and the new, the rich and the poor (the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, is Mexican, and yet half the country's population lives in poverty) and the city of Monterrey is no exception. While some areas (such as where Danie lives) are more modern and comfortable, we drove through areas in the city centre with much older housing, and that was where I got my first of many culture shocks.
There was a guy standing by a space between cars on the road. Danie told me that he was paid to guide drivers into their parking spaces. What?! I could do that myself (okay not very well. I kinda suck at parallel parking). Since learning about value-adding activity at business school, I've used it as an excuse for thrift, especially with toilet attendants. Why the hell should I pay someone because they ran the tap for me and gave me a paper towel? I don't want to brag, but I can do that pretty damn well myself thanks. In fact, I've been able to do that since I was about 3 or 4, and the only reason I can't do it in a club is because some bastard is holding the paper towels and hogging the tap! I've had to become a ninja, hovering near the basin, waiting to make my move. Waiting to attack. Then I SWING for the tap when he least expects it, turn my back to him as soon as he tries to catch me with his soap, and shake my hands dry, splashing him in the face. There you go, toilet guy! You always try to splash us with perfume, saying "No Splash, No Gash", well you just got splashed motherfucker, and you're not gonna get any gash because you're too busy harassing gentlemen in the toilet and watching them pee!
Where was I? Oh yeah, Mexico. So there's a lot of this kind of "informal commerce". Unemployment is lower in Mexico than it is in the UK, but a lot of people work these "informal" jobs where they receive tax-free money, and when I first arrived the concept was very weird for me, as many of these jobs didn't seem to add value and warrant being paid. Parking guides (I can do that myself), people who put the petrol in your tank (I can do that myself), people who bag your shopping at the supermarket (I can do that myself), jugglers on the roads (I can do that myself) restaurant musicians (there's music on the stereo), flower sellers (the flowers are fake), Amish German-Mexicans trying to sell you cheese on the road while you're at a red light (um.... what?!) although I'm yet to meet a toilet attendant, surprisingly enough. Probably because I haven't been out clubbing.
However, I've learned since to accept these jobs as they are, and to go with the flow. After all, there are people who rely on these little propinas to live (although I still refrain from buying the flowers). Anyway, I digress, epicly. After traveling through the city we arrived at Danie's house in the suburbs.
Now for the moment that would install fear into every man: meeting the parents. It's particularly scary when it's your first time, but I may have had a little extra reason to self-defecate: the little issue of the massive language barrier as well! Her parents don't speak much English at all. I don't speak much Spanish at all. This will be fun....
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Oh God I hope they don't do this... I won't even bloody understand them
and I'll fail and they'll deport me... |
... It went well! The family were very welcoming, all there with warm smiles as I entered their equally comforting home for the first time. It was a brief hello, as it was already quite late, but it was enough for me to hopefully have made a good impression with my limited Spanish..... and to try Mexican Coca-Cola! Oh it was good, like meeting a new best friend! Apparently Mexican Coke has more natural sugar from sugar cane, unlike the corn syrup that the Coke I'm used to contains. I don't know to be honest, but what I do know is Mexicans LOVE their Coke, so I would fit in nicely!
Before long, Danie and I were in the car going for a bite to eat. She wasted no time in getting me my first taco, from a small place just round the corner from her house. Oh it was so good! If the first swig of Coke was like making a new friend, this first bite was, quite literally, a taste of what was yet to come. Delicious beef, salsa, tortillas... I can kinda see why the Mexicans are so
locos about tacos! That's basically what I've lived on these last few weeks! I have no idea how my girlfriend can be vegetarian here. It's almost like starving yourself to death in a supermarket, or being celibate at the Playboy mansion.
Then it was time for bed. The family had kindly set a room for me downstairs, with en suite - how kind! As excited as I was to start my Mexican shenanigans, after a 30-hour day I had the energy of a stoner on a treadmill. It was about time for a proper snooze.
I was woken early the next morning by the gate opening. Danie was leaving for work, leaving me in the clutches of the family I had just met. That first day was very tough indeed. I just wanted to spend time with Danie, but of course she had to work and I had to stay at home. Soon, I found myself being dragged around the town, somehow ending up at her father's dentistry and at the doctor's (for Danie's brother) and I had no idea what was happening and for how long. It was confusing, and I was very nervous trying to make a good impression whilst not knowing what the fuck was being said to me. It was a week of broken communication, with smiling and nodding. What would the Madagascar penguins say - "Just smile and wave, Ollie.... wait, don't wave! You look like a nob."
They are lovely, of course (the family now - not sure about the penguins) but I was very apprehensive of five upcoming awkward weeks with negligible successful communication between us. For the first week that certainly felt like the case. I made sure to be polite, and when I did speak I referred to the parents with the polite '
usted' form and reserved the more informal '
tú' for Danie's brother.
Yeah English seems to be the only language where we don't discriminate. We don't care if you're rich, poor, worthy of our respect or of a kick in the balls. We don't care if you're one person or more. You don't even need to exist, you could just be 'one'. In French, they use '
vous' for everyone except a familiar individual, for which they employ '
tu', and they say '
on' for 'one'. In Spanish, they have no fewer than FOUR words for 'you'. If you're a singular familiar person, you get a
tú, if you're a singular formal person, it's an
usted in your emails, if you're a plural group of familiar people, you're
vosotros (or
vosotras if you're all ladies) and
ustedes if there's a single member that isn't familiar. Thankfully in Mexico, they realise that the case of
vosotros is pretty damn rare! I mean, when you talk to a group of people you're not part of, there's bound to be that one person you don't really know/bother with/care for/would save if their head was trapped in a toilet.
So yeah, regarding the parents, I conjugate my verbs in a sycophantic manner. However, for the first week it probably didn't matter how I did it, as 90% of the time I was answering the wrong questions. Here's a typical exchange:
Señora: "Ollie, palalalapotellanutellasacapuntasierratu TOALLA cagagalalacera por favor?"
Ollie: ".............................................. okay no problemo...."
(20 minutes later)
Señora: "Ollie QUÉ HICISTE?"
I had returned with a tyre that I had taken off the car, mistranslating the word
'toalla', meaning 'towel'. She had just asked me to hang my towel out to dry out the back...
I'm only joking of course... like I'd know how to change a tyre! But I believe I've made my point: my comprehension of foreign languages sucks. They ask me to wash the dishes, I wash their tortoises instead. They tell me my Spanish is good, I say "I am hungry, yes". It's my Achilles heel of language learning, and the main reason why I'm still hesitant to call myself fluent in French. But this time, it's been a lot more scary! I have to appear the alpha-male, the fantastic lad worthy of their daughter, but here I'm as helpless as a hedgehog on a bouncy castle.
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| Hanging out in the centre of Monterrey with Danie |
I spent the evenings with Danie of course: hanging out, eating out, making out and passing out. That first week I tried a lot of Mexican cuisine. Tacos, sopes, enchiladas, carne asada, sushi..... Yeah we went for a sushi buffet on the Thursday night with Danie's best friend, who knew English as well. Thank God! While immersion is a fantastic way to learn a language, when your level is pretty low it can be rather asphyxiating and you yearn to chat in your own language with someone. Yes my girlfriend speaks English, but it was nice to meet someone else who spoke it as well. We switched between the two: I'm not a total slacker!
We finished the week going to the centre of town for the first time to meet a couple of friends from Rennes - well, they're from Monterrey, not Rennes, but I met them when on exchange in Rennes - for a nice meal in a fancy canal-side restaurant (think the canals in Amsterdam, Bruges or Disneyland: not the dodgy ones on the edge of town where the local hobos go to breed). While Danie and I waited we were serenaded by a dude with a guitar alternating between anglophone and hispanophone songs - okay he was playing to the whole restaurant: we weren't that special! It was a nice environment, and Danie sang along with the Spanish songs looking at me in a cute, yet slightly awkward way, and I returned the favour with Hotel California and Summer of 69 and my inferior singing.
Then Itzel arrived. It was surreal! She had been one of my best friends in Rennes and one of my companions for our Interrail trip around Europe. It was great to see her, but crazy to do so in her 'natural' environment! We tried to talk, but then I realised that the nice serenading muchacho was rather intrusive to the restaurant environment. Luckily, however, he finished his set not long after, and we were left at peace.
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| Reuniting with some Rennes friends |
Or so we thought. The bastard returned with a vengeance, in the form of a full band! Yes, a drum kit too - the loudest and most annoying instrument when you want a nice dinner to catch up with long-lost friends! When the others arrived, we relocated to an even more uppity and posh restaurant, right by the canal! I'm just glad I didn't sneeze or I might have gone for a swim. While it was abnormally hot for me (37 degrees on average in Mexico - hot but not unmanageable) and I would have quite fancied a dip, this would probably not have been the right context. Instead I stuffed my face with
carne asada, which is their posh word for BBQ.
It was a nice end to the week, but we had to get home promptly, as we were to get up very early the next morning (4am) to go on holiday, and - wait, I DIDN'T MENTION THAT? Oh yeah, we'd totally booked a holiday ages ago, in Playa Del Carmen near Cancún. No big deal, just the Caribbean, where I had wanted to go my whole life. Yeah not really worth a mention in the blog, but I'm going to do it anyway because I like to annoy you guys with long anecdotes! But I also like to procrastinate and spread my to-do list over a long time period, so you got away with it this time. You're free to go back to your families, friends or that secret lover you keep in your wardrobe. Enjoy your freedom, because I'm....
Done (for today... mwahahahah)
Ollie
