This post is going to consist of a collection of short stories and photos. The stories are in no way connected, but they’re fun and/or interesting. :)
In my last post, I talked a little bit about the supermercado. I’m going to describe it a little bit more. Basically, it’s like K-mart. It’s a grocery store with some random stuff like clothing and toys. One thing that’s interesting is that you can’t bring in backpacks or grocery bags. You have to leave your stuff at the “paquetería.” There, they take your stuff and give you a number so you can retrieve your items after shopping. The reason I went to the super was to buy a few ingredients for a dessert I wanted to make. Here is what I discovered: they don’t grow strawberries here. They import them from the US and they’re super poor quality. Not sweet or juicy. Also, they’re surprisingly expensive. Mérida has TONS of delicious fruits in hundreds of varieties so I was surprised to learn that they don’t have strawberries. Also, it took me like 15 minutes to find the sugar. It’s stored in weird plastic bags…definitely not what I was expecting. Another thing, they don’t have Nilla Wafers. How sad is that?
About a week ago, my mamá made us “huevos divorciados.” (divorced eggs) You can see from the picture how they got the name.
Another interesting little tid bit is that most businesses here offer delivery. Not just pizza restaurants, but almost EVERYTHING you can imagine. Stores, pharmacies, pet food shops, even Carl’s Jr!
Next, I want to tell you about a creepy little shop in Progreso, the town with the beach. It’s supposed to be a little touristy place but it is super sketchy. Outside, they sell animal bones and teeth. Inside, it’s not very well lit, it’s dirty, and there are stuffed snakes hanging from the ceiling. I don’t mean plush, cute stuffed animals. I mean that they took out everything that was inside of the snake and then stuffed it. The texture is really unsettling because the taxidermist didn’t do a very good job on the preservation part.
My friend David, has a truck and one thing I’ve learned is that trucks are the best vehicle to have in Mexico. Why? Well, it’s because you can take all of your friends with you in one vehicle! They just stuff everyone in the back of the truck. (They don’t have seatbelt laws in Mexico.) When I ask David who is going with us (to the beach, to an activity, etc…) his answer is always “whoever we can fit!” Which means anyone who wants to go because we can make people fit like you wouldn’t believe…
Another little cultural difference….I’ve noticed multiple times that when someone asks for a drink of your water or to borrow something, they reach for it and take it as they ask. There’s an assumption that you WILL give it to them. The people here are a lot more giving and nice and they don’t say “no” when you ask for something. It’s quite a bit different from the US because when I ask someone for a drink from their water bottle, there’s a good chance they will say no because they don’t want to share germs or they’re just really stingy. Just an interesting observation. :)
Speaking of cultural differences…..I went to an Institute dance last night. Now if you know me well, this is somewhat shocking because I generally avoid dances like the plague. I enjoy planning them and working at them (like I do for my job) but they are definitely my least favorite social event to attend. I don’t enjoy dancing and I am BAD at it. So I didn’t really want to go to this dance. But I only have a few days left in Mérida and all of my friends were going. So I thought I could go, chat with a bunch of people, and avoid the dance floor as much as possible. But if I had to dance once or twice, it wasn’t the end of the world, right? Well. Here, they don’t just dance. They DANCE! They have actual dances like merengue and salsa. And pretty much everyone dances. I mean, there are a few people sitting along the wall, but it’s generally just to rest between dances. The way the DJ arranges and changes the songs makes it really hard to escape if you are coerced into dancing. Trust me I know. Another little detail…..they don’t turn down the lights. It’s bright and everyone can see everyone. I find dancing in dimmed lights uncomfortable so the thought of the lights being left on made me wonder again why I decided to go. But no worries…I had a couple of friends at the entrance, getting people to sign up for institute before letting them into the dance. So I decided to help. Pretty soon, Beto found me, grabbed my hand, and tried to pull me into the dance. After resisting and telling him “ahorita?!? No, más tarde!” (right now?!? No, later!”) multiple times, I finally agreed to go. I would like to emphasize that I said NO very firmly and forcefully withdrew my hand from his grasp. But I felt really bad and reflected on my first dance as a 14 year-old. I had no idea what I was doing and felt really uncomfortable because I was 14 haha. My friends got this guy to ask me to dance but I told him no and ran away. I felt really bad afterwards for rejecting him. More than six years later, I am still plagued with that guilt. So anyway, back to the present. I didn’t want to tell Beto no, so I went. It was fun but I am SO SO SO bad at it haha. I could see people around kind of chuckling at the gringa haha. After like two songs, I got away and found a place to chat/hide. But then David found me. At that point, I was NOT ready to go back out to dance so I refused haha. This happened several times with David. Then I ran into this kid, Juan, who I talked to at the last activity. He’s an investigator and it was his second activity. I told him no but he kept persisting and I have a guilty conscience so I said yes. I thought it was never going to end. Juan wasn’t the problem…I just really didn’t want to dance. He’s cool and I like hanging out with him. Finally, I said I wanted to use the bathroom. He wanted me to stay on the dance floor with him. I said more forcefully, no because I had to use the bathroom. He followed me to the bathroom and entered the men’s room. I was thinking, okay I can just stay in the bathroom forever. But it was super hot in there and I was sweating, so I decided to leave super quickly and find someone else to talk to. Well, he found me and wanted to dance. I said “not now, but how about later?” But he kept asking! It was super annoying. He would not take no for an answer. So I said I wanted a drink. We went to the drinking fountain and after, he said he wanted to dance. So I said that he should find someone else and get to know them since we were already friends. He didn’t like that idea. So I said I had a friend for him and I desperately searched for someone else from BYU. He didn’t like that idea either. So I told him I didn’t like dancing and didn’t want to dance anymore. He kept persisting. At this point, I didn’t feel like being nice anymore. I was so flipping annoyed. And I remembered my friend David. I told him we would dance later and then danced with Juan. And I felt SUPER bad. It’s bad enough I rejected him, but then agreed to dance with some other kid like ten minutes later. So, I tried to explain it to Juan and said I needed to find David. Juan still wanted to dance. So I repeated it with obvious annoyance and then went to find David. I couldn’t find him but I saw my friend Enrique helping with institute stuff at the entrance so I joined him. He received his mission call to Monterrey last week. We chatted for a bit and he practiced his English. Juan came back wanting to dance. I began to wonder if “no” really does translate into Spanish or if every Spanish teacher I’ve ever had has been lying to me. Long story made short, the dance finally ended and I was pissed off. I couldn’t figure out why these guys couldn't take “no” for an answer! What part of “no, I don’t want to dance” doesn’t make sense!?! Am I really THAT hard to understand?!? Well, I talked to my friend, Carlos, after the dance and he really helped me understand better. He speaks English really well and dated a girl from California so he understands the cultural differences. He explained to me that when someone from Mexico goes to a dance, it’s because they want to dance. And that’s their primary reason for going. People don’t go if they don’t want to break out their moves. So my presence made everyone assumed I really wanted to dance. It didn’t make sense to them that I was saying “no” because I showed up. Obviously I wanted to dance with them. But from my perspective, all I wanted to do was practice my Spanish and avoid any form of dancing. It’s just a little cultural difference, but I was on the verge of anger by the end of the dance. I just wanted to be left alone haha. I haven’t been that frustrated since the first Sunday here when we were trying to get to the Stake Center and had some serious communication issues with Amira.
Along with the saying "no" thing...when someone says "no" here, many times they don't mean it like we do. If you invite someone to hang out and they say that they can't, you have to convince them to come. You have to tell them how much fun it will be and that they will be missing out. After doing this for a while, the person usually changes their mind. It annoyed me at first, but now it's funny. But when I say "no," I mean it. If I want to do something, I will do it without being convinced haha. Just different.
So moving on to something wonderful about the culture…there’s a chain of ice cream shops here called “La Michoacana.” It’s pretty much the best thing known to man. They sell “aguas” (which are kinda like juices), ice cream, paletas (popsicles), and other awesome treats. I quickly discovered that I absolutely love the horchata de coco (a sweet milk-based drink) and the paletas de crema (specifically the kind with kiwi and strawberry). They’re located all over the city and it just so happens that there is one between the bus stops on the way to/from the university. We’ve become good friends with the guy that works there most often. His name is Jesus and I’m pretty sure he’s gay. He has some awesome flowery shirts though. Anyway, I think he looks forward to the frequent visits from the gringas. Hopefully I'll get a picture with him before leaving.
So I’ve mentioned before how safe Mérida is. It’s the safest city in Mexico. I’m always surprised by how people don’t worry about their safety. At all. Girls walk alone at night and people leave laptops, purses, and other valuables in plain sight in their vacant cars. Well, I found out why it’s so safe. First of all, it’s not near the border and not in the path of drug traffickers. But there’s something more. Something I think is super interesting. Because it’s so out of the way of all of the drug cartel problems, the drug lords own homes in Mérida and it’s where their families live. It’s known that the families stay in the safety of Mérida while the Drug Lords take care of business in the more dangerous parts of Mexico. So how does that make Mérida more safe? Well, the Drug Lords give enormous amounts of money to the local government to keep it safe. If something (like a rape or robbery) goes down, the police get on it and the culprits are severely punished. In comparison to the rest of Mexico, Mérida has money. It’s relatively clean and super safe thanks to the drug trafficking business. And the drug lords keep their “business” far far away from Mérida in order to keep their families safe.
Now for something really sad….in one of my classes, my profesora was telling us about the minimum wage in Mérida. She told us that it is 45-50 pesos (about $3.80 - $4.20). That’s SO little. I don’t make much more than minimum wage in Utah and sometimes I just barely make rent but I definitely make more than $3.80 per hour. Even with the difference in the cost of living here, that’s not enough to support a family! It’s not even enough to support yourself. But then my profesora said something astonishing. It’s not 45-50 persos per HOUR. It’s 45-50 pesos per 8-hour WORK DAY. Imagine working all day and only receiving $3.80. That’s not even enough to cover lunch in the US. And the jobs are HARD! They don’t have the same laws to protect the workers so the jobs here expect a lot from the workers. Definitely worrisome.
Ok last story for now….I went to a little restaurant with some friends last week. It sells the best panuchos and salbutes EVER. They’re huge, tasty, and cheap! They only cost 12 pesos each (about a dollar) and one is plenty for me! But like I said, it’s a little, unheard-of place. The tables and chairs are outside and there is a little sink in the area as well. So I went to wash my hands before eating. The sink was kinda dirty, but such is Mexico. The standard of clean is just different. After thoroughly washing my hands in the sink, we ordered our food and soon began to eat. When I was almost finished, we noticed a HUGE cucaracha (cockroach) on a wall. The mesero (waiter) took a disturbingly dirty cloth and smashed the crap out of the cucaracha against the wall. He twisted the rag, squishing the guts and making sure the nasty thing really was dead. Jill and I watched in horror as he went to the sink where we had just washed our hands and rinsed the guts off of the cloth. The dirty contents of the cloth got all over the sink, touching the handles and everything we had just been touching. I almost couldn’t finish my food.
Well, that's it for now. It's now Sunday night and I leave early on Thursday morning to return to the US. I am SO SAD! I have no idea how I'm going to leave this place. I seriously wish I could stay longer. Or better, I wish I could live here! Provo seems so dull in comparison. This evening I went out with some friends and it hit me that I have to say goodbye to them. But for now, I don't want to think about that. I'm going to enjoy my last three days!
Well, that's it for now. It's now Sunday night and I leave early on Thursday morning to return to the US. I am SO SAD! I have no idea how I'm going to leave this place. I seriously wish I could stay longer. Or better, I wish I could live here! Provo seems so dull in comparison. This evening I went out with some friends and it hit me that I have to say goodbye to them. But for now, I don't want to think about that. I'm going to enjoy my last three days!
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