Wednesday, May 06, 2009

To my Mexican friends in "quaranteen"

Drinking Tecate is a good way of fighting boredom when you can't leave the house.
All public buildings and schools have been closed now for almost a week in Mexico, due to the swine flu, and the people have been told to avoid leaving their homes. Tomorrow the universities open their doors again and people get to see their friends in the flesh again, other than online. 

 For a culture so social and friendly I can imagine it to be hard not to get to hug and kiss your loved ones as usual. After a total lock down of 5 days the society is now supposed to start to work normally again. So, what is it that you've all been doing there all day? 

I noticed a quiz in Facebook that went something like: "Top 5 things that keep me occupied during the swine flu" and the answers were mostly like: my laptop, iPod and dogs. But how does a society just close everything down like that? How does that affect the economy, people's jobs, production, export...? I mean now there are no fresh tortillas in the super market and all the milk from last week has expired. How will things get back to normal?
Santa took off the frustration of a Mexican girl at Christmas.
My last trip to Monterrey at Christmas wasn't actually so different. I had to keep myself occupied for some time because I didn't have as much work to do as I had expected and the trip turned out to be more of a really long holiday. So apart from my Spanish lessons, dance classes and writing some occasional freelance articles, I spent it drinking Tecate, eating well and taking my frustration on some poor piñata. Maybe that's what the Mexicans have now been doing?

1 comment:

paola rdz said...

hallo maaria!
i took your advice and read sometime 'cause as you said.. we are a very social culture and i must confess, it was REALLY hard being just home. Hopefully tomorrow i will go to der Uni haha and see my friends.. yes, i'm going to see the girl kicking Santa's ass haha
bis bald!

pao