heartbreaking sushi & other stories

had a great but altogether far too short weekend. friday night was disco bowling with the vols and jous. we acted like a bunch of fools, spending as much time on the floor of the lanes as we did on our feet, drinking too much beer and playing stupid arcade games. it was weird; we could have been anywhere - the goofy graphics on the electronic scoreboard for "open" and "strike" and "spare" were the same as they are in pittsfield and cape cod and new york. (my favorite of those graphics is definitely the "open" one where the pins are sneaking out of jail while the bowling-ball-jailer snoozes next to them.)

saturday i had a party - so much fun to get a party together, even despite the experience of blatantly being judged by the convenience store clerk when i, a woman, bought three six-packs of beer. the party itself was a success, too, and turned out to be a great chance for my neighbors, two wonderful gringas from the South (jocelyn and meredith, who live two doors down with meredith's little sons), to meet the vols, jous, and his sweet cousin, marcella. hotel staff came twice and told us to quiet down, but i've heard much noisier fiestas in las villas with many fewer people. i stayed up until about 4 with jamie, jawing drunkenly about how fast time has gone by and other kinds of things that seem really important when you've drank an entire bottle of red wine by yourself, and then slipped into an alcoholic stupor.

sunday morning was heralded by my inability to sleep past 10 on account of my first real mexican hangover. i got out of bed and embarked on a groggy, caffeine-fueled onceover of my apartment's little kitchenette-cum-dining/living room (the whole time thinking of kris kristofferson's "sunday morning coming down": "well i woke up sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt/and the beer i had for breakfast wasn't bad so i had one more for dessert"... although i refrained from beer-as-breakfast), and then invited jous to take me for aguas de coco. we spent the rest of the day driving around (a fun little incident: we were going down a street when the truck in front of us stalled. jous put the car in park, we both jumped out and helped the people push their truck onto the side of the calle, then jumped back in the car and went on our way), and i marinated in the kind of spiritually idiotic mood that hangovers cause in me. then we decided to get sushi. i've been pretty fragile since rosie's birthday last week when i had a homesick meltdown, and am sorry to report that this raw feeling combined with the very unraw fish in my tuna roll (seriously - the tuna was from a can) made me break down again. (note to señor forman: i can only begin to imagine how horrified - perhaps enraged? - you would have been by this "sushi," which made even crappy supermarket stuff seem like the paragon of Japanese cuisine.) the worst part was that i was at the lake, which is one of the most beautiful places i've seen in Jalisco, and i was sitting next to my favorite Mexican who had been gracious enough to take me out in the first place. but of course, he wasn't offended, and cheered me up with an episode of the "The Family Guy" that he had downloaded onto his iPod. and so there i was, eating pathetic Mexican sushi and watching a show about a cartoon family from Rhode Island, feeling once again as though my heart was going to break under the weight of all the beauty and coincidence and crazy, painful joy.

luckily, though, mom and dad will be here in less than a week. just joking around with mom on the phone as she fished around in my closet for the clothes that i should have brought was enough to dispel a lot of my homesickness. i'm pretty tired of being homesick, actually - especially because i'll be able to live in los Estados Unidos for the rest of my life and this experience has already been so fleeting. unfortunately, i think the trick to being present is to avoid dwelling on how things are at home (e.g., the availability of good sushi, proximity to my now-20-year-old sister, to say nothing of all the other people i miss so much every goddamn day). that's the real abyss i skirt - the anti-abyss where even cheesy pop songs are potential for sobfests. oh poor lucy! she has so many wonderful people in her life, so many amazing places she's called home, that she can't help but feel feelings that threaten to overwhelm.

for this reason, i'm almost glad sometimes to retreat to the bland world of english grammar. and, despite my initial disappointment/relief that ESL is pretty much by the book, i'm beginning to try out some new tricks in the classroom. the Cap'n will be heartened to know that i now call the attention of my preteen class quickly and effectively by saluting - they know once their hand goes to their forehead, they are silent and ready to receive my guidance, and have even learned the meaning of "WIPE IT," although they are about as powerless as i am to actually stop smiling. as you can imagine, the whole thing tickles the hell out of me. i'm also loving my teen class despite the fact that they're a bunch of funny-looking knuckleheads - i actually startled myself last week with the realization that i was looking forward to teaching their class. (why i enjoy doing anything with teenagers - much less something as dreadful as learning object pronouns - is still something of a mystery to me, but there it is.)

so all is well, as it always is - but if you're reading this, i miss you like crazy!