Gettin’ Carried Away

You read it right… Mexicanada. Surprise! I am in Guadalajara, Mexico. As I promised to do some blogging about my trip, I plan to do just that. However, I forgot my camera cord at home (egad!), so I will be telling you some great anecdotes until I am able to post some nice photos (along with Mexican recommendations) from my trip here this week.

You’re probably wondering… what the heck is Mexicanada? It’s a word I made up to describe a particular encounter I’ve had here in Guadalajara. I met a fellow journalist named Rick who is a Canadian national that has been to 39 U.S. states and 61 countries… and counting. Many of his tales are just mind-blowing, but nothing beats the old “parkade” story.

~* Photo courtesy of flyingserpent.net *~

While driving to one of the many destinations we’ve seen here in Guadalajara, a few of us were making conversation about Microsoft Word. Rick explained that he was annoyed with it not recognizing certain words, like parkade, for example. I thought he said “parquet” (as in flooring), and I told him that if you right click the word you can add it to the dictionary. Dorothy, a very inquisitive San Francisco journalist, heard him say “parkade,” called him out right away and asked “What the heck is a parkade?” Rick simply answered, “A place to park cars,” thinking we should know that already. We all started laughing, as we had never heard of that expression before. Our trip leader, Carolina, later admitted she had no idea what he was talking about at first, but didn’t want to say anything.

If you have read one of my older posts from February, you will know that I love languages. I think it’s kind of funny that I’ve come to Mexico, and I’ve learned a Canadian expression. Lesson learned: You never know what you’re going to learn when you are on a trip.