¡¿Gonna-what-o?!

To give my inital thoughts about my current location, what follows is more or less chunks quoted from my journal, written yesterday...

"Holy Wahoo! Guanajuato! Where to begin? It can´t be done... like the gorgeous mess of streets and the lovely mess of people here, description defies beginning and end, evades orderly process and layout. The city is a wild and charming maze of hilly, windy streets and alleys that curve in all three dimensions! There are colorful edifices on the hillslopes and charming buildings, gardens, and plazas hidden in the street valleys. A crazy and amazing system of arched stone tunnels runs underground, as if out of some fantastic film (making the Big Dig in Boston look SO LAME). The variety of people here is overwhelming--many young, hip university types and retired-looking gringo types. I´ve heard as much English as Spanish here. The city is a bustling, topsy-turvy place that confounds me. Get this--some of the callejónes (alleys) are so twisty and hilly that I´ve seen several people on mountain bikes (in full hard-core gear) pumping and bumping along the cobblestone trails. Crazy!"

"Some folks have commented via the blog and email that I seem to make friends effortlessly here. I´ll have to disabuse them of some things. The truth is that hostels tend to be networking havens and Mexicans are really very friendly people once you start talking to them."

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On a whim, I decided to attend a concert last night by Orquestra Sínfonica de la Universidad de Guadalajara. 40 pesos with my ID--not bad at all. What I realized is that the symphony is like baseball... boring to listen to or watch on radio or TV, but SO INCREDIBLY AMAZING to spectate live. I had an absolute ball listening to the music and watching the musicians. Really incredible.

Today I began the day by moving to a different hostel (I didn´t much like the one I was in... the entry way is part of a children´s furniture shop with ill-looking beta fishes and the dorm room felt strangely like something out of Annie). I then checked out El Museo de las Momias, where they have on display a variety of corpses that have been naturally dessicated and preserved by the properties of the cemetery (something about minerals and hydroscopic conditions). When families cannot pay the fees to keep the corpses buries, they are disenterred by the municipality and either cremated or put into this bizarre musuem. I won´t have pictures (not permitted) but you can try
http://www.mummytombs.com/mummylocator/group/guanajuato.closeup.htm
or another search on the web for the mummies of Guanajuato.

I also visited a museum devoted to Don Quixote, boasted room after room of the Cervantes hero (along with Sancho Panza at times), who is immortalized in a surprising collection of paintings, sculpture, murals, sketches, and artifacts like playing cards, postage stamps, and chess sets. Oh, Señora Vaimburg, if only I´d remembered more from our readings of Don Quixote back in Spanish IV at NHRHS. A side note about this particular Spanish teacher that I had in high school--she was a bit of an eccentric little lady but a pretty darn good teacher with high expectations for us. One thing I distinctly remember, however, was her telling us that we might one day master the grammar and vocabulary of this wonderful language, but that we estudiantes would never (¡nunca!) be able to speak without an accent (i.e. like a native speaker). Well, Señora, I will have you know that I definitely haven´t mastered the grammar or vocab (though I´m not too shabby of a speaker), but my accent is awesome. I am occasionally mistaken for Spanish and am often told that I speak Spanish "muy bien." So Señora Vaimburg, I owe you both a sincere "thank you!" and grinning "ha!"

After the Don Quixote smorgasbord, I climbed another ledge to the cliff-top monument La Pípila, which was as interesting for the views it offered of Guanajuato below than its historical significance (for me, anyway). I followed this with lunch at a vegetarian Indian restaurant, which had good Indian music but the food made me miss home cooking by my Indian family. It also made me excited to go to India next year with my parents (right, mom and dad?!).

I plan to be in Guanajuato tomorrow as well and then make the 3-legged long journey from here to Mexico City to Puebla to Cholula where I will (yikes!) start teaching biotechnology to eager children. ¡Díos mío!