Because the day after Thanksgiving was set aside for administrative work at the Consulate, and because we still had a lot of HHE to put away, I decided to take that day off.

So off I headed to the mall on Black Friday. Of course in Mexico the day after Thanksgiving isn’t really a special occasion. In fact, I was disappointed to get to the mall and find the department store where I needed to pick up baseball tickets (more on that in another post) didn’t even open until 11. I walked around the nearly deserted mall, Wal-mart, and Home Depot (admittadley not my most authentically Mexican day) thinking about everyone back home packing their way into stores for the best deals. I was sure glad nothing like that happened in Mexico.

Or I would have been glad if it weren’t for what we experienced two weeks ago.

While Mexico doesn’t have Black Friday, Mexicans certainly understand the concept. And a few years ago, in order to spur economic development, the Mexican government and a number of commerce organizations introduced their own version. Occurring in November every year on the same long weekend as the celebration of the Mexican revolution, Buen Fin is the Mexican equivalent of Black Friday. It even has its own logo, which I kept seeing for about two weeks without really knowing what it meant.

It wasn’t until we were about to leave work on a Friday afternoon, planning on heading out of town the next day, that a colleague told us what we were about to miss. Neither of us our huge fans of Black Friday in the US. Or crowds. Or malls. So we weren’t too disappointed, but it still would have been interesting to experience.

Lucky for us our route home from work passes directly by one of the largest malls in Guadalajara. Our normally easy 25 minute drive turned into an hour-long trek through Buen Fin traffic. We may not have gotten any great deals, but we can at least say we experienced our first Buen Fin.