¿what's the spanish for wavicle?

OK. Still no word from yahoo about my email. I have started using my gmail account instead. Actually it is much better (yes i realise i am somewhat behind the curve only realising that now.) pmg102@gmail.com it is, pmg101 was already taken.

So, not having email meant i missed all your christmas wishes, or perhaps you're all just cabrones and you didn't send me any. I'm joking! Actually, what it did do is totally scupper my plans to meet up with les françaises in puebla for new year's, since i only heard from them today, and it's already the 31st! However, the flipside of that is that I therefore stayed in Morelia a little longer, and had the pleasure yesterday to spend the day discussing philosophy of physics, among many other things, with a charming local girl! But i get ahead of myself.

I had a good time in Guadalajara. I left my car parked in the street, just outside the parking meters zone. After four days, I thought I should check on it, for peace of mind, so I walked up there, to find the driver's window smashed! On closer inspection, I realised that actually it was just open -- in my half-asleep idiocy on Monday morning when I moved it, I had left the window open. Nothing had been touched -- there wasn't even a homeless man asleep in it. So take what lesson you like about crime versus fear-of-crime. I did shut the window though, before I left it again.

It was also the festival of the Virgen de Guadalupe whilst I was there, so with a few others from the hostel we went and consumed remarkably unhealthy mexican street food, consisting mainly of deep fried things with sugar, whilst not buying things from the many artisan stalls. And we saw some Aztec dancing! Apparently they dance for days on end.

The hostel is dead cool, they hook you up with fun local things each night. Guadalajara has a big art scene, so a couple of times there were trips to galleries and things like that. One girl from the States was staying at the hostel, but had been working in a local community for the previous six months, and she took us to meet her host family for a birthday party. It was great to leave the centre and go out into the real Mexican suburbs, even if they did take advantage of our offer to buy beer and tricked us into buying 50 bottles.

I missed the opportunity to see more french films (seems to be a theme) and/or a bullfight by deciding after a week to leave, for the pretty towns of Colima and Ciudad Guzman, on the way to Maruata's empty beaches for Christmas week. That was amazing. Especially creeping around the beach at one in the morning looking for turtles laying eggs! They are a 400-million-year-old species, and it is amazing to watch them. That was where I met the turtle girl and her boyfriend, Canadians, who (since there were so few people staying) I saw every day. When the time came for leaving, it turned out we were all headed to Morelia, so I offered them a lift, and was then invited to dinner with her family, which was where I met her sister the quantum physicist. Hopefully I will be able to put some of the pictures that they took up here.

Both of my cameras are now used up: I am trying to decide whether to develop them here to paper, or CD, or send the films home, or what. I also have realised (OK, it was obvious to everyone else) that not having a digital camera was a mistake. I am thinking about buying one, but it's pretty galling when they're more expensive here even than home, and certainly than the States.

On the way into Morelia, for a joke but not really, we stopped at a Burger King. You have to marvel at the fact that they can make a Whopper taste identical in Morelia, Mexico, Great Bend, Kansas, and Brighton, England. Or you might think it is a bit sinister. Apart from that, its been tacos, quesadillas, and comida corrida all the way! Oh, and fish, at the beach. Mmmmm.

So, I hope everyone else had pleasant Christmases, and a Feliz Año Nuevo to you all. I have tequila and limes: hopefully I will be able to persuade the Dutch girls at the hostel to share them with me. Apart from that, I had my hair cut. The poor man was very mystified that I wanted those clippers for cutting the side and back pushed all over my head. But he came through bravely. And all for GBP 1.75. I love this country!

no email :(

if anyone has tried to email me, i am not receiving emails at the moment. thanks, yahoo. i have contacted them to ask what is going on. i have had that account for over 5 years and never had a problem, and now that i need it it goes pear-shaped!

had a very relaxing xmas getting a tan, swimming with turtles, drinking coconuts and sleeping under palm palapas on the beach at maruata. hoping to make it to puebla for new year!

happy holidays a todo :)

¡viva mexico!

the cadence of my journey has changed somewhat now
that i am across the border. i have slowed down quite
a bit. partly this is because the US being in many
ways culturally similar to home meant that i could do
a sort of high-speed trip. actually i covered over
10,000 miles in the two months i was there. and partly
it is because driving in mexico is a rather different
proposition than driving in the US. i think this is a
trend which will only continue...

so, first i spent one week in monterrey, as it turned
out, staying with a family which was pretty cool.
except that she wanted to practise her english on me
so i didnt really get much of a chance to practise my
spanish! but i got by, during the day when she was at
work, in my conversations with shopkeepers and museum
attendants, so was kind of chuffed. middle-class
monterrejians aspire to be USAian. it seemed a shame,
but i suppose inevitable.

i started off being very circumspect with respect to
food and water. however nothing went wrong so i became
more and more adventurous. now i pretty much eat
everything, yes including salad, and i clean my teeth
under the tap, and i am pleased to report i have had
no ill-effects as yet!

so after a lovely week in monterrey, i drove down to
zacatecas, a lovely colonial town in the middle of
mexico, where i liked the hostel so much i stayed a
week. i decided to take spanish lessons there too,
since a teacher at the university language centre
would do 1-on-1 for 4 GBP an hour. i tried to speak
spanish in the hostel as much as possible too, as some
of the other guests were trying to improve their
spanish, and i bought (randomly) an agatha christie
book in spanish and a diccionario, the former i have
conquered the first two chapters of with the aid of
the latter.

and yesterday, i finally left and drove down here to
guadalajara, mexico's second biggest city (mexico city
the first, monterrey is the third), with two absurdly
beautiful french-canadian girls whose university has
an exchange program with the university in puebla.
both, alas, have mexican boyfriends... during the
journey, we conversed in a melange of french, spanish,
and english. the early stages of learning a language
are really fun and rewarding, as you pick up new
vocabulary daily.

the city is, well, big, (7mi ppl i think). the hostel
seems to be a little too anglophone for me. i have
already met two people who had been at zacatecas --
i'm not sure i like the 'gringo trail' factor too
much. i will probably stay here a few days (perhaps a
week, true to form), then swing by morelia to see the
monarch butterfly migration, whence to the michoacan
coast to find a playa for christmas :).

nada mas, hasta la proxima!