Special note

I'll be away for about a week but keep writing!

Expect a lot of pictures after my holidays... :-)

Solution - Finally!

As 3 people keep nagging me to puplish the solutions of the vocabulary test, I finally want to do that. I really thought a bit more would participate but it was fun anyway.

So here are the solutions:

1. Malinche (Hernán Cortez' lover and translator/ name of a volcano near Puebla): I think I have to explain again that "lover" can refer to both a man and a woman. In this case it was a woman. So it has nothing to do with "gay". The thing is that this woman Malinche was an indígena being Hernán Cortez' lover and translater. Therefore the word Malinche has become a symbol of betrayal. So calling someone Malinche is not too nice;-) - Sorry, nobody got that right!
   
2. Orejas del Elefante (elefant ears): Is a name for a taco. It is filled with a LOT of meat. - Nobody got that right either! - he he, it seems I' winning;-)
3. güey (ox): right Michael, that would be something like dude in English. But you have to be careful because if you say it to a stranger they will feel insulted. Calling people by an animals name generally is quite a bad thing here.
4. agua del calcetin (water of the sock): This has nothing to do with alcohol and it isn't the obvious thing. That's how people call a very weak coffee here. Why is up to your imagination...
5. una fiesta de tornillos (a party of screws): is a pary where there are mainly guys and the girls are missing (there are the screws but the screw nuts are missing). Fabian, it has nothing to do with "screwing someone" or any other "sexual" meaning. At least as far as I was told...
6. pinche (scullion): Right! That's "f***ing" in English. You can use it as an adjective in front of any noun. I have no idea where is the relation to scullion!
7. pendejo (pubic hair): "idiot" would be an adequate translation. It's not as strong as "asshole".
8. cabrón (billy goat): originally it's an expression for a cuckold. The German expression "jemandem Hörner aufsetzen" is similar. So if you want to insult someone, you can call him cabrón. But - just as 3. - calling one's friend cabrón is quite usual and not considered bad at all. As I explained before: Mexicans like a STRONG language.
9. I'll just cite Michael because I didn't know so many English expressions for it: " looked up a few terms that describe what I think this means. Here's what I came up with:
   - beat the meat
   - choke the chicken
   - burp the worm
   - shake hands with the cyclops
   - slap the purple headed yogurt pistol (I like that one :-))
   - whip the weasel
   Now that I think about it... You seem to have a - well... - interesting time in Mexico, considering what you call "part of every day's communication"... 8-)" And to explain how that comes into "every day's communication": Mexicans (guys) like expressions with a double meaning. And quite often it happens that you say something which you think it quite a normal sentence. A Mexican says this sentence slightly different and everybody starts to laugh. Except yourselft. He sais it again. You still think it is a normal sentence. If they are nice, they explain the double meaning to you...
10. mordida (bite): bribe money. Definitely part of "every day's life" here (although some Mexicans deny it). The police here often stops people who look a bit more wealthy because you can avoid a lot of trouble paying a little bribe. It's something deep-seated in Mexican culture and I guess even if they would exchange all policemen (as New York's former mayor Giuliani who acted as an advisor for the Mexican government) nothing really would change.

And here are your grades, cabrones:

• Michael: You did pinche well on the test. Did you forget to tell me about your Spanish/ Mexican girlfriend?;-) Or how come you got so many words right? I guess you were bored and found a good dictionary on the web... So best grade on the test but you definitely failed convincing others to participate! So I would say 5 points on the test and -10 for convincing others.
  
• Digger: Nice guesses. But just guesses!:-> Well, it was fun reading them anyway. So 1 point for that;-)
  
• Fabian: More guesses that made me laugh! Especially how carefully you expressed your guess on 5. Sorry, it wasn't right. I give you 3 points. But just for the amount of text you wrote;-) (remember Dave Link's scales!!!)
• Everybody else: shame on you, you didn't participate!!!

Another "Wake up!"

Last weekend I went to Zacatlan. It's a nice small city about 3 hours by car from Puebla. On the pic you can see the nice view you have there. When we were at that place (where I took the picture), we asked ourselves if it wasn't possible to go down this valley. So we asked a woman in a shop who told us that it was possible and also told us the direction where we had to go. Because of our experience with Mexicans telling you where you have to go (see one of the previous posts), we also asked a policeman for the way. He told us that it was forbitten to go down there because it was so slippery.

Nonetheless, he went with us to the place where the path starts downwards. Additionally he went away and came back with to boys (about the age of 8) to guide us downwards for a coke each.

I guess that describes some more things in Mexico.

Wake up!

The other day, when I looked out of my window in the morning, I saw this:
You think that's the Mexican style of changing tyres? - No!
That's the Mexican style of stealing tyres over night.

To be honest I don't feel that save any more although they told us that we live in a quite save area. I guess "quite save" means "relatively save considering I'm in Mexico".

The "funny" thing is that usually it's not a problem to find your tyres or other parts of your car again. In most cases you can find them on a market in town (called Falluca) the other day. That means if you are quick enough before somebody else buys them. So what you can do is buying them back at that market. Proving someone that they stole them is almost impossible.

So I should say: Wake up! You are in Mexico!

Trapanovia

or: macho y hembra

Some time ago, I promised to write about Mexican men and women and their rolls. Or should I better say: how they behave in public?

As Mexico is a very catholic country, you can find the classical roles of men and women in society: he goes out to work, she stays at home to look for the children and the house. Although things are changing here as well, at least those who don't study marry and have children early.

What else? If something like that exists, the "typical" Mexican guy is someone between a macho and a caballero (gentleman). Opening the door for a woman and similar things are very common. At the same time you hardly find a Mexican who doesn't say that women can't drive and many more things I don't want to mention here. And how to describe the "typical" Mexican woman? According to Tiziano Ferro they all have a moustache;-) (I guess that was a great publicity gag. And it worked!). Well, without being mean I think I can say that there are more beautiful than intelligent Mexican girls/ women (Of course there are exceptions and one doesn't exclude the other).

Some politics

Mexicans don't like it very much, when foreigners make comments about their politics. So I won't do that. But it should be allowed to write something about the elections that were helt the weekend before.

Honestly, for the presidential elections there were only two real candidates: Felipe Calderón and Manuel Obrador (or to be precise: Felipe De Jesus Calderón Hinojosa and Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador). One candidate for the PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) and the other for the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) and other centre-left parties.

Before the elections Calderón was the favourite. Well, maybe just here in Puebla where there are a lot of foreign companies and the people are even more catholic than in the rest of the country. The actual result was quite a surprise for the people (here). 35.88% for Calderón compared to 35.31% for Obrador. It seems that although almost the whole (rich) North of Mexico voted for Calderón, Obrador has a lot of supporters in the (poor) South. While Calderón promised to create new jobs by reducing obstacles for (foreign) companies, Obrador's program is a more social one.

But if you think that was it: wrong, wrong, WRONG! Obrador claimed irregularities during the counting of the votes. Now the whole case will end in front of the Surpreme Court. Until September they have to investigate the whole thing but it seems that Calderón is to be the new president. He probably will succeed Vicente Fox who is president now.

BTW, Goerge W. Bush was one of the first who congratulated Calderón being the new president. How come...?;-)*

And don't forget there is still a vacabulary test waiting for you!

*This isn't Mexican politics so I can be a bit ironic.

Where the emperor has to go by foot...*

... he also has to use paper.

or: What to do with it afterwards?

Fabian wanted to hear more of this "every-day stuff". This post is dedicated especially to you, Fabian. :->

People used to what we could call "Western European standard" will be shocked by this information: In Mexico you are not allowed to throw the toilet paper into the toilet. Instead you have a wastepaper basket next to the toilet. This is because of the bad quality of Mexican drainage systems. They just would clog.

But to calm all of you who were shocked too much: At our house we throw the paper into the toilet. Hey, we all are Germans and our landlord never mentioned that it's not allowed.

Please don't forget the vocabulary test (see post July 01)!

*In German this is a nice expression to avoid the word "toilet".

Vocabulary test

The other day I had a crazy idea. Why not make a vocabulary test for the visitors of my blog:-) It would be nice if you participated although everbody seems to have gotten a bit lazy writing comments (exceptions of course conferm the rule). Otherwise it will stay just a crazy idea.

The following list contains some Spanish words and expressions you hardly find in a dictionary but which are definitely part of every day's communication here in Mexico. As a little help I gave you the literal translation. Be creative and guess what it really means (or maybe you know as some of them are quite well-known) and write your ideas down in a comment.

I'll moderate comments again for some time so that you don't copy from each other;-) So don't wonder if your comments don't appear immediately. I'll publish the comments related to this post when I give the solution. All other comments will appear soon after you wrote them.

Now, I hope this will be fun! For you and for me. Here is the list:

1. Malinche - Hernán Cortez' lover and translator/ name of a volcano near Puebla
2. orejas del elefante - elefant ears
3. güey - ox
4. agua del calcetin - water of the sock
5. una fiesta de tornillos - a party of screws
6. pinche - scullion
7. pendejo - pubic hair
8. cabrón - billy goat
9. hacer una chaqueta - make a jacket
10. mordida - bite