The Arrival and a Good Sense of Humor

Before I even legally arrived in Guadalajara on Saturday, April 1, I encounted my first ugly American.

The line for getting through customs at the Guadalajara Airport was long and slow-moving. Three flights arrived at once and only two people were on duty to check passports. An older American gentleman in front of me in the line was apoplectic. Some 30 minutes into our wait, he announced loudly that he figured out why the line was so long and that the airport had only two people working. It was, he said, a game of tit for tat. "The Mexicans are getting us back," he proclaimed.

Had he not been dead-serious, I may have chatted with him about the obvious differences between the way things work in other countries. But I knew it would have been a frustrating conversation at best. So I laughed softly each time he yelled: "This is tit for tat."

Once through the line, I grabbed my baggage and headed to the infamous buzzer -- essentially, for those who haven't had the pleasure -- the same as random security screening in the US. You press the button on a contraption very much like a traffic signal. Green means go; red means stop and let us search your luggage.

Yes, I got red. Which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't true that the last two times I have traveled in the US (within the last two months, I add), I got the dreaded mark for being specially screened by the TSA. So when it happened in Mexico -- after feeling I had already acquired enough good screening karma -- I did the only thing you can do when traveling in Mexico:

Have a sense of humor.