Sunday, February 05, 2006
Unknown holiday
Just got back from Guadalajara, to the sounds of a charreada in the nearby lienzo charro and a baby crying outside my building.
Julia and I had a successful visit to Guadalajara. (By the way, there’s a link to Julia’s blog in the right column of this page. Her blog has pictures, unlike mine!) Her aim: to see whether the city would be a desirable place to relocate for Spanish studies. My aim: to tag along, and also finally to get my camera fixed. Julia will probably be moving there after her third week in Guanajuato runs out, so she could possibly start classes in Guadalajara next Monday. I found a little camera repair shop, where the man told me I could fix my camera’s light meter for only about 250 pesos—a far cry from the $150 repair fee quoted to me in the States. As soon as I get back to Guadalajara to visit Julia, I will pick it up and hopefully be able to take photos once again!
We arrived Friday evening and met up in the bus station. Our first task was to find a bus into the city center; our second to find a room in a hostel or cheap hotel. This took quite a while, so we didn’t sit down to lunch/dinner till much later. By the time we were done eating, we were still too tired to do much, so we decided to go back to our hotel near the Plaza Tapatía to sleep. It was not the greatest hotel, but it was actually the same price or cheaper than the posada’s nightly rate where I had stayed during the TEFL course. Unfortunately, it was very noisy, right by a busy street, with lots of guests giggling and chatting in the hallways. We managed, however.
Many things occurred to me as we walked around the city. One, that Guadalajara is HUGE. Though I had stayed there a month for the month-long course and had visited on occasion, I had arrived this time with different eyes. Having been in Arandas for a while, Guadalajara seemed an overwhelming haven where so much was possible. One could find so many things there, get a camera fixed, go to a bar where a Cuban band played salsa and son, meet so many different people. It had also been a long time since I had stayed so close to the center, which is a completely different feeling from staying in friends’ apartments in the outskirts.
Number two, I remembered how much the guys there engage in cat-calling and other forms of verbal harassment. It doesn’t happen quite as much in Guanajuato or Arandas, though it still happens often enough to irritate. But Guadalajara is a whole other story. The cat calls seem even to be more disgusting there. We hate the kissing noises the most, but the ch-ch psst-noise comes a close second. Julia and I have become rather desensitized by now, though, from experience ignoring or simply laughing at these stupid noises and ridiculous comments. The funny thing is that when you ask these guys a question in passing, like where’s the entrance to the restaurant upstairs or something like that, they become polite and answer the question and don’t say anything more. Like we surprise them by treating them with the respect that they lacked in their treatment of us.
Saturday morning and early afternoon was spent searching for Spanish language schools and camera repair shops. The camera repair shop was easy. I showed Julia the language school where we had practiced teaching during our TEFL course at ITTO. They have a rather developed Spanish-language program. We visited another school after a rather long and difficult search for it, only to find that they require you to register for a whole year and spend half the time at school using their computer programs—very strange. We lunched at El Fenix, the old haunt of the ITTO crew who lived in the nearby “haunted” posada, Vilasanta. Then we walked around downtown before heading to the Chivas game.
The Chivas are the soccer club of Guadalajara. They were playing the Tigres of we’re not sure where—Nuevo Leon? The first Chivas game I’d gone to, back in October, was also against a team from there—Monterrey. The stadium had been rather empty, and the Chivas lost that game, 2-3, if I remember correctly. This time all the cheap seats were sold out by the time we got in line, and Julia and I ended up buying more expensive tickets in the fan zone, which turned out to be very exciting. We sat behind a sea of crazy fans in red and white shirts, singing and jumping up and down. There were three guys in front of us, one of whom was a rather inebriated metal-head who kept talking to us. It didn’t bother us much, because the conversation was extremely educational. He kept encouraging us to shout the usual obscenities that one shouts at games. He would tell us where such and such player was from. If a player messed up, he would shout “pendejo” (asshole) and then tell us, “Oh he’s from Sinaloa,” and show a thumbs-down. Then another “pendejo” would mess up and he would say, “Chilango!” (someone from Mexico City) and show an even more adamant thumbs-down. The portero, Oswaldo Sanchez, who ended up saving the game, is of course from Guadalajara. (He is also, as I found out from Luis, the goalie of the national team.) Anyway, you see the pattern here—Guadalajara good, other places bad. The guy talking to us was sort of a clown. He pointed out one of his friends as a mojado, “wetback,” who was much nicer and quieter and who played jokes on his drunken friend. Anyway, the Chivas won 1-0, and we were happy even though we were waiting in line for tickets during the only goal of the game and had missed it.
After the game we went back into town to eat. We ended up at this restaurant that was recommended by Julia’s guidebook and where I had eaten with my friend Marissa from the ITTO course a couple of times back in the fall. Marissa would be cracking up because it was a Saturday night and Juan Pablo was singing at the restaurant. She and I used to make jokes about coming to see this Juan Pablo, who appeared on the restaurants posters and looked like a real cheeseball, which he really turned out to be. It was kind of a downer going there after the great game. They made us sit upstairs with the cheesy music, and everyone in the restaurant was old. Immediately, these two old guys started hitting on us. Julia was having none of it, answering questions curtly and looking very annoyed, while I tried to deter them more politely. They didn’t seem to get the picture. We told them all sorts of lies, like we couldn’t speak Spanish well and that we were on vacation, and luckily they left us alone. We also ordered a jar of agua fresca, which we assumed would be like any regular fruit drink like jamaica or horchata, but it turned out to be like a gallon of pureed fruit with little actual water. And the food wasn’t that good. So we got out of there as quickly as possible.
Then we went to the salsa place to dance salsa, but it was also a bit disappointing, once again, because there weren’t many good dancers. We were tired, though, so after a beer we just went back to the hotel to sleep.
Sunday morning we hoped to participate in the city’s recreation—they close off the main street of Juarez for only bicycle traffic on Sundays from 10-2. I had always wanted to ride bikes up and down Juarez on Sundays in Guadalajara, but we never seemed to be able to do it. This time, however, we asked about renting bikes, and it turned out that the city doesn’t seem to rent any for this recreation, so we just walked around instead. I wanted to go Parque Agua Azul, which I hadn’t been to yet, and we walked along some strange neighborhoods to get there, only to be disappointed by it. We took a bus back and had a quick lunch, then went to the bus station to leave for our respective “homes.”
Getting home was much easier for me than for Julia, who missed her direct bus and would’ve had to wait two hours for the next one, except we had the brilliant idea to get her on the earlier bus to Leon and change to Guanajuato from there. It was a good idea until she remembered the fair in Leon and couldn’t get a seat on the next bus to Guanajuato. Yuck. Anyway, this is another reason to relocate Julia in Guadalajara—we can visit each other much more easily!
Tomorrow I get the day off. Today was a holiday that neither Julia or I could figure out. I had asked Rocio earlier last week, but she thought it was to commemorate the battle of Puebla, which I’m pretty sure is Cinco de Mayo (5 of May, not 5 of February). Anyway, Rocio will be coming over at some point tomorrow to dye my hair, the roots of which are beginning to look more and more atrocious with the light brown we had dyed it back in November. I was going to get a dark brown to match my natural color, so that I stop dying it and damaging it further, but I saw a dark plum that was cute. Maybe it will be dark enough not to be ugly when my hair grows out? I’m sure this is riveting information for all you faithful readers, so I shall keep you updated on the hair-color saga.
Julia and I had a successful visit to Guadalajara. (By the way, there’s a link to Julia’s blog in the right column of this page. Her blog has pictures, unlike mine!) Her aim: to see whether the city would be a desirable place to relocate for Spanish studies. My aim: to tag along, and also finally to get my camera fixed. Julia will probably be moving there after her third week in Guanajuato runs out, so she could possibly start classes in Guadalajara next Monday. I found a little camera repair shop, where the man told me I could fix my camera’s light meter for only about 250 pesos—a far cry from the $150 repair fee quoted to me in the States. As soon as I get back to Guadalajara to visit Julia, I will pick it up and hopefully be able to take photos once again!
We arrived Friday evening and met up in the bus station. Our first task was to find a bus into the city center; our second to find a room in a hostel or cheap hotel. This took quite a while, so we didn’t sit down to lunch/dinner till much later. By the time we were done eating, we were still too tired to do much, so we decided to go back to our hotel near the Plaza Tapatía to sleep. It was not the greatest hotel, but it was actually the same price or cheaper than the posada’s nightly rate where I had stayed during the TEFL course. Unfortunately, it was very noisy, right by a busy street, with lots of guests giggling and chatting in the hallways. We managed, however.
Many things occurred to me as we walked around the city. One, that Guadalajara is HUGE. Though I had stayed there a month for the month-long course and had visited on occasion, I had arrived this time with different eyes. Having been in Arandas for a while, Guadalajara seemed an overwhelming haven where so much was possible. One could find so many things there, get a camera fixed, go to a bar where a Cuban band played salsa and son, meet so many different people. It had also been a long time since I had stayed so close to the center, which is a completely different feeling from staying in friends’ apartments in the outskirts.
Number two, I remembered how much the guys there engage in cat-calling and other forms of verbal harassment. It doesn’t happen quite as much in Guanajuato or Arandas, though it still happens often enough to irritate. But Guadalajara is a whole other story. The cat calls seem even to be more disgusting there. We hate the kissing noises the most, but the ch-ch psst-noise comes a close second. Julia and I have become rather desensitized by now, though, from experience ignoring or simply laughing at these stupid noises and ridiculous comments. The funny thing is that when you ask these guys a question in passing, like where’s the entrance to the restaurant upstairs or something like that, they become polite and answer the question and don’t say anything more. Like we surprise them by treating them with the respect that they lacked in their treatment of us.
Saturday morning and early afternoon was spent searching for Spanish language schools and camera repair shops. The camera repair shop was easy. I showed Julia the language school where we had practiced teaching during our TEFL course at ITTO. They have a rather developed Spanish-language program. We visited another school after a rather long and difficult search for it, only to find that they require you to register for a whole year and spend half the time at school using their computer programs—very strange. We lunched at El Fenix, the old haunt of the ITTO crew who lived in the nearby “haunted” posada, Vilasanta. Then we walked around downtown before heading to the Chivas game.
The Chivas are the soccer club of Guadalajara. They were playing the Tigres of we’re not sure where—Nuevo Leon? The first Chivas game I’d gone to, back in October, was also against a team from there—Monterrey. The stadium had been rather empty, and the Chivas lost that game, 2-3, if I remember correctly. This time all the cheap seats were sold out by the time we got in line, and Julia and I ended up buying more expensive tickets in the fan zone, which turned out to be very exciting. We sat behind a sea of crazy fans in red and white shirts, singing and jumping up and down. There were three guys in front of us, one of whom was a rather inebriated metal-head who kept talking to us. It didn’t bother us much, because the conversation was extremely educational. He kept encouraging us to shout the usual obscenities that one shouts at games. He would tell us where such and such player was from. If a player messed up, he would shout “pendejo” (asshole) and then tell us, “Oh he’s from Sinaloa,” and show a thumbs-down. Then another “pendejo” would mess up and he would say, “Chilango!” (someone from Mexico City) and show an even more adamant thumbs-down. The portero, Oswaldo Sanchez, who ended up saving the game, is of course from Guadalajara. (He is also, as I found out from Luis, the goalie of the national team.) Anyway, you see the pattern here—Guadalajara good, other places bad. The guy talking to us was sort of a clown. He pointed out one of his friends as a mojado, “wetback,” who was much nicer and quieter and who played jokes on his drunken friend. Anyway, the Chivas won 1-0, and we were happy even though we were waiting in line for tickets during the only goal of the game and had missed it.
After the game we went back into town to eat. We ended up at this restaurant that was recommended by Julia’s guidebook and where I had eaten with my friend Marissa from the ITTO course a couple of times back in the fall. Marissa would be cracking up because it was a Saturday night and Juan Pablo was singing at the restaurant. She and I used to make jokes about coming to see this Juan Pablo, who appeared on the restaurants posters and looked like a real cheeseball, which he really turned out to be. It was kind of a downer going there after the great game. They made us sit upstairs with the cheesy music, and everyone in the restaurant was old. Immediately, these two old guys started hitting on us. Julia was having none of it, answering questions curtly and looking very annoyed, while I tried to deter them more politely. They didn’t seem to get the picture. We told them all sorts of lies, like we couldn’t speak Spanish well and that we were on vacation, and luckily they left us alone. We also ordered a jar of agua fresca, which we assumed would be like any regular fruit drink like jamaica or horchata, but it turned out to be like a gallon of pureed fruit with little actual water. And the food wasn’t that good. So we got out of there as quickly as possible.
Then we went to the salsa place to dance salsa, but it was also a bit disappointing, once again, because there weren’t many good dancers. We were tired, though, so after a beer we just went back to the hotel to sleep.
Sunday morning we hoped to participate in the city’s recreation—they close off the main street of Juarez for only bicycle traffic on Sundays from 10-2. I had always wanted to ride bikes up and down Juarez on Sundays in Guadalajara, but we never seemed to be able to do it. This time, however, we asked about renting bikes, and it turned out that the city doesn’t seem to rent any for this recreation, so we just walked around instead. I wanted to go Parque Agua Azul, which I hadn’t been to yet, and we walked along some strange neighborhoods to get there, only to be disappointed by it. We took a bus back and had a quick lunch, then went to the bus station to leave for our respective “homes.”
Getting home was much easier for me than for Julia, who missed her direct bus and would’ve had to wait two hours for the next one, except we had the brilliant idea to get her on the earlier bus to Leon and change to Guanajuato from there. It was a good idea until she remembered the fair in Leon and couldn’t get a seat on the next bus to Guanajuato. Yuck. Anyway, this is another reason to relocate Julia in Guadalajara—we can visit each other much more easily!
Tomorrow I get the day off. Today was a holiday that neither Julia or I could figure out. I had asked Rocio earlier last week, but she thought it was to commemorate the battle of Puebla, which I’m pretty sure is Cinco de Mayo (5 of May, not 5 of February). Anyway, Rocio will be coming over at some point tomorrow to dye my hair, the roots of which are beginning to look more and more atrocious with the light brown we had dyed it back in November. I was going to get a dark brown to match my natural color, so that I stop dying it and damaging it further, but I saw a dark plum that was cute. Maybe it will be dark enough not to be ugly when my hair grows out? I’m sure this is riveting information for all you faithful readers, so I shall keep you updated on the hair-color saga.
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5 de febrero is the day of the national constitution. As I recalled from my father who say to me one day...Luis you must know it.
haha, well, i found out that it was the day of the constitution the next day at school, when the principal was scolding the kids for not knowing what day it was. i also understood that the 6th of february commemorates the day that mexico lost a lot of territory to the united states, and the principal said, "so do we celebrate today?" and the children answered, "no." and people smiled goofily at me, and i back at them.
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