El finde

So much to report on, I’ll jump right in…(The pictures are from Sunday and having nothing to do with the text next to them.)

Friday I met with my “amiga”. She’s an English teacher, which is absolutely perfect. We met at the mall, picked up her boyfriend after his class, invited a couple other English teachers she works with, went to Wing’s Army (very similar to Bdubs) to watch Mexico play Educador (I think it was Ecuador, but can’t remember for sure. It was a 0 v 0 tie, so nothing too exciting.), went and hung out at her apartment, told travel stories, attempted to dance, went to hear a dj at a bar. I really enjoyed the evening. I got to meet a lot of Mexicans and practice lots of Spanish. The most surprising thing is almost all of the English teachers had near perfect English, so they didn’t even really care to practice. Every now and then they asked a question, but for the most part they totally kept to Spanish for my sake. Best of all, since they are teachers, they were really aware of the words that would trip me up in stories and could catch them and explain them right away for me. Por ejemplo: I’ve always learned swimming pool as piscina, here they use alberca though. So there was no way I would’ve figured that one out on my own. I’ve heard it at least five times since!

Saturday I went with one of the English teachers I met on Friday to two birthday parties. It was a really gracious invitation considering we’d just met. The first was in las bougainvilleas district of the city. It’s closer to the mountains and completely reminded me of LA. It’s also where the SUPER rich of Guadalajara live. It was a fun drive there just seeing the houses, gardens and mountains. We arrived at a sort of sports complex, which really confused me because I thought we were going to a bday party. The party was there, under a HUGE tiki style hut. The family had rented it out for their fiesta. We hung out with a lot of the people from Friday night again and some new people as well. The party guests had already eaten, but after a little money changed hands with a waiter (which it turned out wasn’t actually needed because they actually knew the chef), we were able to get a couple plates of food. They ended up giving us so much that we hardly made a dent. Once satisfied there, we headed for the next party.

The next party was for a grandmother, so very family style. First we went to the family’s house near town, I met a few other people. (Really really nice girls. And Iscel has a killer custom designed “AMORE” necklace I’m completely jealous of.) Then we all headed out to Cajititlan Lake to their uncle’s house for the party.

The drive itself was quite surprising. It was my first exposure to “the other side” of Mexico. It was really a humbling experience to see the living conditions outside of the city. It was a really good reminder as to why I’m here and motivator for me to really do some good things. That can be a little hard to see in the affluent city sometimes.

We made it to the uncle’s house. It was a very Florida country club style community. Being around the Mexican family was my favorite part of the weekend. I watched them sing karaoke, run around spraying each other with foam, harassing the grandfather to sing to the grandmother, the dad catching a baby tarantula and showing it off to everyone there, and finally DANCING. 

This I have to say is where we are really lacking in American culture. It seems everywhere else I go, people know how to dance. They dance with their parents, cousins, siblings, anyone! as they grow up and as a result it makes for super fun parties. We, on the other hand hardly even hug or kiss our relations, let alone willingly press ourselves up against them and run around until we’re sweaty. I think it makes for a good representation of the closeness of families. Of course there are exceptions, but I don’t think anyone could argue against the fact that there are far more taboos in the US then in Mexico. Whereas in the US we usually bring friends to help entertain us at parties, Mexicans are content to only celebrate with their families (and an occasional foreigner like me!). I like this.

We drove up to the lake, but it was dark. It was really nice to see the glow of the lights from Guadalajara (known as GDL  from now on) with the sound of the lake lapping against the shore. Que tranquilidad. We drove back, I talked to Yann a bit and then Saturday was over.

Sunday I went on a group tour around GDL. Rather than talk a bunch about it, I’m just going to leave you with these pictures...Let me know what you think or if you have any questions.

Upcoming Events:

Rotary meeting was cancelled today because it’s mother’s day.

Tuesday-maybe dance class, orphanage

Wednesday-main market “Mercado Libertad San Juan de Dios” 

Thursday-orphanage again?

My very Mexican moment of the day: The Monday and Wednesday dance class I signed up for will be starting Tuesday.