El Peso

FINE, I said, as I stomped off the scale at the pharmacy this morning. My premonitions were correct. This time I didn't even need to try to convert kilos to pounds in order to understand the gravity of this situation. But I have since done so with the help of google, and yes, very bad: If I continue to consume tequila, beer, and melted cheese at this rate, I will weigh an amount which is considered a lot even among bench-pressers by the time I come home.

Plan of attack:

1. No tequila (on weekdays)
2. No beer (on weekdays)
3. No melted cheese (more than once a day)
4. Three jogs/week in Bosque de Chapultepec, even when smog is unbearable and all wildlife is hiding.
5. No more street snacks, unless accompanied by a Mexican friend or international visitor (street snacks = street cred)
6. No more Cheetos, even though and especially because they come fully coated in chili powder
7. No more chicharron, for this is fried pig skin. Yet so delicious.
8. Will drink only Leche Light, Mexico's answer to skim milk (only 3 g of fat/serving!)
9. No more blogging about how delicious Mexican food is, as this practice often justifies my indulgent choices. I'm sorry.

So now I will talk about other things, with the hopes that one of them will very soon include the fact that my new purple coat fits me again. 

Kindly ignore the fact that my necklace is a spoon.

On Friday I went to a party at la casa de Mike, who is an engineer fresh out of MIT. I don't mean to stereotype but I thought it very engineer-like of him to lower a string with a key attached from the balcony, so I could efficiently let myself in. He proceeded to throw one of the best parties I've been to here, because it had equal numbers of Mexicans and internationals, not the usual 9:1 or vice-versa ratio which can often lead to linguistic hegemony.

So the party was bilingual, and all the more fun because it was attended by engineers, archaeologists, a pianist, and opera singer, and even a man chronicling the history of the Tabascans (who did SO much more than invent sauce). The result was a refreshing blast of new vocabulary, so neatly and cartoonly contexted in each person's spiel about their job, that at times I wondered if we were trapped the pages of a language textbook. 

I'm Maria, I play the piano and I hate to transpose!

I'm Paula, I study biology, and wow are the ethical issues surrounding stem cells ever crazy!

I'm Beto, I'm an archaeologist and I help people to register Pre-Columbian artifacts that they find on their property, because Mexico is really into cultural patrimony laws!

I found myself trying out my own new terms from the mariachi world, like chamba (party where Mariachis are a required ingredient), callo (finger calluses), and huapango (a particular song style, strumming pattern, and type of party, the defining details of which I'm still figuring out). These new words we shouted to each other over David Bowie songs and cups of sangria (this is ALL I'm gonna say about the sangria: it had the usual ingredients, plus figs and cinnamon... I will leave it to you to conclude how delicious it was) and chocolate candy skulls, which have flooded the shopfronts and roadside stands in recent weeks, as Mexico gears up for Day of the You-Know-What.