It is Thursday today. I can’t believe that this week is almost over… with no time markers to keep track of where I am, I feel like I’ve lost track of this week entirely. I keep intending to blog, but on top of having no sense of time, I’m also completely exhausted by the end of the day.
So let me work backwards and drop a few bloggy breadcrumbs along the path of this week. Today, like every day this week, was mostly taken up with classes. We start at 9 am, and each class is 50 minutes long. I have four classes a day, and the kids only have two, so for my third class (just before the lunch break) and my fourth class, the kids are just hanging around.
We’ve worked out a bit of a routine, however. While I have my third class, the kids are usually reading their books or (primarily Monk) drawing. What’s kind of astounded me so far this trip is the rate at which these kids are blowing through the books we brought. Monk, who is usually not a fast reader and would generally prefer to draw, as of this afternoon, has finished both of the books we brought for him. He’s now started on one of the books that Moon finished a couple of days ago. Thankfully, Moon brought two books from the series he’s reading, so if Monk gets into it (and it looks like he will, judging from his assessment of the first chapter), then he’ll have two 300-odd page books to get through. At the rate he’s been going, he’ll likely be finished both by the time we leave Guanajuato.
Same deal with Moon, but the problem is that I don’t have much else for him to read. He’s about 100 pages from finishing the second big book, and I think he brought one more that is quite a bit shorter. He can also read one of the books that Monk brought — so by all accounts we probably have about three or four days of reading material left for him. The good thing is that we’d heard about a bookstore in town selling english books, and after searching all over for it yesteday and today, we finally found it tonight. Unfortunately after it had already closed. At least we know where it is now, though — and I have to say, finding things in this city is no simple matter. On the other hand, everything is really close together, so eventually you start to learn the maze of streets fairly well.
Ok, so that just about sums up how our time is spent here when we’re not at the school: we wander. Today our mission was the bookstore; yesterday it was the bank (to change money). As we wander around, we’re checking out all the hostels we run across (there are a few listed in the lonely planet guidebook, but we’ve only seen two of those in our wanders — compared to five or six others that aren’t listed in the book).
The reason we’re looking at hostels is that the classes and homestay ended up costing more than I’d planned for, and I refuse to go above budget (I’m also saving pesos for another, very much more exciting reason which I will get to in a minute). But when we first arrived at the school on Monday, I was assigned four classes a day, which is the standard schedule for students. I explained to the guy who is in second command (first in command reminds me of the queen — she is very regal and does not seem to get her hands dirty with petty admin details) that the price I was quoted through email was based on only two classes a day, but he kind of waved that aside and told me that we’d figure it out later. We did, the next day (Tuesday), and by then I’d figured that taking more classes in the first week here is not necessarily a bad thing. And when I added up all the numbers, I realized that we are paying something more than double for our homestay compared to what we’d pay in a hostel. I decided to pay for the extra classes and leave the homestay after one week, leaving us looking for a good hostel for the last 11 days of our stay.
Although I love the family we’re staying with, I’ll be glad to be moving to a hostel after spending a week here. It will be nice to have a bit more autonomy (ie., not having to truck up the enormous hill to get here for supper at 4:30 pm each day), and also to be closer to the centre of town. Like I mentioned, we’ve looked a what feels like a gazillion hostels (ok, maybe 5 or 6), and we’ve narrowed down one that is both clean and attractive, and not too expensive. We actually saw one tonight on our way home that was by far the nicest we’ve seen, but it was also $100 pesos more a night, plus we’d have to switch rooms halfway through our stay because the nicer room (the one with a window to the outside) is booked for the last half of the time we need. So tomorrow we’ll go check out the second-nicest we’ve seen — for the second time, since the first time we looked at it the room was occupied. Based on the rest of the hostel, though, I think it will be fine for our stay — a clean, well-equipped kitchen, clean bathrooms and a nice rooftop terrace. Plus I’m pretty sure that both private rooms have outside windows, which is a must as far as I’m concerned.
There are other happenings worth mention, aside from the school being great (in terms of small classes and awesome teachers, not in terms of the growing sense I have that it is a serious money-making operation that is quite a bit more expensive than it needs to be….). Our family is lovely, and they took us to the park yesterday so the kids could play soccer (pictures over there on flickr). Also yesterday, on our money-changing mission to find the bank, Moon led us on a great back-street route that took us up to the monumento el pipila and an amazing view of the city (pics also on flickr).
Also yesterday, as we were looking for one of the hostels listed in our guidebook, a friendly fellow stopped and asked if we needed any help. I told him what we were looking for, and so he showed us, asking us along the way the typical questions about where we are from, etc. He mentioned that he knew people from Alma Mater U in Lovely City — as it turns out, he is a historian at Universidad de Guanajuato. We had a nice chat and I asked if he knew anyone who could speak to me about my research topic — and he said that yes, of course, he could talk to me about it. I got his email address and we went on our way, but then we randomly ran into him again this afternoon (walking down a different street) and we had another nice chat. He offered to go with us for a tour of the colonial mine here in town, so I think we will go on Sunday. Fortuitous meeting indeed — I hope that he can fill me in on some historical-type questions I have about my research topic.
Also this weekend we are going to a fiesta for the birthday of our homestay mama’s brother on Saturday. I brought with us some yummy smoked salmon for a gift from home, so I think I will break that out for a treat that folks may not have tried before. If there is one thing that is clear about the local culture — they love food! We’ve been eating quite well here, although I still haven’t quite figured out the system for food cooking/storage. There are often pots on the stove starting early in the morning (our homestay mama also works at the university, though I think in an admin-type job) — it seems like a lot of the food must be par-cooked early in the day, and then reheated or cooked more later. In any case, it is not fancy but everything is muy muy delicioso.
And…. now for the most exciting and awesomest part of this update: Tab A is coming to meet us for a week after we leave Guanajuato!! I am soososososss000 happy that he’s coming down — and for the best, most vacationy part of the whole trip, when we are going to a little surfing town just north of Puerto Vallarta for a few days at the beach. It worked out brilliantly — he’ll fly to Gaudalajara, and we’ll meet him there to spend the night before heading out to the coast on the bus the next day. Three nights and four days of beach lounging/surfing/sipping fruity drinks, and then back to Guadalajara for all of the boys to fly out on the same flight. The kids will stay in LA with my sister and dad, and Tab A continues on back up north, bringing the Mexican warmth with him to ward off our grey chills.
So, yay, this trip just got 1000x better!
And based on these first few days, I am so happy that we are coming back for a year (and not just because it will take me that long to speak spanish at least as well as a 5-year old). Next up: things that astonish (and please) me about the culture here, and how I might want to stay forever,