Thursday 29th October, 2009
As promised, Jose Antonio was to insist that I would speak only Spanish to his colleagues and they to me - (which has worked for the most part, as they now pretty much leave me alone.)
Upon arrival on my first day at the office, I was asked at reception if I had any fever/headaches other pains to declare, (I held my tongue on the slight backache incurred from the plane...I would know better this time..) and was given a free squirt of KY jelly into my palms (this is the National AIDS programme after all, I told myself, and nothing to do with H1N1...)
After meeting the population of Mexico and their assistant (the pile of names just slipped right off my brain after all that KY jelly..), I was shown to my office, just outside the window of which, a circus of Mexican muchachos were performing improbable (and un-secured) acrobatics on top of tall poles of wires, and making a helluva racket about it too.
I was dragged up and down the stairs a few times to collect more short-lived names, and then (finally) taken to lunch by the lovely Mauricio at around 2.30pm. A healthy vegetable soup and cottage cheese enchilada later, and my Spanish improving by the minute, I felt newly invigorated, until, (after a further 4 hours in the office), I could barely find the strength to keep my eyes afloat.
(Hmm..and it seems my office is on a slope. If only I had a malteser I could test the degree of the slant..or perhaps I've just been stocking all those 'pán del muertos' on my left side... )
At just after 7pm, as Carlos kindly sped me down the road to Jose Antonio's, my fatigue was mulled somewhat by news that the office were trying to organize a weekend trip for me (these guys are amazing...I can't tell you - though I do secretly suspect they were unsure what else to do with me given that I didn't speak bloody Spanish...)
JA would be off to Oaxaca - a poor state of southern Mexico but one of the most 'culturally' rich melting pots of Mexico, and a famous spot to watch the 'I see dead people' festivities unfold - on the weekend, and they were trying to find me a flight to join him. I celebrated this good news with a salad-bowl full of cinammon flavoured cereal followed by a glass of Hersheys chocolate milk (see above), and died a calcium-overdosed death in my sofa bed at around 9pm.
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