jeanne in tequila country

The energy I was expecting to have after returning from my vacation never really appeared. I get so tired every day at work that I end up wanting to go to bed right after watching my telenovela, around 9:30. I think I just didn’t realize how hectic my vacation really was. My trip back from the States was also rather exhausting, as I had a really long layover in Dallas and then a seven-hour overnight bus ride back to Arandas. I did spend the next morning sleeping, but I don’t think it was enough to really be rested, because I had to travel to Guadalajara as well the same day. Despite the exhaustion, my attitude has definitely been refreshed, so that’s good for work.

Speaking of work, we had to work today—a Sunday. It was “Domingo familiar,” or “Family Sunday,” an event for the students and their families. We were to arrive at 11:30 a.m. to help set up, while the event would last from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. When we got to the events place—a terrace adjoining the Charro tequila distillery, everything was chaos. There had been a party the night before, and since they hadn’t been properly notified that we were having an event there the next day, they had left everything to clean later. Carnitas bones were sitting on the kitchen counter along with piles and piles of dirty dishes; the floors were filthy and there was trash everywhere; the table cloths were dirty and they didn’t have any clean linens. The people there were pissed off because they didn’t know there was going to be an event; we were pissed off because people would be arriving in an hour and a half and nobody was working very hard to get the place cleaned up. Later, the principal and other directors arrived, and they put us to work helping out. We picked up trash, arranged the tables, piled the dirty dishes in one corner of the kitchen, swept the patio, and since there weren’t any waiters, we had to wait and bus tables, too. In short, we did a lot of work none of us were expecting to have to do.

Exhausted back home, just writing another blog entry. We have tomorrow off because it’s May 1st, the international labor day. (Also, it’ll be the day we will not buy any gringo products, in protest of anti-immigration sentiments in the U.S.) I’ll probably just do lots of chores that I’ve been putting off in my laziness. I have to do laundry and clean my apartment and unpack properly. But lucky me, I get Tuesday off as well, because I have to go to Guadalajara once again for my visa. I’ll teach Wednesday and Thursday and then get Friday off, because it’s Cinco de Mayo (in commemoration of the Battle of Puebla, whatever happened there). Yet another three-day weekend! There are THREE of these long weekends in May. I thought about spending the next long weekend in Puerto Vallarta again, this time with Rocio, but it’s too little time for so much travel and expense. We will probably stay here and maybe take a day trip somewhere. Then for the last long weekend, the school is taking the teachers to Zacatecas, a colonial mining city in the hills to the north, but only for a day. It will be nice to see the Zacatecas, which I hear is beautiful, but what a pain it will be to travel all that way for just one day. Maybe I’ll convince Rocio to stay the night with me and go back by ourselves the next day.

This three-day weekend in Arandas are the last days of the fiestas patronales, or the fiestas for the patron saint of Arandas. I’m not sure who that is, actually. In any case, there are fair-like rides for the kids all along el parque and tent-restaurants set up in front. Every night this weekend there have been shows in el parque, and all along the main street, which has been blocked to traffic, there are bands playing banda music and people dancing and drinking in the streets.

I went last night with Rocio. I had only heard them before, especially one night when a band was playing very close by my building and woke and kept me awake until about 1 a.m. Rocio and I spent the afternoon dying her hair “uva,” or “grape.” Then we went to the fiestas. The streets around el parque were packed with people, not all from Arandas, because people from surrounding towns, even from Guadalajara, come as well. I waited for Rocio on a bench in el parque, and there were fireworks being set off right in the middle of the plaza. It was kind of frightening, until I realized I was safe in my area from burning bits falling from the sky. We walked around and found some of Rocio’s friends. We stood chatting and sometimes Rocio and her friends would dance banda.

The friend of the boyfriend of one of Rocio’s friends was this nice cross-eyed guy. When he was away getting something to drink, I heard them talking about him, that it was sad that none of the girls ever want to dance with him, because of his being cross-eyed, and it’s a pity because he’s such a nice guy. Well, there I was with no one to dance with and not wanting to dance banda with just any guy because it’s kind of a sketchy and intimate dance, so I thought I’d be nice and talk to him. We had a so-so conversation, and then he gave me his cap, which is this cheap thing with the logo of the tequila distillery where he works. He never invited me to dance (I suppose he doesn’t try to ask girls much anymore), but he invited me to the charreada that was happening today in the lienzo charro near my apartment, which I would’ve attended except we had the stupid school event today. I was not interested in him in the least, but then later everyone kept making jokes about him to me. “Where’s your boyfriend, Jeanne?” or “Where did your conquest go?” I would say, “What conquest?” and everyone would just laugh. Even today Rocio and Aracely were telling all the other teachers at the Family Sunday thing that I had picked some guy up, and, exasperated, I’d have to set the record straight. It’s like being in middle school all over again.

Anyway, tomorrow is the last day of the fiestas, and I’m considering going again, but I’m pretty sure I’ll just be tired after watching “La fea” and not want to go. After all, I have to wake up super early to take the bus to Guadalajara Tuesday morning.

In other news, I have been asked to play the piano with the students while they perform the Mexican national anthem in a competition this week. I spent a few hours practicing last week, but it was such short notice, and I haven’t played the piano in several years, that I think I should tell them it’d be better to just have guitar accompaniment from the music teacher. I suck. And, as always, I don’t really practice much. I didn’t practice yesterday or today! I meant to, but … you know how it is. Practically every day I get the national anthem stuck in my head, though. Kind of bizarre.

After an afternoon English class on Thursday, Aracely and I got tetanus booster shots. One of my students is a pediatrician, and in his class we had discussed tetanus a couple of times. I can’t remember how it came up the first time, but the second mention was made by me to demonstrate the usefulness of the present perfect tense, as in the question you ask someone who has just stepped on a rusty nail, “Have you had your tetanus shot?” We were talking about tetanus for a while, and I asked, “What happens if you get tetanus?” and the doctor answered, “You die.” I thought he was joking but in fact tetanus is often fatal. You are supposed to get the vaccine boosted every five to ten years, and I can’t remember the last time I had one—probably in high school. So he brought us booster shots the next day and administered them right there in English class. My upper arm still hurts from it! Anyway, public service announcement for the day: get your tetanus booster shot if it has been ten years without an injury since your last one, or if it has been five years with an injury, or if you can’t remember when your last booster shot was. Even though it kind of hurts a little.

Believe it or not, I had an excellent time vacationing in Columbus, Ohio. This is because many of my friends are there—there’s no way I couldn’t have had fun. I also got to relax because I didn’t have any work to do there, and, unlike the trip to Chiapas, I wasn’t traveling around like crazy. I just stayed put and did normal Columbus things, like playing with the cats, chatting away for hours with girlfriends, cooking new recipes for Luis and then watching movies or TV, going out to the salsa club, meeting friends for drinks in the Short North, shopping at the Chinese supermarket with former classmate Wang Wei, eating lots and lots of Chinese food, and just reading in the lovely Midwest spring sunshine.

Many people remarked that I look well, even that I am glowing. I answered that I am the happiest I have been for as long as I can remember. Who wouldn’t be happy with the last few months I’ve spent in Mexico? It helps to have a two-week vacation in the midst of spring, and it helps to have had a good friend to hang out with every weekend for the last three months. I was also happy to be in Columbus seeing my friends again, spending time with people (and cats) I love.

Another thing to make me happy—I was admitted to Columbia University Teachers College for their master’s program in bilingual education, and I found out while in Columbus that I have received a few credits’ worth of scholarship funding. Of course I still have to figure out a way to really fund my studies there, but I am optimistic. I am waiting to hear back from the only other program I applied to, at the University of New Mexico, but at the moment I’m pretty excited about Teachers College and New York City.

It could be dangerous, all this happiness. I might really resent having to go back to work. I might get tired of Arandas weekends without Julia around to liven things up. I might lose interest in living here, knowing that I will be going back to the States in about two months. Despite being tired from all my traveling, however, I do feel as if I have more energy to go back to work tomorrow. (Lucky for me, I didn’t have to teach today because I had to be in Guadalajara to do more visa stuff.) It’s definitely more energy than I had before the vacation. This newfound motivation should be good for both my students and for me.

I haven’t been keeping up with my yoga practice or meditation, so it is possible that I could find myself on a bit of a low after all this up, up, up. Now that I have more time to myself, though, with Julia back in North Carolina, I should have more opportunities to relax, do yoga, and meditate. The retreat-like part of my time here can finally pick up where it left off, and hopefully it will help with my project of finding contentment through enjoying the simple things in a largely solitary life. I don’t think it will be too difficult while there are so many things going well and so many things to look forward to—lots of long weekends in May, summer in Columbus with friends, and beginning bilingual education studies in the fall.

Here is the entry from the week before my spring vacation, so these few entries are all out of chronological order. Sorry about that!

This week in tequila country: A week with Lea in exciting Arandas; a weekend in Guadalajara with Julia; preparations for Julia’s grand finale in Mexico.

Day 1 (Friday, April 7)
Early morning bus from Guadalajara to Mexico City, I discovered Dramamine. Even though the entire ride is a mainly flat stretch, I was thankful for the security. We tried to get to our hotel in the historic center in time for “La fea,” but we missed most of it. Our taxi to the hotel had a TV screen, but the reception was really off and on, so we hardly saw what was going on. Good to see that elderly male taxi drivers also enjoy that telenovela, however. We ate dinner at a nearby diner but were too tired for much else and slept early.


Day 2 (Saturday, April 8)
We got up really early to see the ruins at Teotihuacán, north of the city, to make it in time for our afternoon flight to the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. I had already been to Teotihuacán once before, and I remembered it being really crowded and really hot. This in mind, we left with sunscreen, hats, light clothing, but we failed to take into account the hour we’d be seeing the ruins—right at opening time, 7 a.m. It was unbelievably cold. We arrived at the bus station hoping to get on a 6 a.m. bus to the ruins, like Julia’s guidebook said, but it turned out there wasn’t one until 7. The driver of the bus to Otumba, however, said he’d take us. At a crossroads, he called us to the front of the bus, gave us 15 pesos and told us to get off and take a taxi to Gate 1 of the ruins. Once at the gate, the ticket seller had not yet arrived, and we hopped around trying to keep warm until the guards took pity on us and let us hang out in their little office. They asked us the usual questions, where are you from, what are you doing here, and we chatted with them about politics and news. They were very nice. They kept telling us to move to the town of Teotihuacán. When the ticket seller arrived, they were very helpful, lamenting that we didn’t have student or teacher IDs to get in free. We were the first ones into the ruins, it seemed. It was an altogether different experience going this time. There were hardly any people around—just one hawker, one garbage collector atop the Temple of the Sun, and some workers chiseling away at some roped-off ruins. The morning sun was gradually lighting up the steps of the Avenue of the Dead, the main walkway at the ruins, and it was very impressive. We climbed both the Temple of the Sun and of the Moon. There were dogs hanging about, running agilely up and down the steps following the few other French tourists.

Back in the city, we ate breakfast at a diner called Café el Popular. It was interesting because some of the décor and signs were Chinese, but there was no Chinese cuisine at all on the menu. Later I learned from a guidebook that the café serves its café con leche chino style, meaning the waitress brings the coffee and hot milk and you specify the proportion. We didn’t really understand why that would be chino style, but things that are different tend to just be called Chinese even if they’re not Chinese.

We took a plane to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas. By bus it takes 14 to 16 hours; by plane, only about one hour. We made the mistake of taking a taxi directly from the airport to the town of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, instead of taking a taxi to town and then catching a bus there, as we had originally planned. We thought the price difference wouldn’t be large—it was only 180 pesos each for the hour trip, and we’d make it to the city before dark. The driver whined and haggled a lot, however, so the trip was not very pleasant. He didn’t want to take the toll highway because the toll would be 15 pesos—under US$1.50. He wanted us to pay it. Julia did all the negotiating because she was better at it. She told him to let us off on the side of the highway if he didn’t want to take the toll road, so he took the toll road. In the end we did pay for the tolls, but rather reluctantly, because once in San Cristóbal he was complaining that a taxi would charge 10 pesos for all the driving around he was doing to take us to our hostel. We had never run into such a money-grubbing taxista, but it goes to show the way the people in Chiapas are with tourists. Perhaps they really are that badly off, that they have to haggle for ten or fifteen pesos, or they are just accustomed to treating tourists that way.

I realized that San Cristóbal is high in the mountains of Chiapas, and that it is cold there. I had packed all wrong—I was expecting humid jungle weather, and all I had were sandals and tank tops and one thin sweater. I suffered.

The hostel where I had made reservations turned out to be a hippie mecca, young European and Canadian hippies everywhere, swinging in their hammocks around the courtyard and listening to bad ’90s alternative rock. My guidebook had said it was good and that the communal bathrooms and kitchen were well looked after. This kind of comment is relative. I was thinking it would be like the hostel where Meabh and I had stayed in Oaxaca—very clean single-sex communal bathrooms with several shower stalls. We were put in a rustic cabaña, and I mean rustic like it was called a cabaña simply because it was made of wood. It was more like a lean-to, as Julia said, with bunk beds taking up the primary space of the room. It served well for a place to crash one night, though, and it was affordable. Despite the music continuing on late into the night, we slept.


Day 3 (Sunday, April 9)
Up early, yet again, to catch a bus to Palenque, where there are some important Mayan ruins. We barely made it onto the bus, because the seats had all been booked. We only got on because when the bus arrived it was the kind with an extra row of seats in the back, so they could sell two tickets at the last minute. The bus trip took five hours, completely through the mountains. Many people got sick. Not me! I was prepared with Dramamine! However, I did have to breathe through my mouth for the last stretch of the trip, because the boy in front of us had puked in the aisle and smelled up the entire bus. It was rough.

Once in Palenque, we settled into our cabaña near the ruins, which was very nice. Here the climate was the humid jungly kind, so I made use of my summer clothes. We ate at the nearby restaurant and then went into town to catch a collective minibus (colectivo) to a waterfall south of the town. It went frighteningly fast on the mountain roads. By this time, I had taken my third Dramamine of the day, and I was goofy and laughing at everything and really, really, really wanting to sleep, so the curves didn’t affect me. We got off at the intersection for Misol-Ha, the waterfall, and walked the sidewalk-less 1.5 km to the site. The waterfall and jungle around Misol-Ha is apparently where Predator was filmed. It was beautiful, but there were droves of tourists, so it wasn’t as pretty as it probably is off-season. We walked behind the waterfall to the mouth of a cave, but didn’t feel like fending off volunteer guides and just decided to get in the water. It was very cold, deep water, and the current from the water cascading into the pool was quite strong. I got tired swimming after about two minutes. The Dramamine probably didn’t help.

There were lots of French tourists in Palenque. At the waterfall, we were getting out of our clothes to go swimming in our suits, and a group of young Francophones near us asked us rather snootily to please move our stuff somewhere else so that “everyone can have their own space.” We would not have put our stuff there if it hadn’t been for the fact that there weren’t many other safe places to put it. But we complied and found another spot a few feet away. Then one of the Francophone girls slipped and fell on her ass, and we acted like we didn’t even see it, because we were both silently thinking, “Serves her right.” Kind of bitchy, non? Vraiment, I don’t really care. Never in my life have I disliked French people as much as I did on this trip. Every time we encountered any, they were very unfriendly, no doubt completely disdainful of Americans. (Even the English tourists we met were friendlier!) The rest of the trip Julia and I referred to them as “Frenchies,” or sometimes even “#$%& Frenchies.” I don’t feel good about this in particular—generalizing about a nation of people is never nice, and I know several wonderful French people—but I understand where these generalizations come from.

When we were about to leave to walk back to the highway and catch a colectivo back to town, it started raining. We waited for it to subside, but decided to walk in the rain while it was still light out. Lucky for us, an elderly Texan man traveling with his Mexican granddaughters took pity on us and gave us a ride all the way back to our cabaña.


Day 4 (Monday, April 10)
The next day we got up early to go to the ruins, hoping for a repeat of our great experience at Teotihuacán, with hardly any people there. These ruins were pretty well trafficked by tourists, however, and we were late for the 8 a.m. opening time because I thought we’d be able to walk easily from our cabañas. The 2 km ended up being more like 4, so we got a ride uphill with a couple who stopped in their boat of a car. The ruins were amazing. Unlike at Teotihuacán, whose two or three pyramids were solid, we got to go inside some of the many structures at Palenque. In the huge palace, there were a few walkways and steps going down inside, without signs, devoid of other tourists. We even saw a few little bats flying around at one steep, dark stairwell.

After the pyramids, we checked out of our cabaña and got an early bus back to San Cristóbal. Another five hours of Dramamine-induced stupor through mountain roads. This time I offered my “travel sick medicine” (as the English guys near us called it) to those around me, so we didn’t have to deal with any smell or puke issues.

In San Cristóbal, we stayed in a nicer hotel. That night we watched “La fea” at its new primetime hour, starting at 8, eating pizza from the restaurant downstairs and going directly to sleep. We’d been getting up every morning around 5 or 6, and then traveling by bus for many hours, so it was only natural to want to go to bed around 9 p.m. Julia also felt tired and feverish, the start of her cold.


Day 5 (Tuesday, April 11)
Shopping. “La fea” at 8. In bed by 10.


Day 6 (Wednesday, April 12)
The day of the failed bike tour (or rather, the day I failed the bike tour). See below to entry of that date for more information.

The rest of the day was fine. More shopping. “La fea” at 8. In bed by 10.


Day 7 (Thursday, April 13)
Bus back to Tuxtla. Due to money shortage issues, we swore off taxis whenever possible. We walked eight blocks from the bus station to a bus stop in order to catch a colectivo to the airport. Much cheaper by far, and we had a very nice colectivo driver. Back in Mexico City, we took the metro to our hotel. I wandered around looking for an internet café in vain, because it was the beginning of the Easter holiday and most everything was closed. Julia and I walked to the teeny tiny Chinatown of Mexico City—a short pedestrian block of Chinese restaurants and stores. Then we wandered to the Alameda and ate turkey tortas and drank huge fresh juices. We looked at the Palacio de las Bellas Artes and filed into the cathedral in the center mainly to observe the sinking of these buildings into the soft, drained-lake ground. We were back in time for “La fea” and went to bed early again.


Day 8 (Friday, April 14)
I had scheduled a flight that departed at the same time as Julia’s. We spent hours at the airport because I was nervous about long lines like the time I had been there a year earlier, but this time there were no lines at all. Oops. My flight from Dallas was in a small jet and we ran into thunderstorms, but we made it safely back.

It’s weird to be in the States again, especially after having spent a week in Chiapas, where there are many impoverished indigenous people. During our last breakfast in Chiapas, hawkers would come up to our table trying to sell woven bracelets and coin purses, saying in their lilting, accented Spanish, “Cómpralo” (Buy it). A young boy came begging for money. Julia gave him a tortilla filled with leftover bacon. I bought a headband from a woman who said, “Tengo mucho hambre” (I am very hungry). Julia offered more leftovers to other vendors, who always accepted.

Some of the little, trivial things I notice now in the States are the shapes of the toilet seats and the ability of these toilets to flush down toilet paper, and the cleanliness and automated-ness of public restrooms. Other perhaps less trivial things I notice are the whiteness of Columbus, and the wealth, wealth, wealth of this country.

Normally I would answer this question with a definite "yes," but after this morning I'm not so sure. I guess I would have to modify my answer with a qualifier: "Yes, I can ride a bike, on flat surfaces." And if you asked me, "Can you mountain bike?" I would have to answer, "I can ride a mountain bike on a flat surface, but no, I cannot mountain bike."

Most of my friends probably already know that I am no cyclist, and they would probably laugh and ask me why in the world I thought I could go on a 4-hour, 25km bike tour in the first place. I don't really know why I thought I could, especially having realized that the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas is nestled high in the mountains of Chiapas. I suppose I imagined the trail to be flat, so obviously I wasn't thinking.

The only times I've gone on bike trips before were with my friend Tammy back in high school and with my roomies back in college. Tammy and I had decided it would be a great idea to bike the road through the Sahuaro National Monument on the east side of Tucson. It was not such a good idea for me after all, because I couldn't ride up the numerous hills and had to walk my bike up all of them. I think I got a flat tire as well. During a summer in our college town, my roommates and I took a weekend vacation to Cape Cod, where Julia Oliver's cousin had a house. We rode bikes to the beaches, but of course that was all flat, and we didn't go very far.

It all sounded like a great idea: a bike tour of the indigenous villages and nature around San Cristóbal. It seemed a better idea than taking a horseback tour, since I've never been on a horse and because it's a long way down from atop a horse's back. Julia seemed to think I could handle it, so I guess I wasn't being incredibly stupid by assuming I'd be OK on the bike tour.

We got to the bike place and got ready for the trip. We got our helmets on and tried out the seat height on our bikes. Things were already not going well, because Julia and I had just had our first fight of the trip, arguing about how to get to the bike place. We were late because I had taken a wrong turn. Also, as soon as the bike people let us in, they remarked about my sandals being the worst shoes possible for cycling. I had forgotten to pack my sneakers, so that I was all I had to wear. Then I was trying out the seat height, and the guy was holding the handlebars, and when I was getting off, my shoe got caught and I fell off the bike and scraped my knee. I fell off the bike and we weren't even going anywhere. You can see where this story is going.

I got another lecture about how my shoes were the absolutely wrong type for this trip. I was getting cheeky and wanted to say, "Well what do you want me to do about it? These are all I have, so if you want to help me out then give me a proper pair of shoes." But I didn't. We set out, the Swiss guide and two German speaking cyclists and Julia and me, all in a line, weaving through the narrow San Cristóbal streets and traffic. We took dirt alleys that seemed always to be going uphill. I was getting out of breath, and we weren't even out of the city yet. On one dirt hill, I couldn't change gears properly and the chain slipped off. I thought I could just slip it back on, but then when I tried to ride up again, of course, I broke the chain.

The Swiss guide came down asking, "You broke the chain?" I said, "Yes." "Oh, Girl!" she said, rather exasperated. She took out her tools and fixed the chain, giving me a lecture about changing gears softly and slowly. Of course I needed this lecture, because obviously I do NOT know how to ride a bike up an unpaved hill.

More uphill riding for a while, and I tried to recover from the embarrassment of having broken my chain already (though I would like to say that the chain broke on me, all of its own accord). I was clearly the cycling dunce of the group, but I was psyching myself up by repeating in my head, "I can do this. I will not break the chain again. I will go up the hills without falling," and I was ready to give it my best. After the uphill going, however, I got really out of breath. We passed the periférico (the ring highway around the city) and there was this long dirt road stretching out in front of us, uphill of course, and I just couldn't go any further. Julia hung back to check if I was OK. I was pedalling half-assed and said, "I don't think I can do this anymore." She comforted me by saying that the trip was indeed difficult, with so much uphill riding, and that they were all going pretty fast. We caught up with the others (only because they had stopped completely), and I said I couldn't go any further. "This is just the beginning of the uphill riding!" the guide said, pointing out the very apparent fact that I was out of shape. I replied, "Obviously I can't go any further. I'm just not a cyclist."

She gave me a map and directions to get back to the city and the bike place, and I mustered up some cheer to say goodbye-have-fun to Julia and the German-speaking cyclists. It was easy enough, but I had to go uphill a little on the periférico, and I could hardly make it, huffing and puffing like an idiot. Everything else was frighteningly downhill from there, into the city. I probably wore out the breaks because I was sure I'd slide and crash into a parked car. My hands ached from gripping the handlebars, and my tailbone was sore from the seat, so I knew I'd made the right decision not to continue this self-torture for over three more hours.

When I got back to the bike place, the guy there didn't look surprised. Lucky for me, he didn't ask me any questions besides, "Did you leave anything here?" I walked back feeling exhausted and completely demoralized. It took effort not to just fall onto the hotel bed sobbing at the humiliation I had just experienced. I pulled myself together, reminding myself about that thing I read about how depressives think about setbacks, that they think every setback is permanent and pervasive. I had to tell myself repeatedly, this only means I couldn't go mountain biking, and that's OK. In the past I probably would've kicked myself for being so stupid as to think that I could cycle several kilometers uphill. But I think I did pretty well, considering the circumstances. I retreated with some dignity, accepting my limits.

So I came back and did some yoga, a longer practice than I have done in a very long time, because it is something I can do and because it's all about accepting one's limits. I think I should stick with gentle yoga and forget about mountain biking.

Anyway, it's too bad this entry is so negative. The rest of the trip has been good. In fact, people keep remarking that Julia and I seem very happy traveling. On the way to the ruins at Teotihuacán outside of Mexico City, the taxi driver said, "What's important is that you are happy." And then near the cabins where we stayed by the ruins at Palenque, a man at a tour tent observed that we were very "felices" and told us to continue being happy.

I also have an entry about Lea's visit to Arandas and Julia's last weekend in Guadalajara, but I couldn't post it, and it's saved on Julia's computer, which of course isn't here with us in Chiapas. I will try to post that as soon as I can, and also to tell more about the rest of our trip, but that might not be for a while. I think I'm going to get an ice cream or something and enjoy the sunshine in this chilly mountain town.