First night out on the town!

I got to sleep in Saturday, which was glorious, and then I met Ashley Berkland for lunch. Ashley was on my freshman hall at Furman, and we remained friends throughout our time at FU. She is staying in Cuernavaca for the next year working as an English teacher in a local university. I can´t even begin to explain how grateful I am that she is here with me. I feel so much more at ease knowing that I have someone here with whom I share a history. So naturally I wanted to see her asap when I arrived, and through the magic of gmail chat, we made it happen. We ate molletes for lunch - toasted bread covered with beans, cheese, and salsa - then she gave me a brief tour of the city until she had to go b ack to her señora´s house on the other side of the city.

I took a taxi to Ashley´s house later that night, and from there we went to Bull, a small, but very popular bar with the most amazing live band! The band sings covers in Spanish and in English absolutely perfectly - usually better than the original! It was absolutely packed in the bar, which was all decked out in spider webs and weird lights for the Day of the Dead (I´ll explain in an upcoming blog). There we met some of Ashley´s Mexican students from the university, who have since become some of my good friends here. Her friends ordered a beer for me, and I was surpirsed to discover that in Mexico they serve liter beers (usually the brand Victoria) with salsa around the rim of the cup. So after I had a liter of beer sloshing around in my stomach, mixing with the tangy aftertaste of salty ketchup, I didn´t exactly leap at the suggestion that we move our party to a dance club. But off we went to Therberna, a pretty posh club that plays all sorts of music. Luckily by the time we got there, my stomach had settled. I tried to bust a move with the others, who quickly offered me some dancing lessons. By the end of the night, I didn´t stick out so much as the gringa dancer, and my friends assured me that with practice I might actually be halfway decent. I continue to hold onto that ray of hope.

We danced at Theberna for about 3 hours, and then Ashley wanted to leave and get some food. So Ashley, her boyfriend Arturo, Arturo´s friend, and I went to a taco called La Gringa. Tacos are open-air restaurants that are only open at night, and they stay open until about 5:30 in the morning. "Gringa" or "gringo" are the terms that Mexicans use to refer to a woman or man from the U.S. It´s not entirely derrogatory, but its not entirely friendly either - it depends on how they use it. Anyways, we all had the famous "gringa" dish, which is essentially incredibly fatty meat (pork or beef), pinaeapple, and salsa on a tortilla. Since it was approahing 4:30, and our stomaches were so full of grease we could hardly move, we decided to call it a night, and Arturo drove all of us back to our houses.