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“Ojalá que no es uno de nuestros amigos” Gustavo mumbles in a mixture of words I do not quite understand. A mixture of words of a language I am, after five weeks of trying to integrate, still struggling with. Spanish. The speed of the language rolling over his tongue I am not able to follow. His dialect. People from the north of Mexico, Chihuahua, have a different way of speaking. Marco had told me so. They speak way faster than the people living in the middle of Mexico. I had not taken it seriously. I should have. It was a mixture of words spoken with a facial expression I was even more confused about. Gustavo was smiling. Smiling about a topic no one should be smiling about. He handed me my phone back as I see the title of the news article on my phone re-appear: “Balacera En La Zona De Bares de Cholula Deja 2 Fallecidos, 1 Era Estudiante”. There was a shooting 500 meters away from the club, the City in Puebla, where we went partying the night before. Two people died, including a student. Gustavo was still laughing, and Marco did not stop laughing since either. He said that he just hopes that it is not one of our friends Marco translated as an answer to the confusion on my face. “That is how normal it got in Mexico” is what Marco answered on the silence and the bigger wrinkle in my forehead. “Do we really want to laugh about this?” I whisper to him. To Marco. He was sitting next to me. I had my hand a bit awkward in order for my ring and middle finger to protect him (and the rest) from my morning breath; the smell of cigarettes and mixture of too many liquors was still sensible. I felt sorry. I did not brush my teeth. “Do we really want to laugh about this?” I express my thoughts out loud. “We have to Anna” he whispered back. He adjusted the tone of his voice to mine. “We have to laugh about it, because we cannot change it”. “This is Mexico” he says with a curled upper lip and his eyes translating pain. I wanted to bring up the safety, the danger, the fact that we cannot laugh about these things, the differences, the unfortunateness. The beauty of the country. Solutions. I wanted to bring up that I was sorry. I wanted to translate my western perception of the world in a language both Mexican, Dutch, German, and other nationalities in the room, not speak. Nor understand. In a language nobody understands. Except me. I wanted to explain how I throughout the years learnt that being safe is a subjective term. How I learnt to feel safe in situations I did not feel safe before. How I learnt that feeling safe is a term the majority of the people on this planet not even have defined yet. He rested his hand on my upper leg, and I reminded myself of the fact how long it took me to not directly pull away. Years. To not draw conclusions. To not make assumptions. He rested his hand on my upper leg, and I rested my hand on his hand. “We cannot change it” I whisper. “Safety comes in all different kind of forms”. “And we can learn and grow from each other” he whispers back.