Como estas, tu casa mi casa. Pendejo.

Me and a bunch of pals went to Mexico for our friends' wedding. The groom was my partner in crime and during our binging prime we may well have kept a few bars in business. It was also the first Christian wedding I'd been to, and the first visit to Tequila land (Guadalajara to be precise).

As an Indian I needed a visa, which surprised everyone at the Mexican consulate since I can easily pass off as Jose Carlito. The lady at the desk asked me if it was my first visit and zooked me out by saying "they say the girls there have the prettiest eyes in Mexico". Life's never the same after a 40 year old woman in heavy makeup winks at you.

I get an average of 2 "como estas" per week in Colorado, you can imagine how it was in Mexico. A rush of Spanish directed at me and my Mexican friend, then disbelief when I said "no habla espn". But I do "get" the Mexicans, in that we're pretty similar in the way we think and act. Both Indians and Mexicans don't believe in the trivialities such as queues, retail price, traffic lanes or crosswalks. We both know how far a good tip goes, how important the sub-staff is, and that no TV show can work without 25 mins of drama.

The Church wedding was amazing, and very different from anything I'd seen. Firstly, Americans (the groom was American and the bride's family is greatly Americanized) somehow manage to project opulence in a ceremony where the only colors are black and white. Second, the people are awfully quiet and actually concentrate on the wedding vows. An Indian Hindu wedding has enough colors and noise to cause an epileptic seizure, and absolutely no one gives a crap to what happens on center stage. A wedding is an awesome networking opportunity, and the couple getting hitched is only incidental. With enough food to feed a small army.

I was taking all this in, when it was time for a blessing. Folks lined up to receive a share of the ol' flesh and blood. There was an even bigger hushed silence as people joined and left the queue. My German friend, who at that time was drawing our attention to the pretty girls in the church jumped up and joined the line. If this wasn't surprising enough, he returned and even said a silent prayer. I was watching agog as he said suddenly in his deep and accented voice "hmm, Christ tastes rather bland, doesn't he?"

Yeah.
Did I tell you we also tried to pick up cougars? No? Some other time then.