Irapuato/Guanajuato (just say it…you’ll laugh)

I love mexico. Just in case I haven’t already said that enough. The last few days were pretty eventful–I will try and keep it…shortish.

I went to Guanajuato with the students, minus Kristoff (in Leon vising friends) plus Anita, a rising senior at Duke who wants to go to med school. So it was me, Lorene, Charles, Joe and Anita. First, the very nice students humored me in an adventure to Irapuato to take my computer to get fixed. It turned out to be quite the adventure.

We arrived in Irapuato on Friday afternoon in our camioneta (huge-ass white van) and stopped at a gasolinera (gas station) and Lorene and I took a cab to the “address,” except that we did not have EXACTLY the address. When I talked to the Apple technician on the phone, he told me Street Lopez. Turns out, there are about 4 different streets called Lopez in Irapuato. Sweet. So the cabbie took us to one…it didn’t even have numbers up to the 800s (which is where the address was). So I decided to call the other store in this state, in Leon. The woman on the phone there told me the address and the colonia (neighborhood, loosely translated) where the street was. Unfortunately we had already arrived at the second Lopez street (which was also wrong), but we told the cabbie and he took us right there. When we got to the address, which was thankfully much more…nice…than the other two, I asked a woman about the office, she told me that the guy who worked there was gone for the next hour…So we asked when they were open the next day and agreed to come back the next day on our way home from Guanajuato. The whole ride costed a litle under $10. Not bad for being driven around for nearly an hour.

We loaded back up into the van, at least with the correct address and colonia now, and headed to Guanajuato. Arriving in the city also proved somewhat difficult. We got lost, missed the second turn and had to turn around. Except we were on the side of a mountain that only went one way. So we had to drive for a while to find a place to turn around. Either way, we did eventually get to Guanajuato. We parked the van, checked into our hostel and ate at a very very nice restraunt for about 10 bucks. I had salmon–delicious! We headed back to the hostel, saw two guys get in a fight (basically one just punched and kicked the other, then they walked away) and chilled at the hostel for a little bit, just sitting around talking. Then we decided to go out to the Guanajuatan bars. Everything is very walkable, which is nice. First we went to a hole-in-the wall bar with a pool table. We played some pool, had some drinks…I was fairly unimpressed. Joe decided to go to sleep, so he headed back to the hostel, but we wanted to go DANCE! We thought we’d check out this one bar where they have live Salsa music, but it cost 50pesos (about $5, a little less) to get in, and it didn’t look all that fun. Well as we were deciding whether we should go upstairs to the salsa club, a guy about our age asks us in English if we want free shots, and if so, to follow him. So, feeling adventurous, we follow him down some stone steps, a little wary of why we were going down into a dark basement-like area, but we all thought we had four people and one of our people was a guy. So whatever. We get downstairs and see this small dungeon-like area with a plasma screen television, a few seats and balloons everywhere. We were the only people down there. Raul, our “host” told us that it was early (11:30pm) and there would be more people later. We all laughed and talked about how sketchy we thought it was, but it also had good music and Raul was a pretty amiable guy. So we got our free shots and sat and chatted with Raul for a bit. After a while we decided to venture out and go to a different, more dance-acceptable, club. We thanked Raul and headed down the street, Lorene and Anita still with drinks in their hands. We arrived at the other dance hall and the girls had to finish their drinks, so we took pictures and Charles bought us all roses from a guy who was selling flowers on the street (awe!). Lorene and Anita finally finished their drinks and we went into the club, which was playing…techno in Spanish? We walked around for a little bit, found some guanajuatenses (people from Guanajuato) to dance with…danced for a while, then decided to go check out the OTHER dance club. It was pretty lame, so we went back to Raul’s bar, where there were some more people. There, we dance some more with OTHER guanajuatenses until we decided it was time to go to sleep (3:30am?). It was a fun night, and us girls ended up talking for a while when we got back to the hostel about how well we all get along.

Saturday, after getting lost AGAIN trying to leave Guanajuato, we went back to Irapuato and ended up dropping my computer off. It might take 2 weeks to fix and I might loose all my information. But asi es (that’s how it is). Then we drove back to Juventino. We went to the birthday party of the 4 year old grandson of one of the delegation (friends here), though he went to go pick up one of our doctors and his 15 year old son at the airport, so he wasn’t there. It was car-themed and really long, probably felt longer since we were all so tired. We then drove to Celaya to have dinner with the Padre (father, in the Church) at a really nice restraunt and I got to practice my Spanish with a 20-year-old law student here from Juventino who was really nice and interesting. While I look forward to going back to a diet of mostly lettuce, fruit, nuts and dark chocolate, I quite enjoyed my steak. It was delicious. I ended up back in my quaint little bed here in Juventino, in the doctor’s house and woke up this morning, went for a run, showered and now am about to go with the doctor and his wife to get my daddy from the airport. Unfortunately, posting pictures has been postponed (hah!)…So until later–Take care all!