No mames, guey.

*I'm backtracking a bit with this post

Guadalajara, MX: August 24-27
For my 3-day visit in Guadalajara, I stayed with a small (self-proclaimed) artist colony. Some of the artists live in the residence, others just rent space for their work. There's a large, open common area with small side rooms that branch off the communal center, which are used as living quarters, work space, storage for artwork or all of the above. My Couchsurfing host (who didn't actually live in the colony, but was apparently part of this extensive "family") showed me to my room. It had a high ceiling with white walls and contained nothing but a twin and large, intensely colorful cubist-inspired paintings of what looked like contorted farm animals made by the landlord of the complex. Speaking of contorted farm animals, the day after my arrival I felt like such when Moctezuma unleashed his revenge on my bowels. Rushing to the nearest baño every half hour and holding back grimaces as my stomach convulsed in painful waves comprised most of that sad day. I did learn something though. I learned that gorging on pork rinds drenched in hot sauce, countless pints of dark beer, and I don't even know how much pot, after a day of eating nothing is totally awesome and regret-free as long as I remember to take my diarrhea pills the next morning.

Josue (my host) and his friends were a talkative, peculiar bunch. When I saw them, they were almost always either drinking, smoking, or working on their artwork which between them, ran the gamut from 5' x 5' painted portraits to stained-glass plane mobiles. Miguel and Manuel are architects who paint for their own peace of mind, others use the communal space to teach art classes. In conversations I preferred to listen, taking in the quick sentences of lazy speech, filtering out the excess of filler words -"no mames", "guey", "pinche", etc.- trying to piece together the punchline that caused that outburst of laughter 4 minutes ago. They were aware of my gastronomical curiosities so I was enthusiastically introduced to a few local delicacies:

Torta Ahogada (drowned sandwich): Pork sandwich completely immersed in chile tomato sauce
Posole: Chicken broth with corn (the large grains), chicken, lettuce, onion, and hot sauce to liking. Normally enjoyed for dinner.
I never cared for (American) Mexican food back in the States, but now that it's all there is and more, my pre-existing culinary discriminations are being seriously revised.

The city of Guadalajara is fairly sprawling, with narrow, broken sidewalks, some of the most ornate churches I've ever seen, and a consistently temperate climate that one could get used to. I'm writing this a few days after having visited and after having seen Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende,which in my opinion are more memorable and whose recollections thereof are much more vivid my mind given the closer proximity in time. There is also some inherent bias since I tend to be too easily seduced by the charms of colonial architecture of which there is aplenty in GTO and San Miguel. Because of this, my description of this relatively average metropolitan city is bound to be drab.

My last night in Guadalajara I was high off my ass on hashish. Again I sat back and listened to the conversations of my hosts, straining my ears at the rapidity of their voices, making out some phrases, giving up, occasionally chiming in so as not to appear rude, and eventually succumbing to the hashish in all its delayed-responsiveness glory, once in a while smiling stupidly when it was evident someone had said something funny.