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
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