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Published: October 19th 2006
So, I have been here for almost three weeks and have been taking classes at a language school the whole time. I originally planned to study there for four weeks and then use one week to travel around with my friend Chris. But now I think I´m going to leave the school a week early and wander around by myself until I meet up with Chris.
The school has been good for me. My spanish is definitely better than when I arrived (not that it really could have gotten worse!). But I´m realizing that I´m not going to learn as much about the language in four weeks as I thought I would. I had unrealistic expectations of being able to speak really well in spanish after a few classes, but I now know that being fluent in the language is going to take a lot of study (obviously). I can take classes back in Texas with people that can explain things to me in English when I don´t understand, so to sit in a classroom here feels like a waste of time. For now I can speak enough to get by (kind of!) and I´m going to go for it. I just bought a big book of maps and I´m going to decide on a rough travel plan tonight or tomorrow.
As far as an update on what I´ve been doing for the last three weeks:
I have stayed with the family the whole time. I really like them and would recommend them to anyone that happens to be reading this and is planning to visit Guanajuato. At first I couldn´t understand them well, but now I usually know what they´re talking about and I can talk to them without too much difficulty. Well, I still can´t understand the kids, but I can´t understand some kids that speak english, either.
Also, there is a big festival in Guanajuato right now called Festival Internacional de Cervantino. There are a lot of people here for the festival and a lot of shows. I have seen the opera Carmen, a ballet folklorico, a horrible band called Sonik Gurus, a rock opera, some guys from Colombia that play accordion, a modern dance thing in a beautiful theatre here, some dude from Belgium playing the piano in another theatre, some art exhibits, and lots and lots of street performances. There is constantly something going on, and most of it is free. It´s pretty cool.
Besides the festival and my classes I have just been wandering around Guanajuato a lot and seeing the sights. Last night some Canadian friends from the school invited me over for dinner. They live close to this monument called Pipila that has a great overview of the downtown area of the city, so I went there. I have also been to some of the museums, including the mummy museum. There is a really large cemetary here and apparently in the 1800´s if a family couldn´t pay to keep their dead relative in the cemetary the city would dig the relative up and cremate him/her. Doing this, they realized that the soil in the cemetary is so rich that it perserved some of the bodies of the people that were buried there (kind of like mummification). So they put them in a museum. It´s interesting in a strange way. Some of the mummies still have clothes on or still have hair. A couple of them are babies. Apparently the guides tell stories about how some of the people died, but since they were speaking in spanish, I had no idea. I would imagine that most of them are legends anyways.
Guanajuato is a nice city and there are still a lot of museums and stores that I want to check out. I think I´ll spend the weekend here wandering around and maybe buying some souveniers. Oh, and I finally had a margarita. It was at a very touristy restaurant, but it was one of the best margaritas I have ever had. And, surprisingly, I´m getting a little tired of mexican food. I never thought I would say that! It´s all really good, but I just like to have a lot of variety. But there are lots of restaurants here that I haven´t tried yet, so I think I´ll be okay.
Things should start to get more interesting when I leave here, so I´ll try to update more often then. Maybe!
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billy
non-member comment
i wanna be in a museum. i don't care where it is. now you know my last dieing wish. unless i can be buried at second base at the ballkpark in arlington.