Double standards come doubly standard

Obviously, Mexico is a very different place from the United States. And even after three months, the amount of double standards imposed on relationships is still jarring.

Mexican guys are incredibly jealous.* Once a girl has a boyfriend, she better not even think about looking at another guy, because her boyfriend will get jealous. Guys here have that macho sense of pride, and they simply can’t (or are conditioned to not be able to) take any indication that their girlfriends might be noticing something other than them.

But Mexican guys are also two-timing assholes.*

Seriously, while a girl in a relationship can’t step a toe out of line, Mexican boys will flirt with anyone (especially white girls) even if they’re already engaged (something I experienced on Saturday). But if you tell them you’re not interested because they have a girlfriend (which I have done**), they still think there’s nothing wrong with their behavior. A guy who was trying to convince me to… well, probably just fuck him (who had a girlfriend in Puebla**) said, “We’re young. We should be living in the moment!” Yeah, that is not sound moral reasoning for cheating on your girlfriend. I’m still not interested.

But guys here in Mexico can get away with this, and they do get away with it.

Probably the best example of this was this girl Monica that started talking to Melissa and me one night while we were walking around near Santo Domingo. When Melissa told her she had a boyfriend back in the states, the girl asked, “And he doesn’t cheat on you, even though you’re in Mexico?”

No, he doesn’t, Melissa responded, and not just because I would kill him. Because being in a relationship, theoretically, means a tacit agreement to respect your partner, and that means not cheating on them.

But maybe that's just my silly, American perspective.


*Obviously there are exceptions. There always are. So for every generalization I make here, just take that as a given, because stating it every time I write something is stupid.
**His first hint should've been when I saw him again and asked pointedly, "How's your girlfriend doing?", but he kept trying nonetheless.

When time stands still

Something Ashley said over the weekend, when discussing how unusual beach weather is for us in November: "It feels like time is standing still here. Like I'll get back to Tennessee and it'll be August 23."

It's strange how true that is. My whole time here has felt like a huge vacation, even with the few days I had actual coursework. Maybe it's because half the courses won't actually count for anything, or because the ones that do are really easy. But everything is so carefree and easygoing, and I don't feel like I'm doing any work.

And it's not just the relaxing state of mind here. Everything is so different, yet I've settled into my routine and this city like anything else. It doesn't feel foreign, but the fact that I know it is only adds to its unreality. This is not my real life; therefore, my real life must be on pause. I will go back, as I have before with every other vacation, and not much will have happened in my absence.

Of course, my second longest vacation was only three weeks. When I got back, it was still summer, and the things that had happened didn't seem very important. It was still summer, the sun would still set late, my friends and I would still stay out until 3 a.m. every night. Life picked up pretty much where it had let off.

Now, when I go back, it will be winter (though that might not mean much in LA) and all my friends will still be in school. They will have spent an entire semester without me, and maybe they missed my presence, but more than likely they adjusted long ago and forgot to even notice.

I think the reason time seems to be standing still, even more so than the unchanging (okay, barely changing) weather and surreality of it all, is the fact that we, as humans, are inherently selfish and unable to comprehend most things bigger than ourselves. And our worlds, my world, revolve around us. What happens when we can't see it, aren't there it experience it, well, it ceases to exist. We know that's not really true, but it's how we I perceive things anyway. My normal life and everything it entails are not here, therefore I can't imagine how the things in my normal life are getting on without me.

So that world is standing still.

And it'll be waiting for me when I get back, right?

Something not related to how sick I am

I went to the doctor yesterday; it turns out I have an intestinal infection. Yay! That's always super fun. (It's never super fun.) So the past four days have been wholly uninteresting, with me mostly sitting in my room, clutching first my head (it was really bad the first two days), then my stomach, moaning as the evil bacteria and my immune system had a battle to the death. Which is still going on by the way, but I think the bacteria are losing too many men and can hardly call for re-enforcements from inside my intestines, so they are attacking less frequently, relying on the element of surprise. But my immune system is like, WHAT. WE HAVE ANTI-BIOTICS NOW. SUCK ON THAT. It's like unleashing the A-bomb. (No, it's not.)

Why am I humanising my illness? I'm so weird.

Anyway. Some stuff about last week that is actually interesting and doesn't involve my digestive tract:

1) The Optometry Clinic!

Isn't this little old lady adorable? I swear, she kept changing outfits and coming in every 15 minutes. (She obviously did not do this.) But a lot of the old people tend to look alike. Well, there are types. And it's like, DUDE, YOU WERE HERE YESTERDAY. But they weren't.

And this cutie!


Aw!

It was a really great experience. Glasses don't really seem like such an expensive deal, but for most people here, it's either get glasses or eat. Guess which one usually wins out.


2) Chiapas!

As I said before, Chiapas was great, even if there were a lot of problems with our pants. First, on Friday, they got really wet in the rain and our hotel was being a bitch about letting us dry them, because we hadn't washed them first? Whatever. We ended up waiting for two hours and paying 10 pesos to put them in the dryer for ten minutes. But then they were dry and toasty, so that was nice.

Then, on Saturday, we went horseback riding, which was awful because a) cheap saddles are uncomfortable and bruise your inner thighs and b) my horse was retarded and kept falling into pitholes and my pants were COVERED in dirt. But other than the Epic Pants Fiasco, we had a lot of fun.

Horsey!

A typical street in San Cristobal de las Casas. It's a very cute little town, even though the centro is super European-looking. Well, Mediterranean-looking.

We hiked all the way up to that church.

And all the way up these stairs. At the top of which there was another church. Naturally.

Jill stepped on a candle in the church in San Juan Chamula (pictured), a tiny town about half an hour out of San Cristobal, where they have no pews but instead candles and pine needles everywhere whilst they perform 'exorcisms' with Pepsi from the 80s (they believe you can expel bad spirits in burps). You're not allowed to take pictures inside the church. They have a tendency to smash cameras.


And then there was the jungle in el Cañón de Sumidero!

An actual crocodile, in the wild!




Lions and tigers and bears Jaguars and toucans and parrots, oh my!

And now I'm off to Huatulco for the weekend. I know, brilliant idea to go to the beach when I'm sick. Whatever. Some relaxation (in the shade, as the doctor told me to avoid the sun) will be nice.

We're not from here

It's never surprised me much that the United States would have a holiday celebrating the beginning of the end for countless millions of Native Americans. We are a nation made up of, primarily, the very white people who did the raping and pillaging and spreading of highly contagious diseases and enslaving and murdering. And we won, in the end. We got rid of most of those pesky indigenous people who were in the way of our land, our resources, our purple mountains majesty, whatever. It's only fit that we celebrate Columbus Day.

But it really surprised me that they celebrate it here in Mexico.

But I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, because we got the day off for it today.

Melissa and I went shopping on Alcalá, a street with the nicer shops, and maybe it's just because I'm usually not out in the Centro at that time or maybe we're approaching the high traffic season here in Oaxaca, but there were a lot of middle-aged and retirement-aged white tourists.

Y'all can probably already tell that I hate other tourists.

I know I'm technically a tourist, but I like to think of myself as better than a tourist, because I'm studying here, and living with a family, and I actually speak Spanish. So, I tell myself, I'm not really a tourist.

But the reason I really hate tourists is because seeing them reminds me exactly of what I am. And when trying so hard to reason that I'm not a real tourist, that's not the kind of reminder I like to have.

We met (well, Melissa met) these two women in this shop, La Mano Mágica, one of whom was from the same town in Florida as Melissa is. And as we wound our way through a couple shops, we kept running into them, as is wont to happen when you're shopping on the same street. They did not speak Spanish at all, which I actually relish, because it means I get to feel superior. And I as I was speaking Spanish to the owner of a jewelry store, feeling very superior, I told him that we were studying in Oaxaca until December, and he said we should come and help translate for a clinic of American optometrists that is going to some nearby pueblos to give out free glasses the first week of November.

See? Trying to be superior is a good thing.

Hogar de las Niñas

We had them draw their favourite animal and (at the behest of the Doña, who insisted the activity had to include some component where they could practise writing) write the name of the animal and their own names.







We also gave them chocolate. This photo was actually taken by one of the older girls; she's 13 and she actually took some pretty good shots. I told her she should be a photographer.

White people

It's so jarring how important being light-skinned here is. Wherever I go, I get wolf-whistles, calls of 'mamacita' and 'heeeey baby', and I know it's only because I'm white. Men everywhere are eager to impress us with their sparse English vocabulary. They seem to equate being white with being beautiful. There is a saying that I do not know in Spanish, but basically, if a baby is born with darker rather than lighter skin, they say something akin to, "It's dark skinned, but it could still be pretty!"

I remember when I thought racism was as easy as deciding not to hate people because of their skin color. Sometimes I miss being twelve years old.


On Saturday, Catherine and I were at this café and there was this obnoxious white girl sitting behind us. The kind (of person, not specifically white girl) who talks really loudly about personal things in public places like coffee shops and restaurants where NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT HOW YOUR EX-BOYFRIEND THOUGHT YOU HAD TO WASH YOUR FACE IN THE MORNING BECAUSE THE SANDMAN PEES ON IT AT NIGHT. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

Anyway, not only was she the regular type of annoying, but she was the racist type of annoying as well! The most ridiculous shit was coming out of her mouth, such as, "I hate the Mexicans here. It's like, all the English they know, they learned from a porno." What an asshole. She also didn't know how to say 'water with ice' in Spanish, and it's like, IF YOU DON'T SPEAK SPANISH, CARRY AROUND A PHRASEBOOK LIKE A GOOD TOURIST. Or if you hate Mexico that much, just leave. The people are wonderful and nice, and even though they holler at white girls, it's only because white people have been imposing racist and unrealistic standards upon them for hundreds of years, so SHUT UP AND GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM.