A Haircut in Tlaquiltenango

So, like I said, I met Mercedes and Karla at the Jazzmientos show and we got to know each other at the Alejandro Flores show at El Manojo the next night.

On Tuesday of last week I took the bus out to their hometown of Tlaquiltenango, which is about an hour outside of Cuernavaca. It was a really nice little pueblo; much smaller than Cuernavaca, but their was still a lot of action. I can't believe it didn't get more pictures of it.

Yeah, so Karla owns a salon and she agreed to cut my hair. I said I wanted to look more Mexican, but she said my hair was too thin. Que lastima.

Next we went on quite an adventure. Honestly I have no idea what happened the whole rest of the day. We started getting on busses and taking taxis. They are both photographers and there was a bunch of talk about "taking my picture" but I was never reall ys sure why until much later. One problem with not understanding the language is that everyone makes plans, but they don't tell me what they are. They just say "Vamanos" and I follow them wherever they're going.

Tlaquiltenango is way out in the country and it was really great to get out of the city. We went and picked up a guitar from their friend Pete (who plays heavy metal) and then Pete came with us to an Emilio Zapata museum where they the clothes he was killed in and his sombraro. It was very interesting, but honestly, I can't be around that many guns anymore. It makes me sad.

But I cheered up a great deal when Karla and I had a guitar lesson using no English, other tan the words to Pay Me My Money Down. I can't tell you how fulfilled I am when I teach someone who doesn't know how to play the guitar, how to play Pay Me My Money Down. My español gets a work out and so does my teaching.

From there we went god knows where and found a festival that the city was hosting called Feria Zacatepec 2008. It celebrates St. Santiago. It was the craziest fair I'd ever been too. There where rides and games and a ton of booths selling bootleg DVDs and crafts and toys and all kinds of stuff, and a huge bandshell. The band that night was playing "banda" which isn't any of our favorites, so we didn't stay there too long. There was music blaring from every corner of the fair, so it was impossible to hear anything anyone was saying, let alone for me to understand a thing.

We found a relatively quite tent to have some cervezas. The beer in Mexico comes sencillo (simple) or prepared. There are several different preparations. I like mine with salt and lime (límon en español), but Pete and Karla drank their's with what looked to me to be about half a bottle of chili power. I like chili, don't get me wrong, but que es muchísimo.

We left the fair after a couple of giant cervezas and headed off to another bar. Again, more taxi's and buses and a ton of walking. All I did was follow along and try to keep up. Eventually we found that the bar we were looking for was closed so we bought some beers and headed off to find some tacos. This is my last picture of the night and I think it summarizes it beautifully.