Guanajuato por fin

I have 27 days left in Mexico. This means I have less than a month to find Zorro.
Tuesday my only class was cancelled (are we starting to see a pattern?) because my classmates had to go to a conference. I went to the market with mis padres. Later that day I went downtown with Kelsey, and we were sitting in a plaza filling out postcards. A guy came up trying to get us to buy something. I told him I didn’t have change. He told me he’d take a bill. I told him no. He talked a bit more, and then asked if I wanted to go smoke some marijuana with him. Lovely. He may not have enough money to visit his family, but at least he has enough money for drugs.
Wednesday both of my classes were cancelled. It was día del estudiante (Student’s day) but that didn’t really have anything to do with it. We went to a presentation during the first one, and then when I got to the second one, someone told me we wouldn’t be having it. Thursday I went to class and then someone said we weren’t having class, instead we were going to go look at our grades. I thought they must mean the grades from our last essays, but they meant our final grades. Our professor is so pregnant that she doesn’t want to have class the last two weeks. I got a 9.5 (grades in Mexico are from 1-10), but the .5 rounds down to a 9. I can’t complain about that though, seeing as how I don’t have to write the final paper, and I got a 9 in a class taught in Spanish. Not only that, but it was a 6th semester linguistics class, and I’ve never taken a linguistics class in my life. Now I will only be having class Mondays and Wednesdays.
Thursday night I hung out with some of the students from Hope. We basically had an American night, as we met in Starbucks, went to McDonalds, and then went to the mall.

Friday morning I went to the market with them. The Hope kids are all really nice, and being around them has made me realize how much I have improved. When I hear them talk in Spanish, I am reminded of where I was at the beginning of the semester. I may not have improved as much as I would have liked to, but I have definitely improved more than I had realized.
This weekend I went to Guanajuato with Kelsey. It is the capital of the state Guanajuato, and it’s about 2 hours from Querétaro. We left in the afternoon on Friday. We found our hostel and walked around el centro. We saw the plaza principal (main square), the teatro (theatre), la basilica, and la Universidad de Guanajuato, which is a really cool building with a pretty view (although pretty much everywhere in Guanajuato has a pretty view).
The theatre:

We watched part of a performance of la estudiantina, a group that walks around and plays.

Our hostel was right over a bar, so we didn’t get much sleep.
Saturday we went to the market. There are a whole bunch of fondas, or teeny restaurants, and as we were walking up to them to figure out where we were going to eat, the owners all start waving the menus, calling out, and making noises to get you to come to theirs. We walked to a building called the Alhóndiga, which I will explain later. Then we went to callejón del beso (Alley of the kiss), which is a really tiny alley. At one point it’s so tiny that the two balconies across from each other almost touch. Legend has it that two lovers kept apart used to kiss from these balconies.

Basilica:

Main Square:

We walked through a lot of plazas and stores, and then walked far away from downtown to see a park by a dam. The dam was empty because they were doing construction. We went back downtown and rode the funicular up to the Pípila statue.

The statue is of a man holding a torch. At one point, the Spanish were occupying Guanajuato, and they had locked the Alhóndiga, which is where all of the food was stored. If anyone tried to get to the door to unlock it, the Spanish would shoot them. This guy carried a stone big enough to cover his body along with a torch, and burned down the door of this building so the townspeople could enter and get food. The statue is at the top of a huge hill with a beautiful view of the city.

el centro:

We hung out there for a bit and actually ran into one of our classmates, which was quite a surprise.
Sunday we went to the Casa Diego Rivera museum, which is the house where Diego Rivera (famous Mexican artist) was born. It’s four stories, the bottom story has all of the typical furniture from that time period, the 2nd and 3rd stories have his artwork, and the 4th story has art from other artists. On the way back to our hostel we ran into Pierre, who was also there for the weekend with other students from his program. We wandered around some more walking through the tunnels.

There are tunnels underneath the whole city, it’s pretty neat, and a nice way to avoid too much traffic in the city streets. Later we went to the Don Quixote museum, which had artwork from all over featuring Don Quixote.

We got back to Querétaro and I caught up with mis padres who had been in a different state for a wedding.
Photo album from this weekend: Guanajuato

hasta que el dinero nos separe...

Sarah, the girl from Hope who lived here last semester, was here visiting this week, so she slept in my room and we shared stories. A group of 10 students and a teacher from Hope had arrived earlier in the week for a two-month summer program. I saw them for the first time on Wednesday. I talked to some of the students, two of which are actually living in the same area as me, and chatted with the professor too. I believe that I will end up going on a trip or two with them, so I’m pretty excited about that. My second class on Wednesday was cancelled. This happens quite often, but it’s always a nice surprise.
Thursday after class I had coffee with a friend. I always cringe when someone invites me to coffee when they mean actual coffee – I’m just not a fan. However, this was café de olla, which means coffee prepared in a pot, and it’s prepared with piloncillo, which is obtained from the boiling and evaporation of sugarcane juice. It was delicious, probably because it tasted nothing like coffee.
The weekend wasn’t extremely exciting, but I was still trying to catch up on sleep from last weekend. Saturday I went to one of the markets in town. I didn’t buy anything, but it’s always fun to look. Also I had the best horchata I’ve had down here. I took a delightful two-hour nap, and later in the night one of the families that comes over for the weekly card game came over. The boy, Edgar, is 8 (I think) and he never has anything to do. He showed me the toys we bought, and then I asked if he wanted to play a game. He showed me the program on his dad’s phone to make music, and then the program to take pictures and edit it. I got my computer and played in photo booth with him. He absolutely loved the effects, and Maria (his sister, who’s around 13) came over to see what all the laughing was about. We spent the rest of the night taking pictures while the adults played their card game.

Playing with the effects:

Sunday mis padres invited Laurel and I to come to the church. They go to the first mass and stick around for the next two to sell tamales, waffles, fresh orange juice, and atole afterwards.

They were leaving at 7am, so they had their friends pick us up and take us at 9. We ate waffles (mine had cajeta, chocolate syrup, and strawberries with cream…so good) and then went to the ten o’clock mass. It was the kid’s mass, and it was different than any mass I’ve been to in the US. The songs were more modern, and were performed by a band (I could see about 7 guitars, 2 tambourines, and 4 singers, but there might have been more instruments). The kids all gathered at the front for the sermon part. There was a puppet and it was more of a asking questions sermon than an actual message. For communion, it wasn’t dismissed row-by-row, rather whoever wanted to go up went up. The adults went first, and no one took the Eucharist in their hands, it was placed in everyone’s mouths. The kids went up next, and they got real bread.
Later that day Pierre invited me to Starbucks. It was a nice sibling bonding experience. We chatted over delicious drinks.
This was the first week I actually felt like my speaking has improved. I still stumble over my words, so it could be that the change is completely psychological. Either way, I’ll take it.

Hoy prefiero sopa

Last week I talked about the confusion of whether or not we were having an extended weekend or just a day off this week. Well, mi madre had called the school, and they told her that we would have Wednesday off. Tuesday I got to school and people were saying we were in fact having school on Wednesday but that we wouldn’t be having class on Friday instead. This turned out to be just a rumor, but it amazes me that there can be so much confusion the day before a possible day off!
Wednesday was a lovely day. I spent time sunbathing, planning the weekend, and making cookies (side note – they do not sell brown sugar in Walmart in Mexico).

Anyway, we had the day off as it was Cinco de Mayo – the 5th of May. Now, in the US, this is a big deal. However, in Mexico, it isn’t. Yes, we got the day off of school, but that’s it. The only place it is celebrated is Puebla, the town where the battle occurred (for those of you who do not know, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s Independence Day, but was the day that a battle occurred between the mexicans and the french).
Our plans for the weekend were to go to Hidalgo, which is the state east of Querétaro. Luis (one of the guys who lives here) called his uncle, who owns a hotel in Pachuca (the capital), for us so we'd have a place to stay, but on Thursday my “aunt” offered me the keys to her mom’s house. Her mom is here visiting, so the house was empty. What a nice offer!

Friday mis padres drove Kelsey, Laurel, and I to the bus station. They were going to pick up Sarah, a girl from Hope who was here last semester and was coming back for a visit, and told us they’d leave a bit early so they could take us. We didn’t make reservations this time (not for lack of trying – the bus station phone line was always busy). We wanted to take a direct bus at 7:30, but it was full, so we went to the next company, and their bus was supposed to leave at 8:30, but it wasn’t going to be direct. Oh well. The bus ended up not coming until 8:50 because there was an accident, and we didn’t leave until after 9. My “aunt” told me that her sister would be there to pick us up from the bus station, so I called her around 11:30 to tell her that we were still 2 hours away, and to tell her we could just take a taxi. She said her son would be picking us up and that he would be out and about anyway. We arrived after 1 and waited for Yerfry to pick us up. Him and his friend, Jesus wanted us to go out dancing, but we were tired. They took us back to the house, and showed us how stuff works and how to get water for showers and stuff (you had to hook a wire onto the metal box, and sparks would fly everywhere…a little scary). We started asking about taxis and places, and they told us that they’d just take us around the next day. We talked a bit more, and they talked Laurel and I into going downtown to see how pretty it is at night. We saw the clock, which is in some way or another a replication of Big Ben.

We listened to a mariachi band and then drove to Real del Monte, the next town over, which they said was also pretty at night. We ended up getting home at 4:30.

The next morning, Saturday, they came back to pick us up at 9:30. We tried to unlock the door, but we couldn’t figure it out. Then we realized that we didn’t have the right keys, they did, and they had more or less locked us in. It was quite comical, and I had flashbacks of Jessi’s wedding (haha Jess).
We drove to Omitlán de Juárez, but really only stopped to buy some CDs. We had some breakfast and were off to the Basaltic Prisms, which is on the list of the 13 wonders of Mexico. “Rocky formations thousands of years old made of basalt prisms originated by abrupt lava cooling. The construction of a dam complements the waterfall that covers these geometric figures.” Now the water flow is controlled, but before the water all collected into a river.



Then we drove to a park that I believe was in San Miguel Regla, where we walked around and rented a rowboat for a bit.

We drove past a lookout and then through the centro, where we saw the clock again.


We went back to Jesus’ house to eat and then played pool, air hockey, foosball, and danced a bit. We then went back to Real del Monte, where we ate pasties, which are a traditional dish there because it’s a mining town. We ate one “traditional” one, which had potatoes and veggies in it as well as one sweet one, mine had strawberries.

Sunday the boys picked us up again and we picked up a chicken for lunch and drove to Teotihuacán, which is in the state of Mexico. It was the capitals of the Aztecs and is pretty close to Mexico City. We didn’t have a ton of time, but we picnicked and climbed the two largest pyramids.
Me on top of Pyramid of the Moon, Pyramid of the Sun is in the background:

Pyramid of the Moon:

View from Pyramid of the Sun (which is the second largest pyramid in the "new world"):

They had to be home early, so we hung out at the house and then went to the mall to find some food. I ate at Vips for the first time. Vips is pretty much all over in Mexico, but it’s owned by Walmart, so it’s pretty much American-Mexican food. It was good though. When we returned to the house, we tried calling the bus station to make plans for the next day, but we couldn’t get a hold of any one that could help us.

Monday we woke up early and went to the bus station. We got on a bus to go to Ixmiquilpan, which is about 2 hours north of Pachuca. There’s a nice little story in which I could have been detained by immigration, but I will save that story for when I get home. Ask me about it some time, it’s a good one. We got dropped off on the side of the road near Ixmiquilpan, got some food, and entered a water park type thing. We asked the people at the gate if we could call the bus station to find out what times we could get back to Querétaro, but they weren’t that helpful. One guy inside the park started talking to us and ended up driving to the bus station to check the times for us. He found us in the pool later and gave us the schedule! People here are just so nice. Anyway, the park had a bunch of pools full of thermal waters, most of them around 90 degrees. It was lovely.

We stayed there for about three hours, and were told to cross the road and get on a bus that says “Luza” to get to the bus station. We just missed one and were told that the next one wouldn’t come for another 15 minutes, so we were pretty sure we would have to wait over an hour to start heading home. Just then a bus pulled up that said Querétaro, which is the bus we would have gotten on if we had made it to the bus station on time. Perfect. We got back to Querétaro and went to the store to buy flowers and chocolates for our madres, as it was Mother’s day here (which is why I didn’t have school, it’s a much more important holiday here than it is in the US).
New Foods:
Chayote dulce - This is a dessert where you carve out the fruit (chayote is a fruit, I'd never heard of it), mix it with sugar and vanilla, and then put it back in the peel/skin. Mi madre dribbled chocolate sauce on it and put a few dehydrated strawberries on it too.
Crepas Saludables – healthy crepes. I had tried other types of crepes before (with cajeta, chocolate, and/or ice cream), but this week mi madre made what she called healthy crepes. They were filled with spinach and onions, but the sauce was made from butter and flour, so I’m not sure how healthy they really were…
Dedo de novia – (girlfriend/bride’s finger). It’s one of the kinds of Arabic sweets that mi madre makes. It’s a roll made of flaky bread, and this particular kind was filled with pecans, but mi madre said it could be filled with a lot of different things. She put cajeta on it and it was delicious.
Enfrijoladas – basically like enchiladas but instead of being covered in chile (a spicy sauce), it’s covered in frijoles (beans).
Tamal dulce – sweet tamale. Like regular tamales, it’s made from a corn based dough, but it has a lot more sugar in it, and then they fill it with cajeta and pecans. Delicious.
Esquite - Corn kernels boiled in water with herbs. It's served in a cup and add either lime juice, spicy powder, and salt or else mayonnaise, cream, and cheese. It was ok.
Flan Napolitano – I don’t know that I’ve ever had regular flan, but this flan had a different texture than regular flan, and mi madre covered it in cajeta and put strawberries on the side.
Pictures from the Weekend:
Hidalgo and Mexico

fe fe fe

It was a long but not necessarily interesting week.
Monday both of my classes were cancelled. I had gotten a text Sunday night that my first class Monday would be cancelled, as my classmates had gone on a field trip for a different class and didn’t return until after midnight, so they decided they weren't going. This worked out well, as I was exhausted from my weekend in Cuernavaca. I enjoyed my relaxed morning and walked to school for the second class, only to find out that it was cancelled because the professor had a conference to go to. When I returned home for lunch, mis padres informed me that we would be getting a student from Canada for the summer, who will be attending a different university in Querétaro.
Jumping back to last week Tuesday, because I forgot to mention it then: I went with a friend to a high school where he teaches an English class three days a week. The students asked me questions and I responded. They’re at a very basic level, so it was fun to hear the mistakes that they made and to know why they made them. It made me miss ESL though.
A little example of the disorganization at la UAQ – there had been rumors going around at the school about whether or not we were going to have a break this week (as in the week of May 3rd), as Saturday was a holiday and so is Wednesday. I was told that it was possible that we’d celebrate Saturday’s holiday on Monday and Wednesday’s on Tuesday, so we’d have a four-day weekend. On Wednesday, I asked a classmate if this was true. She didn’t know. We asked the professor. He didn’t know. I went to the Office of Mobility, they didn’t know. Mind you, this was less than a week before the possible break was to occur! In the end, mi madre ended up calling the school, to find out that we did not in fact have a long weekend, but just a break on Wednesday.
The summer students have begun to arrive on campus. I was in the computer lab on Wednesday when I heard two guys speaking in English. They’re with a group from the University of Oregon.
Friday was “día de los niños,” or kids day, in Mexico. Mis padres gave me three cajeta suckers. I was content.
Saturday I went to el centro with Kelsey. We ate more tepoznieve (this time I had tres leches (three milks) and canto de sirena (mermaid’s song, which had peach, pineapple, and other fruits)). Both were delicious, of course.
When I got back home, the family was over playing cards, so I joined in. We had cake, as it was one of the relative’s birthdays.
Around 11, mis padres went to the bus terminal to pick up Pierre, the Canadian that they had told me about earlier in the week. Sunday mis padres were at church when we woke up, so I showed him around and we chatted about ourselves and about Mexico. He’s 38 and working on his MBA. He’s from Quebec, but has lived in Minnesota for the last 11 years, so he speaks both French and English, and is quite good at Spanish too. We all ate breakfast together when mis padres returned, and he jumped right in with their teasing me. Mis padres love that. Later I showed him around Walmart and the neighborhood.
This is the longest college semester of my life. While most of my friends have finished school or are currently taking exams, I have 5 more weeks of classes and 7 more weeks in Mexico. Ah, well. Good experience.
I took a total of 4 pictures this week, but they're not worth posting.
Next week's blog should be more exciting!