Fotos Cuartro? - The lady at the National Car hire is getting her hair straightened.

Fotos tres - Taken from School and on Beach on overcast day

fotos dos - The last three were taken from my school

Mon through Friday

I am trying to work out what has happened since Monday, where the last post left off. I guess I am pretty much in a routine, but I am still really disorientated so I am tired most the time. Amanda has been driving me to escuela in the morn (nExt week I am going to take the bus), I go classes which I am still lost in coz the other students are light-years ahead of me, then get picked up at some time from 2-5pm. Until that time I loiter around town or here, at the School, on the computer which is where I have been writing most of these.

Amanda's joyful parents returned from Italy on Tuesday night - they are obsessed with it.
They are both really lovely people and her madre is a HOOT (since she is Americano I feel that is the perfecto word). I went with them to COSTCO this AMerican chain of a superstore where everything is bulk. IT is ca ray zay. I was taking photos coz everything was jumbo, but I got nicely told off buy the manager.
People were also trying to promote products to me in Spanish, so I just nodded the whole time and then said Gracias. People think I am MEXICANO! I love it.

There is another Huge supermercado which is called MEGA. It has a fabulous bakery where you get a tray and load stuff on then a lady bags it. It was all very fun and I took a foto of my baked goods... which will tryand add soon.

Lunch bell! ADios

The OC

Amanda{s house is straight out of the OC.
Each hour I find something new and crazy about it. It has my dream indoor-outdoor flow and is beautifully tiled. The kitchen is so indoor-outdoor there isn{t even a door, just a big round arch.
Now would be a good time to explain that they have very high walls with alarm fences, a huge BelAir gate and two police dogs.

I will take pictures of the outside with their permission because it is straight out of home and garden. SPeaking of which, if you are middle-class or above here you are expected to have a housekeeper. It isn{t a snob thing, it{s a supply a livelihood thing. There are also personal gardeners and pool cleaners. Nuts!

The downstairs level of their house is just Amanda{s room, her living room with a pool table, lounge set and large tv.... and then the guest room where I am temporarily staying. It has two queen sized beds and a spacious bathroom. TV too - the Telenova{s here are hil ar i ous and make Shortland St look like quality acting-writing-producing all round good show. The one I watched the other night has Enrique Inglesis singing the opening song.. big money in these shows.

Anyways, We went to a resturant around the corner from her house that Amanda thought was tacky but I thought it was brill. Exactly how I expected a restaurant in Mexicana to be - Piñata decor, forrest green walls. Apparently though it is abnormal - set up that way for tourists.
You can see into the so-called kitchen which was just lady preparing food on the trolley. It was only us and a familia there and the food took over 30 mins so I doubt they could handle it busy .. there were about 70 seats in it.
OH Holy, the best part is.... I can{t believe I was talking about the decor.. It is run by DRUGLORDS so there was a shoot out there a few years back!
No wuz, that is all over now, apparently it was a fight over territory. I know.. brilliant stuff. There were grenades thrown and everything. Malie assured me that only people involved get killed.
LOL.

Continued...

I told Amanda 4pm on the first day of classes (I finish at ") so I ended up walking home. It isn{t far, but after I got out of the Tourist area all the streets looked quite similar. I couldn{t remember (and still don{t know) which street John lives on... it is one of the streets named after a Latin American country (the whole neighbourhood is... Brasilia, Panama, Colombia etc) It might be Bolivia acutally... or Brasil...
Anyways I did that joyous thing where I stumbled across it. I stopped to look around and realised I was outside the neighbours house! Muy bueno.
That evening we trouped out to Amanda{s casa with her bff Malie (pronounced like that awful Hannah MOntana, but is actually HAWAI{IAN wooo). Malie is actually Mexican and African American and her biological African American father grew up thinking he was white because the family was llight skinned and green eyed.. it wasn{t until he was a teen that he learnt about his race.
There is a book about this and movie on his families story and boy am I going to read that!

Amanda{s house is actually 45min to an hour away from PUerto Vallarta, and I actually learned a few days after this initial trip that it is actually in a different state... crazy I know! But so exciting. So in my first day I accidentally hit up 2 states.
Amanda{s house is in La Cruz... I will try and post a map.
Here it is below - PUerto Vallarta is in JALISCO which is on the right toward the bottom (on the coast) I RED and La Cruz is in light blue in NAYARIT.

got to get back to class... lunch is over

Picturras Uno

American AIRLINES ... ARRIVAL....Escuela day 1

So I don't remember where I was going with the last stuff, but I recall that I wanted to talk about the air hostesses coz they were soooo southern ya'll!

They weren't young like Air NZ or JetStar or especially VIrgin Blue. These women were middle aged, most with permed or boofed hair, smacking gum. Their faces had bright eyeshadow which looked ri.dic.u.lous but unfortunately most were lacking that good ole southern hospitality.

Oohhh I wanted to have a unique US experience in the airport, so I was going to sign up for the Army to get the free food they have in the big-ass recruitment place (note that this is Texas so potentially the biggest recruiting state) but instead I went to Popeye's which looked marvelosa. Proactiv facial cleaning set is also conveniently available in a vending machine, beside the Newspaper machines that only take credit card payment. duuummmmmb.

And it was. All I got were the cajun fries but it was like that delicious wedges sprinkle on thin fries YUM. I got a huge box and I am glad i did, coz that ended up being the last meal I had for about 40 hours. It was 4.06 and I was all confused coz the girl said 4:39 but another tip - USA restaurants don't include tax. I just realised I accidentally participated in the 40 hour famine.. (anyone want to sponsor me?).

On the flight to Puerto Vallarta I had a window seat which was brill, the nice Af-Am I mentioned early was like "Saweety, I got to change dis seat. You don't wanna sit in the back o the plane now". A retired man was talking to me, he owns a villa or something in PV and was loving giving me the inside scoop. He was asking me about the school, he said "Is the one in the Romantic Zone?" (A region in PV) "Coz that one is the best". I was all "yyaaahhhhh", despite knowing that it wasn't. There are only like 3 Spanish schools in PV so I presume it is the one linked to the Univerisidad de Guadalajara (where I plan to go, to get me a Poncho with the city written across it, a la Ugly Betty), which only offers like a 2 week course.

Anywho, There wasn't actually much to look at out the window, just farmland as Texas became Mexico. The odd thing was the sun just literally fell out of the sky. I didn't see it set! I was so odd. Puerto Vallarta was dreary and raining as we flew in but still neat to see. Excitement didn't set in as I kind of expected it to... just scared and confused really.

The bags took a while to come out in Puerto Vallarta, and I slipped on the floor and faceplanted in a ladies bag ... but mine was actually one of the first out (unlike in LA where it was one of the last, especially annoying since I was about the Third through the customs.. But I learnt why when connecting to Dallas - Note for future US travellers: Do not lock your bag if you are in a hurry or impatient - They. scan. the. bags. twice. I was fareaking out coz my dad (Gaz) was all concerned about my 1 1/2 hours I had to pass through the airport (apparently it usually takes two. Even with the late bag it only took me about 40 mins total. Then I moved over to the building nextdoor with ease, handed in my bag and then hit the African Americans). Anywho, the customs didn't even scan my bag in Mexico (!) but an angry lady was unimpressed when I didn't hit a button which lit up when I handed in my Declaration form. The button served no purpose. Trust me.. I studied it. There was a hilariously tacky "waterfall" with "Welcome to Puerto Vallarta" on it (Fake of course, with fake Trees) and then I entered the first room lined with desks. I guess they were tour desks but the whole was decorated like a fake-ass jungle.

The next room had the same desks only was decorated (supposedly) as bright mexican Casas (houses). It was really weird and pointless.

Coming out of the gate I was met with 35 guys in Lemon shirts trying to get me into their taxi. I was waiting for my friend (amiga) Amanda, who was to arrive an hour later. A taxi driver who talked to me said there were only 6 people on her flight from Phoneix (there are like, 5 flights in a day?) which made me really confused as to why all the taxi drivers were still loitering around.

Amanda arrived with her friend John and it started to BUCKET down with rain. Amanda's sister in-law and John's partner arrived to come get us in huge trucks, which was lucky because those two both had over 100kg of stuff each! (I was sitting nice on 19.4, carry on 8kg and laptop). I try and tell my mum that I am not actually bad.

Getting the stuff into the car was a comedy of errors because Amanda's suitcases kept splitting open (side note: not only was it bucketing down, but there are no drains here so we were shin-deep in aqua aka water) and she also kept slamming the boot on everyone's head.

We drove through the flood to Centro de Puerto Vallarta, the region which John lives in and my school and the town's Starbucks all reside. His house is beaut - I am going to take photos and add them sometime because I want all to see. My dream house basically.. he used yellow tiles in the kitchen - two of my favourite things, after Musical theatre and African-Americans, are tiles and the colour Yellow.

Dragging myself to school (escuela) the next day was a challenge, but thankfully Amanda's bro drove me. Town hadn't opened so it looked dead. It changes very soon (this was at about 8:15 am...2:15am NZ time), as the town is lively and the highway actually goes right down the main street (but they only go 50k and the streets are cobblestoned, making them even slower). My escuela is on the main street - Juarez.

I was unhappy to learn that the class I am in have already done a weeks worth of classes, so are confidently talking with the teacher, I was there expecting some "Que tal?" (how are you?) games. I am worried as people are like "you'll pick it up" I can't easily 'pick up' hundreds of words and the verbs and everything that I am not going to learn. I'm giving it some time obviously, don't want to jump into a different class too soon because I really love my teacher, Claudia.

Dallas etc,.

OKay, I forgot this from last time but I saw a semi-famous person in the LA airport.. he was an actor, not a big one but a minor one... I do not know what he is off... not too famous... I will work it out.

Also there was a body of a fallen sailor (aka killed in war) on the plane from LA to Dallas which I found very sad. There was a man and woman in full uniform (and 1st class) that were accompanying the body home. I didn{t look as it left the plane (we were grounded for about 20 mins so they can unload it and take it to the next flight)... These 30-odd women behind me were saying really disrespectful stuff -I found the whole thing really sad.

Dallas is the best airport I{ve ever seen. Although Bangkok is pretty amazing, and Napier also...
Dallas was like a city or something... there are like 5 huge terminals and you get on an amazing train mono-rail thing to get from one to the other... ah. maz. ing.
The Qantas guy in Auckland gave me tickets as far as Dallas, but didn{t give me my last ticket...
The flight to Dallas was a Qantas flight apparently, but operated by American Airlines (who DOMINATE over there I{ve learnt)... but I guess wasn{t responsible for the Mexico one... anyways I went to the desk all lost going [I don{t know where I am meant to be and got a fabulous 65ish African American Texan woman who was [I{ll help you darrrlin[
calling me saweety so that was fun. Turns out the whole Qantas/American Airlines thing was flawed because they both had me registered, so I had two separate tickets on the plane.
She printed out my return ticket in a fun envelope and gave me elabourate instructions for boarding the train to the right Station... then the lady who UV{d my tickets was all askin if I knew how to get there, as was the man who scanned me bags.

part 3 to come... getting picked up again

Dia cero - Aeropuerte

Hola from Puerto Vallarta (Español lesson - ll is y in espanol, a la TORTILLA),

I am going to talk about my day of travel.
I left Nelson at 7:40 am to hit up the big smoke. I watched {Hey Dolly in the lounge before boarding to LA at 1:05. It was very long... 12 hours... they served us food on LA time which Ithought was dumb because everyone on the plane was on NZ time... so dinner was at like 2.30pm and then breakfast was at like midnight... whhhhaaaatTtttt

I didn't sleep much - I knew this would happen. I can¿t sleep on planes cause I'm busy being anxious. Now for the movie run down: I watched [New York, I love you, which was the 2nd attempt at Paris, JE Taime .. only this one is set in NYC obviously. I liked it a lot.
I think there were more memorable scenes in Paris but then again I like every scene in this one, unlike Paris.
Paris jetaime is short scenes all based on love in Paris (and NY in NY) by different directors. It{s cool to see what they create.... wow this is boring! But the scene with the Elderly couple is soooooo grrreeaattt.

Then I watched... I think it is called [Mother and Daughter ?? It is about adoption and I really liked this too... although some parts weren{t good I thought... but it is one of those bittersweet ones. Annette Benning is muy bien!

Next I tried to sleep... after not much success (including 1 s}toldler and 1 baby who screamed allll night¿flight.-. one being Liam, a gorgeous blonde 14 month old who I entertained for hours,but he kept screaming louder and louder ..happy screams though... draining).

After not much success I watched Bran Nu Dae which I{ve been wanting to see for agggesss- it{s an Aussie musicale that came out last year. It was muy bien. Short I thought.. but good. The best song is There is nothing I would rather be than to be an aboriginee. Amazing.

For dinner it was braised chicken, which of course I didn{t touch, and mashed potatos. I was sooo hungry and damn were those potatos ammmazing. Unfortunately I can{t say the same for the Scrambled eggs the next morn coz they were S T A N K.

LA airports were sooo thrilling becuase there were African Americans everywhere. In case you didn{t know, I am racist towards dem white folk. Only about 2 staff of about 150 I saw weren{t AfAm.. but you guessed it ¿ they were latina of course! All the women in LA airport (guests, not staff) were disgustingly smacking (is that the right word?) Gum. I don{t think they couldve openied their mouths wider.....

Part two to come...