Single Abroad: Confessions of a Boyish Man

SINGLE ABROAD:

CONFESSIONS OF A BOYISH MAN

Brian Ward

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Published by:

CoolCats Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright (c) 2011 by Brian Ward

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Modest Beginnings, Mexico

Chapter 2

Freedom, Queretaro, Mexico

Chapter 3

Fifty Kilos on Bananas on a Bus to Cancun, Cancun

Chapter 4

Louie Armstrong is Out to Kill Me, Valencia, Spain

Chapter 5

Rome After 9/11, Italy

Chapter 6

The Flying Pig Hostel, Holland

Chapter 7

Bonjour, avec Linda, s’il vous plait, France

Chapter 8

The Great Railway Debacle, Ireland

Chapter 9

The Jamaican Heist Canary Islands, Spain

Chapter 10

Voodoo Crocodile Farm, Club Med Ixtapa, Mexico

Chapter 11

Mexico Spring Break, Mexico

Chapter 12

Stranded in a Flooded Taxi, Queretaro, Mexico

Chapter 13

Large Steaks and Two-Inch Thick Goat Cheese, Peru

Chapter 14

Mexican Dentists, Mexico

Chapter 15

Mexican Haunted Houses, Mexico

Chapter 16

Surfing in Mexico, Mexico

Chapter 17

Dead Pigeons Falling Out of the Sky, Mexico City

Chapter 18

Gil and the Russian Mafia, Marbella, Spain

Chapter 19

Too Much Sangria = Food Fight, Marbella

Chapter 20

3,000-Pound Jesus, Marbella

Chapter 21

Beer Tour in San Miguel, Malaga, Spain

Chapter 22

Indian Restaurant by Day,

Club Camaleón by Night, Madeira Islands, Portugal

Chapter 23

No Size Medium Underwear? Dominican Republic

Chapter 24

Patience, Mexico

Chapter 25

Scaling the Andean Highlands for Love, Ecuador

Chapter 26

The Midget Shakira, Colombia

Chapter 27

Who Invented Brazil? Rio de Janeiro

Intro

If you can’t already tell, I was a loser in high school. The only reason I got through it was because most of my fellow students thought I was completely out of my mind. The only problem with my plan was that most girls were reluctant to give their phone numbers to a guy who wrote the days of the week in Spanish on the insides of his jacket. If the army wouldn’t take me, there had to be another way to travel the world, here is the route I took.

Chapter 1

Modest Beginnings

Faridy, my Mexican love interest, was into doing what made her feel the most joy in any given moment.

Do you want to go out to eat? I’d ask.

No, but I’ll go with you if you want, Faridy replied.

Once the tamales arrived, we decided to go to the the plaza to eat them. Once we got to the plaza Faridy decided the tamales smelled good and would eat mine. I didn’t mind, I loved watching her hands gently unfold the crumbly cake as she smelled the week-old boiled corn husks. She didn’t want any of her movements to seem the least bit arousing or forward. Her uninhibited greasy-handed eating put me even more over the top in love with her. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. As cars drove past us in the plaza men would honk their horns and yell, Bon appetite, good-looking!

During my visits to see Faridy, I’d ride Mexican buses (the thing I hate most in life) halfway across the country to be with her for one night. These visits were certain to arouse drama. In some instances she’d push my hand away from hers in the movie theater for fear of who could be watching. Other times, like my last visit to her summer camp, she was the polar opposite.

I unpacked my clothes next to the bed where I planned on sleeping (the floor below her). As I unpacked, she walked down to the base of the stairs and gazed at me cross-eyed for ten seconds. I struggled to read her mind. Sensing my bewilderment, she volunteered her source of unease verbally, Is that where you are planning to sleep? Before I could respond, she stormed back up the stairs. I quickly threw my stuff back into my backpack and followed her up the stairs. I didn’t have a pillow or blanket, so how did she expect me to sleep on a bare mattress next to her?

I didn’t push the matter because it was barely afternoon and we’d have plenty of other things to fight about before bedtime. The day passed like old men in bathrooms. My mind flickered in and out of the activities we did with Mexican youth. I was in charge of 15 Mexican middle-schoolers. Our team competed in everything from obstacle courses to sandwich-making. Nightfall finally came. I was very apprehensive about sleeping with Faridy. During the barbeque, I didn’t even bother heating my hot dog over the fire, I ate it raw. I threw my trash away and ducked into the shadows on my way to the second floor of the cabin where I knew Faridy would be sleeping. Before going inside the cabin, I took a look at the second floor windows, no evidence of anyone lurking upstairs. I let myself in and crept up the stairs. I had no idea of who would be in the room with Faridy, or even if she’d be in there. When I opened the door, I saw three mattresses. Faridy had made me a bed on the far right of the three. I quickly parted the two beds and put my mattress in between the other two, guaranteeing a ringside seat with Faridy, no matter which mattress she slept on.

My blanket was little more than a flannel sheet and the cabin had no insulation to keep out the cold. I stripped down to my underwear and hid under the sheet, waiting for Faridy. What happened next may have been 20 seconds but felt like two hours. The cabin light came on and I peered out from under my sheet to see who was coming inside the room. It was Faridy and her male camp counselor companion, Mogly. I pretended to be asleep as Faridy verbally objected once again to the sleeping arrangements. She shuffled the beds yet again and I hid powerlessly under the flannel sheet like an abducted foreigner in a game of Russian roulette. The lights went out again. This time I was once again on the outside. I looked over at the swelling under the blanket in the bed next to mine. Something was thrashing under the covers. I feared the worst. I rolled over and faced away from my sexless bed mate. Just then a voice in Spanish echoed out from underneath the covers, Are you going sleep with your back towards me? I had no idea what to do next, I was a 26-year old shivering under a paper thin blanket with a beautiful Mexican girl inches away from me.

I finally got the nerve to turn in her direction. By that time she had rolled to the other side of her mattress. I had to do something, I put my hand underneath her covers. I felt my hand run into her back. I started to pull up her sweatshirt. After getting through that layer, my hand still didn’t feel her bare skin, there was yet another sweatshirt to penetrate. After peeling off two more could I still feel another sweatshirt. I asked her in a low voice as to not arouse Mogly, Faridy, can you take off a sweatshirt and loan it to me, I’m cold.

Get your own sweatshirt, She replied. I immediately hit the brakes and abandoned my pursuit.

I lacked the fundamentals when it came to relationships with women. Applying my skills from high school didn't improve the situation.

The two most beautiful girls in my high school were Michelle Salinas and Sara Pemberton. Michelle Salinas was considered one of the coolest girls in the school because she went to Raves in the Bay Area on weekends. Most of her male friends had facial hair and various parole violations. I knew there would be no chance for me to be popular her clique of friends. I had one group project with her for English class. It was a five person group and we met at Ethan Robert’s house and tried to put together a documentary about an eastern European family coming to America. Michelle would usually show up late if she came at all and we spent the entire time together watching Ethan Roberts practice guitar with his band in the garage. Although Ethan was barely over 80 lbs, he was in a band and therefore squeezed me out in terms of winning Michelle’s attention.

Sara Pemberton on the other hand was a little more accessible for me because I sat next to her in biology class. We sat behind huge lab tables designed for science experiments. The nice part about these tables was that they covered the teacher’s view of each student from the chest down. I spent the entire period vandalizing Sara’s biology book under the table. Her revenge was writing a bunch of perverse sayings on my hands. One day she wrote her phone number on my hand. After that period I wrapped my hand in heavy plastic and vowed not to sweat or wash my hands before I got back home, so as I could carve her number into my bedroom wall.

By the time I got home, the only digits visible were 633, the prefix of everyone in my high school. I never got the nerve to ask her for her number again.

I graduated high school with no clue on how to get to first base.

Chapter 2

Freedom

College was a great time in my life. By 2 p.m. each day I would be finished with my classes and homework. By 3 p.m., I would be asleep or playing Super Nintendo with my room mates. While I was studying at Chico State, I enrolled in the study abroad program and got accepted to study in Queretaro, Mexico.

Before leaving, several of my friends offered to store my Super Nintendo at their house in case I didn’t come back. I was really scared that living in Mexico might be detrimental to my future. I decided that I had no evidence to support Mexico being a dangerous place. I would therefore have to go there in person in order to prove or disprove my North American society’s view towards Mexico as being a dangerous place. Too often society uses fear to take away our freedom and keep us on track. I decided not to let unnatural fear dissuade me from achieving my dreams.

The morning of my departure for Mexico finally arrived. My step dad Alan came to pick me up early Friday morning. As I wheeled my luggage to his car, there was already a problem that we hadn’t anticipated. How was I going to fit two huge suitcases and a carry-on into the tiny trunk of his Mazda Miata? My step dad did some quick thinking, he bungee-corded one suitcase onto the trunk, opened the convertible top and seat belted the other bag into the backseat. We drove to the airport. During the ride, we gritted our teeth against the 80 mile-an-hour winds that blew into the convertible. Meanwhile, our feet baked under the car’s heating vents. While checking in for my flight at the San Francisco airport, the ticket agent gave me some bad news.

I’m sorry Mr. Ward but your connecting flight through Los Angeles has been delayed until 5 p.m. due to bad weather.

Impossible. If I take the 5 p.m. flight from Los Angeles, I won’t get to Mexico City until 2:30 a.m. At that time, it will be too late to get a bus to Queretaro, I replied. After saying that, a Mexican guy behind me offered to help me get onto the bus to Queretaro with him. I accepted. Before I even boarded my first flight, I had already met a local person from my host city.

His name was Rafael and he was connecting in from Hawaii. He had visited a girl he’d met at the same university where I would be studying.

After we both checked in, Rafael and I went for a meal together. I had so many questions to ask him about Queretaro.

What kind of food do they eat in Kae-taro? I asked.

Rafael laughed when he heard my pronunciation of Queretaro. He told me that most North Americans pronounced it that way.

He took a pen and wrote down the pronunciation, kah-RAY-tah-row. It was easy.

We didn’t get to Queretaro until 5 a.m. the next day. I fretted about calling my host family at such a strange hour. I imagined myself being awakened in the middle of the night by some Huckleberry Finn character saying he was to be my new housemate. I made the call at the bus station and explained to three members of my host family who I was and yes I was sure I had the right number. They told me to wait at the bus station and someone would be there to pick me up. Rafael gave me his number and told me to call him in case nobody came to pick me up. The truth be told, I think he would have let me move in with him if I wanted to. As I waited outside for my host family to pick me up, I got my first glimpse of Queretaro. It definitely didn’t fit the description of the Mexican town I pictured. At night it looked like any town in California, with gentle hills that were so perfectly illuminated by street lights, the town reminded my of Chevy Chase’s roof in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I don’t think Santa Claus himself could have done a better job.

The campus at Queretaro, a city of 800,000 people, is about 125 miles Northwest of Mexico City. My school, El Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (El Tec), was founded in 1975 and during my stay was enrolling 3,000 students. El Tec currently operates 26 campuses throughout Mexico in 25 different cities.

Queretaro also has many well-maintained historical buildings from the Spanish colonial period and limitless options for night life. Many multi-national corporations like Kellogg’s and New Holland are opening up headquarters here, providing a number of high-paying jobs.

International Programs at Chico State recommended that I get to Mexico two months before classes in order to adjust to the food, culture and layout of the town. I arrived less than 24 hours before classes were to begin.

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On my first day of school, I was given a cookie-cutter schedule of classes which included Mexican culture and basic Spanish. On the 3rd day of sitting in Spanish classes with a bunch of Americans I realized that I wouldn’t learn anything surrounded by Americans all day. And I probably wouldn’t receive credit for the work I was doing, since none of the classes had anything to do with my business major. I decided to go to the International Programs office and change my classes to ones that would give me credit in my major and expose me to more Mexican students. This turned out to be a very memorable day in the history of higher learning in Mexico. I grabbed my new schedule of classes and set out to look for my first class of the day, which had started a half hour earlier.

As soon as I walked through the door of my first class, all heads swung in my direction. After I introduced myself, my teacher greeted me by saying, How you feeling, man? Whispers resonated throughout the rows of students,…..que, que dijo? (what did he say?). My teacher explained to the class that he got his teaching degree at USC and loved California.

The classes were a lot of work for me. This was mostly because I couldn’t speak or understand Spanish completely. During class lectures, even if I could understand the teacher speaking in Spanish. I tried my best to translate the lectures from Spanish into English and then write the lecture into my notes. I could never make any sense out of my notes when I read them after class.

Even getting to school sometimes was a bigger chore than the classes. I was taking a bus to and from school four times a day. At midday I returned home to eat lunch with my host family. After I finished lunch at my host family’s house, I took the bus back to school. This back and forth four times a day left me exhausted. Sometimes I was so tired that I would walk into the wrong class.

When I made it to the right class, I did well on the homework but bombed the tests. After a particularly bad grade on an accounting test, I walked into my teacher’s office crying and asked what could be done. He introduced me to the teacher’s aid and she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. I was still crying a little but tried desperately to wipe the tears from my eyes. I couldn’t get my hand in front of my face because my thumb was caught on my backpack strap, so I gave it extra force and ended up punching myself in the face.

Her name was Bianca and she was of medium height and light-skinned. I could tell she was older than me because she dressed in high-heels and business suits with her hair tied back. She told me I was welcome in her office whenever I needed help with my accounting class. She also suggested that I should bring my accounting book to class (What a novel concept?), because the formulas I was writing down in my notes were mostly wrong. If I copied them directly out of the book, I would have less chance of getting them wrong. Even if I was going to flunk out of accounting at least I could use that as an excuse to come see Bianca every day.

I started to become self-conscious about my clothes after meeting Bianca. I was the only guy in my classes who wore clothes from the Goodwill. I started to want to dress more normally when I was around Bianca. I still wore a lot of goodwill clothes but instead of wearing ripped clothing, I wore new T-Shirts and tucked them into my pants. My test grades continued to suffer, but I kept up with the homework.

After I bombed yet another test, this time in Service Marketing, I went into my teacher Miguel Angel’s office and told him I couldn’t understand why I was doing so badly on the tests when the homework was easy enough. He opened his grade book to find out what grade I had. It turned out that I had an 83%, I couldn’t believe him. After looking at my grade I showed him the test I just took, a 33%. He told me not to worry about the tests because they only counted for 20% of my final grade. The most important part of the class was the group project we had to turn in the last day of class. I walked out of there with a huge sense of calm. An unmanageable situation minutes before had turned into a winnable war.

I decided to move out of my host family’s house the third month of school. The reason was they were charging me $350USD a month rent, which in Mexico is enough money to rent a block of apartments. I was also tired of the two hour commute to school. I started asking classmates about sharing an apartment with them. Two friends said that there was a place to rent across the street from them. This was perfect because they could also give me a ride to school in the morning. It turned out to be a room in the house of a four generation extended family with the grandchildren in their thirties. I stayed in one of the daughters’ rooms who had moved out. Even though she was over thirty, the room was still full of dusty prehistoric infants’ toys. I felt as if I were living in Mother Theresa’s toddler room. On my third day of living there, I was told to move out because a relative of theirs was moving back home. I packed all my stuff up and moved again. I had seen a for rent sign next door, so I walked next door to see if I could rent from them.

The next room I moved into was a cleaner, more private cottage, located a few feet behind the owner’s house. In the cottage I had my own bathroom, microwave and my own key to my room. This was the place I wanted to live. The first day that I was living there, the landlord brought me a contact to sign in Spanish. As I looked it over, I couldn’t read more than three words in each paragraph. The entire contract was eight pages long!

Being as though I was just across the street from my former residence, I was still able to get a ride from my classmates in the morning. From that point on, I decided to stay at school all day. I started spending a lot of time in the library and the cafeteria because I was literally at school all day. It was better for me because I could meet with friends from classes and go over the homework, eat meals on campus and feel more like a part of the university and not like a stranger as I had felt before. While I was living in Mexico, any time I spent alone made me revert back to thinking in English and I’d forget the Spanish I had learned. If I was to learn to write with my left hand, I’d have to tie the right behind my back.

Since I was at school ten hours a day, I decided to try taking some sports classes. I started practicing with the school softball team in the afternoon. My school, had one of the best athletic programs in the country; we had a swim team, a football team, a soccer team, a softball team, a basketball team and a women’s volleyball team. Our basketball team was good enough to play against Texas Tech.

Queretaro wasn’t at all what I expected Mexico to be. The city was way too clean and was probably the safest place I have ever lived. The only way I knew that I was still in Mexico was by visiting the intersection behind campus. In the middle if the intersection there was a tree sprouting in the middle of traffic. This tree was the drivers’ only warning of the missing manhole in the street.

My life in Mexico started to become routine, I knew all the cheapest restaurants to eat at and had friends to help me get through the classes. Just as I got used to spending seven days a week at school, a three-day weekend loomed on the horizon. If the school was to close, I’d have to roam the streets for three days. I had no idea of how I’d fill so much time. Before the weekend arrived, I got invited by one of my friends to go to his house in Huamantla, which is about five hours from Queretaro but might as well have been in another country. This was the first time I was to leave Queretaro state after being there for over four months. In the Mexican style, I rode down to Huamantla with four other friends in a Volkswagen bug. Storage space was limited to what I could fit on my lap. I brought my backpack which had an extra pair of underwear, a camera and a coat. When we got to Huamantla, it turned out to be a tiny Mexican village located at the base of a snow-capped volcano. The closest city was Puebla, which was an hour away. My first meal in Huamantla was Sopa de Camarones (seafood soup) which I ate with my friend Daniel Flores’ family. After I had eaten half the bowl, my shirt got tighter, my throat wound in knots and my eyebrows caught on fire. I switched from eating the soup to drinking the broth to try and put out the fire on top of my tongue. As a sipped the broth, Daniel’s mom looked at me and told me to stop eating because she could tell that there was something seriously wrong with my face.

She gave me to eat some tamales to relieve the burning, but by that time, I couldn’t taste anything because the taste buds had been burnt out of my mouth. The one positive aspect of this experience was that I was no longer hindered by my taste buds when testing new food for the rest of the weekend.

After the meal, all of Daniel’s friends came over and they invited