My 5 Years living in Mexican Culture

Back in 1995 I moved to Austin Texas with my 8 month pregnant girlfriend. About 6 months later, we split up and I ended up on my own in a town where I didn't know anyone. I will save that story for another time, but suffice it to say that this was the beginning of the craziest time of my life.

Cuidad Gaudalupe, NL MX. Can you spot the gringo?

I was really broke at the time, barely getting by on my crappy minimum wage job that was mostly going toward paying child support. I lived in a really crappy apartment in the worst part of town. I was the only white dude in my entire apartment complex. Not only that, but I was the only one who spoke English!

I had always been fascinated by the Mexican people and culture, but only knew a few phrases in Spanish. I had gone to Mexico once before on a missionary trip with my church when I was 13 or 14. The only Spanish I could remember was when this kid begged me to buy him some milk so I did - then he threw it at me and yelled "No me gusta leche!" (I don't like milk)... Afterward he ran away laughing. For some reason that gives me no end to amusement even to this day.

Pretty soon I managed to get a job at Dell Computers working on the assembly line. There was this dude there working on the cleaning crew named Jesus. He was really friendly, but didn't speak any English. We started to point at things and ask how to say them in each other's language. This went on for some time until we started to get a little vocabulary going.

Of course a lot happened in between, but suffice it to say that I really got in to trying to speak Spanish properly. I ended up going to Lerdo, Durango Mexico with Jesus' brother and hung out down there for a couple of weeks. The people in the town had never seen a white person in real life, which I found to be incredible.

The most bizarre thing happened to me while down there. I went into town with my friend's brother, and all of the girls in the market stopped what they were doing and started to stare at me. It was freaky as hell. By the time I had walked all the way to the other side of the market, there was a crowd of girls following us. My friend told me to hurry up and get into the car and we drove back to his house. When we got there, the girls were driving by in cars looking for the 'white guy'. Apparently they thought I was a super rich celebrity. That was nuts! I had never before, and never since been chased by a mob of excited women. Scary and awesome at the same time.

Oh well, back to my boring old white self.

Later on, I met this guy Felipe from Monterrey Mexico. We became super close friends and ended up driving to Monterrey pretty much every weekend. I worked Monday, Tues, and Wed, and every other Thurs. Every single moment that we were off work, we were in Monterrey partying with his cousins and friends, as seen in the top photo.

Orale, Ricky! Ya vamos para las caguamas guey!

That is Felipe getting into the drivers seat and our friend Abraham from Mexico DF. We drove this car to Mexico so many times. Felipe was technically illegal in the US, but border patrol used to just wave us through. They would ask, where are you from? He'd say "Alabama" LOL!! Of course that was way before 9/11.

At some point, we stopped even coming back to America. In fact, at one point I just stayed in Mexico for about 3 years. I don't know when it happened, but I remember one morning I woke up lying on the cement drunk out of my mind. All of a sudden, everyone's words made sense to me. It was as if I became fully fluent in Spanish overnight. I was completely absorbed into the culture and language.

We were such slackers back then

In fact, it got to the point when I had no idea when I or someone else was speaking English, and when they were speaking Spanish. It all sort of blended together. This doesn't really happen that much anymore, but I can remember the feeling.

Later on, I met this girl and ended up traveling down to Puerto Angel Oaxaca. I had literally zero dollars and a bus ticket. It took 24 hours by bus to get down there. 14 of those were down extremely windy roads through the jungle.

This is my friend Loriss.. She was never really amused by me. But her little daughter was the cutest thing and was my little buddy down there.

Mamá, quien es este señor

Sometimes I wonder what happened to that kid who would just drop everything and travel around Mexico by myself without a penny to my name. I am so tame these days. I mean, Amanda and I do travel around a lot, but I have to admit that my sense of adventure and excitement has dwindled significantly since those days.

I've been spending some time thinking about the old days lately. I think that I was so reckless back then that I have associated those days with a bad version of myself. This has caused me to lose a lot of my carefree spirit. I think that I really want to make an effort to get a bit of that childishness back, but without the flagrant lack of self control that I used to have. Wish me luck!

On a side note, Felipe and I used to write songs in Spanish and record them while drunk. I will try to find some and post them on here!