The last two days have really helped me to recoup from my brutal dash across the entire length of the US in 3.5 days! I’ve been going to bed early and getting up without an alarm, which is what makes all the difference in how productive my day is going to be.
I still set an alarm though, just in case, and Siri is very reassuring about it:
This morning’s complimentary breakfast included quesadillas and salsa, which is much more my speed than are pancakes, plus fresh fruit salad. Very yum! I can’t believe the quality of the breakfast we get!
I hadn’t planned to do any other work besides proofing this week, but ended up accepting two of the three requests from other clients. That’s how things roll when you’re a business owner. Sometimes, the client’s needs precede your own.
Early afternoon, I headed out for linner after getting a recommendation from the front desk to go to El Canton, literally around the corner and in front of the Mexican consulate. It’s a Chinese restaurant that isn’t really showing up in the search results yet (it’s not even showing up on Google Maps or through a Siri search). The clerk said that it’s the most expensive Chinese food in Nogales, but it’d be obvious why when I got there…
I stepped outside and was promptly hit on the head by something that was, thankfully, not a coconut, but… a date! I’ve never seen a date palm before!
El Canton is a rather swanky looking restaurant, but, thankfully, Americans don’t dress up. Meals were quite expensive, averaging about $14 each. But there was a small buffet for $10, more expensive than the other buffets in the city, but the first bite of my super fresh and delicious food explained why. I had chow mein, three different kinds of broccoli, and several kinds of meats. Everything was tasty and nothing was overly salty or sweet. What a gem, and tucked away out of sight!
BTW, I had a reader comment on how Chinese food and ‘Mexican’ don’t seem to go together, but there are tons of Chinese restaurants in the parts of Mexico I’ve been to, so I think it’s a popular cuisine with Mexicans. In fact, in the Duolingo app I’ve been using, nearly all the food-related exercises are some variation on “I ate Chinese food”!
I then went for a long walk to the border and back. As I mused on Facebook, it’s funny how walking to Mexico the first two times I did it felt so special and now there was nothing to it.
I stopped en route at a Goodwill store that was rather interesting. Everything is thrown onto huge tables, unsorted, and you have to dig through it for treasures, then pay by the pound. I had a bit of a poke around, but didn’t find anything.
There was a McDonald’s at the point of no return, so I paused to get a McFlurry (Oreo, please), and check my emails since I was waiting for something from a client. I had a decent view of Nogales, Sonora, from my seat.
Mexico is behind a fence:
Coming back home, I saw this billboard advertisement for a casino resort (it says, “Amigos con beneficios”). As they say in Spanish, jajaja! I wonder if this phrase really has the same connotation in Spanish, or if it’s a joke for bi(multi)lingual folks!
The weather was lovely today, not too hot, and perfect for a walk. I’m glad that I’m finally discovering a little bit of Nogales beyond the frantic pace of Mariposa Road.
“amigos con beneficios” I assume you’re referring to sex? 🙂
Does “friends with benefits” mean anything else? 😉
“…it’s not even showing up on Google Maps or through a Siri search). ”
I know nothing about Siri or Siri search but had no problem finding it on Google Maps. Using “El Canton Nogales, AZ” as the search term on Google brought up 3 choices with the first one being in Nogales. Using “Canton Restaurant” as the search term took me directly to the location with a marker.
That does not explain why you could not find it using search – maybe it is an Apple computer ‘feature’.
What I meant is that when I asked Siri and Google to show me restaurants nearby, El Canton did not show up. I had to do a direct search for it, the way you did.
Amigos con beneficios, jajajaj….
The translation of “friends with benefits” is amigovio/a. It’s one of the words I wrote about in my “From Untranslateable to Indispensable” post, where I wrote about words in Spanish that are hard to translate into English. And yes, amigovio/a isn’t hard to translate, but it was a “bonus word,” since I thought it was fun. You can find the post here: https://gringosuelto.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/from-untranslatable-to-indispensable-twenty-three-interesting-spanish-words-with-no-good-translation/
All that said, I have no idea what “amigos con beneficios” means, but it probably isn’t the literal translation of the words.
I’ve never been to Nogales. It’s interesting to see the fence, especially after listening to so many Republicans bloviating about the “open border.” Hello, Mr. Trump! There’s already a fence there!
Anyway, don’t let me get going on that theme.
Saludos,
Kim G
Boston, MA
Where there are friends, and there are benefits, but not in the same person.
See, I think that’s the point of the billboard, to be a bit of a linguistic joke for folks who speak both English and Spanish. The casino is saying that they are friends with benefits, which makes sense in the context of the ad (about their player’s club), but if you translate literally to English, you get the double entendre. I have a hard time believing it wasn’t intentional.
I’ve seen The Fence before. I will reserve comment on it.