Friday, March 03, 2006
Tapping my fingers in Arandas
Aw, man. It’s Friday night, one of the first weekends in Arandas in a long time. The cursos diplomados, whatever they are, are happening again this weekend. So I’m stuck here in Arandas, going to classes this afternoon, all day tomorrow, and a few hours Sunday. It’s a good thing I’m staying in town, probably, because I’ll be forced to save money, and I have lots to do around the house that I can’t do when I’m hanging out in Guadalajara with Julia. Gotta do lots of laundry, clean the apartment, do serious grocery shopping. I also have to get back into the habit of doing a yoga practice longer than five minutes every day and start meditating.
But I’m antsy this Friday night. I’ve gotten used to doing something every weekend, the way Julia and I have been going out dancing, or at least out for a drink somewhere. I want to go dancing! I tried to get Rocio, Aracely, and Cristina to go out tonight, but Rocio’s got a cold (and she spends hours chatting online with her boyfriend in Chicago every evening), and Aracely and Cristina have kids and can hardly ever go out. We’ll probably go out tomorrow night, but because of the kids and because Rocio (being twenty and still living at home) can’t stay out late, we’ll probably just play pool at the cinema for a couple hours, or else hang out at Aracely’s house with the kids, and we’ll all be home by ten.
In this small town, there aren’t many single women close to my age. I knew what I was getting into when I moved here, and I was OK with it. But now that I’ve been going out and having a grand old time with Julia out on the town in Guadalajara on the weekends, I wonder if I made a mistake. If I were in Guadalajara, I’d probably have more single friends my age. Maybe I wouldn’t be getting as much practice with my Spanish, but at least I’d have a social life. Isolation and the hermetic life seemed like a good idea at first, but maybe I’m a bit of a social city girl deep down….
It’s Lent now, which means for forty days the clubs in Arandas are closed, so I wouldn’t be able to go out dancing this weekend even if I had friends to go with anyway.
Lent means the butchers close on Ash Wednesday and every Friday during Lent. That’s fine with me because I really need to stop eating so much meat all the time. I also feel left out if I don’t also observe Lent, so I am giving up cookies for forty days. It’s not as big a sacrifice as it sounds, because I still eat little snack cakes, like my favorite mantecadas and panqué (like pound cake snacks). However, there is still temptation everywhere—today someone was passing out polverones, my favorites (orange-flavored shortcake-type cookies), and I abstained. At the cursos today, the only snacks available were about ten different kinds of cookies and one little package of mantecadas, which I gobbled up in no time at all.
Julia’s birthday is next weekend, and we are going to do all kinds of exciting stuff in Guadalajara. Friday night, on Julia’s birthday, there is a Cesaria Evora concert (she’s a fabulous Cape Verdean singer), and then all weekend we’ll be celebrating by going out, I hope.
But I’m antsy this Friday night. I’ve gotten used to doing something every weekend, the way Julia and I have been going out dancing, or at least out for a drink somewhere. I want to go dancing! I tried to get Rocio, Aracely, and Cristina to go out tonight, but Rocio’s got a cold (and she spends hours chatting online with her boyfriend in Chicago every evening), and Aracely and Cristina have kids and can hardly ever go out. We’ll probably go out tomorrow night, but because of the kids and because Rocio (being twenty and still living at home) can’t stay out late, we’ll probably just play pool at the cinema for a couple hours, or else hang out at Aracely’s house with the kids, and we’ll all be home by ten.
In this small town, there aren’t many single women close to my age. I knew what I was getting into when I moved here, and I was OK with it. But now that I’ve been going out and having a grand old time with Julia out on the town in Guadalajara on the weekends, I wonder if I made a mistake. If I were in Guadalajara, I’d probably have more single friends my age. Maybe I wouldn’t be getting as much practice with my Spanish, but at least I’d have a social life. Isolation and the hermetic life seemed like a good idea at first, but maybe I’m a bit of a social city girl deep down….
It’s Lent now, which means for forty days the clubs in Arandas are closed, so I wouldn’t be able to go out dancing this weekend even if I had friends to go with anyway.
Lent means the butchers close on Ash Wednesday and every Friday during Lent. That’s fine with me because I really need to stop eating so much meat all the time. I also feel left out if I don’t also observe Lent, so I am giving up cookies for forty days. It’s not as big a sacrifice as it sounds, because I still eat little snack cakes, like my favorite mantecadas and panqué (like pound cake snacks). However, there is still temptation everywhere—today someone was passing out polverones, my favorites (orange-flavored shortcake-type cookies), and I abstained. At the cursos today, the only snacks available were about ten different kinds of cookies and one little package of mantecadas, which I gobbled up in no time at all.
Julia’s birthday is next weekend, and we are going to do all kinds of exciting stuff in Guadalajara. Friday night, on Julia’s birthday, there is a Cesaria Evora concert (she’s a fabulous Cape Verdean singer), and then all weekend we’ll be celebrating by going out, I hope.
