Parental Visit Chapter 1: Guadalajara

Yesterday Dad got in around 8 and we walked over to a restaurant that a guy on the plane recommended to Mom called La Vaca Argentina. It was a tasty steak place Argentinean style with a large wine selection. We each got different types of steak. I got ribs by accident because I didn’t know what the word meant, but it was all good. We also got a bottle of Mexican wine to fill up our giant wine glasses. The place itself was really pretty and had a great atmosphere. The highlight of the meal for me was the bread they served us (there’s not much in the way of good bread in Mexico) and the garlic olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip it in.

Today was my full day of playing tour guide to my parents, and I actually think we covered a lot of the good sites. We started off in the late morning by going down to the historic center so that I could show Dad the cathedral and take them to San Juan de Dios (the giant market). We walked through the cathedral and all the way down to El Cabañas at the other end of the historical center. I told Dad a lot of the same things I told Mom on Wednesday, including the story of San Guadalupe and how it ties in with the story of the birth of the Aztec god Huitzilopotli. When we got to the end of the plaza we took a right and checked out the market. Mom and Dad enjoyed looking around at all the things being sold but really weren’t interested in buying anything. I admit it can be overwhelming but it was funny how out of place they seemed in there. I picked out some coconut candies for myself and after doing a good circuit around the bottom floor we headed back to the plaza in front of El Cabañas for lunch.

After lunch we took a taxi to Centro Magno and I took Dad on a foot tour of my daily life. In Centro Magno we spent a good five minutes staring at the movie show times trying to match the Amercian and Mexican movie titles. Some things are direct translations (like Alice in Wonderland is Alicia en el País Maravilloso) and some things just don’t translate (The Blind Side = Un Sueño Posible). Then I took him to CEPE and La Sacra (which were both closed unfortunately) and, finally, back to my house. The whole family was sitting around the kitchen table so Dad got to see them all. Tere saw him and said we looked exactly the same.

Side note: Santiago, Pati’s brand new baby who was born on Thursday, was sleeping in a car seat on the dining room table. He’s so cute! He looked very peaceful but I’m sure he won’t always be that way. I can’t wait to see him awake and maybe hold him. I can’t believe how active this family is in life, if that makes sense.

After Dad’s visit to my house I walked him as far as the Laundromat where I had to pick up my laundry and then we parted ways for a little siesta.

We met up again at 5 at their hotel and I took them to Tlaquepaque. This is probably the most touristy area of Guadalajara, and for good reason. It’s super cute and colonial, it’s got some great artisan shops, and there is live mariachi music on Saturday nights! There were a ton of street vendors; a lot more than were there when I went last Monday, so there was a lot to look at. We wandered around for a while. We hit gold at a linens store where Mom bought table runner for herself and matching napkins and then some more stuff. It snowballed into a giant purchase but I think it was worth it.

After the success of that stop we went to a restaurant for a drink and some guacamole. I don’t know what the name of the place was but it had a great atmosphere. We sat in a colorful and festive courtyard which centered on a cute little fountain, and to top it all off, another table had hired a small band to play music for them while they ate and drank. It was delightful. Mom and I got margaritas and Dad got a beer and we sat there as the sun went down. We finished there around 8 and wandered around for another half hour or so before going to El Paría, a plaza where they put on a ballet folklorico on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons.

El Paría is an old building (built in 1827) with a giant courtyard in the center which is surrounded by a bunch of different restaurants. In the center of the courtyard is a gazebo where the performance took place. The night started off with a few different mariachi groups wandering between tables, playing for different groups. My favorite was a large group of mostly old people who just came into the square to hear the music and dance. They hired one of the bands and all got up and started dancing. It was so cute to see the old couples dancing together. Old love! After that the groups took a break for a while and the ballet started.

In this case, “ballet” doesn’t mean a bunch of people jumping around in tights and leotards; it was simply a performance of several traditional Mexican dances. They started off with dances from Veracruz and then did dances from Jalisco. I liked the Jalisco ones better because the girls had big skirts that they held out and flung around while the guys all had on big black sombreros and those colorful blankets slung over their shoulders. Once the dancing was over, a mariachi band went on stage and that’s about when we left.

I’m pretty much packed for this next week and ready to go. Tomorrow I’m meeting Mom and Dad in their hotel lobby at 9:30am and we’re getting on the plane to Cancun!! I’m so excited!!!! It will be so great to get to see another part of Mexico. Plus, I’ve heard from a lot of people that Tulum in absolutely beautiful and that I’m going to fall in love and not want to come back. We’ll see about that!

Morelia

SUNDAY (3/14)
I got up early and packed and took the 622 to where I was meeting Nikiya and her friend Dennis. Our bus left at 10:10am from Guadalajara and arrived in Morelia around 1:30pm. We checked into our hotel and went out in search of food.

We thought our hotel was much closer to the main cathedral, but we were wrong and we wandered around for a long time before we finally settled on a place. We assumed there would be a lot of restaurants around the main cathedral when we found it, but Morelia has a different church every two blocks or something so part of our problem was that we didn’t know which one was the main cathedral. After eating we wandered around some more and ended up doing some shopping. I bought a high-waisted jean pencil skirt for 90 pesos that I’m wearing right now! When it was all over it was like 6 and we decided to go back to our hotel and rest before getting dinner.

For dinner I was much more prepared. I looked up restaurants in my guidebook and found one near the main cathedral and the plaza de armas called La Casa del Portal. It was this funky place in an 18th century house with the original wall paper, cluttered with random pieces of old Mexico and custom furniture and the food was delicious. I got a regional soup from Michoacan with a bean base, chiles, avocados, tortilla strips, and cream. It was so good! After dinner we walked around looking for something to do but there wasn’t much. We sat down outside a bar with live music (they played lots of Bee Gees for some reason) and had a few beers. We turned in pretty early.

MONDAY (3/15)
Lots of churches. That’s my impression of Morelia. We had pretty much all of Monday to explore the city since our bus didn’t leave until 8pm. After walking around so much Sunday afternoon we decided we could take it slow, visit all the churches, go to the market, and leave.

We started off by visiting the aqueduct, only a few blocks from out hotel. There was a pretty park with two fountains where the aqueduct ended. One of the fountains was of three topless women holding up a giant platter piled with all the fruit from the region. I noticed, walking around later, that this fountain is kind of a symbol of Morelia.

After that we went to all the churches in the center. I was the keeper of the map so I helped navigate us through the narrow streets with their narrow sidewalks while Nikiya announced that she had no idea where we were. We went to a lot of churches so I’ll only mention the ones of interest. We went to the church we had nicknamed the Dome of the Rock because it had a very impressive gold mosaic dome, but the inside was disappointing. We also went to the main cathedral which was beautiful, the outside and the inside. There was a giant organ with a winding staircase up to it that Dennis climbed up. I took a picture of him on the stairs because the size difference between him and the organ was funny. It was huge. But by far the coolest church in Morelia was the church of San Guadalupe which we saw on our bus tour we took before lunch. The bus stopped there and we all got off. It looked like a regular church from the outside but as soon as I stepped inside I realized this place was special. What I loved about this church was that it was a representation of the Mexican passion for their beliefs, not some attempted reproduction of European designs. The walls and ceiling were completely covered in colorful decorations in the shapes of flowers and fruit with gold accents that glinted in the sunlight let in through the stained glass windows of the giant dome. Everything seemed so hectic and yet it all worked together and had a kind of beautiful symmetry about it.







At the end of the bus tour we were dropped off at El Museo de Dulces (the Candy Museum) where we paid 7 pesos to take a little tour (all in Spanish) lead by a girl in 19th century (?) costume. Apparently Morelia is known for its fruit candies. In the olden days each family made a hobby out of making candies and selling them from their front door. The museum was in the house of one family in particular that took candy beyond just a hobby. They make the candy by turning the fruit into pulp and then heating it and adding sugar. then they take this sugary pulp they spread it out on boards to dry in the sun or stamp them into molds with words or images on them. They gave us a little demonstration where they showed us the heating and adding sugar part and then gave us all little sample cups at the end. It was like sticky applesauce and very tasty. The tour ended in the museum store (of course) and I bought myself some caramels and rolls of the fruity stuff.

After the candy museum and lunch we walked to the market which sat against the back wall of one of the churches further out of the center. It had a lot of the typical things and it was no fun because they wouldn’t bargain at all, but I think I made some good purchases.

By the time we finished at the market it was time to go back to the hotel and get our stuff and go. We stopped at a café on the way back and had some truly awful tea and went on our way. We got a taxi and got on the bus without any problems and got back to Guadalajara around midnight. We shared a taxi and made two stops, first at the Casa Internacional for them and then my house. Then it was sleep for me.

Orchestra de Jalisco

Today Nikiya and I bought our bus tickets to Morelia for Sunday and Monday! Cassandra scheduled our final excursion for the Saturday of our last three day weekend which was a bit of an oversight, but, oh well. A bunch of people are going to the beach (a group left today for Puerto Vallarta), but I didn’t want to leave because this trip is already paid for. Instead, Nikiya, her friend Dennis, and I are going to make the most of our remaining two days and explore Morelia a bit. It’s the capital of the state of Michoacan and is supposed to be a beautiful, big colonial city. Penelope told me there’s a candy factory there! I’m SO going! It’ll be a good weekend.

Tonight I met up Paula, a girl from choir, at La Sacra (the music school) and we took the bus downtown. On the way, Linda’s new amigo Amistad, Ivan, got on our bus which was just a weird coincidence. I hadn’t seen him since the first time I met him over a week ago, but he remembered me! We chatted, all three of us, for the rest of the bus ride.

Paula and I got off right next to the Teatro Degollado in el centro and wandered around for like half an hour. We went into the state music school nearby in this old colonial building. It used to be a convent or something. At 7 we went into this small salon in the back of the theater where we sat through an hour long class about listening to and appreciating classical music. It was pretty cool because it was taught by a member of the orchestra (a cellist) and we listened to one of the movements they performed later that night.

At 8 we rushed to the front of the theater where Paula got a free ticket from one of the orchestra members (a fat, oddly proportioned percussionist) and I had to buy a ticket up in the balcony but it was with her student card which made it half price.

The first half of the performance was classical stuff. There was one movement by Mendelssohn with a huge violin solo. That was the song we listened to in the class beforehand. The whole thing was basically a sixty piece orchestra vs. a single violinist. For the part they brought in a beautiful young Spanish woman with crazy fast fingers, Eva Leon. The best part was that during intermission I met up with Paula and we went back stage and met her! She lives in New York (of course) and speaks English, but she was still surprised when she asked me what my name was (because she was giving me her autograph) and my name turned out to be American. I guess if I hang with the Mexicans I look like one?

The second half was with a mariachi band and I was down on the first level with Paula. I took a bunch of videos because the whole thing was so priceless. At one point the whole audience started singing along, complete with those stereotypical whoops and whistles. For their final song they sang one about Guadalajara. Paula was shocked I didn’t know it and told me if I didn’t learn it before I left then I couldn’t really say that I lived here. I better get on that. She’s going to make me a CD with all the traditional songs and another one with pop songs, hopefully.

After the performance her friend from La Sacra who also plays cello in the orchestra drove us home. I didn’t say much the whole ride because I was really tired but Paula made up for the both of us, plus maybe ten more people. That girl can talk! Well, time for bed.

My First Mass

I just got back from my first mass with choir in the main cathedral in el centro historico. I got to the cathedral about fifteen minutes early and Penelope was already sitting there. I introduced her and Ashleigh (who I had been hanging out with for a few hours before mass). A few minutes later Ashleigh left and other choir people started arriving. There’s this one red headed girl who I thought was foreign too in the beginning, but she’s not, she’s from somewhere near DF. Her name is Paula and she sat next to me and chatted with me the whole time. She’s really nice and offered to show me around the city and take me to her other music school where I might be able to take guitar lessons!

She also helped me through the mass. Being with the choir at mass was like being backstage at a show that’s been playing for 20 years with the same cast. They were all goofing around and making hand gestures and still saying “Amen” in all the right places. There were several songs that we didn’t have music for because they all knew them by heart (any good Catholic would, I guess). In these cases, Paula would lean over and whisper the next line really fast to me right before we had to sing it. This had about a 20% success rate but it was nice of her to try. About an hour or so into it, Penelope realized that I’m not Catholic because I didn’t know about “passing the hand” (that’s the direct translation) and any good Catholic would know that. She immediately whispered the news to the organist (the guy who auditioned me) and it didn’t seem like too big of a deal. I wonder if he’ll give Cassandra a bad time about it.

After the mass, Paula walked me from the cathedral, down Avenida Juarez all the way to Federalismo (about ten blocks), pointing out landmarks and good cafes as we went. There’s a café near la Iglesia Diana (?) that I need to check out on a Frirday night. She asked me if I like dancing and told me she would take me out to the good places. When we got to Federalismo and passed through the park we turned towards Morelos and she walked me to where I could catch the bus. It was really nice of her to take the time to hang out with me. I hope this is a sign of the new possibilities choir will open up for me!

Lucha Libre

= AMAZING!



For those of you who don’t know, Lucha Libre is Mexico’s version of the WWE but WAY more entertaining. It’s full of ridiculous costumes and characters and some horrible stage fighting that gets slightly better as the night goes on. There’s lots of shouting and drinking and just general hilarity. I highly recommend it for those who can handle the macho shenanigans of the men in the crowd. Unfortunatley, cameras aren’t allowed so I didn’t get any pictures of this glorious night (the photo above is from the web).

I met Linda at Centro Magno last night around 7 and we had dinner at Subway before catching a taxi to the arena. There was some famous Puerto Rican singer named Cheyane (sp?) at the music store in Centro Magno and there were tons of screaming teenage girls crowded around the store’s windows. Right when Linda and I were leaving, he came up to the front windows of the store and all the girls pushed up against them and screamed even more. Then he started walking around the perimeter of the store for maximum exposure which meant all the screaming girls were rushing outside at the same moment we were just trying to leave. We got swept up in the current of the crowd and threw in a few high pitched screams, because we could.

We met Cassandra, Elan, Nikiya, Nikiya’s friend Denis, and a friend of Cassandra’s out in front of the arena. When we got inside we realized that we had front row seats! The wrestlers were literally less than ten feet away from us, sometimes on top of us. They liked to throw each other into the seats, especially our seats since we were a group of mostly gringas. I knew it was going to happen so I was ready to move if they got close, but Linda wasn’t ready, so the first time they did it she basically got a wrestler thrown on her. After that she tensed up anytime they got close to our side.

The best part about Lucha Libre is the cheering. More like jeering, really. Before the fight, Cassandra gave us a heads up and a crash course in Mexican swear words and insults. They turned out to be very useful. Most of the time the insults were directed at the wrestlers who would come to the edge of the ring and deal it right back. A lot of times the crowd picked one wrestler or team that they liked better and just mocked the other team mercilessly. The guy behind us was very creative with his insults and absolutely hilarious. Cassandra and her friend collapsed into hysterics at one point. One of the wrestlers in the last group was a gay guy, or at least his character was gay (Maximilion?), so the crowd had fun with that. The whole night if two wrestlers were in compromising positions the crowd would start chanting “Dale un beso!” (Give him a kiss!), but when the gay wrestler came out it became the principle cheer.

There was also a rivalry between different sections of the crowd. The seats where we were and all the others on the main floor are more expensive and the seats up in the balcony are cheaper, so all the insults thrown back and forth are class charged. Our section would start chanting something like, “You’re gonna miss your bus!” (because it’s assumed that since they are poorer they came to the arena by bus). Then the pobres would chant back, “Your mother brought you here!” and we would reply “Tu mama es mi chacha” (your mother is my maid). We would also just randomly start chanting “Pobres, pobres, chinga a su madre!” It never got old.

Another thing that never seemed to get old for the guys in the crowd was picking out any girl and targeting her. A lot of times it would be girls coming and going from the arena (to the bathroom or whatever), and as the girl walked in front of the audience their attention would turn to her and they would all start chanting “Vuelta! Vuelta!” (Turn around! Turn around!). Nothing really happened if the girl ignored them. Maybe the odd man would yell out some insult, but if you did turn for them they would all cheer. This happened to us a lot. Everytime we got up to get out of the way of the wrestlers who were being bashed into our seats, the guys sitting behind us would start the chant. Linda got caught three times (one time a wrestler took her hand and spun her), and after the third time a radio announcer came over and tried to interview her. She couldn’t understand anything he was saying (and neither could I) so he went away pretty fast, but it was still cool. Linda was on the radio!

The whole time, Linda and I were so into it. We picked out our favorites based on their costumes. There was a pretty funny guy dressed like un indio that we couldn’t help rooting for. I think all the women at Lucha Libre treat it kind of like a strip club, and take this as the time to let the machista come out in them too. It was so much fun!! I have to go back before I leave!

First Choir Rehearsal

I just got back from my first choir rehearsal! When I woke up this morning I didn’t know I was going today, but Cassandra sent me a text during my first class saying I was going to meet the director today.

After classes she walked me to the music school (only a few blocks from CEPE) to introduce me to the priest who runs the school and to the choral director. After we were introduced I was on my own. The director (whose name I still don’t know) led me to the classroom where rehearsals take place and sat me down at a desk in the front row. The classroom was already filling up with students and when they saw me walk in they all started going “Sssssssssssss.” At first I thought they were shushing each other but after a whole hour of hearing how they use it, it seems like a bad thing. I’m sure they didn’t mean it in a mean way. The few people I’ve talked to in the choir seem very nice. The girl sitting next to me (Penelope) made sure I knew what was going on and speaks a little English. She gave me her phone number after class in case I had any questions.

We sang through "Kyrie" and "Gloria" and one other but I can’t remember what it was called. I don’t know how long they’ve been working on these songs, but if they were sight reading I’m impressed. We sang through Gloria and the other one in solfege which I caught on to pretty quickly. Overall the rehearsal was easy. I think this will be a good practice for my Spanish and my music reading skills.

The only thing that bothered me was that the conductor kept assuming I didn’t understand what he was saying. In part, that was true, but I got the gist of it most of the time. I think it’s a tendency of the older generation to assume foreigners don’t understand because the students were nice and spoke to me in Spanish. After class I introduced myself to another group of girls and we chatted for a little bit. They are all students at the school for more than just choir, I think. One girl invited me out with them on Thursday, so I’m excited about that. I think I’ll finally start making some Mexifriends now! Rehearsals are every day at 1pm, so I’ll see them all the time.

When I came home and told Tere that I’m in a choir she knew exactly which one I was talking about and told me that Gabi and Pati both studied there. Pati also plays the mandolin. I learn something new every day.

Tonight, Lucha Libre! Time to take a nap.

Guanajuato!

Here are the highlights of my weekend in Guanajuato:

FRIDAY (2/26)
We left CEPE around 11am and none of us went to our first class, again. Cassandra rented a small SUV with a driver for us, so the drive only took like 3.5 hours. I have a feeling if we’d taken the bus it would have been more like 5 hours.

Guanajuato is such a cute, European-type city! It was one of the richest cities during Spanish rule in Mexico due to the productivity of the nearby silver mines. The city is protected by the government so the outsides of all the buildings have to remain the same and there are no neon signs anywhere. The cobblestone streets were narrow and lined with colorful buildings all jammed together. The city is nestled in a small valley, so the residential areas stretch up into the hills, dotting the hillside with all the colors of the rainbow, which reminded me of areas of San Francisco. Our hotel was right in the middle of everything, next to the Teatro Juarez, the original cathedral, and a cute town square. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that Guanajuato was some sort of Disneyland version of Mexico, it was that pristine.

After getting settled into our hotel, Elan, Nikiya, and I went out exploring the winding streets, looking for lunch. We ate at a café in a “busy” intersection in front of the big cathedral. After lunch we decided to attempt climbing up one of white crosses mounted on the top of one of the hills surrounding the city to get a good view from above. We just headed up a street near the café and kept walking up. It turned out that the cross was much farther than we had anticipated and none of us were very prepared for the long trek. We did, however, get to walk through some of the picturesque residential neighborhoods above the city. I took a lot of pictures. The whole thing was a little unorthodox (I don’t think the residents were used to seeing gringos in their neighborhood) and beautiful. I love a good spur of the moment decision. Once we came down the hill we explored the streets some more and then went back to the hotel for some rest.

We all met up with Cassandra for dinner at the restaurant next to Teatro Juarez. I had enchiladas with green sauce and we sat there for a long time. Afterwards Elan showed Nikiya and I an Irish pub he found and we got a few beers before turning in for an early night.

SATURDAY (2/27)
We met for a tour of the city (in Spanish) at 10am, or we were supposed to. This whole trip ran at least an hour late, but I didn’t mind. I’d like to say I could understand everything our guide was saying but I had to ask Cassandra for a lot of translations. We started at the Teatro Juarez, named for the President of Mexico in the late 1800s that funded several theaters all over Mexico. There’s a Teatro Juarez in Guadalajara too. We went all over the city including the childhood home of Diego Rivera and the Alhondiga where the Mexican revolution began in 1810. Both are now museums.

Diego Rivera’s house is a deceptively large museum full of his work, which varied tremendously through his life. One room would be cubist and the next would look like Aztec drawings and the next would be realistic portraits. It was really interesting to see how much one artist can change in a lifetime.

The Alhondiga is the building where all the Spanish fled when Mexican revolutionaries, lead by Father Miguel Hidalgo, stormed the city on September 16, 1810. The Spanish locked themselves inside this storehouse and shot at any Mexicans who got close. Finally, one man strapped a rock to his back to protect against the gunfire and carried a torch to the giant wood door and set it on fire. Once the door had burned down, the revolutionaries swarmed into the building and killed everyone inside. This is what Mexico celebrates on their Independence Day every September 16th. This year is the bicentennial so the party’s going to be big! Now, the Alhondiga is the second most important museum in Mexico and houses artifacts from the pre-colonial period all the way up to independence and onward.

After our tour we got lunch in this really cute square that we hadn’t found in our exploration of the city the day before. It was protected from the street, surrounded by buildings, and lined with restaurants on all sides. The meal I ordered was three courses and it took about 2.5 hours to get through lunch. No one else ordered as much as me so it felt like we were just sitting there for most of the time. It was really good though: tortilla soup, steak in really spicy sauce, and chocolate ice cream!

After lunch Nikiya and I took a taxi to the Mummy Museum a little outside the city. The mummies of Guanajuato are odd because they are unintentional and the circumstances which lead them to be put on display are equally strange. In the 1840s the government started taxing the people for their cemetery plots, and if the family didn’t pay for three years the body was exhumed. It was only when they started exhuming bodies that the people of Guanajuato discovered that the natural elements of the soil created accidental mummies. These mummies were put on display in the museum and started drawing tourists in the 1850s.

A lot of them still have clothes, hair, skin, everything. I was pretty creeped out the whole time but Nikiya loved it. She even bought a key chain replica of the smallest mummy on earth (a tiny little baby on display with its mom). The only interesting part to me was that some of the mummies had their life (and death) stories posted next to them. We were both a little disappointed by the exhibit because we had heard that there were 119 mummies but we only saw maybe 40. It only took us half an hour to get through the whole thing, so we decided to kill time by walking back. On the way back we went into the Mercado Hidalgo, a smaller version of the market San Juan de Dios in Guadalajara. We wandered around for a few hours, taking our time to get back and browsing the stores, and met Elan to take a look inside Teatro Juarez. It’s a beautiful Greek-style building on the outside that reminded me of a smaller version of the Paris opera house on the inside. It was really very pretty, but most of the building was blocked off so we could only see the theater and one of the salons upstairs.

After that Nikiya and I went back to our room and Elan went off exploring by himself again. He came by around 9 and we all went in search of pizza. We found a pretty ghetto place in the same little square we’d had lunch in and each got little pizzas. I have fun with these guys.

After dinner we were supposed to meet Cassandra at the karaoke bar across the street from our hotel but we wanted to wander around a bit first. We wandered into a bar called Why Not? because, why not? There was some sort of birthday party going on inside and we struck up a conversation with some of the people there. One guy, who must have been pretty drunk at this point, kept calling me and Nikiya “gringas” which got old, but the rest of the people were nice. Cassandra started texting me so we decided to leave and meet up with her. I was reluctant to go because Why Not? was really fun, but oh well. The first bar we went into with her had a very loud live band and we were seated right in front of them. I couldn’t hear anything so I got a little grumpy. Then we went to check out the karaoke bar but there weren’t any songs in English. It seemed like all the songs were equivalents of Elvis or Britney Spears or Journey as far as the enthusiasm in singing along. Cassandra and Nikiya sang a Julietta Venegas song, “Me Voy,” and by the time they finally got to go it was like 1 am the bar was pretty much empty.

SUNDAY (2/28)
We had breakfast around 10 and left the hotel for San Miguel de Allende about an hour behind schedule. This, only to find out that our driver had left the headlights on and the car was out of batteries. He didn’t have jump cables so we had to sit around for another half hour while he went in search of cables. He got one taxi driver who claimed to have cables but apparently he didn’t. What a weird thing to lie about. Elan said he hit another car as he was leaving the parking lot too. Our driver eventually found another taxi with jump cables and we were on our way.

San Miguel de Allende is another colonial town about an hour east of Guanajuato. I learned today that it’s also the home town of Miguel Hidalgo (the priest that led revolutionaries to Guanajuato in 1810). In a lot of ways I like San Miguel de Allende better because it wasn’t as pristine as Guanajuato. It looked like people actually lived there but at the same time it felt like stepping back in time, not like stepping into Disneyland. It had the prettiest church I’ve seen in Mexico so far and several lush, green town squares which were full of people because it was Sunday. There was a big market that had a lot of really good little shops. Their specialty seemed to be metal work which makes sense since that area made its money from the silver mines back in colonial times and still. I bought myself a cute little ring for my left pinky. I had never found a ring I felt like I could wear every day before, so when the woman said it was 120 pesos and I only had 140 left I still felt like I had to have it. This turned out to be a big mistake because I still hadn’t eaten lunch. Cassandra offered to pay for me so we went to a place inside the market and had some delicious chicken tacos for 30 pesos. It turned out she owed me money for going to the Mummy Museum so it all evened out in the end.

After lunch we wandered around the city for half an hour or so. I wish we’d had more time and that I’d had more money, but so goes life.