jeanne in tequila country

This past weekend, Lea, Julia, and I went to the quiet beach town of Melaque.

Lea arrived in Guadalajara Friday around noon. I got permission to teach my classes early so that I could leave by 10:30 for Guadalajara. I arrived at the bus station just in time for me and Lea to catch a bus to Melaque.

I have never liked bus travel much, and those blog readers who have been keeping up know that I had uncomfortable bus trips to and from Puerto Vallarta back in January. This is because getting to the coast around here involves traveling through the Sierra Madre mountains, which can seem never-ending.

My motion sickness usually consists of a headache and a feeling afterwards that I am still moving around. I was once on a two-hour boat trip to Catalina Island, with my high school orchestra, and I felt so sick aboard that I had to sit outside to keep watching the horizon, even though it was freezing in the wind. I never threw up, though.

What’s going on? I threw up on the bus ride to Melaque. And on the ride back to Guadalajara.

I was surprised that I got so sick. Even when I felt it coming on, I didn’t think it was really going to happen. Just as we were finally pulling in to Melaque, on level ground and going slowly, I started salivating a lot, and then I had to run into the back, where I threw up into the sink.

On the way back, I didn’t think it’d happen again, but I was better prepared. I had a plastic bag ready. I didn’t eat much before getting on the bus. I still got sick, though, right in the middle of the mountainous part of the trip. I ran to the back of the bus again, to spare my neighbors, but I ended up being knocked about in the back. At least I wasn’t the only one—next to Lea was a poor boy who kept throwing up about every five minutes. I suppose I am grateful that I only had one bout.

Anyway, besides the bus part of the trip, the weekend in Melaque was nice. It was quiet compared to Puerto Vallarta. There weren’t too many tourists, though the entire beachfront is lined with bungalows and hotels and palapa restaurants. We ate at a beach restaurant that first night, and there weren’t many guests there. The waiter, Chuy, seemed bored, because he talked to us a great deal. He even told us a dirty joke, which we didn’t really want to hear. Then we just went back to our bungalow and slept.

Saturday we walked along the shore. At the end of the abandoned-looking malecón, the point was rocky. We climbed big rocks and watched black crabs and the spray from the waves. As we walked back to the sandy beach area, we saw a huge group of black birds flying low over the surface of the water from between the rocks to the beach. They looked like a type of cormorant, and there were hundreds of them. They landed in the water close to the sandy shore, bobbing their heads into the water and coming up with shiny silver fish in their beaks. For several minutes they fished along the beach. We were fascinated. It could have been a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Birds, so we were a little wary, but it was also beautiful.

We swam and sat on the beach all day. At first we were in the sun, but then we realized pretty soon that we should get under an umbrella. We rented a table with an umbrella at the beach restaurant of our bungalows. We read a lot. I think I burned a bit. The next day we went out on the beach again, but we only had about half an hour before we had to get ready to get on the bus back to Guadalajara.

The trip back was worse than the first. The driver was going alarmingly fast around the curves in the mountains. I felt terrible and knew I wouldn’t be able to get on the bus back to Arandas immediately. We all went into town and had dinner. Then I got on the last bus to Arandas and arrived home around 11.

I have cancelled my afternoon classes this week, for Lea’s visit. Lea is actually in Guadalajara for a couple days now, hanging out with a friend there, so I could’ve taught the afternoon classes today and tomorrow, but I’m glad I don’t have to. I spent the afternoon doing much-needed laundry and mopping. This evening I ran a few errands. Lately I haven’t had that kind of time on weekdays. I miss my free afternoons!

Julia and I have been planning a week of travel in Mexico the first week of my spring break in April. Originally we were thinking of taking a bus to Puerto Escondido, the beach in Oaxaca that I missed during my Christmas vacation. Now I am wondering whether we shouldn’t find a way to fly somewhere instead of traveling by bus…. It’s the only really affordable way to travel here, though, and the first-class buses are usually very nice. It’s just the mountains that are in the way of the beach, and the enormous expanse of this country, that make travel difficult. We know so little about Mexico in the United States, and one of the things I never realized is how big the country is. So much of Mexico to see, so little time! Perhaps spring break will be a good time to see if Dramamine actually works.

My four-day weekend is drawing to a close, and it’s cloudy and chilly here in Arandas. It seems many times I begin to wash my clothes up on the roof, it’s sunny, but as soon as I start hanging up the clothes, it becomes cloudy and windy.

I still haven’t done my planning for the week, which is normal for me by the evening. I have just finished watching my telenovela (soap opera), “La fea más bella,” and I think I have recruited another viewer in Julia, because she finally saw it today, and we were texting each other on our cell phones about it. It was an especially exciting episode for her to be initiated with, because Don Fernando, the dashing boss of Lety la fea (the ugly girl), had to fulfill his end of a bargain he had made with the gay art director of their company, to dress up as la reina de la noche (queen of the night) in a drag contest. Unfortunately, we missed the drag contest, which was probably on yesterday while we were driving back from the beach, but we did see the silly slapstick stuff of Don Fernando getting help from Lety out of his costume and makeup. It’s pretty silly, but I am still SO addicted to the show.

I suppose I am writing about my sitcom/soap because I didn’t have an especially exciting weekend at the beach, so I don’t have a lot to report, but that’s not to say that it wasn’t very nice. I had a rather tranquil trip, in fact.

Julia and her boyfriend Patrick, who was visiting for a week or so, arrived in Arandas Thursday night, in their rental car. Friday at school was the celebration of the spring equinox and the 200th birthday of Benito Juarez (the benefactor of the four-day weekend), so there was a show, I didn’t have to teach much, and the kids got out early. We did, however, have one of those never-ending meetings afterwards. Fortunately, the principal knew I had to leave for the beach with my friends, so she let me get out a little bit earlier. It wasn’t as early as she had promised me the day before, however; nor was it early enough to avoid night driving. The trip to Puerto Vallarta took a whopping eight and a half hours. (Many thanks to Patrick for driving all weekend!)

We stayed at Mika and Claire’s house in the older part of Puerto Vallarta. They had gone to a beach further south for the four-day weekend but had most generously let us use their place. This helped a great deal, because we didn’t have to spend money on lodging. Julia did her interview on Saturday afternoon, and we went to the beach afterwards. There were tons of people because it’s high season for tourists, and it’s spring break for many young Americans. The clubs, bars, and restaurants Saturday night were packed. We ate at a very fancy place that was clearly one of the places to be in Puerto Vallarta and then tried to go salsa dancing at the club called La Bodeguita. By now, Julia and I are used to not actually dancing much at these salsa places in Mexico. We talked to people and had beers. Everywhere we went was crowded so we just headed home.

Sunday morning we had a lovely breakfast at the pancake house near Mika and Claire’s. Then we drove up the coast to a smaller beach, because the ones in P.V. are crowded and full of parasails and jetskis and tourists. We drove to Punta de Mita, which was cute, but we wanted something a little more remote. We ended up on a nearby dirt road behind private beachfront condos, parked, and walked down to a very nice beach. I think it was called Punta Negra. There weren’t many people. The waves, however, were very scary for me. It was shallow but the waves were quite big, and I got tired of having to dive into the larger waves, so mainly I read on the sand and burned a little.

Monday we walked around town, because I had to get to my bank, which happened to be the furthest from where we were staying, but on the way back it was a nice walk along the beach and the malecón (kind of like a boardwalk but not a boardwalk). We watched pelicans diving. Then we drove out, and it only took us about five hours to reach Guadalajara. Once in town I got on a bus to the central bus station so I could get back to Arandas.

No drama, no fights, no being denied entry into popular night clubs, no cowboys trying to pick me up on their horses, no birthday carousing and drunkenness—only sea, salt, sand, seafood, and now I cannot think of any other things that alliterate.

Now I have to get back to work and get my apartment in order, because my friend Lea arrives in Guadalajara Friday for her spring break visit. We will probably go to the beach again, but perhaps to a smaller one further to the south. It won’t be quite as relaxing because I won’t have four days off to do it, but it’s the beach all the same, and I am not in danger of getting bored of the beach anytime soon.

We got into that club called Nuts (pronounced “newts”), which didn’t let us in a couple weeks ago.

It was Julia’s 30th birthday. All the way to the club, she and I were making jokes about us not getting in again. We were with four other girls, friends from her Spanish classes. One of them became nervous with our joking. Another told us to stop making jokes because there was no way they weren’t going to let us in.

Someone had told Julia that perhaps we had not dressed right when we weren’t let in. The night we waited in vain at the door, it had been cold so Julia and I had kept our jackets and sweaters on. I had had my glasses on too so we probably looked a bit frumpy. This time, Joy, the leader of our pack, prohibited us from putting on sweaters or jackets at the door while we waited.

Because of the implication that we didn’t have clothes sufficiently mamacita and because we just didn’t bring skimpy clubbing clothes to Mexico, Julia and I on the afternoon of her birthday decided to go shopping.

I had arrived in Guadalajara much earlier than expected on Friday, because the principal and the owner of my school happened to be driving to the city and offered me a ride. (Obviously, things with the principal are not as tense anymore. I still haven’t written that message to the teacher of the courses, though.) I only taught one hour of classes that morning, which was fine with me, since I was feeling congested from my cold. We were off at 10:15, speeding along the highway because Lorena, the owner, had to get to a meeting at 11:30. We got to the city in record time, and I helped my principal look for books to prepare our students for their first communion. I bought a birthday cake at our favorite bakery near the school and dropped it off at the posada, Vilasanta. Then I went to find Julia at her school. She was just getting out of her Spanish class when I arrived.

We went back to Vilasanta, where we had lunch. Martha the cook makes great meals every weekday in the posada for only 30 pesos. Since it was Friday during Lent, we had breaded fish, which was delicious. After birthday cake, we went shopping.

We were going to try to make it back to the posada in time to catch my favorite soap opera, “La fea más bella,” but finding the right tops and accessories was more important. Julia ended up getting a sexy green halter top and cute silver mules, while I picked up an orange sequined “bib-shirt,” as Julia and I called it, because it has a strange little bib you tie around your neck like a halter top.

For dinner, we met Joy and Malvina at the gazebo in the historic center. Julia and I were twenty minutes late, because we had been chatting with people we knew at the posada. We thought we had missed everyone (and none of the people we were meeting had cell phones, what a pain!), but then Joy and Malvina showed up a few minutes after us. We ate at La Chata, where we had lots of good horchata and I had marvelous chiles rellenos. As we were waiting outside the restaurant for a table, one of us noted that everyone else waiting for tables was staring at us. Joy, who is African American, said, “It’s the brown skin. They see a morena!” And I added, “Maybe also because there is a chinita, too.” There was also a güera (blondie), meaning Julia, even though her hair is light brown and not blond, and a Mexican American, Malvina. Later at the club, Joy proposed we drink to the diversity that our group represented. “Only in America, baby.”

After dinner, we went back to the posada, because Julia and I had to get dressed to go out. There we met up with Amanda and Melanie. Julia and I put on our new clothes and made ourselves up (with the help of Joy, who understood makeup better than any of us others), while we all pre-gamed with some tequila from Arandas.

We only waited about three minutes at the door before we were let in. The same asshole bouncer was there, but another guy was letting people in, too. This second guy was intrigued by Joy’s New York driver’s license, which she might have flashed unsolicited. She was used to getting into clubs with waiting lines in New York and was a pro. Then we all had to show our IDs, all from different states. We were also a bigger group of nicely dressed women, so there was no trouble at all getting in.

Julia wondered why the club was so popular and exclusive, because inside it really wasn’t all that. There were lots of good-looking people and also lots of dressed-up geeks, but everyone was pure fresa (the word for strawberry, but it also means stuck-up rich people). We got a table, a bottle of vodka, and some pineapple and orange juice, and commenced the birthday celebration.

The music was sometimes goofy—lots of punchis-punchis (cheesy electronic dance music), Mexican pop, and some funny hip-hop hits from our high school years—but they also played some good hip-hop and R&B. I kept waiting for the reggeton (kind of silly Puerto Rican hip-hop, but fun to dance to), but by about 2:30 when we left, they still hadn’t played any. They probably would have started that music much later, since the club probably stayed open till about 6 a.m.

Back at the posada, we ate some more birthday cake and talked. We were all pretty drunk, since we had finished a whole bottle of Absolut. The next day, Julia commented that I had been a Chatty Patty while drunk. I can’t remember what I was talking about, but I do remember talking quite a bit.

The next morning, of course, I didn’t feel so great. We woke up at about 7:30 because there were people working and playing music downstairs. We still lied in, but we didn’t get out of the room for breakfast till about 11.

On three or four hours of sleep, we went out shopping again. Because we plan to go to the beach next weekend (which is a four-day weekend for me), Julia wanted to get a new bathing suit. We went to two malls in search of one. She finally got a cute bikini in Neapolitan-ice-cream colors, and we went home to eat our leftovers from the birthday dinner the night before. Then we were off to a salsa dance class with Joy. The class didn’t turn out to be all that, either, but I did learn how to practice turns and spins so that I don’t get so seasick while dancing salsa. Then I caught the last bus back to Arandas.

It was great to sleep in my own bed again, because I needed to sleep in as much as possible and rest from my cold, which has progressed to annoying coughs and still more congestion. Of course partying and shopping a lot might have made it worse, but I had way too much fun to regret any of it. I hope my 30th birthday this October is as much fun as Julia’s was.

This afternoon, I was in my evening class of beginners, which consists of three kindergarten teachers from my school, Rocio the secretary, a mother of a couple of my students, and a “chemist” who is the friend of a student in my advanced class. We were practicing how to describe people, so I had people describe a person and the other students had to guess who it was. When one of the kindergarten teachers described me, she said, “She is tall. She is wearing blue jeans. Her tennis shoes are white, blue, and gray.” Another kindergarten teacher said, “Is she sick?” And the first student answered, “Yes. She is sick almost all of the time.”

I have managed to catch a cold once again. I had just gotten over that last infection that lasted for weeks. I don’t understand what’s going on.

The teacher continued in Spanish that I catch a cold whenever the weather changes. Sure enough, the weather has been strange this week. It has been warming up a lot the last few weeks, but during the last few days it has been colder and very windy. Also, some other people were sick, too, earlier in the week.

One of my students told me to buy medicine called XL-3. So I went to the pharmacy just now and got a box of it. It has paracetamol and what looks like phenylephedrine, so I’m going against my usual refusal of symptom-relieving medication and ingesting some heavier stuff than chicken soup and hot water with lemon and honey. Hopefully it will get rid of this dumb cold before going to Guadalajara tomorrow for Julia’s birthday!

Which reminds me, Cesaria Evora cancelled her concert. :(

A funny thing happened on the way home from the pharmacy. I was getting off the bus and there was this group of about six guys on horses waiting for the bus to pass them before continuing down the road. One of them said to me, “Señorita, quieres dar una vuelta conmigo en mi caballo?” (Would you like to go for a spin with me on my horse?) I declined, “No, gracias,” which is already my automatic reflex whenever strange men talk to me on the street. Then later I thought to myself, what would’ve happened had I said yes? They weren’t all that bad-looking, which is pretty rare here in Arandas, and I’ve always wanted to ride a horse. Would he really have gotten off his horse and helped me on, and would we have ridden down General Arteaga with all its speed bumps and traffic? Sometimes I think these guys don’t expect girls to say yes and would be at a loss for words if one did.

Luis told me that I have to eat better, or I’ll get sick again. The other day I told him I was giving up cookies for Lent, but I said it in Spanish, and what I probably said was that I was fasting on cookies—eating nothing but cookies. Oops. So of course he told me I shouldn’t be fasting. No, no—on the contrary, I have been gaining a bit of weight, what with all the cooking Rocio and I do at my house during the week. We almost always eat some kind of meat with tortillas and vegetables. We make milaneza (breaded filet of chicken or beef) or albondigas (meatballs with rice in soup) or alambre (kind of like fajitas mixed with lots of cheese) or my chicken chili or spaghetti Bolognese or something like that. And I’ve become dangerously accustomed to the 10:30 “breakfast” at the school. I have a bowl of cereal before school, and then a couple hours later I’m eating eggs with salchichas or tacos or something with the kids. So now I have four meals a day. No danger of me fasting here.

Maybe I got sick because of stress. This week has kind of been a nightmare for me, because I became extremely angry with the school administration, meaning my principal.

Monday morning, a day after the stupid weekend-long course ended, the principal called a meeting. We talked about some programmatic stuff that doesn’t really relate to me (how we have to decorate the classrooms with spring stuff and Benito Juarez—all of which is irrelevant to me because I don’t have my own classroom), and then near the end of the meeting, she asked us all what we thought of the courses that weekend. A bunch of the teachers said, “Muy interesante!” and I thought to myself, “What a pack of liars.” None of the teachers with whom I had talked had wanted to go to the classes. In fact, they were rather unhappy because they have to pay high fees for them even though they are mandatory. I don’t have to pay for them, but I don’t understand why I still have to go. I guess to be treated like all the other teachers.

One teacher said, in a more honest and frank fashion, “It was very difficult this time because the teacher wasn’t as dynamic as the last ones. But I did learn a lot more this time.” And then the principal turned to me and said, “Jeanne, what did you think of them?”

I paused, partly because I had to formulate the Spanish, but also because I was trying to find a way to soften the expression of what I really thought of the courses. “I didn’t like them,” I said rather sourly.

“Why didn’t you like them?” she asked me. “Was it because you didn’t understand them or what?”

“At times I didn’t understand them,” I said. “But also, I’ve done stuff on learning styles already, on my course in Guadalajara, so it’s not new information for me.”

“So you’re the one who wrote on the evaluation that you didn’t want to go to them?”

“Yes,” I answered, somewhat defiantly and proud to be telling the bold truth in front of everyone. I had not scored the course highly, but I had not scored it poorly either, on the final evaluation, which I had understood to be anonymous and confidential. I had also written in explanation at the end of the evaluation that this was because the courses were mandatory and that I didn’t want to go to them.

Then the principal said to me, “You are going to have to write a letter of apology to the teacher.”

“But it’s the truth,” I said, indignant.

“Maybe it’s the truth,” she said, “but sometimes we have to keep quiet rather than tell the truth.”

What a hypocrite, I thought, as I remembered her lectures to the children all during February about how we always have to tell the truth. I was seething with anger—everyone could see it. The room was absolutely silent.

She continued, “The teacher didn’t feel good at all about that evaluation. You have to explain yourself to him. And to those of you who did not come to the courses this weekend [because there was one teacher who didn’t come at all, and two who didn’t show up for the last few hours on Sunday]: if you want to stay at this school, you have to fulfill your responsibilities to the institution” and blah blah blah and on and on.

After this meeting, I was angry and tense all day long. It took great effort on my part not to let it affect my teaching. At one point, I walked into my first-grade class with a cup of bright red jamaica in my hand, feeling very tired, and I thought to myself, what’s the point? But I caught myself and milked cheeriness out from somewhere inside.

I think I milked most of it out already, because I couldn’t find it anywhere during my last class this afternoon. I have just had it with my second-graders goofing around whenever I want them to read their storybooks. I think I play too many games. All my students in all my classes expect games when I appear in their classrooms, and I usually end up playing them because it’s the only time they really repeat sentence patterns and learn vocabulary and pay attention. But that means I can’t get them to do much work.

Monday afternoon, the day I couldn’t stop being mad at my school, I had visions of myself quitting and moving to Guadalajara.

Some of the other teachers spoke with me that day. The one who had been chastised for not showing up was also indignant. “I don’t like that she did that in front of everyone. She didn’t have to do that.”

Another teacher sympathized with me. She was the teacher of the fourth and fifth graders until recently, when the fifth graders were moved to the second-grade classroom with another teacher. “This is the way the school is, Jeanne. A couple weeks ago I was angry for about a week, because the principal told me that I was not handling the fourth and fifth grades well. But I had twice the work of any other teacher and getting paid exactly the same, and then she blamed me when it didn’t go well.”

Later with Rocio while we were cooking, I went off on a tirade that was building up all day and had no way of venting till after school let out. “There is no way I am going to write any goddamned letter of apology for telling the truth. What happened is not that I offended the teacher, like the principal said I did. Most likely I offended the principal, because I explained to the organization offering the courses that the school had made them obligatory for all the teachers, whether or not they wanted to be there. No, I’m not writing any letter, nor am I going to go to anymore of these courses.”

I tried later that evening to have a peaceful yoga practice, but I couldn’t stop thinking of what had happened. I kept thinking of what I’d say to the principal if she brought up the letter again. I kept thinking how I’d chew her out. I have a contract, and nowhere in the contract does it say I have to give up eighteen hours over one weekend per month to go to courses for a diploma that I don’t need. It specifies school hours as Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. And she cannot fire me, firstly because she needs me too much, but also because then she’d have to pay me until the end of the contract period anyway.

The next day, I was calmer. I was actually able to return to a semblance of the former rapport I had had with the principal, which is usually very friendly. She did bring up the letter again. She said, “You don’t have to apologize, but you should at least explain to him that you’ve studied this before, and that is the reason why you evaluated the course the way you did.” I just made a face and said nothing, but I thought about the message I had already composed the day before, which would explain that I had nothing against him or even the courses but was unhappy that I had to be there when I didn’t want to be, which is the fault of my school and its principal. Her request showed that she had also thought about the demand she had made of me, that I apologize to the teacher, and that she perhaps had realized that she had been too hard on me.

But I have still not written any letter. Nor do I plan on returning to the courses when they come up again, perhaps at the end of this month.

I thought about some of the career tests I had taken back at the end of grad school, when I was worrying about what I would do with myself after graduating. One of them had characterized me as having a low tolerance for working with others, and that I would do better in a job with little supervision and which allowed me to work at my own pace with my own ideas. What kind of job is that, I wonder. Someone had remarked to me, jokingly, that I need a job that caters to my lazy and spoiled personality.

The point is that I do poorly in the face of adversity or criticism in the workplace. I don’t exactly comport myself diplomatically. I like people to know I’m pissed off. This is, unfortunately, not a good tactic, especially in cultures like Mexico’s or Taiwan’s, where I also ran into numerous problems, and in the workplace in general. This must be something that can be learned—how to be professional, cool, calm, collected, nice. I do sometimes like that I am on occasion very frank and that I tell it like it is; I think it’s admirable to fight conspicuously for what you believe in. I suppose those are the advantages and disadvantages to being the way that I am. I have to learn how to choose my battles.

Aw, man. It’s Friday night, one of the first weekends in Arandas in a long time. The cursos diplomados, whatever they are, are happening again this weekend. So I’m stuck here in Arandas, going to classes this afternoon, all day tomorrow, and a few hours Sunday. It’s a good thing I’m staying in town, probably, because I’ll be forced to save money, and I have lots to do around the house that I can’t do when I’m hanging out in Guadalajara with Julia. Gotta do lots of laundry, clean the apartment, do serious grocery shopping. I also have to get back into the habit of doing a yoga practice longer than five minutes every day and start meditating.

But I’m antsy this Friday night. I’ve gotten used to doing something every weekend, the way Julia and I have been going out dancing, or at least out for a drink somewhere. I want to go dancing! I tried to get Rocio, Aracely, and Cristina to go out tonight, but Rocio’s got a cold (and she spends hours chatting online with her boyfriend in Chicago every evening), and Aracely and Cristina have kids and can hardly ever go out. We’ll probably go out tomorrow night, but because of the kids and because Rocio (being twenty and still living at home) can’t stay out late, we’ll probably just play pool at the cinema for a couple hours, or else hang out at Aracely’s house with the kids, and we’ll all be home by ten.

In this small town, there aren’t many single women close to my age. I knew what I was getting into when I moved here, and I was OK with it. But now that I’ve been going out and having a grand old time with Julia out on the town in Guadalajara on the weekends, I wonder if I made a mistake. If I were in Guadalajara, I’d probably have more single friends my age. Maybe I wouldn’t be getting as much practice with my Spanish, but at least I’d have a social life. Isolation and the hermetic life seemed like a good idea at first, but maybe I’m a bit of a social city girl deep down….

It’s Lent now, which means for forty days the clubs in Arandas are closed, so I wouldn’t be able to go out dancing this weekend even if I had friends to go with anyway.

Lent means the butchers close on Ash Wednesday and every Friday during Lent. That’s fine with me because I really need to stop eating so much meat all the time. I also feel left out if I don’t also observe Lent, so I am giving up cookies for forty days. It’s not as big a sacrifice as it sounds, because I still eat little snack cakes, like my favorite mantecadas and panqué (like pound cake snacks). However, there is still temptation everywhere—today someone was passing out polverones, my favorites (orange-flavored shortcake-type cookies), and I abstained. At the cursos today, the only snacks available were about ten different kinds of cookies and one little package of mantecadas, which I gobbled up in no time at all.

Julia’s birthday is next weekend, and we are going to do all kinds of exciting stuff in Guadalajara. Friday night, on Julia’s birthday, there is a Cesaria Evora concert (she’s a fabulous Cape Verdean singer), and then all weekend we’ll be celebrating by going out, I hope.