School Daze, Mis Nuevos Amigos, and Unibrows

First, a few short anecdotal tidbits that may or may not be of interest to the audience at-large:

1. A few days ago, I was cleaning out my jean pockets before washing them, and found 27 pesos. And while that equals about 2 US dollars, it was the first time I found money in my pockets in my laundry in Mexico. Mexican-laundry-money-virginity gone.
2. Because electricity is based around the same currency as caviar and Tiffany earrings here, we try to conserve as much as possible (call it forced to be "Green", if you will). So, in order to save on gas/electric costs with our dryer (yes, it uses both - don't ask me), I made a clothesline. A large one, with lots of little wooden clothespins. Now I'm four hairy facial moles and fifty pounds away from being a real Mexican mother (forgive me anyone from Mexico reading this - it was a joke. The American version would be, "the stench of stale beer, nine smoldering, chain-smoked cigarettes, barbed-wire/picket fence tattoos, 75 lard filled pounds, and a cup between my nasty boobs from being a real redneck mother [and if any rednecks are reading this...well, let's be honest they can't read]).
3. Finally, we got gas for our stove, and so I took the stove's virginity (running theme in this entry) with a little bit of quesadilla action and some white cheddar/queso macaroni and cheese, with a side of picco de gallo. And while that may seem cliche or even unorthodox, I don't care, because I have been here a week and haven't had time to find recipes or shop extensively, so kiss my ass.
4. I figured out how to link my obscure references which I am constantly lambasted for to actual pictures/videos. This excites me like a kid opening a present on Christmas morning.
   

We started training Wednesday. I can easily describe the training as college education classes - but in Spanish. That's right, Spanish. We had to wear earphones while a little old, but very sweet lady translated in the back of the room. Our training involved two hours of the first four "Harry Potter" movies (apparently because the children's use of Mexican voodoo on their teachers is similar to wizardry) and a wonderful viewing of "Finding Nemo". Why "Finding Nemo"? To discover character traits in the characters. But, as I pointed out, they're Disney characters so they all have the same shining virtues that have no basis in reality, hence the reason it is talking, animated, Hippie-turtles.

I have made nice with two people who work at the school, both of whom would win my MTV edition of "Senor Ryan's New BFF!" The first is the principal of our school (but is more the equivalent of a superintendent). He is a young guy and extremely nice. Like, super nice. Imagine your superintendent sitting down for lunch, talking about his family, then delaying the resumption of a meeting to talk about his favorite football teams and where he went to college. I can tell that the school runs so efficiently and everyone at least seems happy simply because he makes it go and is extremely congenial - or more like, badass. Super, super, super di-dooper guy!

The second person is the maintenance man at the school, who also repairs things at our house. He speaks very little English, I speak very little Spanish, but yet, we communicate quite easily. Every time we see each other, I wave and he smiles and waves back. It's total bro-love. For example, he came to ask what was wrong with the house. I said, "La luz en la bano...es...no trabajo (the light in the bathroom is no work). Ahora, no problemo, pero, noche (Now, no problem, but night)..." at which point I covered my eyes and pretended to run into the wall while whizzing. He laughed extremely hard. The light was fixed an hour later. He also falls into the category of super, super, super di-dooper!

We met two new guys at training, Sherman and John. Sherman is from Miami and works at our school. John is from Greenwood (how small is the world!) and works far away, but was here for training anyways. Both are fine, upstanding individuals of the highest accord. So last night, for Sherman's birthday, we went to Hooter's, of course. Eight pitchers of beer and several double shots later, my first celebration in Mexico ended stupendously (mind you, most of that was not consumed by me, but I wanted to make clear this was no "blow out your candles and have nana give you a kiss on the cheek and a check for $10" kind of birthday). Fabulous, fabulous evening.

Finally, I leave you with a quandary that has perplexed me for some time. Mexican men, unlike American men, rock the unibrow. Straight up. I mean, we're talking caterpillar-crawling-across-the-brow-ridge-fully-dressed-for-winter kind of unibrow. It makes Russian female gymnasts look like a cueball. Now, we are probably all aware of the massive clumps of hair that rest upon my eyes, and you are probably wise to the fact that I have to keep my unibrow trimmed so as not to look like Weird Al's upper lip. And so, my perplexity: "To unibrow or not to unibrow, that is the question?"