I Heart Mexico

El Fin.

2007-04-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

well that's it. hard to believe my last semester at university has drawn to this quick conclusion. i have to say, taking this class was a kind of risk i took earlier in the term when choosing courses - it looked damn interesting and i had heard hearsay of jon's innovative ways but never having studied literature seriously, let alone "bad" literature in spanish, i was very hesitant to take and fail a class in my last semester.

i took a lot from getting to think and comment on things throughout the week via blogs, which still stands for me as a great venue for student participation especially for us who feel a bit self conscious of our comments on a somewhat unknown field. i also learned of a good framework for critical reading of any text or cultural concept - it is interesting to read over my earlier blogs where i still confused taste with quality and think back now with what i have learned.

earlier in the year i thought, maybe the class is called bad latin american literature but it's actually a twist, and the books we read will end up being good. well it took chapter 1 of eva luna to know that was not going to be the case, but regardless, i don't feel it was a waste in anyway to read these uninspiring books. it took patience, was at times entertaining (especially in class debates) and got us to think in a way that traditional 'read this, tell me why it's a work of genuis' approach would not have.

given some context for latin american literature, i now feel inspired to read some "good" latin american literature! i have started with mario vargas llosa's travesuras de la nina mala and i'm pleased that i feel comfortable enough to read and enjoy literature in spanish... seeing how this text goes right where the others we have read went wrong is quite impressive.

thank you all for your patience, your comments, and your blogs which have all taught me mucho.

Corazon Salvaje

2007-03-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

Me guste esta telenovela mucho mas que anticipe - no es decir que quisiera assistir a la entera cosa pero porque odeo a las soap operas americanas, pense que no iba a divertirme ni un poco con esta.

Sin embargo, siempre hay una gran diferencia entre mi gusto y el valor actual "literario" de una cosa. Claro, la telenovela sufre de cheesiness, malos efectos especiales, un trama que es predecible en muchas partes... pero en general, recibimos todas las expectativas que tenemos de una telenovela.

Creo que segun las expectativas que tenemos para una telenovela, Corazon Salvaje se puede considerar bueno - en contraste con algunos libros que leimos, de cuales expectamos algo mas que ellos no nos daron. Porque la calidad percibida de una telenovela es tan baja, Corazon Salvaje nos sorprende con algo (un poco) mejor. Mientras con libros como genero de diversion/literatura/etc., expectamos calidad mas alta y es por eso que libros como Eva Luna nos decepcionan.

Es interesante que la telenovela tanto como libros de Allende, Esquivel, y Quino nos da un survey de latinoamerica - claro, con estereotipos y todo, pero creo que muchos de los valores y rasgos principales son representados mas o menos bien. Hablando de valores y temas latinoamericanas, una cosa que me decepciono de Corazon Salvaje es que no trata de provocar reaccion classista - es obvio que todos los servientes son indigenas mientras los protagonistas son criollos (sp?) pero na hay conflicto de eso. Los ricos blancos se enamoran con otros ricos blancos, mientras los indigenas les sirven sin ninguna queja. Juan es hijo de una rama y por eso tiene un poco de estigma pero para mi eso no es bastante.

10 anos con mafalda

2007-03-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

bueno ahora recuerdo cuando compre este libro y pense, que extrano, ese no puede ser un libro de comics, verdad? pero la neta es que despues de terminar los 7 locos estoy mas que contenta leendo comics. por lo menos tienen un mensaje cada uno, aunque algunos no entiendo tan bien (tal vez por falta del contexto argentino, no se)

pero como es que estamos leendo comics en una clase de literatura mala? no creo que muchas personas serian tan criticos a unos comics que a un libro literario. abriendo un poco la definicion de literature, ese coleccion de comics tiene casi todas las caracteristicas de un libro: aun las categorias son semejantes - inclyen la familia, TV, el colegio, la politica dentro de cada uno. el trama linear no existe tanto pero en algunos libros tambien el trama no existe en una manera asi obvia....

ya saque personalmente mas de este libro que del anterior, quiero decir, estoy leendo, me interesa lo que leyo, algo me parece chistoso, algo me hace pensar y no tengo la misma frustracion que tuve con los 7 locos por no poder entender ni sentir nada por el libro..

bueno algo que no se es como podemos categorizar este junto con los anteriore: segun yo, como agua para chocolate y eva luna son en un grupo, el alquimista en otro, los 7 locos en otro ademas, y 10 anos con mafalda es........ algo en la categoria mas amplia de cultura claro, pero de literatura??

creo que existen varios medios para explorar temas culturales y para contribuir a una cultura, por ejemplo, un documentario puede tener tanto valor cultural que un libro magnifico que un mural de Banksy... pero no se exactamente como hacer sentido de 10 anos como obra literaria - vamos a ver!

El Fin de Los 7 Locos

2007-03-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

Pero que pierda de mi tiempo...

Tal vez si estuviera en clase este semana podria sacar mas de este libro pero como es, creo que he gastado demasiado esfuerzo y tiempo leendo este libro sin nunguna satisfaccion al terminarlo. El fin me parece muy inconcluso, de hecho yo no esperaba que la ultima pagina seria la ultima cuando la leyo, entonces paso la pagina esperando una otra y mi corazon latio un poco mas rapido porque ya fue el fin!!!

Algunas puntas que me quedan:

1. quien es el narrador????? siempre refiere al hecho que Remo le cuenta todo eso pero nunca se quien es. no me gusta que aun al terminar, todavia no se quien me conto toda esa historia

2. en contraste con los otros libros, los mensajes de cuales eran muy obvios y a veces forzados, este no me deja ningun mensaje, ninguna observacion ni inmediata ni longterm. por lo menos lo que puedo decir de los otros es que el mensaje, y el efecto de ellos, quedo aun por un poco de tiempo mientras este libro me dejo completamente NADA. me parece que leer un libro complicado vale la pena si al fin uno aprende algo, o esta impresionado con algo, o se da cuenta de algo, pero nunca tuve que trabajar tanto para terminar un libro sin ningun resultado.

3. la rosa del cobre que era la clave contribucion de Remo a esa "sociedad" parece absurda.. y creo que la technologia asociada con eso tambien era sugerida para crear los gases asfixiantes en unos laboratorios bacteriologicos (p.217-), algo que me horrorizo en leerlo. hasta esa punta seguia la politica de que hablaban en el meeting del Astrologo y los otros con un poco de interes pero despues de lo mencionado, me di cuenta de la locura dentro del grupo... y es eso, no, que son locos? pero quienes, los todos? bueno, no se.

como habia dicho, este libro me confundio mucho y me dejo frustrada de no tener nada de conclusion, nada de compreension, solo unas horas gastadas leendo en vez de hacer mil cosas mejores. por eso segun yo no es buena literatura, pero tal vez alguien pudiera saltar algo de sentido de Los Siete Locos...

me aburre, me hizo trabajar, y me dejo sin ninguna impresion. tal vez merece ser en una lista de libros que compramos para mostrar y no para leer, (from the guardian article) porque si, parece algo muy serio y en ese sentido "de alto valor." me recuerda la poesia que nunca puedo seguir ni entender pero segun criticos es de alta calidad.

Los Siete Locos

2007-03-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

Bueno, decidi que malo o bueno, ese libro no es facil de leer en vol. De hecho, no es facil de leer y punto. Pero, aunque sufri mucho en las primeras 60 paginas, las despues me parecian mas interesante, tal vez porque me involve un poco mas en la historia...

Algunas impresiones:

1. demasiado descripcion: por ejemplo p51-53 cuando el protagonista nos introduce al Astrologo, y acaba con tres paginas de descripcion sobre la casa. realmente, es necesario?? segun yo, no.

2. otras cosas que el expresa me gustan mas, por ejemplo una linea en particular sobre su odio por Barsut: p43 "y lo que hacia mas intenso este odio era la falta de motivos." hay frases asi que me muestran una abilidad linguistica y emocional que para mi no ha existido en los otros libros todavia.

3. hablando de la politica, que cosas hay. Bersut, el Astrologo, y Rufian el cafishio todos nos relatan subjetos politicos pero mientras los primeros hablan de revolucion, del socialismo, y de otros subjetos que me confunden un poco por no saber tanto de Argentian, el cafishio relata una politica horrible sobre el papel de la mujer - horrible pero muy divertido de leer!!

4. es interesante comparar los libros porque claro, los 7 locos es bien diferente, desde el idioma hasta las temas (nada sobre familia, indigenas, o realismo magico todavia!!!!) hasta los personajes que me parece Arlt nos presenta sin tratar de nos los hacer amar: es decir, los presenta y punto mientras Esquivel y Allende por ejemplo presentaban sus personajes con clara intencion de que todas las lectores esten emocionadas por ellos...

bueno, es todo para ahora, me interesa leer de lo que ustedes opinan y si creen que es mal libro, porque?

jetlagged,
marina

reflection

2007-02-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

i'm confined to a computer with no microsoft word hence no accents, and since spanish with no accents makes me mad i will have to write this post in english.

looking back over class notes i'm amazed by how much we have covered in what seems a fairly short time, i am also amazed at how much i write down in the class because i feel pretty incompetent to analyze literature of another genre/language/culture on my own...

one line that made me think as i re-visited was the idea that Jon introduced of Bourdieu, that said taste comes essentially from one's social position. this made me think of our social position as likely middle-class left-leaning soon-to-be university graduates who consider themselves somewhat enlightened and very open to embracing other cultures. so what then is our taste? we know by class votes that each of the 3 "bad" books we have read have been quite liked by a few, and reasonably liked by a few more. but maybe a defining aspect of our taste, given our social standing, is the idea that we know enough to recognize what is considered of value, be it music or literature or film, but it doesn't always line up with our personal taste, so we are forced to divide our preferences into the socially acceptable pile that we quote when asked of our tastes and the personal pile of guilty pleasures that are only guilty for us because we think we should know better. i reckon if i'm on the right track and at least some of you agree then still our thinking is not shared by most of the population, who would embrace "middle brow" as "good" because they haven't learned not to. i am starting to see the distinction into three, with low high and middle, emerge as i try to categorize anything around me really...

another thought as i read back is that in my mind as i read over themes we have looked at, expectations of latin american literature, and shared politics therein, i cannot put our 3 books in the same category: i see Eva Luna and Como Agua Para Chocolate as one category which possesses and shares a great deal of the above expectativas and themes, and The Alchemist basically in a corner on its own. Eva Luna and Como Agua Para Chocolate seem the classic popular stereotypical latin american novels - they share a big dose of magical realism, family, story-telling, food, love, the extreme range of emotion from dire agony to bliss. The Alchemist on the other hand is written by a Brazilian, and though Brazil is technically in Latin America it is in many other ways the odd man out (massive, portuguese, different in its history, ethnical make-up etc. etc.)and apart from that it is written about somewhere completely different altogether. by a man. Though it too has story-telling, love, and certainly a bit of what could be considered magical realism or at least magical, it has nothing in common with the other two novels. this may have already been obvious to all of you but for me it is very blatant now that i look back over all 3 books instead of looking at just one at a time.

a shared concept between all 3 is the appeal to the sentimental - they all produce feelings in us but rather cheaply, rather easily. they give us everything necessary in order to feel how they want us to - the awe in the alchemist, the scandal in eva luna, the poor fortune in como agua para chocolate - all seem so readily available that as the readers we don't have to fight or struggle or invest ourselves at all to achieve those emotions.

damn well i think i have written too many words and perhaps said too little of value. reminiscent of our bad books!

Como Agua Para Chocolate:

2007-02-11T02:39:00.000-08:00

Bueno, eso es un libro que aun si nunca había llevado a este clase, iba a criticar. No me gusta ese libro, entonces ese ayuda a formar criticas del libro, mientras que El Alquimista, a pesar de las razones por ser en una lista de literatura mala todavía me gustó, que lo hizo un poco mas difícil.

Me parece que Esquivel combine muchas de las expectativas que ya hemos mencionado en clase, pero además de eso, todo se hace en una manera demasiado obvia y embotada. Si fuera una telenovela, no seria muy buena porque la melodrama sí existe pero no es bastante melodramática, mientras la trama es demasiado flaca y trata de ser algo que no es: creo que trata de entretener en una manera parecida a las telenovelas (o las entregas mensuales de una revista) pero no esta exitosa porque es aburrida. Pobre Tita. Pues cuantas veces lo podemos decir?

Hay libros que leemos para pura diversión, unas pequeñas “induglences” aparte de nuestra vida intelectual, pero eso mientras en un nivel igualmente bajo, no me satisface como lector buscando escapismo, amén de algo de calidad.

Las recetas en particular no me interesan – no me gusta cocinar, no me gusta leer tanto lenguaje técnico en un idioma extranjera y no me gusta lo que representa esta fusión entre comida/la cocina y la novela -- parece muy claramente ser destinada para mujeres. Seria interesante preguntar a los hombres de nuestra clase de cuanto les divirtió/intereso esta novela….

The Alchemist, Part II

2007-02-04T13:43:00.001-08:00

Las discusiones en clase me hicieron pensar mas en los fracasos del libro, pero mientras tanto, sí, todavía me gusta. Con reservaciones. De hecho lo menos yo pensaba en el libro, lo mas me gustaba – entonces ya que comenzamos a criticarlo parte por parte es difícil recordar el placer que me dio al leerlo sin pensar, si me explico.

Algo en que yo pensé después de leer el fragmento en donde la Gipsy leyó el sueno de Santiago. Ella repito su sueño casi palabra por palabra pero también añadió, “There you will find a treasure that will make you a rich man,” (14) que la niña en el sueño no decía. Es interesante que en el fin, es exactamente lo que pasa: el encuentra el tesoro bajo del árbol en la iglesia que lo vaya a hacer un hombre rico. Cuando leí el libro por la primera vez, pensé que iba a ser algo de metáfora, que el tesoro vaya a ser algo que el aprendí o algo de que se dio cuenta, pero en el fin, me sorprendió que el tesoro era exactamente eso, el oro. Pues ahora pienso, que extraño que la Gipsy tomó el sueño que podía todavía dar ese tesoro como metáfora para algo mejor, y lo interpretó directamente a decir que Santiago iba a ser un hombre rico por el tesoro. Tal vez sin lo que ella le contó, el podía imaginar que el tesoro seria algo mejor pero ella limitó, por su interpretación, lo que el tesoro podría ser.

Estoy pensando también un poco en lo que el personaje de Fatima nos da sobre el papel de mujer. No me impresiona de manera muy positive, porque no me gusta la idea de que ella espere a Santiago mientras el busque su tesoro y decida volver a ella. Pero podría ser peor – el podría quedarla esperando en el desierto embarazada….

The Alchemist

2007-01-28T18:15:00.001-08:00

Después de leer The Alchemist, tenia que pensar mucho en lo que opino que sea literatura mala, y lo que me gusta como lector – porque en contrario con Eva Luna, me gustó mucho el libro de Coelho. No quiero decir que es una obra maestra, y no voy a empezar un culto de personalidad sobre Coelho como creo que ya hacían varias personas de los millones que son fanáticos por el, pero sí me gustó. No creo que necesito defender porque, eso es algo aparte de la calidad, o el valor, del libro – el gusto es algo bien subjetivo y no pueden gustar muchas cosas de alto valor mientras amar otras obras de bajo valor. Supongo que depende de que tipo de lector somos, si pertenecemos al mercado restringido o al mercado de circulación masiva o de ambos, y también depende de lo que buscamos en un libro. Me gustó por la trama, por el estilo de contar, y sí por el recuerdo de un mensaje bien común – pero algo que, después de tantos anos en una institución teóricamente de alto valor, se me ha olvidado.

Algo que sí me molesta sobre la escritura son los sustantivos de varias cosas: “Personal Legend,” “Language of the World,” “Soul of the World” = muy cursi. Pero me interesaría leerlo en portugués porque es un idioma mucho mas expresiva entonces puede ser como defendió Jaime (yo creo) en un comentario a una entrada que critico el lenguaje de Allende como "cheesy" también… De cualquier manera, esos sustantivos me distraían del libro.

Otra cosa que no me gusta es todo que HarperSanFransico añadió al libro para hacerlo aun mas rentable – the reader’s guide, the map of santiago’s journey, the interview with Coelho – todo muy trillado y obviamente designado para provocar mas de esa respuesta fenomenal de lectores-fanáticos al libro… Pero supongo que todo eso se generó después del éxito comercial del libro, entonces aunque me parece de muy mal gusto, no distrae de la calidad del libro. Me parece como Harper y Coelho después decidían sacar provecho del éxito del libro (milk it for all it’s worth) pero que el libro su mismo no trata de lograr ese objetivo.

Eva Luna - Terminada por fin!!

2007-01-22T00:46:00.000-08:00

Bueno, me tienen que perdonar por haber tomado un poco demasiado vino antes de escribir esta entrada… pues tuve un mal día de trabajo….

De verdad cuando comenzó leer el libro, estaba buscando cosas negativas para que podara criticar Allende y el libro. Pero después de leer aun un poco, empezó a tener mis propias razones para criticarlos. Yo se que casi todo lo que digo puede ser usado contra mi como lector, pero bueno, así son mis percepciones:

- todos los personajes para mi faltan de profundidad. Todos son caricaturas, introducidas para no se que, tal vez para hacer al libro mas interesante según Allende

- el trama no es interesante – no sigue ningún tipo de formula en donde algo se resuelve, se concluye – solo establece la vida de una chica, y lo termina con un fin que no nos da mucho en cuanto pensar a su futuro y lo que ella lleva después de pasar por tanto drama

- hablando de drama, me parece que todo el libro se escriba en una manera demasiado dramática – melodramática, quizás, en cuanto me parece algo que yo podía imaginar a unos 15 anos cuando pensaba que lo mas drama, lo mas interesante. Pues, no es totalmente así, porque si un lector sigue leyendo con tanta incredulidad, no basada en un real interés en el libro, no va a pensar muy bien del libro…. Se que Jon puede simplemente contestar, pues tal vez es problema de expectativas por parte de lector, que algún libro sea creíble, pero lo que quiero decir es que me engañan los eventos del libro tanto por como se pasan uno después del otro, sin reelección, sin profundidad, como una lista de lavandería (laundry list) que por las reacciones que estimulan en los personajes (Eva esta violada, encuentra a Zaluma muerta, y tantas otras cosas bien provocantes que no puedo creer en su reacción a ninguna de ellas…

- lo que me mas sorprende es la reacción que tengo sobre sus palabras de haber encontrado el hombre para ella… eso no me parece un choque al feminismo, y tampoco me parece débil Eva por estar un poco dependiente al amor de H. Naranjo poco antes, porque creo que el amor hace loca a todas, aun mujeres bien inteligentes que planean todo en sus vidas y quien son seguras de que no necesitan a nadie para ser felices – el amor, si quieres creer en el como una cosa química o una cosa emocional, nos hace a sentir cosas muy extrañas y por eso puedo creer en su reacción en el fin cuando esta con Rolf. Pues ese no quiere decir que me gusto el fin ni que estoy aun un poco feliz para ese amor entre Eva y Rolf, pero solo que eso es una parte del trama que me parece un poco creíble y menos irritante.

Eva Luna: Los Primeros 5 Capítulos

2007-01-14T11:30:00.000-08:00

De verdad me di cuenta de que puedo entender lo que pasa en el libro pero es mucho mas difícil tratar de percibir el lenguaje elegido por Allende – es decir, cuando leo en ingles, puedo decir diferencias sutiles en el lenguaje usado por autores diferentes – libros como los que se venden en el aeropuerto usan un ingles muy pobre con demasiado adjetivos y adverbios, todo escrito tanto que un niño puede leer y entender. Pues no es igual en español, no puedo contrastar su lenguaje con los demás.

Hablando del “plot” (la trama?), no me gusta mucho ninguno de los personajes – leo todo lo que pasa con una indiferencia, en contraste con lo normal para mi – yo casi siempre puedo identificar con, a lo menos, uno de los personajes, y eso me provoque a leer mas.

Las cuentas son un poco extraños, como el monstruito a quien la Madrina da luz, o la manera en que Eva es concebida. Talvez es parte del estilo de realismo mágico en que, yo creo, Allende entre otros esta clasificada. Pero no creo que esto hace un libro malo - la trama no debe ser realista para ser buena. Solo que para mi como lector no me gusta tanto cuando en un libro con personajes mas o menos creíbles no puedo creer mucho de lo que les pasa…. No se si eso es entendible…

Creo que me va a ser muy útil leer los blogs de ustedes para tal vez entender mas como debo criticar un libro, para ahora he dicho todo que pensaba mientras leyendo los primeros capítulos.

SPAN 490: El peor libro que he leido

2007-01-08T18:04:00.000-08:00

En mi vida yo he leído bastante libros malos – desde “The Babysitters Club” hasta algunos viejas obras de Stephen King. Pero es fácil describirlos como “malos” por su contenido y su estilo pobre – es decir, ‘tacky,’ en el caso de King en particular.

Pero hay un libro que me molesta sin comparacion por el facto de que muchos le creen una obra maestra, algo muy bueno y pues yo no puedo estar mas en desacuerdo. Ese libro es Dr. Zhivago, escrito por Boris Pasternak durante algunas décadas en la primera media del siglo 20.

Lo leí por la primera vez en 2004, en ingles, como parte de mi clase de literatura rusa. Casi no podía terminarlo. Pensé que era aburrido, impractico, y muy parcial a demonizar el Ejercito Rojo (the Red Army). No me gustaron las relaciones entre Yuri y Lara, y no pude creer en su amor – no me convenció Pasternak que Lara era el amor de su vida y que el no hizo nada para luchar cuando la separaron de el. Pasternak me parece falso, y su "obra maestra" nada mas que una herramienta de propaganda, util exactamente en las épocas cuando el libro tuvo tanto éxito en el oeste.

El verano siguiente yo leí el texto en ruso, para ver si tal vez era la traducción que me dio una experiencia tan mala. Pues, baste con decir que no podía concluir el libro. Claro, en ruso, era un poco mas interesante cuanto a descripciones pero el amor y la política fueron tan desagradables como en ingles.

Entonces así es, yo odio el libro, y la película claro, pero no puedo dar mas de una justificación aparte de lo que acabo de decir. Si hay alguien a quien le gusta el libro, me pueden decir porque?

[image found at : http://www.sineport.com/poster/eski/drzhivago.jpg]

catching up

2006-07-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

alright well i meant to post before i left for salvador but you know... i decided to enjoy the beach and a stroll around sugarload mountain instead, oh the trade-offs we must make! don't be too jealous because in another 2 weeks i will be sadly back in vancouver and will have nothing more to write about on the blog. let me just reach for the kleenex and let you know what i have been up to.

1. hitting up the north zone (read bad zone) of rio which is another world really. thanks to some friends i have ventured out now a few times, the more memorable being to a 'club' which in the north is an abandoned warehouse with really cheap drinks (shame i am off the booze for almost 2 months now!) really sick beats and a lot of grinding. you know that modern day grinding originated in brazil before converting all of north america? yep. right here. its the most raw thing i ever seen, there in that warehouse. kinda made me want to clap for the expression and vomit for the sheer intesity of that expression especially when done by people less qualified for swimsuit catelogues (can you believe not every female in brazil is a model? shocker based on what we hear as far as stereotypes go)

anyway this place played a rotation of hip hop (hippy hope as the brazilians pronounce it), samba, FUNK!!!, pagode and foro. the rotation was so fast though that sometimes they would stop one song and switch to a completely different genre. dj must have ADD. and it featured some live funk with cheesy dancing as background to make it seem more clean. hah! i am only now getting around to understanding some of the lyrics and they are enough to make ME blush.

by the end of the night the floor was a swamp of beer, ice buckets, and god only knows what else. my jeans were soaked to the knee, reminding me of walking around ubc's puddles for 8 months of the year.

2. salvador, bahia for the past week!!! i had the privilege of going with osiris and his parents who are both incredible. his dad was invited to the 2nd annual Intellectuals of Africa and the Diaspora Conference, where the Brazilian president Lula honoured him with a medal for his many years of fighting for black rights in Brazil. I got to be in the same room as Lula, plus the presidents of Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Tanzania, Jamaica, plus Wangari Maathai, recent nobel peace prize winner, and Stevie Wonder. Holy crap. And most of the important people stayed at our hotel, so I got to practice my french with the delegation from senegal, and with the foreign minister of algeria, portuguese with angolans, and spanish with a man from uganda (i am aware their official language is english, but this man in particular spoke spanish). thats not the typical tourist take on salvador, i'll say that much!

the city itself is wonderful, baians are a much more happy and lively people. much more friendly and low key than rio. live music in the centre every night of the week, rain or shine (sadly it was mostly rain in our case)

it is also the birthplace of capoeira, and you see rodas of people playing everywhere! i even got dragged into one, innocently walking by. luckily i was in a skirt so i only had to play the instruments, and got to avoid the embarassment of having my ass kicked by some amazing capoeristas. but here it is so male dominated, i have seriously seen 1 girl in a circle, and she wasnt even playing.

anyway so many amazing experiences, and now i am back in rio for a last 2 weeks. i am trying to get to my toddlers at the favela all the time that i can, and just soak in the charm that is A Cidade Maravilosa before i have to leave

my visa is valid for 6 years it turns out, so don't worry brazil, i'll be back!

i hope everyone's summer is amazing!!!!

love
marina

ps an old friend of mine has a gig at the lamplighter on august 10th, anyone in vancouver and interested in coming with me, please do!!! i have never seen them live, but from the site i gather its mostly punk influenced. quinn if you are reading this i just KNOW your nose is turned up!

another week another story

2006-06-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

life in rio has been pretty damn sweet. blogger still wont let me post photos but still. some highlights of the past week(s) inlcude:

- watching the brasil vs. australia game in a bar then walking out to a street full of loudspeakers, people, and yellow and green. hours later stumbling home with sore thighs - didnt need to run that day, i think i danced off the past week-s food intake... but then ate it all back that evening of course

- brasil vs. japan game in Alzirao, an area in the infamous and dangerous north zone, with a huge tv screen and 3 000 people on the street watching (well not really, because it is impossible to see what happens in the game)and about 10 police men surveying the area for our safety. as if they could do ANYTHING if something went down.. but anyway brazy partying with live bands and amazing female samba dancers of course follows the 4 1 victory

- friday night a friend invites me to a favela funk party - finally! its in magueira, a favela up north. we drive in my friend-s car, me the only girl and the only foreigner. we are 4 people total - my friend, his friend, his friend's cousin. me and the friend are the only ones that have never been before. so we find the entrance (not easy), get a parking spot (that should be in quotation marks. we find guys yelling for us to stop at a certain spot so we do), walk up. the street is full of people, who are very obviously not from the upper middle class as my mates. but its cool i am informed, the only danger is crossfire, not being robbed-mugged-kidnapped. people dont mess around in the favelas, they do their business elsewhere. crossfire, i think, well what are the odds of that... hah. walking further up, i can already hear the music and it is dope. but still a crowd infront of us. thats when i first see the AK 47s, slung on the shoulders of every 5th person in front of me. they are cool, and casual, and dont seem to be affected. well i gulp, but carry on because hell what was i expecting> gm place>? anyway the friend turns to my friend and says dude lets get the hell out of here, this just as we see a confrontation starting to mound a few rows of people ahead of us. we turn around and head down the hill, careful to walk with ease as if we forgot our own AKs in the car and were just walking down to fetch them...

i won't lie, seeing the weapons i am so used to facilitating about being right up in front of me was a scary sight.

so there ended the night that was supposed to bring me into the source of the beats i love so much. another night, maybe...

- starting volunteering at another favela, closer to where i live. i work 3 days a week, doing conversation classes with teenagers and then working in the nursery with 20 adorable toddlers aged 1 to 4. i have my favourites, sure, but basically they are all great and so different. kids really have a way of capturing everything about a society in a miniscule un-censored illustration. i love them and love working there. it'll be hard to leave...

marina observes and injures herself: news?

2006-06-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

sorry about no posts, i have written one like 4 times and it wont let me publish, well see if it works this time or if i have to go back to mass emails urgh

well it is just over a week of marina´s adventures in brasil, and to be honest, i have not had many adventures :)

i am staying at a hostel, where people come and go almost daily. kinda wish now i was with a host family, because rio is expensive so hostel cost plus food is a lot. even coming from canada. but i came from mexico, where relatively, things like food were ridiculously cheap. also, i have spent the week not doing as much sight seeing and more getting settled in - finding supermarkets, navigating the metro and buses, school every day 8:30 to 12:30.

went out friday night with hostel crowd to a place with crappy live music, but the canned music they played between songs was funk. i mean FUNK. baile fun. favela funk. i love it and i love dancing to it. and i would have kept on dancing to it all night had some guy not been pushed into my toe, causing a big part of the nail to break off and stab into the under-toe flesh. i bled all over my beautiful havaianas and then stumbled off to the side of the room for the rest of the night. this is the shitty thing about rio, you cannot just leave a place when you feel like it. i had to wait for others to go with me. which is also why i have had less adventures - sun goes down by 6, and i cannot wander around in the dark alone. i bet if i did, i would have a lot more to write about but i would be writing from a hospital at best and a favela imprisonment at worst (they dont have computers come to think of it)

regardless, there are many cool, amazing, and funny things about rio and brasil that i should share.

1. amazing - the only city in the world where living in the valleys means you are rich, and living on the beautiful hillsides mean you live in favelas, the worst most run down drug lord owned shanty towns that exist on the continent. british properties - not likely.

2. thongs on the beach. i know i know just look at a rio postcard. but unlike a postcard, thongs on the beach are worn by every member of the female species - including the 10, 20, and 60 year olds. and despite rumours, not every brazilian woman is gorgeous. some are, most are okay, and many are not either.

3. speedos on the beach. yikes. heres one place i will never pick up men because regardless of how good looking they are, a man in a speedo = marina looking the other way and making gagging noises. i know its cultural. well i dont care. no speedos. none.

4. rio de janeiro is home to a cult of the body, nearly all residents are body-obsessed. not in health, mind you, but beauty. what does this mean? working out, grudgingly, to look better; getting surgery to look better; doing anything and everything possible, and constant obsessing over bodies. the results, some of them, are astounding, but quite sperficial. very unlike the vancouver coastal vibes of health and living healthy over simply stoic beauty.

5. every person that lives in rio has been robbed. numerous times. one friend of mine, 7 times. most also have stories of kidnapping in their family or social circle. so basically your odds are this - live in rio, get robbed/assaulted. there is no judging it. sure you can take precautions. but they are futile at best. most tourists never stay long enough to experience the same, or they stay in their resort compounds, but life in rio, even the good parts of rio, comes with a daily dose of mega crime. i have so far been fortunate. please knock on all objects of wood around you when you are reading this.

6. portuguese is a beautiful language. and spanish actualy helped way more than i thought it would, i can understand a lot, and they can usually understand me. switching has been a matter of different endings, prepositions, and a few funny mistakes (some verbs mean one thing in spanish, and a very different thing in portuguese)

7. and most important. while the women yes are beautiful, everyone expects it, so to me the most wow factor (besides the mountains) is the men. well, boys really, you know me! but seriously, there are many MANY good looking men here. first, there are all kinds. any guy you possible have as a ¨type¨ you like, is here. times 500. and i figure, the odds of a good looking guy in vancouver are about 1 in 20, in mexico it was about 1 in 30, and here it is 1 in 2. okay 1 in 5 if you are picky. and even the older men, who i dont personally find attractive, are infact attractive. just not to me.

that said i have met very very few. why? i don´t know. but maybe i should end this post, and try to go pick some up. so i can take photos and show you what i mean ;)

anyway if you have any ideas for things to do while i am here, or want me to pick you up anything (keep in mind it is not cheap but i do like you) let me know

tchau meninos

marina

I HEART RIO DE JANEIRO BABY

2006-06-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

i tried updating a few nights ago but the internet just shut off... good thing i wasnt in the middle of a credit card flight purchase or something, not that my blog isnt important :)

well yes, after a stressful as always air journey (one flight was delayed so they were going to make me stay in houston texas for a night and day since i'd miss my connection) but then the second flight was delayed too so i caught it! thanks continental airlines for being consistently inefficient because what i hate is inconsistency and inefficiency together, like at least if i know they are always delayed i can be efficient around that point...

so anyway even flying in i could see a million football fields (sorry, i refuse to call it soccer) and in the cab ride to the hostel i saw well, everyone, just playing on the streets, on the beach, everywhere. it is definitely living up to the football hype. and because of world cup (!!!!!) brazilian flags and jerseys and everything is just all over the city, its a sea of yellow and green! our teacher actually warned us today not to wear other team jerseys because it is dangerous. i swear, she was not joking. you can get killed for that here. especially if you support argentina. this is why i love brazil even more, we have a common dislike of silly argentina.

i got into the hostel saturday and immediately saw a group of lads heading down to catch the last live soccer game for a while (everything stops for world cup) in the famous maracana stadium, built for brazil's 1950 world cup... seeing so many people in the stands, with huge drums, enormous flags and more passion than even i am used to, was just incredible. fluminense, our team, lost.. but it was still a great game less for the football and more for the crowds. canada does not know fans. brazil knows fans. man it was amazing. the guys i was with took photos so if they send me some i will show you. otherwise you will get to see how wild people will go in bars watching world cup or as it should be called, god's gift to the world.

the christ the reedemer statue that overlooks all of rio up on its mountain should really have a foot ball in its open arms.

i havent been doing the tourist thing yet, had to get settled into school etc, but i will get on it. so photos will follow!

general news - brazil is so much more expensive than mexico i am definitely eating less which is great to make up for what la comida mexicana did to my waist, but its been overcast and not hot, not exactly beach/outdoors weather. staying at a hostel means meeting only english speakers and ones that leave in a few days at that, so this has also been a bit of a downside. but i am in a special class for spanish speakers, with a venezuelan doctor and a cuban american miami retiree, our class pace moves hella fast since its really just replacing what we know in spanish with the portuguese modifications. i can understant the gist of what everyone says to me, which is surprising and very welcome. but when i go to speak, only spanish leaves my mouth!

okay all for now but i promise i will post cool photos - i have been waking up at 7:30am for school and it is definitely catching up to me, must go nap.

oh oh oh and by the way, there is no gross men making kissing noises and howling at women here unlike mexico - and you know, i dont miss that at all! although everything else about mexico i miss terribly, no matter how much i love brazil (which i do.. i do)

ate logo!

farewell

2006-05-31T23:18:00.000-07:00

my stuff is packed, all except the 500 items i am crushing into carry-on
-
i had a pretty kickin last week though - awesome reggae concert on friday night, followed by 4 hours of sleep and a drive to acapulco with orlando and his friends, followed by going back to paladium (the club that was my intro to acapulco and mexico with fernando the great back in december) and another 4 hours sleep before driving back to puebla
-
and then just a few days to soak up everything i love about cholula, who would have thought this little town would grow on me so much...
-
so my deal in rio is that i won't have regular access to internet. the school has 3 computers (and way more than 3 students) and i don't feel like wasting my valuable reales on internet cafes, so i will keep it minimal but worthwhile.
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okay wish me luck!

Acapulco Photos:

Dirty south we ballin' dawg...

2006-05-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

onto the crazy adventures of marina and aisha!!!!!!!

okay so after my visa stint i figured our journey to zapatista lands had to be a show breaker but in fact, though with many funny moments, it was never that scary.

some highlights...

- the total hours of bus time in the past 13 days was 59 hours. we are now pros at bus travel - we know exactly what to pack, what to wear, and how to sleep (with the help of aisha's sleeping pills and my ipod with limited battery power)

- watching a big forest fire on the side of the road on the night bus down to chiapas - adam j wish you were there to put out the fire

- checking into the hostel in san cristobal at 4am, spanish is never a challenge for me unless its when i am still groggy from the cold medicine, off a 12 hour bus, and in the rain

- 5+ hours in the artesan market, buying jewelry and chatting up the friendly hippies that make it

- sam and ben the english gap year travellers we shared some travels with. sam's newly bought wool poncho smelling like a dead cat when the daily afternoon showers rolled in. ....

standing in our 12 bed dorm:

(some french girl) - it smells like something dead in heeere
sam (still wearing the poncho) - no, thats me
(girl) - no no it smells like... cat. yes, dead cat. or goat.
sam - i insisit the smell is me, look (comes near)
(girl) - mon dieu

- cats at the hostel yay! and marina starts getting myserious bites all over her arms and back they itch like mad and are not mosquito bites. we think maybe fleas but then relocate towns and the bites continue. we think the fleas have nested in my hair. but the ocean water seems to kill them off once we reach the coast.

- rekindling my love for quebec and the quebecoi thanks to a group of cheerful quebec citians (dave and melanie) and a cute montreal boy (hugo)

- getting to palenque and realizing we had the time to either hit up the ruins or go to the amazing waterfalls at agua azul. we chose the waterfalls. and had to get on a 40 minute caravan stuffed with locals. we winded down the hilly highway as the driver apparently thought his 15 passenger van was my camaro, and passed every car along the way. driving we saw a sign saying "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING ZAPATISTA TERRITORY. THE RULES OF THE REPUBLIC OF MEXICO DO NOT APPLY HERE" (palenque is in chiapas to clarify, making these visits to remote villages rather risque) gulp. we then passed 2 men walking along the side of the road with machetes. aisha squeezed my hand and i insisted it was because of the lush forest that surrounds us that they had the machetes (i don't know that at all, but frankly its best to be optimistic)

- watching groups of ants carrying bigger dead bugs up a wall at the bus station while waiting for our delayed bus to tulum (on the carribean sea!!) those ants taught me a lot about teamwork, leadership, and determination

- getting stopped about 1 h into the bus ride to tulum as the national immigration patrol pulled 2 men of our bus, questioned them, and then came back for them when they refused to get off the bus a second time. one was sitting right next to us. that was a little intense but luckily they ended up leaving peacefully.

- before tulum let me just remark that the most beautiful people are maya. their faces are just beautiful. old men, women, and especially children alike. really like no other groups of people i have ever before seen. thats because chiapas has one of the most concentrated indigenous populations of mexico. puebla on the other hand is the most spanish-infliltrated, making me look more indigenous than many locals around here

- the water in tulum and playa del carmen is a colour that i never believed existed in nature. i still hardly believe it in fact.

- an accidental 8km hike along the beach looking for the ruins... nearly dying from heat exhaustion as the beach trek turned to highway trek

- meeting some cool australians and more english gap year boys (also cool) in playa del carmen. partying hard. hitting up walmart for food, because it was the cheapest option and when you travel on pennies you have to suck up your conscience.

- trying to book a flight back, failing to do so, deciding to head to merida (6 hours west) to catch a flight back to mexico city. finding out they were charging double the internet price and having to take the 20 hour bus ride we were trying to hard to avoid in the first place. but luckily that bus played good movies for once (literally i can list the most awful films we have seen on other bus rides) so the time went by fast.

and today i got my brazilian visa!!! except they actually marked it for 3 yeras not 90 days so you might not see me for a while :)

how to get a brazilian tourist visa and live to tell about it

2006-05-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

step one.
wake up at 4 am, call the taxi, get to the bus station

step two.
get on the 5am bsu to arrive in mexico city by 7:30am (half an hour behind schedule)

step three.
hail a cab to take you half way across the city to the embassy
avoid getting extremely frustrated at the traffic that precents you from driving beyond 20km/hour
also avoid breathing in the smog and exhaust fumes

step four.
ask the korean embassy where the brazilian one is at.
finally stumble to the right place and try not to get phased by the long-ass line up outside or by the fact that you are dressed in camouflage pants and skate shoes and everyone else in the line is wearing suits

step five.
put yourself down on the list (#40) and wait in line
supress the full bladder you have had since step one

step six.
wait around for an hour and a half, get let inside
give the lady your documents, and then find out you need to pay in US dollars not pesos (ask yourself, but why, when i am in mexico and brazil's currency neither is the US dollar)

step seven.
hail a cab to the nearest bank, get driven to a small one you have never before seen

step eight.
enter the bank, see people lying down on the floor, use deductive reasoning to assume its a hold up, and back out of the door as fast as you can
don't freak out just yet because you have to get back to the embassy within 20 minutes or else have to come back another time

step nine.
get back in the cab, drive to another bank, get out the money, and get back to the embassy with a few minutes to spare
hand in your stuff

step ten.
hail another cab, smile as the security guards at the embassy still hit on you regardless of your disheveled appearance
get in the cab, drive a bit, listen to the battery die
get out of cab, take another one

step eleven.
get to the bus terminal, hop on that bus, and sleep until the driver wakes you up and you are the only one still on the bus

step twelve.
get home and write out what happened so you can amuse friends and family and wonder at life' funny ways

*** about the bank hold up, no one looked like they were hurt, and i didn't stick around to see where the people holding up the place were at. they were not in sight when i entered.***

no posts for a while because i am taking off tomorrow for 2 weeks of deep south adventures

the last week

2006-05-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

let me recover my thoughts in a manner carey uses.....

highlight (of the past week): rounds of free shots at bombay tuesday night

lowlight: winding up at tigre, a dance club not known for its class

highlight: everyone at tigre being friends of ours, and the alcohol droning out the bad music

highlight: getting ridiculous marks while showing up to classes too hung over to remember professors' last names

highlight: meeting a woman named Sveta (my mom's name), whose family moved from ukraine to mexico the same year mine moved to canada with her daughter who is a year younger and her husband who is also in computer science

highlight: quality time with the girls, 2 of whom are taking off this week (one yesterday one tomorow)

highlight: gringofest, organized by our friends, held next door to our apartment building in a new bar

lowlight: being so gone at gringofest that i don't know who i said bye to, who i took photos of/with, or how i got home (apparently i stumbled next door to our place and collapsed on the bed)

highlight: waking up fully clothed but with contacts out, what a responsible drunk i am!

highlight: stumbling through breakfast for a 2 day escape to cuernavaca, the city of eternal spring, and thus avoiding more painful goodbyes

lowlight: 3 hours on a bus hung over and with limited ipod battery

highlight: scarfing down 3 desserts in the span of an hour later that night

there you have it!

catching up and moving on

2006-05-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

yo. so i wrote a post then it got deleted.

the gist: past few weeks have been weird, realizing how temporary this has been as people talk about their flights home. strange how their eccentricities become endearing once you realize you may never see these strange kids ever again.

summer plans are finalized. your little marina is arriving into big bad Rio de Janeiro on june 1st and starting 4 weeks of intensive portuguese on the 5th. gotta find me a place to stay and a place to train, as well as several to listen to baile funk and adapt my brasilena personality. i am the best mix of scared and excited, and it feels great since it at one point was not going to go down, until i realized money is nothing but numbers until its spent doing what you always dreamed of.

oh yeah and getting through finals has been easier than passing grade 3 in the soviet union. well that was actually tough, i'll enlighten you some day. but seriously my marks so far have been goddamn 100% 100% and 99%

the other two are yet unknown although less than 90% is not in the stars. funny considering how little damned work i did all term!

2006-04-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

photos:

1. turcan and me
2. laughing because aisha just jumped out of the restaurant down a level and hit her head on the drinks sign, prompting the tables around her and all of the 30 waiters to burst out laughing.
3. all of us at dinner. notice - no bras, nice tans...
4. charli me and kendell, eating again. its an ongoing joke that the lives of us 5 revolve around food. except its no joke.
5. adorable girls we met at the beach
6. coming back ie journey of 22 hours
7. read above

yeah so the trip there, broken up in 2 bus rides, was like 13 hours... the way back we left at 2:30pm on saturday and got home at 12 noon on sunday. a torturous 22 hours. and 2 hours of sleep for the whole weekend. one bus ended up coming in late so we had to wait at a terminal from 1am to 7am to catch another bus... we laid down on the floor but were accosted immediately by the security. for some reason, people carrying huge suspicious looking bags is no threat but some foreigners laid out on their dirty towels on the ground is a big big danger and simply cannot be permitted.

puerto escondido

2006-04-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

so lets reflect on the best spring break ever. but first, on the odd timing of spring breaks in my life. ubc's reading break is in february, so its always wasted since no one is that sick of school so early on in the term... and udla's semana santa happens in mid april (when most of the country, adults and everything, in fact gets the week off to ponder on christ's ressurection while sipping margaritas beach or pool-side) and we come back for 2 more weeks of school. talk about a delayed climax!

but anyway for our belated semana santa we gathered up 5 awesome girls (i am on of them) and through a series of bookings and reservations managed to make it to the southwest coast of mexico, to a little beachtown known for surfing (zicatela beach is world reknown and home to huge competitions) and hippies (european backpackers and locals alike). Kind of like Tofino with much more than 2 months of sun! the weather was scorching, but not as humid as acapulco. enough boring details.

we spent the week like this: breakfast, 5-6 hours of beach (a lot of walking to and from), dinner, getting low-key dolled up (no bras or heels the whole week!!!!!), and then bar hopping along the busy strip... amazing food, amazig 2 for 1 drinks, but most of all the ocean. i am determined always to live in the proximity of the ocean because its sheer might never ceases to amaze me and i love the fact that i both love and fear it. you would fear it too if you saw some of the waves. in fact, most of the beaches you cannot really swim at, and the ones you can are crowded during semana santa with so many mexican families i wonder how they keep an eyeon their children since sometimes it looks like the proportions of human to water in the ocean are incredulous. as in, 10 parts human 1 part water.

we didn't really meet too many surfers because most of them frankly spent too much time in the sun and too much money on recreational drugs such that they really couldn't keep up anything you would even consider small talk. example: kendell, the one with blond curly hair, got asked by an english surfer with dreads down to his ass if she had heard about 'the operation'. the what, she inquired. the operation to get gills, he explained fully serious. you should get it because then you could be a mermaid, he added. she laughed politely but he was dead serious. later in the night he walked by again to inquire if she had gotten the operation. uh huh.

by the end of the trip i was addicted to fresh cold coconuts - first the juice then the battle for the sweet fleshy insides oh man i want one right now! and for all you haters i am now fully light brown. morena, as they say around here. and i didn't even purposely 'tan' my skin just naturally adapted to its sun-loving state. so there.

photos: the scenic shots in this post, the people ones to follow!

the first is of oaxaca, the capital city of the state puerto escondido is in. following are all different beaches.

Happy Birthday Burbula

2006-04-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

So the two coolest places in Cholula are Bombay, a chill bar with plush velvet couches and hanging lights, and Burbula, a great restaurant with a rickety wooden bridge that makes you feel like you are in a tree house. Both are owned by possibly Mexico's coolest man, a 24 year old entrepreneur that embodies indie and success. Well, Burbula's 4th anniversary was this saturday and what a party it was.

So first of all the theme was 70s - the owner is obsessed with everything 70s. I wore my 80s dress in open defiance, but the other 2,000 guests in attendance for the most part dressed the part - with more afro wigs than at Value Village in october. It was held at what could have been an abandoned stone mansion meets wearhouse, with a ceiling like 50 metres high. The line up to get in was madness, i almost got pinned to one side of the entrance's steel bars... yes, but despite the wait everyone did get in. There was a really popular and good mexican rock band, some openers, and a kid aboput 10 years old who did an impressive michael jackson dance routine before the big act. That, alongside inside fireworks and hanging trapeze tissue complete with acrobats, made this party pretty much the thing of the century.

I cannot adequately express how awesome it was, but with my trusty camera back at my side, here are photos!!!!

(Oh yeah, before the party we went out with Turcan's visiting parents to a fancy restaurant where i had my first steak, and where they got the entire bill - meal and drinks. swEEEt)

long awaited photos

2006-03-31T09:11:00.000-08:00

fotos

2006-03-29T22:14:00.000-08:00

okay well my computer is messed up (internet constantly failing) and aisha's doesn't seem to let me post photos so i promise those will come tomorrow

peace out

and just to make you less jealous it has rained a bit every day for the past 4 days. i guess thats nature's way to make me miss vancouver....

Acapulco Take 2: return to the west coast

2006-03-29T21:50:00.000-08:00

I am begging forgiveness for the tardiness of this post (i sound like an 80 year old college prof...) but I have waited for ever to get some photos from the trip because i know thats the real reason you all read this sometimes :)

So 2 weekends ago, for the long weekend, we went to acapulco, stopping at Taxco, a reknown silver artesan town, along the 7 hour way. Taxco proved to be less of a silver mine than we expected - that is, there was lots of beautiful jewelry but most of the nice stuff was hella expensive (we're talking 300$us for a set) and i just don't drop that on pretty things. I prefer to drop it on litre coctails and shoes. well anyway the town was picturesque and i did manage to buy some stuff to take home so you all forgive me for being such a bad friend with respect to phone calls and postcards (i swear its the post office, they're really on their way!!! :)

acapulco ended up being hella sweet and better than i expected because what i expected was AMERICAN SPRING BREAK which it was, but we managed to avoid the crowds of identical looking very obviously college kids that shamed every US/Canadian citizen in our group. we got to stay at a hotel literally to the side of the palapa which was the nicer hotel me and nando relocated to on acapulco take 1.... beached it up for a few days, i got some tan lines rest assured. but the best part was we didn't end up doing the 7 hour open bar club scene all the 3 nights we were there, in fact we chilled at some bars the first night, then drank on the beach the second, and went to the club on the third which is fine as all things in moderation. except everyone at the club was seriously 16 years old. yes i know some of you can make all sorts of jokes about that being right up my alley but i swear, i did no checking out that night.

so. funniest moments of acapulco:

1. carey and rodolfo, as we are sitting and drinking at the beach one night, decide they gotta pee, but instead of doing the discreet ocean option they hit up a wall at the side of the sand. two seconds later both are apprehended by valiant mexican officers of the law. separated, they argue their way out of a 500 peso (50$USD) fine... but here is where brazilian arguing does better than bahemian-living-american - rodolfo ends up paying 50 pesos while carey shells out 300 --- all he's got on him -- to get them off his back. this moment was thereforth known as the most expensive piss ever.

2. same night we decide to hit the water and are splashing around, bathing suits in hand i must admit, until one by one we feel different body parts start to sting and get numb. shit! so we bail out of the water, not soon enough though, because everyone ends up bitching the next few hours (some cases days) about the sting. we still don't know what was in that water but the thought of it sends me chills. we'll call this one a memorable, but not exactly funny, moment.

3. same night (you can tell it was a good night) carey loses his wallet when we leave the beach and storms into our hotel room bewildered. he proceeds, in his panic, to turn charli's entire suitcase upside down and then stuffs most of its contents back in, wallet still in absentia. well considering the last thing he lost, his cell in vera cruz, ended up being in the bottom of aisha's bag, i guess it wasn't a far fetch but at like 3am when we were all drunk and sandy it was a helluva move.

4. marina scared shitless of the big waves at one beach, refuses to duck and swim through them. what a baby. how am i supposed to learn to surf in 2 weeks when i can't even put my body alone in those waves?

5. the night we do go out to the club its a procession as always with the girls (me excluded as i am more of a guy when it comes to getting ready) finally we walk out to the main strip when aisha pulls me aside, and tells me in her rush to get ready she took off her bathingsuit bottom and forgot to replace it with underwear before putting on a fairly short jean skirt. we laugh and since i got the key, refuse to go back. eventually she pleads enough (and seeing as how Girls Gone Wild must surely have been itching for an evening mishap) but by this point we are too far from the hotel. we see the walmart, her saviour, and run in. us 3 girls looking hot and ready for a night out then head to the register with one pair of underwear and then book it to the walmart bathroom. the employees thought they were on some gringo tv reality show no doubt.

6. coming back on the bus the bathroom breaks and sends a stench fiercer than hell itself through the entire bus for the next 7 hours. this moment better categorized as painful instead of funny.

but there you have it, all i can remember for now!

word.

2006-03-17T18:41:00.000-08:00

due to the fact that i recently rediscovered on-line ebonics translators (yes i realize, so last year....) the following post has been ebonicized. try to keep up.

so ah be really excited cuz we's iz going ta acapulco dis here
weekend. done packing, all dere iz ta do iz wake up hella early
tomorrow morning fo' da bus.

life's been pimp-tight. took da duck out taday on da grass, it follows
everywhere ah walk fo' real bitch. it also is getting bigger mad fast!
don't make me shank ya!

so you see, i can entertain myself even when the TV is down to some 3 shitty soap opera channels.

news

2006-03-13T14:24:00.000-08:00

okay you can stop with the duck names. one got sick saturday and died. the other is hella lonely, i think i need to take her back to her 800 person family at the market. don't offer condolences, its okay, life moves on. of course i am sad.

but mexico keeps bringing us more and more. i just showed up totally unprepared for an exam which now ended up being a take-home. i have never done one of these, so if you have any tips do tell. like, since its open book, how can i actually impress the prof with my 'knowledge'?

and in other news quinn has been a busy bee making my elections posters. i would like to be ams rep again. and official ams translator. that would be dope. i want to show them but how can i post a pdf file?

i am just bloody clueless this week.

not so lonely anymore!

2006-03-08T22:25:00.000-08:00

on a market veggie run today me and aisha bought 2 baby ducks for 20 pesos ($2) each and now have a cardboard box of chirping peeping love in our living room. we figure we wil raise them and then let them go by the pond at the university, where there are already a bunch of ducks and also peacocks.

one of the ducks is all yellow and is very much like aisha - it is quieter, and mostly stays calm and naps. the other one is darker, with only some yellow. this one is a fighter, almost got out of the box on the bus ride back. its been screaming and kicking ever since, stopping just briefly to take a series of naps in my hands. seems baby ducks have the attention spand of adolescent boys - one minute they close their eyes the next they're shitting and the next just making noise.

still don't know what genders they are, i bet the marina one is a boy and the quieter aisha one a girl.

got any suggestions for names????????????????????????????

they already have middle names care of godmother charli - ophelia and some other shakespeare name i think.

scheduled spontaneity

2006-03-05T10:43:00.000-08:00

I love how plans just evolve over time and take on their own agendas.

Now it looks like i will finish up May in Mexico, getting to see some far off places I don't want to rush through during weekend trips (Yucatan, Chiapas) and then head down to Brazil for a good month or two. Now I have a place to stay and get 'integrated' because the tourist thing blowing through cities really gets old soon. I'm thinking I will chill, take portuguese classes for part of the day, capoiera for another part, and come back to Vancouver being able to threaten someone in 6 languages and then beat them up with style.

Sorry that could not have been a very interesting post. I just sometimes type outloud instead of doing homework which is what I should be doing now.

PS travel plans can evolve much more so if you want to join me, do! I'll even go to shitty cancun with you if that's what it takes to get you interested in the best goddamn continent in the world.

CAR-NA-VAL!

2006-03-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

Aight well last week I started getting antsy about leaving for a whole weekend because of an oncoming cold and a big fat presentation for Monday, so the gang took off on Friday and I stayed back. But then I decided to just give it and do what I could with the presentation, ignore the sore throat, and get on a bus at 8:00am to head to Vera Cruz for what I am told is the 2nd biggest carnaval in the Americas (Rio's being no doubt the biggest).... Because seriously, health and school might be important but if there is one thing i am not known for here its for letting rational choices get the best of me.

So I met up with a crew of 6 people, i could name them all but really what do you care let me assure you they passed the cool test without a hitch, who had gone down Friday and who were supposed to be crashing at a house of an UDLA student who apparently invited everyone he saw. Turns out they showed up to what was a filthy broken down apartment (not house) crammed with 24 people literally laying on top of one another for lack of space and half naked for lack of air cond- Vera Cruz is hot and humid (which is such a welcome break from Puebla's dry dusty air). So they got the hell out of there and somehow managed to find a hotel (an impressive feat since carnaval brings many visitors as you would imagine)

By the time I showed up, they were pool-side at a nice hotel and I was more than ready to join them. We decided to order drinks from the number of workers standing around the pool with menus. Now I don't know if I already mentioned this but there seems to be an excess of workers in Mexico, because everywhere I go, there are employed personnel on duty doing absolutely shit all. Example: waiting for Brendan at the airport, there was about 4 guys standing right at the arrivals gate, joking around, doing nothing, and in fact, getting into a play fight which got in the way of people arriving through the gate - so, not only lack of productivity but actual in-the-way action. Well, same thing at this hotel, they were just standing around. So we ordered our drinks from them, they keep standing around. About a half an hour later still no drinks, we go up to ask. Oh yes, one employee confirms, the drinks are coming, "ahorita" which means now, but in Mexico is used to mean "you are going to be waiting a looong time sucker". Another half an hour later they actually arrive! But, the prices are not what they were on the menu. When we ask why, one employee says its because of the flavour of daquiris that we ordered, and the other insists that the previous employee is new and doesn't know what he's talking about, and in fact it is because they are one price downstairs at the bar, and another price at the pool. So we innocently inquire, okay, so why then don't you have POOL menus for the pool instead of incorrect BAR menus? Well several conversations with the manager later, we pay the damned pool prices and laugh. really, what can you do?

Carnaval itself lined a beachside street for, i don't know, several km, with bleachers set up on both sides of the road. We headed out from our hotel room, after an amazing seafood restaurant meal....mmmm coconut shrimp...., around 8pm, and literally as we got to the bleachers it began. Perfect timing. The floats were lots of different things, local businesses, big brands like SOL and PEPSI, associations, whatever. Some had kids dancing on them, and one boy in particular, maybe 7 yeras old, was shaking it like a polaroid picture for the roaring fans. This kid seriously must have watched a ton of Michael Jackson videos. Hilarious.

At one point me charli and aisha went to find more alcohol and asked directions from a group of people. Kinda drunk, we thought we were following the directions, until this man appeared and began running after us. So we rean faster and as he approached I kicked off my shoes ready to fight. Turns out, he was one of the people that gave us the directions, and seeing us go the wrong way, he chased after us for several blocks just to point in the right directions!!!! We got back to the stands with beer and a rediscovered sense of humanity,

Okay, so by this point we had already downed a fair amount of alcohol, and thought we would take the show on the road so we decided to get down off the bleachers and run alongside the floats. This was by far the most fun EVER and we even ended up spotting another one of our friends in the bleachers - acutally he spotted us because as he said, it wasn't that hard to recognize our group. Man I wish I had pictures but if you recall my camera is broken. So use your imaginations. It was wild.

I could go on much longer but you might be bored by now so I will sum up. The next day Vera Cruz was home to a tropical storm which means rain the size of my fist and wind so hard that it literally blew Charli off the ground (she is tiny but still.....and i should clarify, not LUCKY tiny, just really really skinny. because no one can compete with lucky) That wasa good time considering I had dressed and packed up before looking outside so I was in a skirt the whole windy day. I don't have any pictures but I know that a lot of Mexican visitors do!!!!! :)

So that was basically it, a really fun weekend that I cannot believe I almost backed out of. Right, then I got back, got really sick (still am) and did okay on my presentation. This weekend was supposed to be acapulco but we're just going to chill here and get ready for the long weekend.

How's Vancouver?

return of the smog

2006-02-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

before i write about a fun fun time, let me just make your mouths water by letting you know that i am in the process of consuming cereal with banana (you're thinking: dull) and COCONUT yoghurt. damn this is good.

well last weekend me charli and aisha tagged along with our mexican city friend gilma to her house in mexico city. she lives in the very south, on a rather hilly part which offers the most amazing view of an endless city landscape. best seen at night, when the smog doesn't hide the city in an orange blanket.

so. we got there on friday, and got to eat the best tortas (grilled sandwiches) ever at a stop on the way home (about 40 minutes from the bus station) and then spent hours being lazy in her room with satellite tv. i'm SORRY but i miss tv like mad. yes we have one here but all the channels are shit. i said shit, not the shit (which would of course imply the opposite). no, her channels were the shit.

that night we met up with gilma's brother's friends and went to bull, which is apparently the new it thing (the city has one it thing per week, kinda like on sex and the city actually) and after getting 50% off passes we still had to cough up 200 pesos each which is like 20 US. more than i would pay for vancouver nightlife (which is a bit of an oxymoron anyway) so inside, it was this giant old mansion torn to create a huge open space downstairs and then swanky upstairs areas overlooking the bit pit of a downstairs. they had a band, but it was too noisy to hear over the crowd. i think they were mexirock. i just invented than genre.

the next night we went out to a fresa place called riboli (read: snob) which had a great layout but a lot of snobby people. to get in you had to say who was in your party in the following manner: 3 couples, 2 girls. or the like. they only let you in if you don't throw off the gender balance. and if you're dressed to the nines.

the reason i am going on about the nightlife is to contrast one place and the other, but then end it by saying that both nights just around 5am as we were getting ready to peace, a big fight broke out right next to us. the first night, one of the guys actually stormed through us to get to the guy he was about to fight, so i went after him and had to be dragged back by my friends. furthermore as the fight broke off (without the aid of the big burly security guards standing literally a foot away) the morons didn't even get kicked out of the club! so i had to go yell at the guards too. then my friend decided we should leave.

the second night it happened at the table immediately beside ours, and there were bottles involved, some of which were taken from OUR very table. here the security actually broke it up, and kindly wiped the blood off the leather seats.

the best part of the weekend by far was gilma's amazing family and their amazing food. we ate more than is literally humanly possible. i have been wowed by food here but nothing compares to their cooking. on sunday they had like 80 relatives over for superbowl sunday and made the best paella this world has ever seen. most memorable moment: the whole 80 people singing along (and some dancing along) to the rolling stones' 'satisfaction' during halftime. too bad seattle lost, but that day we gained like 30 new aunts and uncles!

oh and what i will miss most about mexicoo is coming back from the club at 5:30am and eating great food before you go to bed. this is the trick to never being hung over or sick. AMAZING!

so overall damned good weekend. the only bad part is my camera broke so the photos seen below are the last you will see in a while. sigh. and there is still so much i wanted to show you, like our ghetto can opener that i struggled with a few times during the writing of this very post, that looks like an 1800s operating tool.

photos:

1. eating breakfast outside in a yard right out of pleasantville or edward scissorhands
2. going out
3. going out again!
4. family dinner with grilled meat, veggies, and a lot of seconds
5. eating at 5am- don't we look hot?

Want to write me?

2006-01-31T15:50:00.000-08:00

Well I finally found out my postal code, putting the last piece to the where-the-hell-does-Marina-live puzzle

So for anyone looking to send me stuff, which I highly encourage

Marina Kaplunovska
#27 - 1212 Calle la Mesa
Colonia San Andres, Cholula
Puebla, MEXICO
72810

There you are

Konichiwa bitches!
(too bad only quinn gets that reference)

VERA CRUZin'

2006-01-31T09:52:00.000-08:00

What a weekend...

So we headed to the bus station around 2pm friday afternoon to make it on the 3pm bus to vera cruz. By we I mean abour 10 people... mostly international students unfortunately but all very fun. It is a 3 hour bus ride. Well so we thought...... The bus was sold out, and we were forced to buy tickets for the 5pm, until at the last second, we saw another bus company with service to vera cruz.... we rushed to the line, switched our tickets, and happily bought tickets for the 3pm bus on the other bus line, which was even cheaper (175 pesos, so like $20)

We walk aboard the bus, realize there is no bathroom. So I run off the bus to relieve myself before the 3 hour journey. I get back breathless to find out that in fact the journey is 5 hours because our ghetto bus in fact makes a stop at EVERY goddamn little town between puebla and vera cruz (and there are a LOT of little towns between) Alright, fine, more to laugh about later. 5 hours on a bus with no bathroom, no TV, and no air conditioning is not something to laught about. but fine, laugh

So we roll in around 8 and get to our hotel, which to our delight is actually beautiful. Starving, we head out for some nice seafood, we are of course on the coast so we have to take advantage. We get directions to one restaurant, and about halfway there more people tell us it is closed and redirect us to a closer one. Vera Cruz, it must be noted, shuts down around 8 except for clubs, so finding a restaurant is no easy feat. We finally get to the closer one, and start ordering.

Well the first items that arrive are shrimp coctails. They really look like watery ketchup with some shrimpy shrimp and old avocado as decorations. A few bites and we have to send them back. They are AWFUL and also awfully expensive. Next come the margaritas. One sip and we swear they are just salt water with salt around the rim. Also not cheap. Those head back. Next is Turcan's octupus dish. The olives on it are the only things edible. Next are seafood empanadas which look and taste like catfood empanadas. The list goes on, and it takes close to an hour and a half to even get most of the stuff we ordered to arrive at our table (drinks too). Instead of being apologetic for the spoiled food and mixed up orders, the staff look like they are about to pull out a handgun. So we pay the bill and move on, starving and very very disappointed.

Sadly, what happens to fill our stomach that night is the McDonalds beside our hotel. I am ashamed to write this, but there is a certain comfort, after such a horrid seafood experience, in eating salty fries with ice cream.

Oh yeah and walking back to the hotel, one of the guys kicks some dirt on the pavement and piles of cockroaches run all over our open toed feet. I hadn't seen cockroaches since Ukraine, and I gotta say, the sight brought back no nostalgia!

The rest of the trip was awesome, and included as you can imagine, dancing, drinking, and eating at an amazing restaurant the next night. My personal highlight was drinking out of and then eating a full coconut on the beach. The beach, it must be noted, is definitely not as picturesque as Acapulco, but I still really liked it. And after a full month of dry Puebla air, the humidity was very appreciated.

So Vera Cruz, cockroaches and all, was a blast and I definitely want to go on as many weekend trips as possible while I am down here...

teotihuacan and oh so sore

2006-01-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

Last sunday we went to the ancient mexica city of Teotihuacan, where a really cool tour guide showed us around and even let us partake in a ceremony inside one of the pyramids. I love that I am taking a Mexican Civ class where I actually get to learn a lot more about these amazing places that you can visit and appreciate on many different levels.

Speaking of appreciation, I have found another capoeira group here at UDLA and I am now kicking ass monday through thursday 7-9pm. by the fourth consecutive day I basically cannot bend over to tie my shoes, which is fne because really it's flip-flop weather. Except it rained yesterday!!!! well whatever, I can handle a few hours of rain. Better than the 3 weeks straight that I heard went down in Vancity a while back.

So anyway the group is hella small, with a mestre named Edgar who is from Sao Paolo, Brazil. They make me feel really comfortable and really no one in the group besides the mestre is much better than me, so I feel good about myself. We had to do a little exibition the other day, in the middle of the UDLA university square... the only bad thing was that my eye infection has come back so I am condemned to glasses for another 5 days -- meaning every cartwheel and kick I had to perform while trying desperately to hang on to my sole pair of glasses.

And now, empowered by my good weekly workout, my drinking endurance has shot through the roof! Watch out, Mexico!

Hmm well I am leaving to Vera Cruz in the Gulf of Mexico (3 hours away) in.... less than an hour. I figure I will have some good weekend stories to share when I return, so I guess I will sign off for now leaving you wanting more more MORE :)

the sun is getting hotter

2006-01-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

Sitting by the fountain in the sun and trying to get through my prehistory readings, I am reminded of a joke my Subsaharan Africa prof told us the other day...

"The white men came to Africa, and brought with them the Holy Book... They placed the book in our palms and taught us to pray with our eyes closed, which was different than what we were used to, but sure, we didn't want to be rude to our visitors. And while we prayed, eyes closed, the white men took our land and took the book back, leaving us without our land and without God."

Come to think of it, it really sounds better delivered live, not typed, and by the charming Sudanese professor, not this charming Ukrainian Mexican girl. But there you have it. History in a joke.

Cacaxtla, Chipilo, and Tequila in between

2006-01-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

Well I have been experiencing internet problems lately hence the lack of posts - fear not, my life is exciting as always...

Last Saturday we (the international group herded by our amigos internactionales of whom one may well be my soul mate - we both love the same kind of music, and the same kind of guys. well when i put it like that it doesn't sound as impressive but really, she is the shit. only sometimes i cannot keep up with her vera cruz slang) went to the piramids of Cacaxtla and Xochitecatl where 2 different MesoAmerican groups at different epocs built amazing structures. One of the pyramids actually had people living inside -- it was designed with political meeting rooms, ballrooms, huge war murals, and so many other features not found in your bland White House. That was intense. Okay maybe that makes me sound like a nerd, but come on, I am used to cheap pink/orange Vancouver Specials. Pyramids are cool. And so am I.

My classes have been going relatively well except that I don't really feel my best in international political economy as it is, but put me in a room with no other non-native spanish speakers and a prof that habla a milea minute, and I am definitely not feeling so hot. Overall way more work than I heard - let that be a lesson on not trusting former exchange students who say school here is a piece of cake. it might be if you're only doing language classes or some non-substantial discpline like sociology but my classes have a lot of work. Reading, reports, exams, and I gotta find time to go out every night on top of it all. And it is very hard to concentrate in the sun. Aren't you jealous? you heard me, I said sun.

Just so I don't get a lot of envy, I should share that I have had a pretty bad cold for the past 3 weeks and I woke up this sunday unable to open my eyes --- I have an eye infection. So I had to go to the clinic yesterday, and let me tell you, the doctors here(at least on campus) are amazing. Take that, Vancouver family doctor --- I was actually looked after and adequately assessed. Fine so I had to go get medicine for my eyes - piece of cake, hop on a bus and get off at the zocalo (town centre plaza, every Latin American city, town, and trailer park has one) of San Pedro. 15 minute ride max. So I ask the driver to let me know when we're there, because all the streets here look exactly the same and by this time the sun is already setting. About 30 minutes along, I notice the streets getting emptier, and the bus too. I ask the girl sitting next to me when we're getting to San Pedro. She stares, looks confused, and tells me we are NOT going to San Pedro, but to Chipilo. What the hell is Chipilo I inquire. Chipilo, it turns out, is a town WAY outside of Cholula, my town, and Puebla, the city-town of the general area. Chipilo is hella far, hella boring, and hella difficult to stomach with the fine mexican roads. Okay, well apparently the bus makes a loop, so fine, I decide to stay on and get brought back. The bus driver, when confronted by an angry Marina, just shrugs. About an hour later, the sun way past set now, we are still darting around streets and appear to be moving in a seriesof circles. Finally I see that we are approaching Cholula, and man, I diss its dirt roads and roosters but am I glad to see something familiar after this ride. I get my prescription filled (NOT CHEAP) and take the bus that says UDLA (my uni) After paying I inquire just to be sure, and the driver says he is not actually going to UDLA. ok, my patience gone hours ago, I storm off the bus, and have no more change. I hail down another bus, break down in tears, and this driver lets me on and drops me off close enough to the university that I just have to treck another 30 minutes in the dark to get back to my place. That trip made me realize how great Cholula was, compared to all around it. And the only thing that makes it alive, compared to all around it, is the university and the life, economy, fun it brings to Cholula. Long live UDLA and the rich snobby students that go there. (for the record, there are lots of nice people. but there are also areas notorious for the biggest snobs I have ever seen. Wealth here is not the same as wealth in Canada - here you have to flaunt it so much that it tires everyone around you. I'm sorry to seem so critical, it's hard to describe adequately over a blog, but it's something you feel here every day.)

Have I rambled enough to make up for not posting a while?

By the way the biggest bout of Vancouver-friends-family sickness came during that hellish bus ride last night.
I shed many a tear for you and for vancouver transit. even if the transit cops have guns.

Love,
M

Photos:

1. there are 2 peacocks on our campus. they chill by the pond, walk around the tables, and generally maintain the snobby atmosphere.... :)
2. here are some of the murals i was talking about. photos do them no justice i apologize.
3. for a conservative and religious society, there sure are a lot of phallic symbols.... good old nature
4. doesn't look so high but its a bitch to climb
5. a sideways marina charli and aisha after the climb. why are my photos sideways???

50 pounds later...

2006-01-08T20:46:00.000-08:00

Okay the food in Mexico is really something to write home about.

I will probably have to be rolled to the airport to come home because I eat even when I'm not hungry. And yes, for the most part, you can get a great meal for under $5 but when you eat as often as I do, that adds up to a lot of trips to the ATM.

My list of favourites:

- tacos al pastor (I'm still not sure what kind of meat that is, but it is cooked on a big rotating vertical pole on open flame and it is amazing. for the record, upon my arrival, I decided to forego my refusal of all red and hooved meat. And good thing too because my first night here Fernando's aunt made an amazing Christmas eve dinner where every course containted meat, so it would have been plain rude to say no. And furthermore, being vegetarian in Mexico would probably have me in a coma with an IV forcefeeding me meats already. The only concept of salad here is the leaf they place your meat over for decoration. And tofu... well they would laugh in my face a whole lot if I inquired about it.)

- quesadillas (yeah you think you've tried them but all you've tried is trash compared to this. One place in Puebla makes these amazing ones stuffed with anything you can think of (except tofu) all for $8 pesos -- which is like 90 cents canadian--per quesadilla. and they are huge. the lady literally stared at me when I ordered 2. But I had no problem finishing both, which goes back to the title of the post.)

- churros rellenos (basically deep fried batter sticks filled with condensed milk, or nutella, or cajeta which is hard to describe but easy to over-eat)

- sopes (tortillas with black beans, cheese, and salsa. considered an appetizer)

- mariscos and all other things of the ocean (only to be trusted when you are actually within a few kilometres of the ocean. amazing. i never knew shrimp was so versatile)

- tamales (a breakfast food wrapped in a corn or palm leaf, made with corn, chicken, and salsa.... and sometimes mole, which is a traditional pueblan sauce that has like 50 ingredients one of which is chocolate. you heard me. chocolate.)

well I could go on but I am getting hungry just writing about this. And I just ate.

so let's just leave it at: the food alone is enough to make me stay.

Roosters in San Andres

2006-01-06T17:38:00.000-08:00

I am finally home. what is home, one might ask.... Well the university is in between Puebla, a small city, and Cholula, a big town. I live in an area (here calle colonia) named San Andres, which always reminds me of Grand Theft Auto III except that instead of pimps and dealers, my San Andres has roosters and lots of stray dogs.

I'm sharing an apartment with Aisha, another UBC student.. Literally attheback gates of the university! I cannot describe in wordshow amazing it is to be able to get up at 8:30 and leave the house at 8:50 and then be at school ON TIME at 9:00!!!!! the apartment building is sweet, with 24hour security and also wireless internet which at first didn't work for my laptop but the building manager went out of her way to get it fixed so now i am writing you from my bedroom. That's another fabulous thing about Mexico... service is better than anywhere else. Service actually means shit will get done. well. just not exactly in your time frame. Example? Well the manager said she'd havemy laptop back to me tuesday afternoon because the computer guy would show up tuesday morning. Well he showed up tuesday night. And this is a professional! Timereally isn't the same here. I heard all about Latin American time before I came, but this is ridiculous! Mostly because it is hardto figure out when a time is for real and when its actually an hour or two later. They didn't even care when people showed up late for registration!

Aight a line about the weather. Hot in the day, COLD COLD COLD as soon as the sun goes down!

But the funny thing is that for us international students, it's hot in the day. For Mexicans though, its winter. So they are decked out in sweaters and scarves while we walk around in flipflops and shorts, constantly rubbing sunscreen on each other. Hilarious because you will see a group of mexicans in winter gear sitting at one outside cafe table and a group of us sun-lovers at the next table. I must get this phenomenon photographed.

As you can tell though we haven't had a lot of interaction with Mexican students yet, most of them show up next week when classes start. So so far it has been the 150 odd international students. We havea little group going,,, Charli from the UK (Maddy she has a different accent! Studies at Manchester, from Surey) Jared from Louisiana (Speaks Cajun french as well as english. I cannot understand a word of Cajun) Chris and Farnya from North Carolina (both say y'all and i reckon a lot) Carey from the Bahamas (who can dance so bloody well) a few nice French girls, some Quebecois girls equally nice, and then another UBC girl Ashea who I only met here and a few others who rotate based on what we do and where we go. To be honest, there is not a whole lot to do. We're eagerly awaiting the opening of the Bora-Bora, a bar that supposedly has a pool inside, and is a 5minute walk from the university and from our place. But the shitty hotel I told you about in the first email (the one in Acapulco) was also named Bora-Bora, so I will have to drink a lot to get the image of the hotel out of my mind.

Oh okay I know I'm rambling but I must tell you 2 funny things.

1. Hyper Conservatism. when fernando and his friend Juan Carlos dropped me off at a hotel near the university for the first night here, it was early in the afternoon. They carried my bags to my room (on the 3rd floor) and then we stayed in the room for a bit admiring the view of decapated buildings.... About 10 minutes later, the phone in my room rings. I ask Fer to answer because I get nervous speaking spanish on the phone... Its the lady from the front desk, who explains to him that "whatever we are up to in there cannot happen in the hotel and might we please go down into the lobby before they charge us for having 3 people instead of the assigned 1 in the room" I almost took out my pocket knife. Can you imagine? What on earth did she think 2 guys and 1 girl were doing in a room at 2pm in the day????? Furthermore, what business would she have inquiring and ordering us to "stop whatever we were up to"?? Unbelievable!

2. On the whole I have been impressed with the other students here. And honestly, so many are from the States but so many of them are really cool. One though did not leavea great impression. On the first night he (from Maryland) asked me where I was from.
Me: Vancouver, Canada.
Him: Is that the state that speaks French or somethun?
Me: Peace out.

But really everyone else is pretty cool. NOT as cool as any of you, obviously. But still okay. Oh yeah and there is another Marina here from Holland - a lot more mature and reserved but cool. Hey brock, you want me to get you her phone number?

Alright, I haven't really heard from many of you, so so far I am assuming that this means life literally came to a hault when i left. but i think that is not the case, so please do write if you want to! I can now check my internet regularly.

Love
Marina

Photos:
1. the active volcano in Cholula, where I live. You cannot go within 7km of it because it's on orange alert. yikes.
2. charli, another british girl, and me drinking pasitas at 2pm in Puebla (a city within 20 minutes from Cholula)
3. Me, Charli, and Aisha (my roomie)
4. a famous church in Cholula, built on a pyramid that is the widest one in the world. Shame that it's spoiled by the church.
5. Aisha and the 3 wise men! January 6th is big in Mexico, known as the Day of the 3 Wise Men. Because here the birth of jesus is actually celebrated on January 7th. Like in Ukraine.

Pollution+Beach

2006-01-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

Aight onto a blog, which will be less intrusive and will let me post photos.

This blog is purely for while i am away, as most of you know i think its rather silly to keep a blog when you can just talk to your friends about what's up. Yes i realize i just dissed a few of you, but you're tough, you can take it! :)

Here's the first mexico-related thing, i did send it out in email but i figure it should go here too....

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Well I am once again rushed for time but I really want to let you know of the crazies I have been up to here

I have yet to see Puebla, my new home, but i{m sure its great too

Meanwhile. I don{t really want this to be chronological or story-like so I will just write about a long list of funnies that have happened. Basically I have spent most of my time in Mexico City (locals call it DF or De Efe.... and since i am pretending to be a local, so be it) and also 4 days in sunny humid Acapulco (which for the record is 50 times better than Cancun because the tourists are mostly all mexican. and for me, the less gringos the better)

Marina's Happenings and Observations

- Mexico City is hella polluted. How polluted? Well I have had a lump in my throat and stinging eyes basicaly for every day I have been here. I named the lump Gustavo. You can see the pollution in a big ugly orange haze over the city (which for the record seems to have no beginning or end even when you see it from the plane)

- Mexican people are great. Friendly, open, easy going. But quite seriously the worst drivers I have ever EVER encountered. My taxi ride from the airport was when I thought I would never even get to see Mexico because I figured I was going to die right then and there. Seriously. When someone turns on their turning light, this signals to the other cars to speed up and cut off the car before it can turn where it{s going. There is no courtesy, no order to how the flows of traffic converge. Traffic lights are basically only suggestions. Pedestrians --- run for your life!

Police here are crooked as hell, (luckily i have yet to be questioned or apprehended) but basicually you can get away with lots if you got the pesos to back it up.

- you cannot walk a meter without being approached by vendors. On the beach, every 20 seconds someone is offering massages, bracelets, food, cornrows (which for the record do NOT look good on white people, a fact white people seem to be oblivious of). But after being hassled on the metro, at the beach, in the car, and practically in the bathrooms, it is hard not to get very calloused and just shake your head no instead of being polite about it. and if you show the slightest amount of interest, be prepared for a half hour of trying to get out of buying something.

- one area in mexico city is the coolest place i-ve been to so far, Coyocan, a most interesting mix of commercial drive and the punk underground. hippie meets spiked collars. lots of youth. mostly younger than me and fernando (who for the record has been my saviour on this trip so far, from finding a lovely aunt for me to stay with to fending off the males to haggling for my new bathing suit.)

- speaking of fernando. when we went to acapulco to stay first at the hotel Bora Bora, we were hit hard with economics. namely, the cost-benefit analysis. is it better to boil in our room or turn on the ait conditioning which in the process releases an odour more foul than a port'a'potty. oh hey i just fouind the ' mark! sweet. anyway what a trade-off! we opted for the heat.... you would have picked the same trust me.

- gender roles in mexico. well i could write a thesis on this, but here are the funniest things. everyone everywhere thought me and fernando were married or at least definitely dating. why? well clearly a guy and a girl walking within a foot of one another are 'together'. Too funny. also, it is expected that the guy pays for everything, but not just that. that he orders and decides everything. so vendors would essentially ask HIM if I wanted a bracelet! Or, after I would give them the money for something, they would give HIM the change!!!! i have taken it in stride, after all, when in rome.... but if this keeps up, i will just have to KILL the romans!

okay shit the place is closing. to be continued!!!!
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Photos are:

1. fernando and me holding out breath on the bus ride. apparently, air conditioning produces a bad smell. how bad? you would be better off not knowin
2. us on the beach. not in the photo: our 6-packs of Sol (one per person. bought at WalMart.)
3. my wonderful host family in Mexico City: mother Raquel and her two daughters Paola and Patricia
4. more beach

Can anyone tell me why my photos don't show up in the order i upload them in??