One Long Week(end)

Well, here's the rundown of stuff. There's one thing that could be difficult for some of you, but rest assured it's nothing inherently wrong.

Monday

Dance class. The Merengue. Actually quite a fun dance. I'm observing however that lots of dances, however romantic, have some more sexualized elements. Not incredibly so, but somewhat, yes. However it was still a lot of fun. Not that I really remember any of it at all.

Tuesday

Got a call from the parents, which was good. I honestly have no memory of what the heck we studied in class that day.

Wednesday

We went to the old folks' home. The accommodations looked okay, but not absolutely wonderful. There was a guy who I think may have been a Priest or studying to be one who led worship for them, a couple of songs that we were there for.

Thursday

We went to a DIF place for what I think were at-risk youths. DIF in Mexico, in my understanding, is sort of like Department of Human Services is in Oregon. At night we went to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Despite my being completely out of the loop on Harry Potter, I found it enjoyable.

Friday

We went to the beach. We were going to go to Señor Frog's (bar/disco/restaurant) because it was no-cover, but it turned out there was a $10 cover. So we stayed at the tavern we were at when we got the news (I will contend that "Beer Planet," the name of said tavern, is the best bar name ever.) Unsure at this point how I felt about drinking in Mexico I let it rest on the verity of a rumor that at the next hotel we were staying at there would be an open bar. I told two people about this.

Saturday

We went to the beach again today. My wallet had an adventure! It went into the ocean mistakenly and came back short only 200 cash pesos (roughly $20USD.) All the cards, everything but those 200, all that is safe! …And the open bar rumor got confirmed.

Sunday

I had my first drink Sunday. It was pretty light, as in I'm not even sure if I was really affected. For further explanation I feel I should quote the e-mail I sent Dad:

Honestly I wasn't ready. If it's possible I think I pressured myself too much to "fit in" and as a consequence I made a bad experience out of what should've been a positive rite of passage, if that makes any sense.

And I'd love to blame other people to. I'd love to say my parents put too much pressure on me not to drink or that my friends put too much pressure on me to drink. But the fact is by the time I actually did,

a) However intentional your pressure was, I'm the one who has to choose how much stock I put in it
b) My friends' pressure may have been quasi-intentional, but when I explain more of that to you (and I will) you'll know I really can't call it peer pressure, and a couple people made it explicitly clear shouldn't if I didn't want to

Which brings me to the bottom line, which is I really didn't want to, or at least not that badly. Whatever I might say about pressures one way or the other, I chose to be an idiot and do the opposite of what I wanted. So it's my bad. Following this, I'm probably just going to be on refrescos (edit: soft-drinks) for the remainder of the trip (never had the 2nd drink yesterday) and as such won't be drinking again till my 21st (but won't then if I discover I'm still not ready, because the psychological effect wasn't worth it.)

End of e-mail quotation. For the record, I talked with one of the people beforehand that I`d made my stupid "promise" to and they basically said not to drink if I didn't want to. One other person also made that blatantly clear and I'm thankful to both of them for it. I'm sure the other "promised" person would've understood if I'd just said I wasn't ready and wanted to wait for the 21st. And while I'm not as sure here, I'm fairly certain the same would be true of the one person I actually felt at all pressured by—and even then it was probably just me overblowing things. I take responsibility because I chose to drink. And I'm feeling regret for it now because I wasn't ready and I'll never be able to redo it. And for the remainder of my time in Mexico I decided that I'm going to continue getting water and refrescos at the bars.

One last thing. I talked with my Dad and it's his understanding that I made no promise not to drink. But to the extent that I raised that expectation and then failed to follow through, I apologize.

Sunday night got better, though. We went to a place called Carlos and Charlie's, which is a sister business of Señor Frog's. The music was good and I really enjoyed the dancing, what there was of it. Also, there was a program "sexy man" contest. I didn't enter, but one of my classmates became the gringo from Michoacan and brought the house all the way down. As in, he completely annihilated the competition—the local competition. As in, if America had kicked butt in Iraq and continued to do so the way that he did on the stage, people wouldn't be complaining about our military situation there. (Let's just not get into the morality of the war to begin with.) That's a lie--they'd still be complaining--but not as many of them and not as much. I'll admit, I was pretty impressed. I'm not one for doing stripteases myself, though.

This club was considerably more, um, basic than Ego. Still dancing, though, and still fun. And the music was bumpin´! Actually, one of the guides on our trip, Christian, is also a fan of electronica. We're actually going to a bar this Friday to hear some local stuff. He also recommended some Mexican electronica I could check out. I'd say I'm going to miss having electronica be not the most ostracized form of music where I am, except taht I'm going back to Christie where, in my wing, it's quite popular.

Also, honestly, obviously not for alcohol but for the musical aspect, I'm going to miss being able to go to taverns.

Monday

We stayed at the hotel some after check-out. I went to the worst internet café in existence. The hourly price was roughly $8USD an hour. On the way home I encountered one of the better Morelia taxi drivers. Why was he better? Because instead of charging a full extra 30 pesos for an extra distance of about 20-30 blocks he only charged me 20. I was prepared to pay thirty, too.

I also ate some Domino´s Pizza for lunch on Monday. Bad for me, and heavily American, I know. But so good.

Tuesday

Return to the Casa Hogar de Buen Pastor, the home for girls who'd been in difficult situations. Got to sit and watch presentations; I didn't have to give any!