the weekend

Saturday. Got up to good internet connection so looked up a few things de Puebla and emailed mum then, quite strangely, I went to buy some cleaning cloths as the bathroom sink has been annoying me and cleaned the kitchen while listening to music on my laptop – this laptop is my best friend: it is my stereo, my source of information, my telephone (via Skype) and connection to home via email (and before the connection went down, my BBC radio). Bless it. I went up to the roof to hang out the pantelones interior I'd washed and spotted mountains above the clouds in the distance!

I headed into town which is about 40 minutes walk, arrived sweaty at the tourist information office where José explained the buses to me a bit. It all seems a bit haphazard, there don’t seem to be any bus stops, or at least any signs. They cost 5 pesos, whereas a taxi costs about 30 (£1.50). He told me that Agua Azul (Blue Water) which is near here is more than a place to swim – there are hot springs (if you get there early in the morning, they cool down later in the day). After failing to buy either a SIM card or a card reader for my camera – I would like to upload some photos onto this blog, but can’t because I forgot to bring the cable – I met with Lucia (who Anita put me in touch with) and a friend of hers called Lewis who had spent the night in clink. Both of them are here on a British Council English teaching programme, though Lucia has moved here permanently to be with Ramón who she met in Liverpool.

A couple of weeks ago Lewis was robbed of his passport. On Friday he was travelling on a bus to Mexico City to see the World Cup qualifier between Mexico and El Salvador when there was a stop check somewhere near Puebla. Without his passport (despite having a police report about the robbery) he was taken into custody. Lucia has spent the night/morning getting him out. The British Council had been invaluable, the British Embassy incompetent: the Embassy’s weekend duty officer was, incredibly, unable to speak Spanish and unable to do very much until the office re-opened on Monday (begging the question why have an officer on duty?). The police didn’t allow him water or food for most of the time and kept telling him he could be there for months. Paperwork was faxed to them, but it was never enough, for example when a copy of Lewis’s passport was sent to them showing the Mexican visa stamp, they wanted to see all the blank pages of his passport, and insisted at one point that his visa was out-of-date and had been issued in 2000 – when Lewis had been 11! Eventually the main man was called who took care of Lewis’s release telling Lucia to ignore everything his staff said (who were continuing to bully Lewis – half an hour before his release he was told by an officer that he was looking at 6 months!). I hope Lewis dines out on this for years.

We ate, went to a bar to watch the football and met up with Ramón (who looks like a Mexican John Lennon...keep this in mind for later!), had a take-away, sat on a bench in the street. Sounds like a crap day out but it wasn’t. I really liked their company (and not in a thrown-together-have-to-make-the-most-of-this-because-I’m-alone-abroad way) and will meet up with Lucia again. Lewis lives in Oaxaca.

Mexico beat El Salvador 4:1. The first half was rubbish and was stopped for 10 minutes as a swarm of bees invaded the pitch (no, really), but the second half was good and there was a good-looking goal-scorer called Palencia (I watch football like a girl!). We bought tamales – the sweet ones are vile and the savoury ones not much better, despite what Mr Jamie Oliver says it’s like eating suet pudding – and some other street food, can’t remember the name, but fried tortilla with spices which I’m paying for slightly today! We wandered through the busy streets, looking at crafty stuff – El Parian, the art market, is better than I thought yesterday, but still is a bit mass-produced and there’s an artists’ bit with lots of tiny studios in a kind of mews street.

John Lennon: there’s a Plaza de John Lennon which was brought about by Ramón and fellow students sometime in the eighties. It’s under what were their university classrooms – the students used to meet there and swap records and stuff and because the traffic was noisy enough for them not to be able to hear lectures they ‘reclaimed the street’. Some twenty years later it was officially pedestrianised and named (the then University dean had become the Mayor of Puebla) as the students had named it. I’m going to send one of my John Lennon prints to Ramón as a present. Apparantly, and oddly, John Lennon is much loved in Puebla, so perhaps finally I’ve found a market for my prints!

Lots of people walking around in Puebla at night, live music in bars (and cover charges to drink in them, hence sitting on a park bench!), and a band of clowns performing in the street. All quite fantastic.