mi respuesta de un correo electronico estupido para mi universidad en Australlia....

Hi Yuki!
Hi everyone at Swinburne Abroad!

I'm fine.
I have heard gunshots several times since I arrive, last week they were very loud and right outside my house, and yesterday I could hear them en la tarde when I was smoking cigarettes and practising my spanish with cute mexican girls at uni.

Sorry, but I won't be going to meetings or communicating international offices or anyone else other than my young mexicano amigos y familia in regards to safety. They are the ones whose advice I trust, as nearly all other advice I get is hysterical and unhelpful. If it was up to many personas, especially internacional estudientes (mainly girls :P), I would spend my entire exchange locked in the toilet of my apartment.

It is very frustrating listening to international students gossiping at university about whether or not the situation is getting "better" or "worse" in an empty-headed, extremely reactionary fashion every time there is a shooting. The drug war, the apparently corrupt government and media and police, in conjunction with the apparently extreme and unquantifiable power and influence of the drugs cartels in this part of the world... well the catch-22 situation makes it completely impossible for anyone (international offices, students, and mexicana personas included) to have even the vaguest clue as to whether the situation is "getting worse" or getting better".

The gossiping personas I speak of are reading the (apparently) extremely corrupt and sensantionalist (y influential) mainstream newspapers and television every day.... if one was to believe their representation of the situation one would think that walking around Monterrey was like walking around the set of Resident Evil 4.

I have yet to see any bloodied corpses or zombies, and it is fairly unlikely that I will.

It works better for me not to think about the situation and just get on with having the most amazing time I've ever had in my life... I could get eaten by a shark swimming at the beach or be hit by a truck skating or bitten by a spider out the bush in Australia anytime... and I plan to travel all over the world to all sorts of foreign and dangerous locations in the future. Therefore I am using this experience as a means of learning how to deal with fear in a sensible manner.

Although it breaks my heart to hear stories of violence, kidnappings y shootings etc from friends, and my hear goes out to the lovely people of mexico who have to deal with the fear and violence every day of their lives... I have the philosophy that I'm more likely NOT to experience such things than I am. More people don't get shot than people who do. So I try not to let it worry me. Succumbing to fear makes it very difficult to remain happy and positive, and acting fearful in dangerous situations always makes them more dangerous. Everday bad guys can see and smell who is looking and smelling scared in the streets and are much more likely to target people whom they can tell are already terrified. Walking around the streets behind garbage bins every time a car backfires or constantly looking your shoulder is a very bad idea. If the bad guys are proper, nasty, narco-sharks with AK47s looking for a foreigner to rob or kidnap, then there is nothing I can do about it either way, so there is not point thinking or worrying about it.

I see Collingwood won the grand final replay. Tell me this is all a horrible joke made up by the Australian media especially designed to make a homesick traveller very very depressed. HAHA.

The thought of the MCG covered in Black and White streamers makes me want to vomit, but at least it has gone a long way toward allaying my feelings of homesickness. If England beat Australia in the cricket this summer, which is looking like a possibility going on both side's current form according to an australiano amigo..... I am going to be one very unhappy camper upon returning to the city of poor sporting results.

This weekend I am going to the futbal with a mexicano amigo who supports the Monterrey Tigres... I support the Richmond Tigers in the AFL. I have been watching the Primera Division de Mexico on the television and videos on youtube of the muy muy loco fans drinking beers and chanting and sometimes getting in very crazy riots. Mi amigo assures me it will be alot of fun and he knows how to ensure we avoid any dangerous situations. OLE TIGRES!!!!

On sunday I am climbing the mountains once again with amigos from Mexico and a Norwiegan Viking amigo. I'll send you some photos!

Paz y Amor,
y
¡VIVA LA MEXICO!

¡Saludos!
Millas.