Off to Chapala

So, yesterday I didn’t end up just hanging around the house. Jesse’s friends, Lisa and Amanda, came and swept me up into their weekend activities. Lisa and Amanda stayed here when they went to CEPE five or six years ago, so they came to the house to visit with Tere and family. They are both social workers now and spend most of their days speaking Spanish so they are both really good. It would be very intimidating if they weren’t so nice. When visiting had finished they invited me to come along with them and their other friend, Miriam, for a night out so I grabbed my stuff and we left for Miriam’s house (about 45 minutes later. I discovered Mexican time last night too.) Miriam was part of the Amigos Amistad program when Lisa and Amanda were at CEPE and they have managed to keep in touch for all these years. She is really nice and outgoing so it was fun to have her there.

We went to a club called Suite. It was like something out of a movie. I had never seen anything so incredibly club-ish. We danced the night away, and I got home at 3am for the second night in a row and immediately conked out.

Today we all went to Chapala, but don’t tell Tere that because Rosi didn’t ask to take the car there before we left. Lake Chapala is the largest lake in Mexico, has the largest population of US expats anywhere in the world, and happens to be about an hour away from Guadalajara. It looked something like Santa Barbara, with a wide sidewalk next to the water lined with palm trees and vendors. We went out to lunch once we got there (around 3:30pm) at a restaurant on the lake. There were a lot of restaurants on the lake all squished together in a line with men outside trying to beckon us into nearby parking spots. Highlights of the lunch: tortilla chips with lime, salt, and hot sauce (pretty much the miracle seasoning of Mexico), watching the others pay to get slightly electrocuted by a cute little old man with a very old-looking wooden box contraption, and listening to Miriam’s brother sing along loudly with a scruffy guitar player to finish all off.

Let me explain the electrocuting further: Miriam’s brother saw the old man trying to sell his electro-therapy to other restaurant customers, got really excited, and started explaining to Lisa and me (in Spanish) what the old man was selling. After a few minutes I had pretty much figured out what he was talking about but I must have still been making a face because he asked me if I understood (“Entiendes?”) and I said, with a look of horror on my face, “Si, entiendo. Pero,¡No entiendo!” Then he flagged the guy over to our table and convinced everyone else to try it while I took photos and videos. The way it worked was the old man had a wooden box with a dial on it to control the current and two wires coming out of it, each ending in a metal rod. They all stood in a circle and held hands with one person holding one rod and another person holding the other. They stared with a very low current and then he slowly cranked it up. At some point it became too much for a few people and they broke out of the circle. The guys (Miriam’s brother and Jesse) ended up doing it alone for much longer (which I caught on video). The whole thing was very strange.

We got back around 9:30pm and Jesse and I fixed ourselves some rice and beans (with lime and salsa of course!) before saying good night.

My next assignment for myself is to find things to do after school since we get out at 1 and dinner isn’t until 8 or 9. I think I’m going to try the volunteer program offered through CEPE where we go to an orphanage every Tuesday and Thursday, but I still need other things to do. Mexico guidebook, here I come!