Enjoying the view

Jonathan:
Our Spanish classes continue to feel like exactly the right thing to be doing, and Guanajuato still seems to impress us every day. We've enjoyed having a little bit of a routine here... Getting to know the waiters at our favorite restaurants, going to the same coffee shops to do our homework each afternoon. It's been nice to stay put for a while.

Our Spanish learning has been intense to say the least. My level of enthusiasm seems to go up and down, sometimes multiple times within a day. The more I learn the easier it is to feel overwhelmed by what I don't know. Every once in a while though, I'll find myself casually discussing politics with our host family, or talking about the relationship between Spanish and modern indigenous languages in Mexico with a few of my instructors at school, and I realize that I know more Spanish than I think I do.

In addition to our studies, we've enjoyed using our free time to get to know this area a little bit. This past weekend we went with a couple other people from the school to a nearby town called Patzcuaro (nearby is like 4 hours). Patzcuaro is a really charming colonial town with a very different style than Guanajuato. All of the buildings are painted the same two colors, and every sign for everything in the city-- hotels, restaurants, shops, businesses... everything-- is painted in black type with the first letter of each word in red. It's bizarre. It feels more like a compound than a city. We stayed Saturday night in a remote cottage on a tiny island in nearby Lago Patzcuaro which provided a nice contrast to the bustling urban evenings we've been enjoying here in Guanajuato.

This coming weekend we're planning to spend a day or so in nearby San Miguel de Allende... we've heard mixed reviews about this intensely Americanized colonial town, so we're looking forward to seeing it for ourselves and maybe even stopping by the new Starbucks while we're there. As a special treat our dear friend Shannon just happens to be in Guadalajara this week, so sometime on Sunday we'll be heading that way to spend a few days with her. Can't wait!