Working Vacation

At the second welcome party I attended during my first week in Mexico, a teacher described the life here as, “A working vacation.” Boy, did that have a nice ring to it. And man, he wasn’t kidding. I’m on year three here and I still feel like I’m on a working vacation. That’s not to say we don’t work hard at our school. Like most teachers, we work ridiculously hard, often ten hours a day and sometimes more on the weekends. However, when we are not working—then it’s pure vacation-like fun.

I realize I have already extolled the many wonders of Mexico City in previous blogs, but let me just say that after two years here, I continue to be fascinated, surprised and enchanted by all this city has to offer. Just recently, I went to have some happy hour drinks with my pals Ryan and Dean in a restaurant that has two lions in the courtyard. (They were in cages, not wandering freely among the tables.) And despite being in relatively small cages, they behaved in a way that made me think there were not entirely unhappy, playing like two cats. So, living in Mexico City continues to be an exhilarating experience, unique and exciting.

And then, there’s the rest of Mexico; so much to explore. The people I work with are constantly heading out to the beaches for surf fun, off hiking volcanoes, or white water rafting, or just visiting the scores of beautiful Mexican colonial towns. Every weekend someone is off somewhere. And like so much of what we do here, whether it’s watching football at Caliente’s—the gambling house with all the games on—playing Frisbee, followed by lunch on Saturdays, going to see our buddy Jason DJing at a local venue, meeting for Sunday morning barbacoa at Parque Espana, visiting a new show at a museum, the weekend excursions are often done in groups as well. A constant flow of new opportunities at each weekend or vacation: awesome people, great friends, traveling around together in Mexico on their ongoing working vacation.

One such weekend occurred not to long ago. We were invited to celebrate our friend Erin’s birthday by getting a house with a pool by Lake Tequesquitengo. And get this—jumping out of airplanes too! (With parachutes.) Unfortunately for Ale and I, my RSVP to Erin’s boyfriend Hector sat unsent in draft email form without me realizing it. Consequently, we were only able to get in on the deal for Friday night. Luckily, I had some paternity days I was able to cash in, so I took off Friday and we headed up before the rest of the group to have the house to ourselves for the day. The house was quite nice, with a large patio area with a pool adjoining a nicely landscaped yard over looking the lake.

We arrived in the early afternoon and after a quick shopping trip to the local tienda, we settled in to our weekend villa. While the maid made us lunch and drinks, we took Miguelito for his first swim in a pool. He was slightly freaked out at first but eventually got into it. He was naked, so I was slightly concerned about him squirting some of his mustardy yellow shit into the water. Thankfully, he maintained some self control. After our swim we sat in the yard reading and drinking some more until the sun began to go down and we were all ready for a nap.

After a few hours of blessed sleep—naps are not something I often get to enjoy much since the baby arrived—we got a call from the rest of the gang looking for some directions, as the place was a bit tough to locate. We got up and began our Friday party as people trickled in throughout the evening. One of the cool things about this weekend was that there were a lot of people there that I had never met. Erin has a knack for meeting random people and befriending them. So besides some of our core buds, there was a dose of new people, some meeting each other for the first time. There was a guy from Spain, a couple of guys from England, a computer dude from Oregon, a girl here doing her PhD work, all interesting and friendly folk. Miguelito came out for a while and was passed around among the girls. Soon, someone was cooking up some quesadillas with mushrooms and we laid into those. With a big day ahead for many of us who would be skydiving, people trickled off to bed one by one and two by two. Jordan and I, well into a bottle of Jack Daniels, were the last men standing in the wee hours of the morning, and bonded even further with a skinny dipping session before heading to bed. Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. I went up on the balcony and threatened to jump into the pool. Since the “deep end” was only five feet deep, Jordan argued against it. I was still not dissuaded until he pointed out how stupid I would feel if I was unable to skydive the following day if I had broken my ankle the night before. For once, I erred on the side of caution.

Despite the significant drinking until 4am, I lept out of bed at 7:30 am eager to jump out of a plane at 13,000 feet. Driving to the jump location, we passed several groups of burros, some practically blocking traffic. When I commented on this, Tina—ever ready to argue with me—said definitively that they were mules. She explained that mules were half-breeds between horses and burros. I told her that I was aware of what constituted a mule, only the little shaggy spindly legged things on the side of the road were, in fact, burros. “Did you grow up on a farm, Mike?” she challenged. It was with great pleasure that I was able to say, with some truth, “Yes, Tina, I did.” (I didn’t point out that while we had a horse and a pony, chickens, geese and rabbits, we never hosted any burros.) The rest of the crew in the car burst into laughter. Tina’s bluff had been called! The great and frustrating thing about my arguments with Tina is that they are virtually never resolved. But, this time, she was stumped. (Though, I’m certain she’ll never admit it.)

When we arrived at the skydiving place, we got a good gringo laugh to discover they were not open yet, even though it was past the advertised opening hour. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the workers arrived and we began our training. There had been some nervous joking about using a Mexican company to skydive, being that attention to detail is often not the strong suit of Mexican business. But, this place was legit. Very professional, friendly and thorough. My tandem guy spoke perfect English, having studied in Miami for college. He talked about how much partying he had done there, and I thought perhaps that was why he was now a jump instructor. As we floated down to earth an hour later, I would come to find out how very wrong I was. His father owned the company and he’d been jumping since he was five years old. He was a nuclear physicist who had just finished his masters degree in Belgium and was heading back to Munich for his PhD. In a sad commentary on Mexican progress, he admitted he’d need to work in the U.S. or Europe after he graduates, since there is no nuclear energy program to speak of in Mexico.

The jump was fantastic. I’d skydived once before and it was so mind boggling and overwhelming that I remember landing on the ground and feeling like I had just woken up and didn’t properly savor the experience. This time, I was much more relaxed and really focused on enjoying both the freefall and the float down. Also, the first time was in a bigger plane in which you had to “jump” out. That part was hard. Your brain is telling you very clearly that jumping out of a plane when everything on the earth is just little dots is a stupid idea. This time, the plane was much smaller, and we worked our way out of the small door onto a metal leg jetting out to the plane. He stood on that with me strapped beneath him and he did the release into the great wide open without me having to make an act of volition.

After our jump, we headed back to the house and got into a serious pool party. The maid was busy making drinks and snacks while we all enjoyed the sun, the pool and the view. By mid-afternoon it dawned on me that we must have been at a significantly lower elevation that Mexico City because the temperature was significantly hotter. There were swim up tables where the pool and kitchen met, so staying cool in the pool while you had your drinks became the name of the game. Throughout the day, even more people showed up; at the height of the party there might have been 25 people there. More than once I said, and heard others say—drink in hand, floating in the pool, overlooking the lake—“this is some life we are living.” Later in the afternoon, the maid cranked up the grill and cooked up a slew of meats and vegetables we had purchased, along with some quesadillas. It was a fantastic feast that left us all quite stuffed.

As the evening wore on Ale and Miguelito and I snuck off to take another brief nap before getting ready to go out for Erin’s birthday dinner. The owner of the house actually owned the restaurant and the meals were included for those paying to stay at the house. (Some people were sleeping in tents in the yard—though we didn’t volunteer that information to the owner.) The meal was OK—nothing to write home about--but it was a good opportunity to further get to know some of the new people I had met during the weekend. I got to hear more about the PhD girl’s investigation into Mexican-Cuban relations during the Seventies and was jealous of her being a student.

After the cake came out and Erin blew out the candle, Ale and I packed Miguelito in the car to drive back to Mexico. Our room would be occupied by Dean and his girlfriend and her sister that night. (I keep forgetting to ask Dean how that went, as there was only a large, single bed in the room and two sisters to share it with!) Our friends Kristen and Jordan decided to join us for an early departure. 24 hours of straight partying had taken its toll, and there were extra people who could use their room. Waking up at home in their own beds, ready to watch football was a prospect well worth the two hour drive home at midnight.

All in all, it was another fantastic “working vacation” weekend. And the truth is, it’s just one example of the many great trips we take throughout the year. For some reason, it’s the sort of thing I would rarely do in NJ. But, here, hitting the road with friends for adventure is quite the norm. I heard later that those who stayed on Sunday continued the pool party, even jumping in groups from the balcony into the pool. The pictures I saw sure made it look like fun. I KNEW I should have jumped when I had the chance!