Bringin' A Little Bit of Home to Mexico

First, health update. I'm fine. I'm back to eating as I should be. I think part of the problem could be that I haven't been able to keep up my intake of half a cow, three chickens, and two pigs a day (i.e. I eat a lot of meat at home). However, that situation has been rectified. I feel fantastic now and the last several days have laid case to that, such as...

Wednesday - The USA/Mexico World Cup qualifier. I have been looking forward to this moment since I learned I was going to be in Mexico. Ashley, Sherman, and I tried both a Chili's and an Applebee's, but they were completely chocked full of green clad Mexican fans. And so, we ended up at this over-priced, snobby Mexican seafood buffet that was near a Holiday Inn, where I'm quite certain they cooked the food in the disease infested pool. It was horrible. And I'm not usually one to back down from food. Anyways, I had made a bet with the PE teacher and my coordinator at school that if the USA won, they had to fix me carne asada Mexico style. Otherwise, I had to fix them steak, Indiana style. Well, despite an early goal from my homeboy Charlie Davies (this is the goal - watch for the attempt at the "Carlton Dance" before he starts getting pelted with trash), the 110,000 screaming Mexican fans throwing piss, vomit, and batteries at the players for ninety minutes, refereeing shadier than a deaf, blind, white guy at a MosDef concert, and the fact our best player ("Mandon" Landon Donovan) played with swine flu, we lost 2-1. And so, the bet was mine to fulfill.

Friday Afternoon - You know those heart-warming, touching, rally-the-troops-and-make-everyone-feel-good days employers hold? Ours was Friday. But, it was Mexican style. What does that mean, you ask? We had the introductory PowerPoint that ended with "Welcome to the Madison Family!" and the fun little games that serve a deep, dramatic purpose of displaying what the kids we'll be teaching go through, and of course the comraderie that comes with those activities. Then, we all went to a local eatery, stuffed our faces, and proceeded to party. Imagine your high school principal saying, "Beers and margaritas are on me, and the first five are mine!" This is why I love Mexico. I had a great converstaion/chain-smoking convention with two co-workers - but, the night was young.

Friday Night - We rolled to Sherman's pad for the cookout to settle what is probably the infancy of a horrid gambling addiction. Anyways, Sherman's house is very nice - extremely nice - but the patio seals it. Open space inside a privacy wall with a large brick grill and a lime tree. A real-honest to God, lime tree. Growing right there. With real limes.


It was the first of a two part series this weekend that was perhaps the most gloriously spectacular weekend since Bill and Ted traveled through time in a phone booth and kidnapped Abraham Lincoln. To uphold my end of the bet, I marinated 30 New York strip steaks overnight in a Chicago-style marinade, garnished them with onion and lime, and cooked the puppies up just right.

("Thirty steaks? New York strip? Really? That is ridiculous Ryan! Too much money!" Oh yeah? Try 350 pesos. Go ahead. Put that into a converter and see how much that is in US dollars. Then go ahead and get yourself a new pair of underwear to replace the ones you just shit in. Granted, the meat was as tender as if it came from an 89 year-old Grandma with hips like the Hoover Dam and a goiter the size of Rhode Island on the side of head whose lived in the desert her whole life, but for that cheap, you can't pass it up.)


I'll describe the night with a familiar rhyme - "And so the betters with their beer and I with my rum settled down at the table for a bit of good fun. The steaks were all eaten, the men were all fed, and then we smoked and drank until 3am. And at the end of it all, with our belts much too tight, buenas noches to all, and to all, we are drunk." (Look for that and much more in my upcoming first book, Senor Ryan's Inappropriate Nursery Rhymes for Kids, Vol. 2)

Saturday Night - I've never really been to a "club" per say. You know, the stand outside and hope some greasy bouncer in a ten-cent suit says you're cool enough to go in. Well, I went to one. A nice one. Think Cocktail with so many beautiful Latina women that I might have wept at some point in the night. It was glorious. If there were a basketball gym, James Dean, and a movie theatre that only played Without Limits, Saving Private Ryan, and The Big Lebowski on loop, all while Led Zepplin and Beatles music could be heard everywhere (and only the good stuff), I might think it was heaven. I know that's convoluted, but you need to understand just the glory of what mine eyes have seen.

Anyways, I've heard so many stories about the prowess of Mexico and their drinking that it will constitute my second book, Senor Ryan's Stories About People Getting Wasted in Mexico That May or May Not Be Made-Up. Why not show them how we do it in Indiana? So I did. And it was wonderful. And I sang songs in Spanish I didn't know and met people I can't remember and ate tacos that were most excellent, but I think I made the point and have finally reconciled, through all my adventures here this one thing (WARNING: semi-sentimental moment upcoming - look away if you cringe at hearing someone say, "We're gonna watch The Notebook"):

That while I have lived in the small hamlet that is country Indiana for 23 years, it's old and not me and I'm over it. I love being here. I love everything about it. Hell, if I became semi-fluent in Spanish (just enough so some cabbie wouldn't rape me behind a 7/11), I'd move here. Or anywhere. This culture and these people and these experiences are exactly what I've needed to avoid the drab existence that is waking up to cornfields and munching cows every morning and driving the same cracked gravel roads and staring at the same flat plains and hearing the same bitching and moaning from the same old farts who think everyone under the age of 30 has it "so easy", when in reality it's an entirely new bag of shit we have to deal with, mainly from close-minded individuals who think living an 1880's, Little House on the Prairie, "please-and-thank-you", better-not-dip-your-wick-until-your-married,-but-once-you-are-you-can-sleep-around-like-you're-Michael-Jackson-at-a-choir-boy-lock-in lifestyle is better than enjoying life and realizing that one day we're all gonna be worm food and there's no reason to be so damn pensive about each little move until you're 65 and realize you've wasted your entire life doing nothing and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.

A few last thoughts:

1. I finally finished The Memory of Running. Great novel. Highly recommend. A modern, more subdued Forrest Gump. I am currently well into The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. Very good so far. I always welcome reading suggestions, so if you have them, shoot.
2. I've been asked about ignoring Facebook chats and if I'll ever get Skype. I run on borrowed Internet that is worse than dial-up. Seriously. Soon I will try Skype and report the results. Please be patient. As great as things are, there's always something like shitty Internet to mess it up.
3. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, enjoy yourself and have a wonderful day!