i have some very bad news for all of you. ok, really it is just bad for me; i imagine you will all find it something else entirely.

first, i had an incredible weekend in huajuapan de léon. i met about 40 other english profs, went out with them all on friday night and had an incredible time. i just found at least 5 other really cool people who are dying to travel and see more of méxico, and on top of that, i just made friends with four other profs who work at three beach resorts within four hours of me, so now i have a free place to stay any time i go to the beach. score. i cannot really put into words how much fun i had on friday night, but to give you a hint at what the evening entailed, i danced. oh yes. again. i was as shocked as you and believe the ladies were more shocked than you can imagine. i had fun though and found a few friends who were willing to teach me some dancing steps, which i did not really learn or anything, but now i know what they look like.

for the bad news. but really it comes from good news. i have a new friend with a car (yes i have regressed to 16 years old where the coolest kids in my world are ones with cars) so i got a ride from the conference into the capital of the state, same name, oaxaca. a four hour bus ride turned into 2 hour car ride. the 6 hour bus ride from oaxaca back to tehua-york (this is the tehuanas(people who live in the city) new name for their home town of tehuantepec. they call my town of ixtepec tristepec which is a mix of the name of the town and the word triste, which means sad. evil people. i call it feliztepec, which sounds better, and is a cross between the town name the word feliz which means happy. much better) only took 4 hours. yahtzee.

so in oaxaca i am staying with some other profs and we are going to go out to dinner and then, i know you cant believe it either, dancing. my friend from another campus tells me i look like a vago, which is a slacker or more directly, a bum. she says my clothes are far too big for me and it looks like i just lot 45 pounds. as i am soaking this in, she tells me my hair is looking horrible as well. sweet.

i agree about the hair part, so we set off in search of a hair place for me. we find a place that is relatively cheap and i tell her i dont know what i want to do with my hair. i pick up a telenovela (soap opera) magazine and start looking for guys haircuts i like. she points out the obvious, my hair is not like theirs, so we see what the young stylist has in terms of style books.

this might have been my first mistake. i was with two women, one of whom had clippers, and was pretty much at their mercy. they found some looks they liked which i did not. why not? bc every picture had a guy with gel in his hair.

lets go back to the late 80´s and early 90´s. i was around 10-13 years old, and do you know what the best tv show on was? yup. saved by the bell. if you are a guy and you did not think zack was the coolest dude this side of ferris bueler, who it turns out, the character was probably based upon, then you liked slater. i thought a.c. was a tool, so zack was the man. naturally, i wanted his hair. a hand-me-down blow drier and lots of hair spray later, i had a sweet wave haircut (not the tsunami a young miss hulia toy was sporting during her homecoming queen days, but something slightly similar). i dabbled in gel, played around with mouse, whatever my sisters gave me or told me about. i was super cool.

14 years later i no longer think gel is cool. probably bc every single guy down here uses it. most use too much of it.

anyhoo, the ladies are gabbing about how i dont know anything and i firmly saying no. never. not something i will mess with. so the girl starts to cut my hair, although she never stops telling me how guapo (handsome) i would look if i just used some gel. nope. not happening sister.

as she starts to finish up, i notice my hair is a bit shorter than i wanted. not quite a crew cut but super short. the girl smiles at my reflection in the mirror and asks if i like her work. then she takes out a tub of gel, like a vat o mayonase from sam´s club, and holds it up for me to see. my friend has watched all of this and right on cue, nods to the girl to go ahead with her plan.

thoroughly satisfied with themselves, the two women share a laugh as i pay woman and walk out the door. i then went and bought a shirt which is not 2 sizes too big (i agree with the last assessment about my clothes as well but i aint going to buy a new wardrobe). when we met up with the other profs, i was told that i was the cachorro (puppy) of my advisor because i had let her convince me to put gel in my hair and buy a new shirt. i let them laugh but knew i would be washing my hair in 30 minutes and all that gel would come out.

when i got out of the shower and had dressed, my friend knocked on the door. in her hands was jar of gel.

long story short, i now use gel in my hair. not proud of it, but here we are. and i dance. but i also speak spanish, which according to my new friend alejandro (this means alex in english) combines with the previous two to make me an honorary mexican. so here we are. i have a few pics, but i shant be sharing them right now. i am going to let this news sink in and maybe in a week or so unveil the new billy. greasier than the old billy, but a billy all the same.

also pretty cool is that the hotel we stayed in is a chocolate factory. so the smell day and night was killer. i am not a huge fan of chocolate so i did not try but a small taste, but i will be heading back to oaxaca soon so i will be sure to pick some up for a certain sister that i know loves the sweets.

six months on friday. as i reflect on all the changes i wonder what i will be like after the next six. who will recognize me? short hair. i knew it was a bad idea in the first place, and now i have resorted to product. i also am starting to like banda music (think: mexican polka stuff you might here sometimes with accordian, keyboards, guitars, bass, horns, 20 people in the group, etc. and i am starting to learn the words.) be very afraid.

¡zapato vive! ¡la lucha sigue!