Guanajuanto y Puerto Vallarta


Well, I'm down to little over a month here in Mexico and what do I have to say for myself? I really dont know. My Spanish is decent but not fluet, still. I think if I had maybe 6 more months I would have it down pat. But life back in the US is calling me...sadly. I plan to go home May 16th in order to have some good time to study before I take the LSATs June 11th. I have found that my focus has decidedly changed over the past several weeks. It has gone from learning Spanish to preparing for the LSAT and my return home which includes finding a summer job. Once out of practice that comes with college life, multitasking I am finding is increasingly difficult. Maybe its because I'm in a country that doesn't seem to take too much too seriously and is easy to surround yourself with people like to relax...alot. Maybe it's because I am not working and spend most of my days working out, running errands and worrying about the LSAT. Or maybe it's because I'm getting old. This is a fact I coming to terms with, however very slowly. By no means do I think of myself as "old" but 23 does feel different than 19. It's wierd. Like I actually have to warm up before capoeira. I get upset when the warm-up isn't sufficient. I actually have to go to the gym for more than a week to get back into shape. I feel like I need to exercise as opposed to it being an option that I simply enjoyed. Grrr.

Anyways, I have at least been doing some traveling over the past few weeks. I went to Guanajuato with Zoe. It is a beautiful, romantic little town with tons of color. It is famous for its mummy museum which of course we went to. I have to say it was interesting but after about the 20th Mummy, I was ready to go. There were of course many more. Apparently the land in which these people were buried (many children) preserved much of their remains and mummified them. I didn't quite get the whole story but it was pretty cool. We also visited the Calle de besos and the Pila which was this big statue . I think she symbolized freedom. Zoe told me the story but I have troubel remembering things in Spanish. I think it's becuase I put so much energy in trying to understand and less into remembering what people are actually saying. Oh well. It was a really nice little trip. The first nigth we stayed in this really run down hotel where we were afraid to take a shower. My roomate had recommended it us because it was cheap but definitely wasn't worth it. The next day we a nice room in this woman's house for only a little bit more than the hotel. the house was huge so it was kind of like a hotel and we were on the top floor and so luckily had privacy. The lady who ran the place was kinda wierd and was ALWAYS around to great us whether we were coming or going. The only other bad was that the city was packed while we were there. I think it was some holiday weekend because there were a ton of people. But other than that, I took tons of pictures and we had a nice, relaxing weekend.

Last week, my friend Jess came to visit me. I was really happy to have a visitor. The first and only one since I have been here despite the fact that other people have said they were coming to visit me (You know who you are! FEEL BAD!). LOL. But we had a great time. I took her to Talaquepaque (a really cute suburb of GDL) and we walked around, did a little shopping, ate and watched Mariachi. We went out Salsa dancing Saturday nigth with some of my friends and Zoe (who can dance her lil booty off) was helpin her out. Then we went ot Puerto Vallarta (the beach) for a few days. All the Mexicans say it's not really that nice of a beach, so I was expecting to see some dirty filthy place. But it actually was really nice. The beach was clean and the water pretty. There was a nice boardwalk that we must have walked up and down about 50 times during our three day stay. We ate at nice restaurants and hung out on the beach (where I definitely got burned :-( ). Our hotel was also pretty cute and nice for less than $40/night. The only thing that I didn't like was that it was really expensive and there were a ton of foreigners. Things that I had bought in other places in Mexico for maybe 100 pesos were being sold for 400. I couldn't beleive it. It was kinda making me mad too becuase I knew it was such a rip-off. Now I know it may sound silly that it bothers me that there were so many foriegners, but it's true. I think I'm going to have a bit of culture shock when I return to the US. It's just that they were sooo stereotypical. Really white, some really fat who felt the need to show the whole world their blubber, and of course the frat boys. And of course to cater to all the foreigners, all the Mexicans speak English. So Jess and I were both a little upset in the beginnging because here we are in Mexico, but in this little beach town that might as well be any beach town in the US. We of course opted to speak in Spanish to everyone there. I mean we were in Mexico afterall. On our last day, we were eating in this cool shrimp restaurant and the waiter actually thanked us for speaking in Spanish and mirrored our sentiments that if he were in the US, he would have to speak English and appreciated the fact that we took enough interest to learn Spanish. So we liked that. And I had always heard that Puerto Vallarta was a really gay place, so I thought I would go looking for the gay people. It turned out that we were on the opposite side of the beach from teh gay onclove. So sad. It was really kind of wierd too because we had to cross this dark uncrowded part of the beach to get to the otherside. It literally was like a divide between the two sides. Kind of messed up right? But almost as soon as we got to the otherside there were rainbow flags everywhere. There was even a rainbow reality office. The bar we were heading to, unfortunately, was closed that night. :-( But anyways, the trip was nice and I got to see another side of Mexico, even it was like being in the States.

Well the plan for the next few weeks is just to enjoy my time here. We (Zoe and I) plan to go to Chiapas in the south of Mexico at the end of the month. My volunteer program is closed for the next few weeks for semana santa and pascua. So I will fill my days doing well something....