Went home for Christmas and it was amazing. Got to see friends and family and had time to sleep and watch Law and Order: SVU. Now I'm back in Mexico after 12 days in the States and felt the need to comment on some of the things that were most striking when I was home. They were the kind of things that made me wonder how scared and shocked a person immigrating to the U.S must be.
Within 2 minutes of being back, I made 2 rookie "not from America" mistakes. First, I bought a water bottle. I never bought water bottles in the States. I'm a firm believer in tap water's credibility and am obsessed with the whole concept of free clean water after 4 months of living somewhere where you can get sick if you swallow too much water in the shower. When I went to pay for the water bottle, I was excited to use my debit card so I handed it eagerly to the cashier. He definitely gave me a "wtf woman" look (much like the one the tamale man gave me in the Trust Issues post) and pointed at the card-swipe machine in front of the register. Yep, haven't seen one of those in a bit.
As I walked around the airport I was amused by the tiniest details. I especially enjoyed noticing that: most restaurant tables have a bottle of ketchup, flushing toilet paper is a delightful luxury, Beats headphones have been quite successful (judging by how often I saw them at the Dallas airport) and that as promised, military personnel were in fact all heading home for the holidays. The airport was packed with soldiers. Sometimes there were even soldiers with Beats headphones! Giggity.
I would have to say though that the most exciting part of being back, as weird as it sounds, was seeing African-Americans. I have only seen 2 black people in the 4 months I've been in Mexico (and one of them was French) so it was absolutely amazing to see just how racially, ethnically and culturally diverse the U.S is. There are tons of people of different cultures and ethnicities in Mexico too, but not like in the States. In celebration, I decided to dedicate a good amount of time in Nashville to catching up on the latest hip-hop jams, pop songs, favorite oldies, and most importantly, Drake. I found that I listened to the following songs quite a bit:
112-Dance with Me
Drake-So Proud of You
The Weeknd-Wicked Games
You know you like it. Just skip to :58 so you don't have to sit through the Beanie Sigel part :)
AND I heard this song for the first time: Cobra Starship-You Make me Feel. I think they play it all the time on the radio in the States but I hadn't heard it yet and now it brings a whole new level of excitement to my workout.
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| Me and the fam on Christmas Eve |
I'm not gonna lie, I was sad to get on the plane. I knew that the honeymoon stage with Mexico was over and that I was coming back to face a completely different experience. Now that I'm back, I've decided that Mexico is no longer my passionate lover but more of a caring husband. It's a different kind of love but it's definitely still there. Flying over DF was just as spectacular as the first time. It's a behemoth of a city, so unorganized, so chaotic but so perfect in it's own way. Here's to 2012 in Mexico.
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| My 1st glimpse of the city |
