Groupies

It's official. My friends and I are now groupies.

Our neighbor, Gonzalo, is a musician who plays in 4 bands. This weekend and last weekend we went to his shows, got to know a bunch of his friends and have basically embraced our lives as groupies. It's pretty awesome, we even got a shout out at the show this weekend-- they thanked their Canadian fans for coming all the way from Canada to watch them. Nice, eh? It's fun walking into places and not having to pay because we're "with the band". ;)

It's a pretty good life- Gonzalo and his friends drive us around, take us fun places, help us improve our Spanish and most importantly- they are really entertaining guys who love to party. My sleeping patterns and my liver are suffering a bit, but it's more than worth the sacrifice.

It's quite a different vibe hanging out with these guys, they are all super creative (mostly musicians) and they have a completely different lifestyle than the grad-school-then-work-for-the-government . I'm pretty sure some of them will end up being semi/famous. A few of their friends already have their own Mexican television show where they play pranks on people. One of the guys on the show is going to be in a Christmas movie sponsored by Warner Brother's where he plays an elf that has been expelled from the North Pole for wanting to commercialize Christmas. Random, but awesome!


Here's a photo of Gonzalo onstage.

The Krazy Kanadian

I have to admit, this is the story that really made me realize I had to start blogging again so that I could share this story with the world because it's SO RANDOM!

There was a party at my friend Julia's apartment last week because it was her Mexican roommate's birthday. A bunch of us went to hang out (because what's better than a house party on a Thursday night?) and were chatting with her roommate's friends. One of my other friends- Andrea- saw this random girl with 2 braids that looked really familiar. A few hours later, we end up talking to this girl, and it turns out that Andrea and this girl had a class together at McGill. It was so random-- we were at a pretty small house party in Mexico City, where one of our Canadian friends runs into another Canadian that she had a class with Montreal. Yet another example of how freaking small the world is!

Now, this chick was really nice but pretty crazy. Apparently, she works at a bar back in Montreal and always has a lot of energy and is a little loca. She left the party with some Mexican dude (not the one she had come to the party with). We all thought she had just gone to umm..."experience Mexican culture"-- but that wasn't the case. Most of us went home by 5am, but then this Krazy Kanadian shows back up at my friend Julia's house. She doesn't just show up, she shows up HAMMERED and holding one of her braids! According to the girl, she just decided she wanted to shave her head! So she had this random Mexican dude CUT OFF one of her braids and shave HALF of her head. When she shows up to my friend's place she's just running around trying to figure out how to get home- she doesn't have her phone, purse or her friend's address because her friend took her stuff home for her after she left. She wakes up my friend Julia's roommate (please imagine yourself in Julia's roommate's position- it is your birthday, you are very wasted, you have to wake for 8am to go to work and you are woken up by some chick who is half bald and swinging her braid around) and gets her friend's number, but the phone is dead. Oh, and she is also holding a shaving kit that the random Mexican dude lent her.

She ends up just crashing on Julia's couch and comes over to my place in the morning with Julia and Andrea for breakfast. Now, Julia and Andrea didn't really know how to react the night before when this chick showed up (Julia kept trying not to laugh, but couldn't really hold it in), so they just didn't really say much about the whole head shaving this. Well, you know me-- I obviously said something along the lines of "what the HELL were you thinking?". She gave me some bs answer about how she wanted to cut her hair for a while, and she just really felt like doing it that day. Riiiiight. I am interested to know how she is going to explain that situation to a Mexican hairdresser when she shows up to get rid of the other half of her hair.

The photo evidence is above. Unfortunately, a scarf is covering the bald part of her head- but she is holding one braid and the other one is poking out from her scarf.

Baggage, Bronchitis and Boats

The three B's pretty much sum up my first week and a half here. Both my bags were lost (and one may be lost forever), I've been coughing a lung out because I have bronchitis (welcome to Mexico!) and we had some fun at Xochimilco. Xochimilco is touted as the "Venice of Mexico"-- boats maneuvering around canals. That's about all it has in common with Venice, since it's more like "pimp my boat", it's not really romantic and people of all ages go there to party in the middle of the day. Basically, it's an all-around good time!

Some more pictures can be found here. 

The Return

I know it's been a long time since I've blogged-- and I'm not sure exactly why I've let my blog lie dormant for so long. Actually, that's a lie. It's mostly because I was busy/lazy/talked to a lot of people on a semi-regular basis while I was in Ottawa. Since my last post a lot has happened which I can't really be bothered to recount in detail (a ridiculously fun summer in Ottawa, trip to Colombia, finishing my last classes and defence at NPSIA, too many parties, road trips etc.). So-- I'll just start with the here and now.

The impetus for the renewal of this blog is to chronicle my time the second time around in Mexico. I'm in Mexico City for the next five months, and judging by the events of the last few weeks, it's going to be a crazy ride. I don't want to inundate people with mass emails (although they are so personal and give everyone a warm, fuzzy feeling), so I've decided to just start blogging again so people can check up on me at their leisure. Feel free to comment!