Honesty is the Mexican Policy

On Friday I took a solo road trip to El Paso to visit some friends from my mission.  The plan was to spend the night in El Paso at Irene's house and then spend all day Saturday with my friend Lucero in Juárez just across the border.  Lucero ended up canceling on me so I just stayed in El Paso on Saturday and didn't even get to use my passport. 

Lesly is Irene's daughter and she was seven when I knew her on my mission.  She's 17 now and is way into looking elegant all the time.  She had no problem telling me how shabby I looked.  It had been a year and a half since I last saw her and when she opened the door the first thing she said when I walked in the house was, "Whoa, you have so many grey hairs, Schilaty!"  I told her I'd dye my hair when someone told me to.  She said, "I'm telling you right now that you need to dye your hair.  You look like you're 40!"  Irene walked in a few minutes later and gave me hug.  The first thing she said was, "Look, you have so many grey hairs.  How old are you now?"  I told her that I'm 30 and she said, "No, you look older."  She then told me that I look thinner than I looked the last time she saw me.  I asked, "Did I look fat then?"  She responded, "Not necessarily, you just look healthier now."  They also told me that my eyes super-huge and that my nose is large, but it suits my face.  Mexican honesty is my favorite.

I took the two of them out to dinner and they asked me if I needed time to get ready, but I said I was just going to go dressed how I was.  Lesly, on the other hand had taken two and half hours to get ready.  So I, a tall white guy in jeans and button down shirt, walked into the restaurant with two 5'0 Mexican women dressed like they were on their way to the Oscars.  We must have looked a little silly.  Luckily the power went out at dinner and we sat in the dark for 20 minutes so our lack of coordination was less noticeable. 

Since I didn't go to Juárez on Saturday I spent the morning answering Lesly's questions about how she

Lesly, Edgar, a white dude, and Irene when I visited
El Paso in 2009

should paint her nails and do her hair for senior prom that night.  She was very concerned that her hair wouldn't look good--very concerned.  She showed me tons of pictures on her phone of what she could do with her hair and I just told her what I thought she wanted to hear which seemed to calm her.  She said, "Schilaty, you're such a nerd, but you're cool anyway.  I don't like nerds, but I like you.  You should visit more often."  Lesly gives the best compliments and I really do want to visit them more often because I had blast. 

Even though I didn't end up going to Mexico, I got to spend the weekend speaking Spanish and now I feel much more prepared to be going to Peru this Saturday.