un dolor de cabeza

Hello from the tourist hovel of Hostel Amigo, the latest less-than-stellar addition to the Mexico City "party" hostel circuit, where I spent three days last week but thankfully am only in today to steal free Internet access...hello! I'm blogging only because I can't do anything else. Yesterday night, I ate at a horrid little "vegetariano" restaurant in Oaxaca -- fellow travelers, avoid Flor de Loto at all costs, despite what your Lonely Planet, which approaches Biblical proportions as you plot your travels with your index finger holding the appropriate place in your Baedecker, tells you to do! I had enfrijoladas con quesillo and could feel the wrinkles of my stomach contracting in protest even as I shoveled the vile soupy mess into my mouth, but did not stop eating in time to avoid throwing up seven times whilst traveling by 7 hour overnight bus from Oaxaca to Mexico City, into first my plastic toilet paper bag and then into the deluxe bus toilet and having diarrhea that looked exactly like what oatmeal would look like if one melted an entire 16 oz. Hershey bar into it into that selfsame toilet. (Does using the word "selfsame" imply that I am a toilet? How does one use that word?) In a moment of foresight before boarding the bus, I bitchily finagled a plastic bag from the snack kiosk clerk in the bus station with the following conversation:

Me, green at the gills, swaying, speaking crappy piecemeal Spanish: ¿Tiene una maleta...plástico?
Clerk, lazily popping gum: No.
Me: Pero, ¿que es este? [points at plastic bags behind the counter]
Clerk: No, es solamente por customers or something else I couldn't translate
Me: Mi amiga (pointing at friend standing nearby with recently purchased bottle of water)...la botella de agua...comprar...
Clerk: No, ¿quien?
Me: ¡Ella! La botella...el botela...aqua enbotellada!
Clerk, dawdling, popping gum, generally dragging heels: ...
Me: ¡Por vomitar!
Clerk: [slowly and reluctantly handing over a red and orange striped bag]
Me: ¡Gracias, perro!

Yes, probably not a wise or polite or respectful idea to call store clerks perros because I cannot be understood, but that's not even the most belligerent I got on this trip. Two days ago my aforementioned friend was cornered outside a Oaxacan market by three incredibly short men who tried to pick her pocket. It all happened too fast for me to stop it, but she got them away with a loud "Hey!" Not knowing what had happened, I assumed she was being molested so shoved the offending shortie in the back as he passed by. Sad to say, my sympathetic nervous system, for the second time this trip, has shown itself to be useless. (The first time was during a bus near-accident.) I wasn't even able to see, let alone stop, this shortie from pushing me back and slamming me against a wall. Whoops! We glared at each other and then backed off. Maybe he didn't know I was a mujer? I'm fairly confident that I could take on a single 5'1" man but probably wouldn't've fared too well against three of them.

Anyway, the point being, I'm incredibly sick today. Sipping at a Gatorade bottle and pushing buttons on a computer as annoyed looking German boys wait to check their calientemail accounts. This trip has been rejuvenating and illuminating, if not entirely enjoyable. I've seen some pretty nifty things, which I will not recall one by one here, but I think I've decided after two weeks of impossibly early mornings and sleeping in bus stations that I'd like to get up earlier and also spend less time on buses and never look like I've been beached in a place like Puerto Escondido for too long, because damn beach style is GROSS. (Imagine the looks of stunned horror on those in the waiting room at the Pinotepa Nacional bus station, as a six-foot Scandanavian croquete waltzed by wearing nothing buy daisy dukes and a bikini whose tiny black triangles barely covered the rotisserie-tan skin around her nipples!) The streets of Zacatecas and Guanajuato were tranquillo, Mexico City was filled with very interesting pro-AMLO (Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the losing presidential candidate in Mexico's version of the U.S.'s 2000 electoral fraud), Aculpulco was gecko infested and almost whitey-free, Puerto Escondido was like all of Santa Cruz condensed onto five blocks, and Oaxaca didn't have the "Taos-like energy" that a fellow tourist claimed it had but it certainly had food poisonous quesillo and pickpockets...but I must say that the best thing I've seen so far has been the man I saw walking down Calle de Murguía in Oaxaca last night. He was obviously deranged. He wore only a red t-shirt, and no pants, and as I walked by him he squatted on the ground and proceeded to take a shit right on the sidewalk! As cars zoomed by! As people dashed across the seat in horror! I was terrified but managed to sneak a glimpse behind me and I saw the silhouette of an urgent turd being extruded from him. Later I walked by and saw his product, very unimpressive. But still, ¡que interesante!

Okay, the Germans are really getting pushy. No more updates until I get back to New York, tomorrow. New York, sweet New York! How I've missed you! Your wayward son is returning! And me too!