Sunday, July 25th

Today we got pulled over for the first time since being back in Mexico. My mom, dad and I were on our way back from the theater (where we had seen Shrek 3) and my dad made an "illegal" U-turn. There was no sign saying that you couldn't U-turn, but there was no sign saying that you could. There was another place to U-turn up ahead and that was where you were supposed to turn. I'm going to explain something before going any farther. The police in Mexico City don't get paid very much, so when they pull people over they ask for a "mordita", in other words, a bribe. They give you two choices, you pay them now and go on your way, or they keep your driver's license, give you a ticket, and you have to come back the next day to fill out paperwork and then pay. As my dad said, you either pay in money, or you pay in time and money. With either option you can be sure that the money you pay isn't going to go to the government, the officers will split it up between them and keep it. So when the police pulled us over, my dad played new-to-Mexico gringo, he pretended to only know a little Spanish. While the police were trying to explain something that we understood perfectly (but pretended not to), I was sitting in the back trying as hard as I could not to burst out laughing! It was very funny watching my dad work to get the perfect balence, knowing enough so that eventually they would make themselves understood, but little enough so that they had to work pretty hard and repeat themselves a lot. My dad was aiming to make them frustrated so that they would let him off easy, it didn't really work. So after quite a while of listening to the officers try to explain, we paid them and they let us leave.