Probaditas de Morelia

Marisol and I met one year ago today.
Five months later I made the easiest decision of my life and moved to Mexico.
And here I remain, happier than I've ever been.

And finally, the second-half of the photos from our trip to Guadalajara.
(The first set can be found here.)

(Part 1 here)
Three trips to the medicine cabinet, food, and regular bodily functions had done nothing for my pain. It was time to get serious. We consulted Marisol’s dad, a non-practicing, but U.C. Davis educated, vet. He prescribed a strong drug that was a sure cure.

That night we had plans with friends who we are always canceling on for reasons much less compelling than what I could proffer that day: the pain of trying to digest what I could only surmise was a bag of rusty, burning daggers. So we went. 25 minutes later I was limping up the stairs to my apartment thinking I just needed to lie down. Five minutes after that I was limping back down my stairs on the way to the hospital.

This was not a medical institution that filled me with confidence. The consultation fee was $4.50 and the “doctor” that attended to me wore fake, green contacts, a white t-shirt with a big heart on it, and had bleached hair tips. After some arguing with her apparently more experience doctor colleague I was told I had Colitis, given some pills for the pain, and an enormous injection of the same which left me grinning, giddy, and unable to read.

I woke up groggy but amazingly without pain for, oh, about half an hour. With a few more doses of the new medicine it became clear that it cured an illness I did not have. The waves of intense discomfort came and went with increased ferocity. By 2pm we were again in a hospital – this time the cities best – talking with what appeared to be a real doctor. Blood and urine tests and an hour of waiting provided the answer: Salmonella. Most likely from my own cooking. In Palo Alto. California.

Vital Stats
Taxi rides: 7
Different medicines taken: 6
Days of mind numbing pain: 3
Doctors visits: 2
Overly easy eggs consumed: 2
Ears accidentally pierced: 1

It appears Mexico is not particularly happy to have me back. And I don’t mean the people – the land itself has turned against me.

It started with some basic, I’m hungry, abdominal pain. Post lunch it had increased to something more than your typical stomachache. We were briskly walking home with the dual purpose of raiding the medicine cabinet and beating the rain when, right in front of that beautiful aqueduct I love so much, something grabbed my left ear and yanked me backwards. Pain assaulted my senses. English and Spanish curses exploded from my mouth. Despite its tight grip, I was able to turn my head slightly to identify the culprit: a thin branch hooked on my earlobe. I stumbled back a few paces, giving in to the will of this tree-beast. Frantically detaching the branch from my head I found it was covered in extremely sharp hooks which were now dangling at a perfect human-catching height.

Marisol and I exchanged words as we rushed to my apartment with my now bleeding ear. Based on my velocity pre-attachment, the sharpness of the hook, and the force with which I was jerked backwards, I was sure my ear was now hanging in two ragged pieces. A quick look from Marisol surely would have answered this question but apparently I wasn’t in a sharing mood. Upon looking in the mirror back home I was relieved: my ear was gashed in the front and pierced through clear to the other side, but not split in two. Who the hell plants an ear-shredding conifer in such a public...oh, never mind.

Initial fears aside, nothing more than gauze and antiseptic were required to clean me up. More troubling however, was the realization that throughout this lengthy ordeal – it felt at least 20 minutes – my attention never left the now awful pain in my abdomen...
(Continued here)