Pigs and Fancy Nails

This past week I had two good cultural experiences that involved fried pig parts and artificial nails.  If you've ever eaten pork rinds in the US then you're familiar with experience #1: the chicharrón. Made from fried pork rind (and sometimes other parts of the pig), they're usually a tasty, crunchy snack that's great with guacamole and super popular here in Mexico.  My coworker brought in two bags for our team breakfast this past week and some people wrapped them up in tortillas for a chicharrón taco.  Some of the pieces were airy, crispy "chips" like what you see in the US, while others were hard, dark and looked like a body part other than skin.

Later that week, another coworker took the leftovers home and completely transformed them into a new food.  She cooked chicharrón with water, tomatillos and chilis for 1.5 hours to create a soft, supple and flavorful stew to eat with corn tortillas.  Not your normal breakfast plate back home, but bursting with flavor.

As you can see, this bag of chicharrón looks a little different than your grocery store pork rinds.

Transformed for a delicious breakfast.

Experience #2 resulted from an insider connection with a student taking an 8-week class on how to apply and decorate artificial nails.  Two of my friends participated in the class, spending three hours every Monday-Friday honing their new skills, and my friend Rosy invited me to be her model one day.  I’d never had fake nails before but I decided this counted as a cultural experience so why not try it out.  

Site of my nail adventure. 

I entered a room next to our local Raicilla Museum with 12 other students and their models.  Rosy started by cleaning my non-existent natural nails and then sizing me for nail tips.  I don't know what type of material is used for nail tips back home, but these tips were hard, one-inch pieces of white plastic.  Each one was essentially superglued to a nail and then cut down to a length that looked more human.  Stage 2 consisted of painting the bottom half of my real nails with an anti-fungal liquid and then putting peach and white putty-like materials on each nail.  The final step consisted of painting an arc of white dots on each nail, followed by a lacquer and time in a UV drying booth.  The whole process took about 3 hours and at the end I had my first ever set of artificial nails.

Rosy, the creator of fancy nails.

This was considered really long and fancy for me.

It was fun to spend time in a room full of women who were chatting and laughing and to see all of the different designs, some of which included glitter and diamond-like adhesives.  I also watched the teacher make a large bowl of pasta and corn salad which was then served on top of tostadas with a side glass of coke.  Rosy told me that she had taken a previous class with most of the same women to learn how to do professional makeup.  Most of my female friends here don’t have long, decorated nails on a daily basis but they go to town when it’s time for a fiesta.  Parties here are no joke and the basic dress code is super high heels, fancy nails and top notch makeup, so Rosy explained that it was important to learn how to get yourself ready at home (especially if you have kids and limited funds). 

This is how women really do their nails for parties here (image from the internet).

I knew that it would feel different to have long nails but I was at a bit of a loss when I got home and needed to take out my contacts.  After a few attempts where I almost stabbed myself in the eye, I figured out how I could use the insides of two fingers to safely remove each contact.  There's a great sense of pride associated with figuring out how to remove your contacts when you feel like you have alien hands.  Everything is harder with my fancy new nails – typing, opening cans, putting backs on earrings, picking my phone up off a flat surface, getting my keys out of my bag, getting anything out of my bag…. On the bright side, I'm really good at scratching things right now.