Mexico

[vofpracticality]

We have been very lucky, this is the rainy season but it has only been raining at night. Our home stay is wonderful. They don´t speak any english but are wonderful people. I think it helps that we fill up the house. From what we can see here, we are staying with a very wealthy family. Father´s day they took us to a relative´s house for big multi-generational party. We ate for 4 hours and stayed almost 6. The family is full of PhD´s and college educated people. Most seem to work at the electric company, which you have to have a relative working there to get a job at. We have been walking most everywhere, but have braved the bus several times. We don´t like riding it around 1pm when the schools get out and it is full of school children going....somewhere. School was supposed to end this week, but due to the swine flu scare which closed the schools for 2 weeks, they have to go into middle of July. Guanajuato is very hilly, but our homestay is on one of the main streets, basically at the bottom of the ravine. Saturday we went from the homestay to the school, and tried to use the map. hahaha. Yeah, that didn´t work very well. We ended up on the Panamorica - The street that is at the TOP of the ravine, and we luckily found ourselves on the map and found a main street going down, which put us about 2 blocks from the school. It was about 1 hour of climbing and descending. We decided to go home via main roads, and found la casa in about 30 minutes. Haven´t tried that again. We are at the opposite end of town from the "centro", so after school we walk for about 20 minutes on minuscule sidewalks to get to "centro". We have several bakeries which are favorites and we have located the post office. (Horrendous lime green and orange colors).
We stumbled upon the museum of Don Quixote on Sunday. Very interesting to see multiple artists interpretation of the same theme. I can´t think of any other museum I have been to that is on a single theme with multiple artists. Several of the girls were clueless as to the story of Don Quixote, so some education was necessary for at least a glimmer of comprehension. On sunday we also found the ice cream shop off the main square, which we have visited almost every day. They have popsicle looking things that are fruit-based and are very good. One of the girls ordered one that was orange with red covering, thinking it was mango and strawberry. The nice guy who worked there was trying to explain mango and .....something, but we didn´t get it. The first girl tried hers (eating a bit off the bottom - which turned out to be a pure mango bite). A 2nd girl ordered the same, took a big lick, and proclaimed with a horrified tone "My ice cream is SPICY". Turns out the red was chili powder. The first girl was fine with that but the 2nd girl ended up throwing it out and buying a strawberry/kiwi one. (Identifiable by the slice of strawberry and kiwi pasted on the side of the bar)