¡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!