Today marks the seventh day I’ve been in Cd. Juárez. I was finally able to buy a map and discovered that the city is even larger than I previously thought. The city is laid out in the anti-grid and nearly all streets, except major thoroughfares, have speed bumps to prevent people from driving too quickly.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m living with a friend and ex-coworker of mine, Sergio. Also sharing the apartment are Sergio’s cousin, Albert, and the son of a family friend, Marco, a hottie 21yo law student.

The day after I arrived, Sergio, Marco, and I went out for lunch today to a seafood restaurant. I ordered the fried black bass and was surprised to be presented with the entire fish, eyeballs and all, on my plate. There were spoons in the salsa and cream and they were used to spoon each on to the tortilla chips — no dipping and scooping.

Another interesting cultural tidbit I’ve discovered is that folks don’t flush toilet paper; there’s always a wastebasket next to the toilet. I asked Arturo about this and he said it’s to keep toilets from clogging. After some discussing on the engineering of toilet paper, he shrugged, smiled, and said it was just Mexican culture. Some Dutch toilets are designed so you poop on a little platform so you can examine your feces prior to flushing. I wonder what other kinds of cultural peculiarities about poop, other than scat, exist around the world…

I’ve had lots of opportunities to meet people and socialize, as well. On Thursday, I went out to Foro 33 with Marco’s brother, Miguel, who brought along some of his friends. Two of them, Jesse and Iván, are a gay couple and were lots and lots of fun. Jesse speaks English very well and we had great conversation about music, culture, relationships, HIV, and all sorts of things. Foro 33 is actually 3 clubs - one for electronic music, one for cumbia, and one for banda. We went to the banda club and it was really big, nicely decorated, and had an awesome stage which was soon filled with nearly 15 guys playing brass instruments, dancing, and singing — high energy stuff! There was a dance floor near the stage and the rest of the room was full of chairs, love seats, and tables. The wait staff kept our rounds of beer coming until we couldn’t take it anymore and left. It had started to rain and the street outside had a lot of water standing. A few of us were hit by a huge wave as we were running across the street, but we were so drunk that it was fun rather than gross. Good times!

On Friday at 3:30, a party began for Miguel’s birthday. I was pretty quiet until I got a few drinks in me and then started speaking Spanish to anyone who would listen. 12 hours later, I was on the back balcony with Omar, another friend of the house, and Miguel’s father discussing respect, decency, and how it relates to world peace. What a night… I think Miguel, who is even more hot than his brother, was asking me for a blow job at one point, but I don’t think he cared about specifics. His girlfriend and I hit it off and we’re supposed to get together this coming Wednesday and cook dinner together. She’s from Chihuahua City, a little snobby, very fabulous, and is going to teach me to make sushi! We spent a good hour thumbing through the big Southern Living cookbook together on the sofa. Perhaps I’ve found a cooking buddy! I also did some marketing of Mountain Essence products. Alejandra and Anel were ready to buy out my stash of sugar scrub, but I had to convince her that I could make more.

Saturday was spent in recovery, cleaning up, and running errands. Sergio and I went to eat at a Chinese restaurant near Juan Gabriel’s mansion and later saw Episode III at Cineópolis at Las Misiones. Las Misiones is a big, fancy mall complete with a 3-story Bally’s Total Fitness. Cineópolis is the nicest movie theater I’ve ever been in. A regular ticket (around $4.50) gets you into a stadium-seat-style theater, except the armrests lift up so you can get extra close with the one you love or lay down, if you so desire. For around $8, you can get a VIP ticket which gets you access to a private waiting room with a bar and extended food offerings.

Inside the VIP theaters, each seat is an oversized leather recliner and there are wait staff which take drink and food orders during the show. Arturo and I saw “Sahara” in the VIP theater yesterday which was something like a modern “Romancing the Stone” and quite enjoyable because, unlike Episode III, it didn’t try to take itself seriously. I hope George Lucas never writes a script again.

Arturo and I spent the day together yesterday, much of it back at the mall. We did some shopping and met his cousin Elio’s boyfriend, Octavio. We had really good chinese food (better than at the restaurant Sergio and I went to) and some juice at the new all-natural restaurant that recently opened. We got some fresh juice blends served up in big, heavy margarita glasses with lovely garnish for $2.75 USD. We did some shopping at this store called C&A which sells waaaaay cute clothes for what I consider really good prices. The jeans and pants on sale were 200 pesos, which is around $18, and regular prices are around $28 a pair. Shirts averaged around $23. Things seemed to be on the Banana Republic level of quality except that I really like the clothes. Cute black leather belts with orange or green piping on the edge for around $10. I can’t recall the last time I saw a belt for less than $40. The majority of people that I see out here are extremely well-dressed. It must take a strong sense of pride to wear long-sleeved dress shirts and slacks in 100 degree weather.

So, how’s my Spanish? Well… it’s a lot better than I thought! i find myself overcomplicating things every now and then… For example, I got stuck trying to remember how to say “insert” when I could’ve just used “put”. I can participate in conversations, but not really lead them yet although I’m getting better at restating things to be better understood. Certain accents are easier for me to understand and some are completely unintelligible, especially when I have to continually strip out “pinche” and “güey” from everything I hear.