Houseguests

First thing's first. What is Montezuma's problem? Why is he so vengeful? I don't recall meeting him ever, or even seeing him on the street from afar. But apparently we must have crossed paths at some point because he got pissed at me. What an unreasonable jerk. Anyway I went all Double Chee on the Pepto and now we're on good terms again. I don't know why that would make him so happy... strange guy.

It's alright, though. At least I'm finally getting some color... red. Inexplicably, at an altitude 6,000 feet higher than Seattle, and a latitude thousands of miles south, in a town that as far as I can tell sees the sun 364.25 days a year (on average)... I have managed to get sunburned. Ra and Montezuma must have been friends with one of the fruit flies I killed or something, because I'm pretty sure they're both out to get me. Unfortunately for those putos I have my buddies Sunscreen and Pepto on my squad, and that makes three against two.

Short book report: I liked Life of Pi a lot. I'm reading Travels now, by Michael Crichton. I liked it at first but now it's starting to annoy me. I could write for a while about why, but that would be a waste of a blog. I should reiterate that reading anything but this blog is for nerds.

THE NEWBS

The two new Slovenian volunteers are Petra, 25, and Nastja, 24. Petra is a thesis paper away from earning her Masters in Architecture, and Nastja already has her degree in Translation/Interpretation. Ironically, Petra's English is far superior. I think she might is gooder at English than me be. They are both really tall, impressed with how much I eat, and have really good attidudes about traveling and working in the daycare (which Nastja keeps calling an orphanage). They'll be here until November 10th, so I should have some more adventures to share soon enough.


BERG'S EYE VIEW

Because I like the name so much, I've decided to make this a recurring section of my blog.

- VW Bugs may be the most popular car in this city. There is easily at least one per block.

- Americans here act like they're part of some elite gringo club. They pick you out if they think you're American and say hello in English on the street. I don't know you anymore than I know any of these Mexicans, so stop assuming I think it's cool that we're both white. One lone, drunk American at a bar on Saturday was watching us for a while, then finally approached and said "Are y'all Amurricans?" Annoyed, I said that the white ones among us were, then rewarded him with a few minutes of conversation after he said he loved Seattle. He's a kid from Dallas working at a law firm in Mexico City translating documents. He said he'd been dying to talk with some other Americans... good thing you took a job in Mexico, hombre. He introduced himself to Miguel as Frank aka Francisco, but when we left he told me his name is Cart...

- I don't know if it's evident in the Blah Blah Blog, but as my Spanish (kind of) improves, my English is getting worse. I regularly draw blanks as I talk to Donna (the founder) or the other volunteers when trying to think of simple words. Part of it might be that I also dumb things down for the German/Slovenian/even British volunteers to make sure they understand me.

- I sat at Parque Benito Juarez (constructed by Zorro himself, Antonio Banderes) to watch some organized basketball games yesterday. I waited for a while in hopes of seeing some good players. The last game I watched was decent. There were some taller guys and individually the players were better, but with that comes selfishness and crazy shots so it wasn't necessarily more fun to watch. It would be fun to be on a team while I'm here, but it doesn't seem possible. They all have jerseys with company names on them and I think the league/season has been underway for a while. They seem to have built all the hoops to match the average height of the population, because they are all dunkable (by me). Maybe it's better that I'm not on a team... my lifelong dream of dunking on somebody on (what people believe to be) a regulation hoop probably wouldn't win me too many amigos...


I finally labeled all my Photobucket pictures. I'm going to take more of the kids and the daycare staff this week. I hope everything is going well in Seattle (or wherever you are) despite the shortcomings of the economy, the presidential candidates, the Seahawks, and probably the weather by now.

Hasta luego.