Supplies

Before I get started, I would like to tell you all that the prophecy I made in my last post of a new more outrageous question arrived today. It was “Compañero, currently in the United states, for how long do babies breast feed?”

Tomorrow my father is coming to visit for the weekend and the other day, he asked me if there was anything that I would like him to bring me. Aside from the essentials – a pair of Teva Sandals and the best of Barry Manalow album that I had to leave behind – there’s a couple of things that we have in American that I would like tossed in pop’s suitcase. Here’s the final list.

1. Socks – This is pretty universal. Before I started doing my own laundry, I used to blame my poor mother for the death and disappearance of socks in the washer/dryer abyss, but now I know that it is intrinsic in the nature of sock to want to disappear. I would like to let you all know that this universal law applies in México. I have lost many good socks, even Mexican ones.
2. Three Months Supply of Cheap Chinese Food – I went to a mall to buy a pair of rock climbing shoes (which, by the way, are like the foot bindings Chinese women had to wear to make their feet smaller and more attractive as they are supposed to fit so snugly that one’s toes curl back towards oneself in the front of the shoe, which is painful eventually) and spied out of the corner of my eye a Peking Express. I lit up like a Christmas tree. Mexican food is great, but its not mall Chinese. I was served by legitimate asain-mexicans, which was surprising yet comforting as I felt very much at home. The disappointment came when the dining started. This mall Chinese food was noticeably inferior to its American counterpart. Sadly, I don’t think I will be able to return. Unfortunately, my prediction from my previous entry “expectations” was right on. I’ve never been so disappointed at being right in my entire life.
3. College Students – If you go to the University of Monterrey and are reading this, apologies. The children that I attend school with, although some are very intelligent and sophisticated, act like highschoolers. Kills me. A rule that I’m very partial to in the US of A that doesn’t quite carry as much weight here is “don’t talk while the teacher is talking”, which leads to one of the following scenarios in almost all of my classes: either the teacher gets pissed eventually and tells students to quit talking, which they never actually do because they only stop their side convo long enough to say “sorry profe” before continuing or the teacher just doesn’t take note of what’s happening and continues lecturing. In both cases, I end up hearing something about what happened on Desperate Housewives last night in my right ear, something about the shoes someone bought this weekend in my left ear, and a completely random question about America from the professor coming from the front.
4. Last Call – The two-a-clock time limit on partying in downtown Athens is perfect. This usually puts you in a bed sometime around three. Too often here at three AM, I find myself in a smoke-filled room that refuses to empty, and three hours later I gratefully arrive at my bed. This was real fun the first night, surely, but I assure you, staying up until six in the morning is overrated.
5. Buttons – The dudes here have a nasty fashion habit of the guido-style, chest hair showing, nipple revealing, macho, relatively not attractive by any means, shirt wearing that just goes against the little fashions sense that I posses. If you liked the above description for some reason, you’d love it here.

This is definitely the short list as my dad wishes only to bring one bag. Dad, if you have to leave something behind, I guess don’t bring the buttons.

On second thought, maybe just bring one set of clothes for yourself, the buttons will be helping the world, I promise.