So, this weekend has been quite excellent, quite excellent indeed. I spent this weekend getting a tour of the city. I know I have been here over two months now but I really haven’t seen a whole lot of the city. That being said, there really isn't TONS to see. I have hit some of the highlights but not all of them. So, this weekend, David has a co-worker from Mexico City in town. He was working at our office for the majority of the week but then this weekend David gave him a complete tour of the city. At the party a couple weekends ago, Dave offered to let me come along should I want to see the city highlights with them. And that is exactly what I did!
After work on Friday David, Jean, David's girlfriend Heidi and I spent the night on Chapultapec. Chapultapec is one of the main drags in Guadalajara. The entire street is lined with restaurants of all different varieties. Well, kinda. If you want to eat in Guadalajara you have 4 choices. They are Mexican, Italian, Indian or Sushi. That’s it. We went out and ate Indian at this tiny, adorable little restaurant. I really wish we still had more restaurants like this in Canada or that we took better advantage of them. It seems like anytime we want to eat we head out to one of the many franchises that dot the streets of Edmonton rather than all of the little independent restaurants that can provide some sort of variety or culture into our cookie cutter lives. Anyways, we ate, talked, laughed and then went out for drinks and bar snacks. The bars that I end up going to are really more like Cafes that serve alcohol. They serve these awesome little snack things at almost every one of them. I, for the life of me, can’t remember what they are called but they kinda look like pretzels... kinda, but they are really just flour and water and have very little taste to them. That is compensated for by smothering them with chilli sauce. Quite excellent.
Saturday was even better. Dave, Jean and I spent most of the morning in Centro Historico touring all of the important buildings and seeing all of the sites and fountains and random statues. We spent some time in San Juan de Dios as well. I have been waiting to hit this place for quite awhile. It is a three story market that is filled with anything you could ever want a counterfeited copy of. Haha! I LOVE it! It is one of those places that you need to hang onto your money or you won’t have any anymore and the little kid next to you will be a little bit richer than he was a couple minutes earlier. It is just filled with people and noise and color and culture! I LOVE it! I think it is like the biggest market in all of Latin America or something like that. Good times.
After our tour of downtown we headed off to Tlaquepaque which I had already been to but I still got to see a lot of different things that I missed the first time through. David took us in to see the collections of some of the local artists and wow! I was amazed by some of the stuff they had there. Granted this is the kind of stuff that doesn’t have price tags because it might actually kill you to know how much they want for it but it was quite nice to look at.
Stop number three was Festival de Octubre. October is a month of celebration apparently and so the carnival came to town! It was like a giant K-Days or Capital Ex or whatever you want to call it. Good times, good times. I haven’t ridden that many rides in years. I was so proud of myself! And I am totally paying for it now with a stomach that is still upset and a splitting headache but it was super fun. Boss = Screaming like a little girl. Jean = Green. Haha! So much laughter and merriment! Jean had a great love for the little carnival games you play hoping to win the stuffed animals. It was so hilarious! He spent a good 80ish pesos or like 8ish bucks on all of these different games and ended up with a little stuffed Patrick at the end of it. He did win a stuffed hamburger toy at one point but that flew the coop while we were ridding the roller coaster. Ohhhh!!! So, they have the most RANDOM stuffed prizes here. They had any vice you could want in the form of a stuffed toy. They had hamburgers, beer, and even cigarettes!!!! Seriously!!! The cigarettes would even say things like, “You are my vice” and other such lovely phrases on them. So hilarious!
After we had had our fill of rides we went to downtown Zapopan to see the cathedral and to have dinner and drinks. The orange juice I ordered was a wonderful combination of tang and McDonald’s orange drink. Yummm. (sarcasm.) The restaurant/bar thing we were at was playing this really heartfelt Spanish music that made me laugh. Secretly I loved it but it was still hilarious to hear it in the setting we were in. I commented on it to Dave and he told me he had requested it especially for me and had dedicated this song to me. Right after he said that, the next full minute of the song was nothing but the lyrics, “I love you” which obviously led to sarcastic jokes about him proposing with a rose in his mouth which was timed wonderfully as a man then walked by selling roses. Oh, I had a good laugh over it.
All in all, it was quite an excellent day. I got to see the sites and spend time with excellent people. It was really interesting to listen to Dave and Jean talk about their jobs and the likes and dislikes and perks and everything. It was interesting to see the impact that this job has on their spouses and on the kids of the employees of DFAIT. I think that would be the only drawback of applying for a job like this. I would love, love, love to work in this position forever but that being said, it would have SUCH an impact on my family and I don’t know how I feel about that. Stupid life decisions! Haha! Interesting situation, Jean has a little one year old daughter. Turns out that she has citizenship in three countries! She was born in Mexico, has Canadian citizenship since her dad is out working on a posting, and her mom is Puerto Rican. That would be so cool! Turns out I am not even allowed to be a Canadian citizen because I get cold at night here in Mexico which clearly leads to me losing my citizenship.
Oh, one last thing. I have the best boss ever. Not only does he let the bratty little twenty-something tag along and spend the weekend touring the city with him but he also refused to let me pay for ANYTHING. I spent a grand total of ten pesos over the entire weekend when I snuck off to buy a bottle of water. That was it. I tried to pay and he refused. He said he was going to cover it since I do all his work. Therefore he was going to pay for my food and drinks and snacks and entrance into the amusement park and the cost of rides ON TOP of picking me up and driving me around and dropping me off. How is that for employee motivation??! If only all bosses could be this awesome. Seriously.
Moral of the story. This weekend = awesome times.
Sounds great!
ReplyDeleteI have to say, the part that I became somewhat emotional about was when you mentioned McDonald's orange drink and then said Yum afterwords. For a split second before I saw the (sarcasm), I was truly concerned for your welfare and slightly disgusted and horrified.
I'm glad that you still have the sense to not like that stuff. Even if you don't like Feta. You're doing alright! Thanks for the great update!