A Word About Mexican Friends...

I adore my Mexican friends, they adopted me into their social circles with open arms and they are the most fun, happy and loving people you will ever meet, but get yourself in a crisis and you need their help?  Usually they won't answer their phone and they won't come through for you - many of my Mexican friends have disappeared suddenly without a call or text to cancel when we had concrete plans and you can almost always expect a text a few days later about how they left their phone at home, their boyfriend got his finger slammed in the door of the taxi and they ended up going to the hospital, or that their mom's best friend arrived without notice to the airport and they had to pick her up, their cell phone died, they didn't have credit or some other invented Chinese story.  But the many Oxxo's on every corner can assure you that there's no more excuse for not having credit!

On the other hand, they can be incredibly honest about things - one night I was out with a friend and she ran into an ex-boyfriend and said to him, "What happened to you?  You got so fat!"  I could not believe it, as Canadians, even if your best friend asks you if she looks fat, you never say so.  Or she would tell me straight to my face that wearing flip-flops to a restaurant was not appropriate and that I should change.  

Mexican women dress up fancy wherever they go, whether it be to take out the garbage or go to the corner store, they always have their nails and hair done, lots of makeup, lots of jewellery, high heels, and they love to wear labels, whether they are fake or real.  Labels were hard to find where I was living, and if you did find them in a boutique somewhere, they were triple the price of what you would pay at home, so most people shopped in the tianguis markets where everything was fake.  Recently I was in Canada and I asked a friend if his Pumas sneakers were real, he laughed and replied, "What do you mean, real??!  What other kind are there?"  I got so used to people always asking me in Mexico if my purse, watch, etc. was real or from tianguis!  

Baby girls get their ears pierced before they leave the hospital and my friend would always put gel and accessories in her baby's hair, as well as put perfume on her.  Mexicans love to be well-groomed and always smelling nice!  Us Canadians could take a lesson or two from them...