So Friday was a pretty emotional day. Jessica left in the morning leaving me totally on my own to navigate the city and school was out for the semester. Michelle and I feel pretty crappy about leaving because there´s so much to learn and see and do here and we’ve met some pretty great people - like a 16 year old who will spend a semester in Argentina following his stint in Mexico, an angel of a waiter named Miguel and some really fabulous and interesting instructors. So needless to say, there are some mixed emotions about leaving Cuernavaca. I am so excited to see all of you but…but… this part of Mexico is unlike anything I´ve experienced in the United States. My Mexican Mom Ana says it really well, “here in Mexico we live and we work but in the United States you work and you live, it´s a different life altogether.” Now granted, I´ll take my 40 hour workweek over the pay toilets without seats and having to put toilet tissue in the waste basket ANY DAY, but there’s a style of life that I’ll miss so much when I leave. They buy their houses with cash and if they can’t afford something, they don’t really need it. However, there is also extreme poverty and children working/begging in the city round the clock so I guess for everything in life that´s beautiful, there’s something ugly. At any rate, I’m grateful to have gained this perspective to take back with me…

But on Friday, I was meeting Michelle downtown to work on the internet and visit Miguel Angel and some folks at La Universal. I walk down to the bus stop and wait on the number 10 like Jess and I had so many times. I paid the little conductor man my 4.5 pesos and took my seat behind him so I could stare longingly out the window of the first seat and ponder my existence. I smiled to think that I would never have dreamed of getting on a bus in a third world country by myself before this experience and I feel comfortable talking to people in their native tongue and although I may not be able to understand all of what they say back,it’s really ok. It just takes time. I say to myself, I think I’ll write a nice serious blog about the changes that I’ve made over this last month and how different I feel about it all. I muse about American influence in other countries when I notice that Sr. Conductor has a bootleg Guns and Roses tape on his dash. I smile at my surroundings and at the little girl who just got off the bus. Look at me, Sherry Brouillard, on a bus in a foreign country and doing just great. Life is good, I’ll be in el centro soon and can discuss this new found introspection with Michelle. Except… Except, hmm. I don´t remember seeing that restaurant before on my way into the city. No that KFC definitely wasn´t there before. Um, ok….

Turns out I was on the wrong f-ing bus and drove around the city for an extra 40 minutes before realizing I was completely lost and had to get off in the busiest section of town before I could get on another bus going in the right direction!  Well, I guess I haven´t changed THAT much.

Sigh… I’m coming home tomorrow…

Moral of the story: in Mexico, always confirm with the driver where he´s going before you get on the damned bus. No matter what the sign on the outside says!

Hello! So Acapulco is all the things you think it will be, some that you hope it won´t be and lots more than you thought it could be… the beaches of Acapulco Bay and the Pacific Coast are absolutely amazing and like I said, beware the sun… But some things aren´t so great.

Let´s start out with the hotel. We learn on our way to the coast that we´ll be staying at a nice four star hotel known as the Casa Inn.  Hmm, a four star hotel for $130 a person for the weekend? I´m thinking not so much.  When we arrive, it´s nice enough. Maybe like a nice-ish three star hotel or so. But hey it´s Acapulco and I only spent $130 for the weekend to be there so it´s still going well. However we get up to the room and that´s where the real fun begins.

To start, we walk into a room that smells like your grandmother´s closet. Then Michelle admires the smudges of 35 children on teh television set. Four stars?  But it doesn´t end there. The mirror in the baño appears that it hasn´t been cleaned since the hotel´s inception but I am very glad that the last 42 people in the room were so careful in their dental hygeine and wanted to see their teeth up close while brushing energetically. No worries, I´ll just make a quick call to housekeeping, where´s my dictionary. No problem. Make the call and I think they said something to the effect of, we’ll send up housekeeping, or that I should go to hell. Not sure.   Jessica needed to use the bathroom before we go to explore the city and get something to eat, no problem, we’ll come back to a clean room with extra towels in the evening. BUT WAIT – HOLD THE PHONE. There appears to be something like Montezuma´s revenge all over the toilet! (the toilet, I might add that had the caution tape assuring us that it had been sterilized.)  Naturally, when one of us screams about crap on the toilet, all four of us have to congregate in the bathroom to inspect it.  But when I get to the door, WHOA, apparently the person before us who must have drank the water decided to run naked around the room and there was in fact, poo (mierda) on the bathroom door!  WHERE IS MY DICTIONARY? Call the front desk and ask for a manager because tengo muchos problemas con mi habitacion! Click – uh, what? Did she just hang up on me?  Oh no, you do not hang up on me when  there is mierda on my door. Call back, click, click click click – six or seven times.  Remember the phrase, “don’t make me come down there, this is what it looks like.” I look up some special words that I’ll need when I bitch out everyone standing in the lobby and I start to write down them down on the used pad of paper they left us without a pen in our four star room. The Spanish word for poo is excrementos and toilet is taza. Ok, I’m ready. Michelle offers to go down with me while we made Kelyn stay and watch the room.  You don’t mess with me, even in a foreign country! I get down there and the mean bitch begins glaring at me when I ask for her gerente. Ah, yes, we must have spoken on the phone.

While I practice my argument in my head waiting for Guadalupe to get to us, Michelle grabs one of our escorts, Rafael number 2 and tells him there’s CRAP on our door. He comes over and starts to talk to Guadalupe saying that we need to change rooms. Hey man, don’t take away my argument after I looked up all my important words! He tells her, “hay caca en el baño” – whoa, no I wanted those chicks at the front desk to experience it like I had to experience it! So I add in all my Spanish glory, ”en la puerta y el piso, y la taza, todo el baño!!” It was everywhere and I was pleased when they recoiled appropriately when I said it was on the door. They are going to change our room and I demanded the key now because we have our stuff in our filthy room.  Problem solved.

We then move to our new and “clean” (mostly) room and take a peak out onto the balcony. In our first room we had a view up the hill which was ok, but this new room had two balconies. Sure enough, we had a view of the magnificent Acapulco Bay. THIS was more like it. The rest of the trip went very well (2nd degree burns aside) and we spent time on the glorious beaches of the Princess Hotel sunning and having a great time wave crashing (pictures coming soon). Later that night, we all got dressed up and went to a karaoke bar where we sang loudly and badly to Avril Lavine led by Gerald. Muy chistoso! We topped the night off by going to a club and dancing the nigh away. Jessica made me dance on the bar, Shawn and Joven got accosted by chicks I swear were prostitues and we drank GIANT beers that I find I like way more than Coronitas. All in all the weekend was very memorable in so many ways that I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. Except maybe sans the mierda en la puerta.

Moral: sometimes you have to have a little shit on the door to get a view of the ocean.

I know you all are dying to know about Acapulco and I plan to write you a large blog complete with pictures but I just don´t have the time to do that today. Posting pictures is extremely time consuming but I promise to try and get to it soon. The pictures go with the story so it´s important to post all at once haha. But just to give you all a taste, Acapulco is beautiful and wonderful with breathtaking views of Acapulco Bay as well as the Pacific Ocean.

The sun is a killer though, as my roommate, who has second degree burns on both legs, will attest to.

But now I am back in Cuernavaca and there`s a lot that I will be sad to leave in less than two weeks, like all the learning and the cheap clothes and jewelry, beers and taxi rides but there`s a lot that I can´t wait to see when I get home, like all of you and my giant bed with a sea of covers or the food in America. The food? Well yes, here´s the thing about the food. While there is so much Mexican food that is awesome and spicy and ever so tasty, quite frankly some of it blows. For example, empanadas filled with tuna fish and green pepper flavored macaroni. Not kidding. When I was a kid and used to go to summer camp I could always count on two things. One: the food would blow and Two: I would lose weight as a result.

Now, try telling your Mexican Mama that you simply aren`t accustomed to eating tuna in anything but Wonder bread and you just might hear the words spoiled or worse under her breath. Besides, she goes through all the trouble of making enough to feed a third world country (do you see why that`s funny?) I don´t have the heart to say no, gracias. At any rate, here`s what I am having trouble with When you eat good food that´s so tasty you can`t help but eat until you throw up (is that just me?) so when you get fat, you just say, “well the food was aweseome, I couldn`t help but keep eating it!” And that somehow your state of gordo-ness is somehow made aright by sweet memories of lobster with butter and seared scallops in white wine sauce. So while in Mexico facing tuna empanadas or liquidy flan, you want to save your calories for the Snickers bar hidden in your room and your mama keeps saying “Eat eat! You eat like birds I cok for birds!” and you force yourself to swallow one more congealed bite you think… I don`t even get the benefit of losing weight while I`m eating this food!

Moral of the story: Getting fat off good food= ok. Getting fat off bad food= NOT OK.

Hey all, Dr. Elliott posted some of his pics from the trip so far on his web page. you can get to it by clicking on the Cuernavaca course link on the blogroll on the right hand side of the page.