Esta luz nunca se apagará

more developments on the smiths/morrissey phenomenon. three days ago i was at a bar (miércoles is the new viernes in mexico) and got into a conversation about mexican music with another student. we talked for quite some about the curious mix of older american classics and modern mexican music that was being cued up on the rocola (or jukebox, now you know) by the mostly young crowd, but as the bar near closing a strange thing happened. the rocola was turned off and the managers began a playlist of the best ranchero music i've ever heard. my friend told me this happens at every bar around closing time, the idea being to wind down the night and get people to leave. i don't know how well it works most of the time, but in this case the oompa ranchero tunes tapped into the beating heart of the bar full of kids my age who an hour ago were perfectly international in their musical tastes. they all started to scream lyrics to song after song when all of a sudden one came on that made me very excited. Its a classic norteño tune, what you might imagine your favorite mariachis playing, called 'cama de piedra,' and here is the point of this story. a lyric out of the song in traditional mexican fatalist baroque fashion is, "the day that they kill me, may it be with five bullets, and may it be close to you, to die in your arms." ridiculous, but now its all starting to make sense. 'esta luz nunca se apagará' is a bad spanish cover of 'there is a light that will never go out,' but hearing it here reminded of that classic smiths song that matches cama de piedra deathwish for deathwish. "and if a double decker bus, crashes into us, to die by your side, is such a heavenly way to die." boom. minds blown. also, i have pictures, after the jump.

here is the university, as pictured from my helicopter. they're cheaper than you'd think here.



and here is the volcano as viewed from my dorm. the smoke coming out indicates it could blow up at any time.



i need more pictures of real puebla, its muy cool. and that virgin mary shrine on the telephone pole outside the gate is calling to me, but how do you take a picture of something like that without everyone thinking im mocking it. i mean, i am, but how do i hide that sentiment? hasta pronto.

fotos (which can conveniently be spanish, or a lazy english version of photos)

i spent today cruising around puebla and saw lots of good things and took pictures of none of them. except these two, but only with my phone because i left my camera at home. the first is of two cool mexican kids wearing what can only be described as the skinniest skinny jeans i've ever seen. the picture from the rear does not do justice to the situation that was happening in front of the pants, but some things are better left unseen. the second is pda a la poblana. had i a wide angle lens for my phone's camera, i would have captured just about the same thing on every bench. making out on a park bench at 3:00 pm would weird me out. doing so two feet away from another pareja sharing an intimate moment would be even worse, but in puebla this is par for the course. in the end i guess i'm the weird guy who took a secret hip shot photo of 4 people hooking up by a fountain.





i will take more photos with my real camera soon, including one i'm dying to get of a shrine to la virgen attached to a telephone pole outside the dorms. and the volcanoes (2) that i can see from the university. one of them sometimes fumes smoke. ¿is this dangerous? the guy who was explaining this to me sad "thats how you know el popo (the volcano) is mad," then he laughed. i'm not a geologist, but i think thats just how you know its about to explode. everyone here is very funny, but its a very dark sense of humor. maybe thats why they love the smiths so much (i have seen many "there is a light that never goes out" stickers on cars, and now recieved an email from a kid who tagged every message with "so you go, and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home, and you cry, and you want to die." IN ENGLISH, and he didn't even speak it that well. i will continue to report on this phenomenon, it fascinates me. hasta pronto.

Soy Sauce

soy sauce is funny. its the name of cd i discovered here yesterday, and in addition to a delicious condiment for sushi it means 'i am a willow tree' in spanish, which i find very comical. i still haven't decided to tell anyone i have this blog, 1. because travel blogs are an internet version of having to sit and view someone's vacation photos which is truly awful , but 2. because who knows, i may just get really real on this thing. it could be like my very own mexican real world confession booth. i have only been here for a couple of days, but it has certainly been interesting. actually, i already hate where this is going, so instead of describing my days i would rather document the small things that continue to make puebla such a cool/hilarious/confusing city for me. my goal is now firmly established, so i'll start small. i arrived in the middle of the week to the school's dorms where i spent a couple days virtually alone with a couple of other güeros mostly from the united states, or the EEUU which in my mind is a much cooler abrev. than USA. then today, all of the mexican kids started moving in, which resulted in a fantastic piece of cultural exchange. i love talking to kids my own age finally in spanish. just today i left my conversations with a bevy of new disgusting phrases that really add a certain depth to my language ability. being able to ask someone if they "would liked to have" blanked is fine, but the capacity to tell someone exactly the kind of activities that you and their mother have hypothetically engaged in is the kind of education i just never got from school. besides learning to swear, i was also presented with several musical gems. i have learned quickly that 'si me gusta musica estadounidense' does not always mean they like top 40 dance hits. in fact, in my few days here i have found that puebla is like a weird r&b d.j. who has an uncanny knowledge of otherwise forgotten deep cuts you probably don't know, often for good reason. as a case study, i submit a song i had not had the pleasure of hearing before by r. kelly, se llama "feelin' on yo booty." best lyric: Now you're body's got me feelin' like spending/ with a backroom I could come to live in/ and your hair weave looking kind of pretty. its as goofy as it sounds, but in the best way possible. i have pictures i want to put on, but thats not going to happen right now. maybe tomorrow! but probably not. hasta pronto.