4th of July Abroad: If you grill it, they will come!

Soooo, 4th of July was this past weekend, and what a glorious 4th of July it was despite being south of the border where that date holds absolutely no signficance and there being no red, white, and blue in sight. I can't really say there was much celebrating of American Independence, but rather a simple celebration of grilled foods, which no one can resist. On a whim, I made the suggestion to a new group of friends that we should "grill some food" for 4th of July and that comment resulted in a gathering of 4 Americans, 2 Canadians, and 2 Mexicans on the beach at Chaburna for some grillin' and boozin' good times on Sunday. When the first thing you drink for the day is RUM, you know it's going to be a good day! As I was shopping with some of my new friends for snacks and "POP" (by request from the Canadians) for our grill-fest, I realized that my "little travel habit" has kept me out of the US on the 4th of July quite a few times. I actually can't remember the last time I was anywhere that had fireworks for 4th of July, which made me a little nastolgic for the fireworks off Jones Beach (Long Island) that we used to watch with my grandparents when I was a kid. I realized that I've spent 4th July in London (where they're not all that thrilled to celebrate the Indepedence of the "Unruly Colony"), Barcelona, Auckland (New Zealand), and Madrid (3 times)...and now I have Mexico to add to that list.

The Canadians contributed "Canadian-style burgers" to the grill menu, which entailed cooking up some deliciousness in the form of bacon, onions, garlic, and mushrooms on the stove, and then blending them into a paste that was mixed in with the ground beef before grilling. So basically all of the yummy stuff we Americans put on top of our burgers, they put inside the burger for a quite nice affect. They even stuffed a few of the burgers with cheese. It certainly made for less mess when eating and all of the yumminess mixed into every bite. My contribution was grilled pineapples, which went quite perfectly on top of the Canadian-style burgers if I do say so myself. We also eventually went and picked up some seafood for the one semi-vegetarian in the crowd. Somehow, despite how late in the day we went out to try to find the seafood, we managed to bring back a big bag of shrimp and a WHOLE shark. Luckily, I was spared the task of butchery the shark, but I ended up being the one to grill up the shark fillets and shrimp kibabs on the BBQ because the other grillers we're fairly boozed by that point. I added my own special touch by dousing them both in lime and pineapple juice and they went very well with a modge-podge tarter sauce that my friend threw together from sour cream, mustard, and relish. Short on-and-off rain delays produced a beautiful rainbow just down the beach, but also left more time for drinking instead of grilling so everyone was toasty by the time we got around to the actual eating part of the day, which just meant that there were lots of laughs to go around in addition to the good eats.

Other highlights of the day included two of the guys jamming together on their guitars (shirtless, which I certainly did not mind), 3 outfit changes by my friend's wonderfully hippy-esque mother, swimming in the ocean right in front of our friend's condo, and endless good conversation. While I'm loving every minute of living in Mexico and all the Spanish-speaking that entails, it was definitely nice to party with a predominantly English-speaking crowd for a small change. I know I must practice my Spanish more to improve, but my brain was thankful that it got to relax a little at this party and did not have to constantly be in translation mode. So the moral of the story here was this 4th of July in Mexico was my best 4th celebration abroad yet simply because the primitive idea of food cooked over an open flame appeals to just about everyone and provided an excellent excuse for friends (new and old) to gather and get their grub on.