Party at the mad house

Life as a student in Mexico city has been, until now, considerably tamer than you might imagine. The share-cum-boarding house that we are staying in is relatively peaceful - except for a pair of noisy Spanish girls who constantly yell to each other across the echo-ey atrium and insist on smoking and chatting right outside our room.

Our limited Spanish made it hard for us to interact with the other housemates at first, and for the first few weeks we hardly saw anybody except for briefly in the kitchen and all we would manage was a quick Hola.

But as my Spanish has started to improve, I have managed a bit more small talk with the housemates, beyond hello and how are you and where are you from. We have an impressive array of nationalities here - besides the Spanish girls, there is a Spanish guy named Felix, a Colombian named Juan, a couple of French, a Japanese guy named Ken, a Costa Rican guy whose name I keep forgetting and a handful of other randoms who reside in the other part of the house we rarely visit.

Last night we were watching TV in the common area - not something we do that often - when we met a few more people - three Germans named Patrick, Larissa and Franci, who spoke excellent English which made it possible for Adam to communicate properly with them.

They had teamed up with the Colombians and the Spaniards, who were cooking Spanish omelettes and making Sangria, for an impromptu banquet on the terrace. The Germans made schnitzel and we supplied our own national delicacy - beer - to the gathering.

New friends...Adam with Patrick and David

After the meal a bottle of tequila was busted out, quickly shattering any semblance of a civilised atmosphere. We put some party music on our laptop and it wasn't long before all hell broke loose. At first it was us and the Germans up one end of the table speaking English, and the Spanish speakers down the other end of the table, but after a while the two groups blended, resulting in the development of a curious Spanglish blend, as the Spaniards dusted off their English and we switched to Spanish.

When the tequila bottle was drained it was quickly replaced by another, and another, and another (don't forget there was quite a few of us). This is the beauty of Mexico - there is always a corner store handy, ready to sell you tequila at just about any hour of the day.

I was handed some change for my (small) contribution to the tequila bottle, and I sung out "diez pesos, diez pesos de vale" - the typical cry of street and subway hawkers when selling their wares. It caught on instantly, and pretty soon the whole party was yelling "DIEZ PESOS!" at the top of their lungs.

Dancefloor antics

The party did take me back a few years - most of the students here are a bit younger than us, and alcohol makes them pretty hyper, but it was amusing to watch the Spaniards busting out the macarena and their flamenco stylings, and to watch people being pushed up and down the street in a wheelbarrow.

Needless to say, Catalina, the lady who runs the house, was not very impressed, but what is a student house if you can't throw a party every now and again?

Here are a couple of shots of the wheelbarrow fun..