i have an assload of retro-blogging to do, but right now, i'm packing to leave here for good. it sucks. for the life of me, i have no idea how i'm going to get all this stuff back home. i know i should just dump a ton of it, but i can't.

anyway, as much as i complain that this place is boring and tiny, etc, etc, i know i'm going to miss it after i get on that plane tomorrow morning.

i'm lying here on my bed listening to music (i'm going to try to jam the speakers into my backpack and bring it as a carry-on) like i've done for a huge chunk of my time here, and i've realized that i have so many memories from these past two years. soo many. good and bad. hilarious and sombre. awkward and weird and surreal and exciting and peaceful. and these are just from my bedroom! (kidding. sort of.)

i'm not sure if i'll return--to vallarta in particular--i definitely want to go back to mexico city at some point--but i definitely don't regret coming.

feliz cumpleanos to me and billy shakes!!!
(sliiightly buzzed right noww)

details forthcoming in the extremely near future...

i´m currently in morelia, michoacan, the last stop on our two-week spring break haphazard tour of mexico´s central western areas, and boy do i have a lot of weird stories to tell. i haven´t taken many pictures (although i do have some funky vids from the d.f.), but i´ll upload what i have when i return to the pv on saturday or sunday.

further elaboration to come!

allllriiiight. let's backtrack! rewind the time machine to dec. 31, 2006 and we'll move on from there:

- we spend new year's eve w/ some of dave's friends (sans dave, funnily enough) and party in polanco, a ritzy-ass neighbourhood in the df. it's a pretty good time and the ppl are nice. for the countdown, tj makes me do all these spanish-style superstitions/traditions w/ her, like wear yellow (money) and red (love) panties, and we eat 12 grapes, making a wish for each one after midnight strikes. it's silly, but fun.

- i spend the next couple of days hanging out in the condesa (it's kind of like the soho/greenwich village of the df), just wandering around and soaking in city life (i love how tj and i went on holiday in the city and returned to our resort town after our vacation)

- the first day we return to vallarta, we call up dave and head down to the malecon, cruising in his tie-mobile and blasting sirius satellite's left of center. we get completely trashed by around 7:30 p.m., thanks to 2-for-1 litre drinks. (can you imagine?! two flipping litres of cosmo!!) it's actually kind of nice to be back and hanging out w/ familiar peeps again. we go to ztai, this new-ish resto-lounge on the malecon (completely inebriated, remember), and manage to con the managers into letting me play some songs from my ipod. dave and i dance around like maniacs. it's a memorable homecoming.

- fast forward to february. after the mx beat music fest in guadalajara weekend, i help out w/ a teen seminar tj created for the kids at school. it lasts three days and takes place at villas vallarta, a hotel down the street from where we live. dave and i work the sound and "dj" during breaks. we play our fave indie stuff and some of the students really get into it (i've been making mix cd's for 'em since). it's a heavy seminar, and it may or may not have affected me physically.
lots of crazy junk happens:
my ipod, as well as tj's, go missing on the first day (along w/ tj's digital camera and an attendee's cell phone). i feel sick and queasy on the second day and end up throwing up when i get home that night. (i HATE puking!!! prior to this, i can only recall tossing my cookies once in the past 10 or so years!)
all this (and more--it was a week packed w/ sombre news) takes its toll on me, and i end up heading home after first period at school that monday.
things look up however, when tj tells me that the hotel management managed to recover all our stolen electronics (i seriously think i went through ipod withdrawl); they found everything in a men's washroom or something. weird. i really don't care what happened though, as long as my ipod and i are reunited!

- onto two weekends ago--
i make an insane weekend trip to the df to catch the capital's version of mx beat. it is awesomeness, and i feel totally conflicted for inadvertently supporting an evil tobacco corporation in the process. eh. i give the better answer this time when going through the registration/marketing info ordeal and tell the girl "yes" (well, "sí") when she asks if i smoke. i randomly point to the brands that i "smoke," and she proceeds to give me two wristbands you otherwise wouldn't receive if you reply "no" to the "do you smoke?" question (i made the mistake of being honest last time and totally got gypped). i guess i can console myself by claiming that i'm messing up marlboro's stats by lying to them. it's a covert-op from the inside! the wristbands are used to redeem two free packs of cancer sticks and a hip-looking free t-shirt that has all the bands playing the fests listed on the inside (there is also no overt marlboro marketing to be found anywhere on the outside of the shirt, which i like).
this fest has thought of everything; it's raining a bit, so complimentary ponchos are distributed.
we arrive when australia's architecture in helsinki are playing, and we love their zany-ish, multi-member & multi-instrumental act. hopefully i'll get to see more of them when i head down under this fall. tapes'n'tapes are raucous and messy yet good, and they play "insistor," which makes me happy. by this time i have positioned myself in the dedicated fan-girl front-and-centre position of the stage to catch spoon, who play next. they do not disappoint in the least. they are the reason why i made the crazy trek there in the first place, and they are tight as hell and basically perform like the quintessential indie rock band that they are. i sing along like a giddy teenager and secretly have a desire to spawn britt daniel's babies. (okay, so maybe i'm exaggerating a little. but just a little.)
alright, i'm gonna try to make this shorter than it's been so far, so i'll pass over some minor details and skip babasonicos' set (i saw them at the gdl fest; they're totally slick and professional and strike all the right rockstar poses; i also unintentionally got their setlist--thought it was spoon's) and jump ahead to a pleasant surprise--peter bjorn and john!!
i'd read rumours about them joining the lineup, but i didn't want to get my hopes up until i actually saw them listed on the set times board. they flew to the df directly from japan and didn't have any of their own gear w/ them, which explained the tacky-looking bass guitar they were using. to be honest, they started off kind of rocky and off-key, but they picked it up afterwards and won everyone over in the end. they basically played their whole album (w/ an acoustic version of "amsterdam"), and the crowd went apeshit when they played "young folks."
after their set i beelined it to the tent to catch some diplo. i'd already missed detroit's adult., norway's datarock and brazil's bonde do role. it was pretty darned full in there, and ppl were getting down like mad. by now, it was open bar. i loved the vibe and the euphoria in the air, so i headed towards the front and danced the night away.
mx beat, i love you.

- we're almost caught up! last thursday, tj took all of us teen seminar helpers out to dinner at cafe candela, this cool, slightly hard-to-find new hangout we recently discovered, and we filled up on woodfire-oven pizzas and got completely plastered on 2-for-1 mojitos (twofers are a real double-edged sword in this town). we proceeded to stop in at de santos where it turned out they were having another one of those "sound art" events w/ the blindfolds (and my dj friend played another live set, along w/ some german techno dudes i didn't manage to stick around long enough to hear). we then proceeded to the zoo, where i did manage to run into a former student as well as a current student in the span of 10 minutes. i didn't make it into school the next day, for which i am kind of ashamed.
st. paddy's day took place this past (long) weekend, so irish-descent dave & co. (consisting of mika, claire, mike, andi and me) dyed our beer green and went on a fruitless but gut-bustingly hilarious search for the super elusive and "exclusive" (or cancelled?) vallartapalooza. after we gave up, i drunkenly gave my dj friend a call and an impromptu dance party was set up at his radio co-host's place (it was intended to be an indie rock dance shindig, but in the end, it morphed into a funk/techno danceathon. eh. shit happens). it was a decent diversion and dave & co. had a great time, as they'd previously never been to any of these kinds of parties.
we had a kickass sunday brunch at kit kat in old town the next morning (french toast--yum!), and overall, it was a pretty relaxing weekend.

okay! congrats and have a virtual pat on the back courtesy of me--you made it to the end of this post!

and now, a brief canadian music break from my mindblowingly exciting reports of life in vallarta:

i would like to introduce my new cyber crush -- rollie pemberton, aka cadence weapon. i'm a little late w/ this (cut me some slack, man--i've been living two countries away for the last while), but he had the greatest blog ever, and now he's given it up 'cause his own music career is starting to blow up. no matter. read the thing anyway if you haven't. his music taste is almost spot on and his writing style is breezy and easy. this dude is the perfect hipster/hip-hop hybrid.

forget all the updates on weekends past and crap.
this is all i need to express:
nevermind this town--THIS WHOLE STATE IS TOO SMALL.

lisa and i went to de santos to pee tonight and on the way there, we ran into two of my students. that's cool. i'm used to that now. we get to de santos, enter the washroom, and there's another student. that's fine, too. whatever. after relieving our bladders, we agree to check out the rooftop just to see if anything's going on. SUCH A BAD IDEA.
half the freakin' school is up there. it's a mob scene. they spot me and start screaming like i'm in the beatles or something. i'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything--it's the damned scary truth. i try to jet it out of there like a mofo, but one of them stops me and tells me it's chloe's birthday party (her dad owns de santos) and i should wish her a feliz cumpleanos. fine. i tell them to go get her since i ain't gonna attempt to cut through the crowd, and she comes and i wish her many happy returns. she tells me that if i go to the back right corner, all her friends from the gdl are there, and they're all in their 20's, so we can hang out in that little student-free area. uh. no thanks. i kinda don't wish to hook up w/ one of my student's friends, even if they are my age (and even if they are probably attractive as anything).

cut to about 20 minutes ago--my flatmate brings a dude home. tj and i are talking about running into tons of kids downtown, blahblah, she tells me this guy looks kind of young, i tell her he better not be one of my students, she tells me he's from gdl but introduces him to me just to make sure; i confirm that i do not know him, i bid them a goodnight and joke that as long as he doesn't know chloe, it's all okay. she asks him if he was at de santos tonight--he says yes--she asks if he knows chloe--he says yes. i scream and slam my door shut and shout to nobody in particular that i need to get the hell out of here and proceed to write this entry.

i'm just going to sleep. unconsciousness is bliss.

oh, yeah--feliz cumpleanos, benito juarez, even if you've kinda been dead awhile now.

i really should recount the occurrences of these past couple of months (for some reason i just wasn't in the writing mood--i'd start posts and never finish them), but for now, here are the
pics from my winter holiday in the centre of the country.
we ran into the ny couple we met in puebla again in the df. coincidentally, we were walking down the same street in the condesa--great minds think alike, no? maybe we'll meet up when i move to ny sometime in the next few years...

to get back into the swing of things, i'll just write about my last two weekends.

last week, i went to guadalajara w/ some radio dj boys to attend the mx beat music festival, which took place on the saturday. it was a pretty eventful weekend in general; on the friday, we drove out to the gdl from the university radio station at around 7 p.m. and arrived in the city a little before midnight. we met up w/ some friends who'd just come from seeing sonic youth live, and about an hour later, we found ourselves grooving out to a female dj spinning techno at la santa, the hip lounge/bar/house tj and i visited on our last trip (except this time it was still open, and it was packed w/ ppl).
however, promptly at 3 a.m., the staff proceeded to herd us out of there, and the night continued with an after-party at an abandoned building not too far away. i think i finally went to sleep at about 6 or 7 in the morning.

the fest the next day started at 3 p.m., but we didn't get there 'til around 6 in the evening. this whole mx beat deal was pretty insane: 12 hours of quality music, a pair of tickets cost 150 pesos (approx. $15 USD), beer was 15 pesos ($1.50), whiskey/tequila/rum drinks were something like 25 pesos, and for smokers, it was practically christmas--the whole thing was sponsored and run by marlboro, so they were literally giving away "limited edition soundfest series" packs of cigarettes.

getting into the fest was an incredibly eyeopening experience: there was seriously an endless row of computer registers, and before you could enter, you had to surrender your i.d. for the ppl behind the registers to scan, and then you had to give them all your contact info and answer a few survey questions. it was pretty brilliant; lure the masses w/ good music, cheap alcohol and free ciggies, and get a shitload of precious marketing info in exchange! everyone was ready and willing.

the venue was basically a huge open field, w/ one large main stage on one end, a big covered lounge area in the middle, and a huge, very deep rectangular tent for the hip-hop/electronic dj acts at the other end.

the musical lineup was pretty awesome: girl talk, spank rock, the pipettes and the whitest boy alive, as well as some mexican bands (that we missed since we arrived late) and a band from argentina called babasonicos (translation: sonic saliva...?!).

i'd have to say my fave acts were the whitest boy alive (they were the first act we caught, and i was in such a good space at the time, i could've just expired in bliss right then and there; they were tight) and girl talk. the pipettes were fun to watch and entertaining, but nothing really substantial, and spank rock kicked ass and got me to the front of the stage (the affiliated baltimore bass connection remixed peter bjorn and john's "young folks" and we all went wild), but girl talk actually got me on stage. yes--i, christina, actually danced--no, make that shook my wildly and uncharacteristically overly-enthusiastic booty--on stage with about five or six other girls to gregg gillis's ingenious mix of ass-shaking goodness which included, but was definitely not limited to, samples of no less than three different j. timberlake songs, some hot chip, and kanye's "goldigger" for good measure.

i've gotta say, i had not danced so happily to such a good selection of music (remixed version of the yeah yeah yeah's "cheated hearts"! "let's make love and listen to death from above" by CSS!) in waaaay too looong a time.
while i was doing the giddydance, some dude in a blazer came up to me and asked if i was from ny. i am loving this whole vibe i am apparently giving off; do i have a flashing sign on my forehead that says, "please ask me if i'm from ny"?!? i happily lied and said i was, and then proceeded to flippantly insult guadalajara, this guy's beloved city. i regret doing this now and feel badly about it (although i do still stand by my criticisms of the gdl). i'm sorry, gdl boy. you were nice and i was mean.

we went to an after-party at a "minimalist mansion" in some sort of gated community after the fest, and the female dj from friday's la santa turned up again, but the whole thing was pretty lowkey and we packed it in pretty early (well, i guess it was around 4 or 5 a.m., but still).

on sunday, we vegged out in front of the tv, watched tom tykwer's perfume: the story of a murderer at the cineplex (apparently, one of the guys i saw the film w/ was invited to be in the orgy scene while they were shooting in spain...i thought the movie was pretty mediocre--it was a cool story, but i don't understand why it was shot in english or why dustin hoffmann had to be in it), and watched the academy awards. (were they kind of early this year? was anybody else as bored as i was?)

monday was spent getting a chest x-ray for my australian working holiday visa (i took the day off school) and riding a bus for what felt like 6553350 hours to get back to vallarta.

this post is officially too close to getting too long (i doubt anything will ever rival that one i wrote about my finger in punta mita though). i'll continue w/ my account of this past weekend tomorrow.

p.s. i'm going to mx beat df this weekend. yes, i'm addicted.

--this space will soon be filled with accounts of the past two months as well as this past weekend (mxbeat in guadalajara!)--

i have not fallen off the face of the earth!

picture tease: