LIVING in MEXICO: Gringos Underestimate the Noise Factor

My wife and I met with a woman a few years ago when she was contemplating moving to Guanajuato. She asked me what I thought Americans grossly underestimated in their plotting to move to Guanajuato. What immediately popped into my head was: Noise! Americans think they will have no problem dealing with the noise and most believe I exaggerate this.

Well, two years after this meeting, we saw her on the street. I took that opportunity to ask her, "What has been the most difficult thing with which you've struggled in your adapting?"

Her answer was swift: Noise! "I completely underestimated the noise."

Let me just say that to one degree or another, I think I may finally be getting why Gringos form Gated Communities when they move to Mexican towns-the noise! Because we were not born and raised in a country in which people think nothing of having a party outside your bedroom window, blowing off fireworks, screeching, or having a general riot, we simply do not have the wherewithal to withstand what borders on the supernatural for Mexicans. We plainly do not have the ability to withstand the decibel equivalent of a small, tactical nuclear weapon going off outside where we sleep. This is, by the way, what I mean when I say fireworks. They don't set off fireworks but bombs of tactical weapon caliber.

At least with an enclave full of fellow countrymen, you would sleep. That would be the thing you would have in common: Sleep!

Last night, at about 4:45 a.m., someone decided to zoom past our bedroom window on a motorcycle. Our house is on the dead-end street, unlike the others that are elevated on the top of stair-accessed mounds. We are directly on the street. Someone thought it appropriate to rev his motor as though doing so would make his bike work better or at least make him feel very macho for have wakened the gringos.

Not more than ten minutes after motor-Mexican zoomed off into the night, a carload of very intoxicated Mexicans drove up and attempted to park their gigantic SUV (I hate SUV's) into a parking slot designed for a VW bug. They had to go forward then backwards about three million times before being able to complete this impossible parking task. All the while, they were filling up our bedroom, even through I closed the window, with carbon monoxide.

Needless to say, we were up.

Their party, which must have been quite a do since they were dressed formally, was over but they weren't finished partying. They stumbled up the stairs to apartments above us and carried on their all-night celebration until one the following afternoon.

Who knows what was happening (and who cares)? But, it continued happening right at our house, where we live, in a Mexican neighborhood. It is 2:02 p.m. and just now we are laying our heads down to sleep:

Now we lay our heads to sleep
We pray to God that this will keep
Cause' if doesn't and we wake
I really fear what course we'll take.

I will look first for a shoe
But will quickly know this won't do
So then I'll look for a bat
With which to smash those dirty rats.

'll send them flying for all that buying
Gallons of tequila that now won't heal 'em
They'll have to run for their lives
And next time think twice.

Before causing this gringo all this strife!