Photos

Photos of Morelia and Guadalajara are now posted:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22868057@N05/

Daytripping….and….the Mall of Shoes!!!

As I mentioned, Sunday I planned on going to Leon to shop for Jeans.  Heather (a fellow student) and I met up at 10:30 and arrived In Leon around 12:30.  Upon arriving in Leon, there was a problem…neither of us had an idea where to go.  Despite being the 5th largest city in Mexico, my guidebook gives no information about it at all.  The only thing I knew from prior reading is that Leon is known for its leather products in general and for shoes specifically.  Fortunately, there was a tourist information booth near the bus station and we were able to get some maps.  After consulting the map, we realized that there was a mall a few blocks away.  We went inside, started to walk around, and slowly, slowly started to realize that every store in the mall sold shoes.  Every single one.  We looked at our map again and realized that we were in the Plaza de Zapatos (zapato is Spanish for shoe).   An entire mall, with 40-60 shops, all selling shoes!  We looked at the map, realized there was another mall across the street, and went there.  Same thing.  Another mall of shoe stores.  Wouldn´t have believed it if I hadn´t seen it with my own eyes.  Two malls, next to each other, with every store selling shoes.  A woman´s paradise!!!

Fortunately, I knew from prior reading that there was an American-style mall in Leon called Plaza Mayor.  We took a cab there (way too far to walk!) and it was like I was back in the States.  A multi-level mall with 3 department stores, a food court, multi-screen cinema, hundreds of other stores and (supposedly) a bowling alley and an ice skating rink. Plenty of jeans there, but most of them at American prices.  Eventually I did buy a pair of jeans.  Where you ask?  Sears!  Good ol´Sears.  Who´d have thunk it?  Probably not a style of jeans I normally would have bought but I was desperate and at just under $20 the price was right.

Shopping for Jeans in Mexico

Jeans:  When I left the States, I had three pairs of pants with me, two khakis (one green one tan) and one pair of jeans.  The green pair of khaki´s were “sacrificed” to my illness in Queretaro leaving me with just the jeans and one pair of khakis.  And now the jeans have seen much better days and are in need of replacement.  So last night, I tried to find another pair. There are a couple of stores in the downtown that sell primarily men´s clothes.  The first one, unfortunately, sells clothes from American companies (Gap, Banana Republic, Calvin Klein, etc.) and the cheapest pair I could find was $50.  Sorry, but I don´t pay that much for clothes.  The other store had slightly better prices but styles that I´d never consider wearing.  The next stop was the mall.  I tried the Walmart-like store but didn´t see anything I liked.  I then went to an upscale clothing store which had 75% off of everything, making their $90 jeans affordable.  But their was a slight problem.  Unlike jeams and pants in the States, which give both length and waist size, these jeans only had one number.  I asked the clerk about this and she indicated that the one number was for the waist.  Okay, that´s fine since most of them had waist sizes that were similar to mine.  So I held a pair up to me.  Nope, way too long.  Tried another one.  Same problem.  Another, still way too long.  I finally checked with the clerk and she told me that all the pants had the same length.  She then indicated that I could cut them to make them fit.  I can only imagine the look on my face when she said this.  So I left.  But I started to wonder….I began looking at the length of men´s pants here in Guanajuato and I found that few guys have pants that actually fit them.  Most just wear them as are.  A few roll them up.  And there are a few which have clearly been cut.  Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to take a bus to Leon, a city about 45-60 minutes from there.  It´s the 5th larget city in Mexico so there should be more shopping options.

Today´s odd sites: 

• A Mexican wearing an Ohio State t-shirt.
• A van with Ohio license plates.  Now that´s a long drive for you!  Guanajuato is roughly aligned with the Western coast of the US.
• A paramedic walking down the street and stopping in stores, offering free blood pressure screenings.
• A man pushing a boy of about 10 years old down the street on a dolly.  There didn´t appear to be anything wrong with the boy.
• Two boys clinging to the back of a truck as it drove down the street.  What makes this odd is that this was a uhaul type truck.  Just try hanging onto the back of one of those sometimes!

My Spanish: This week I had my first conversation class.  I was pleased at how far I´ve come (though I obviously have a ways to go).  I was able to, more or less, succesfully explain the concept of the Easter Bunny and tell the story of the time when my parents took my older sister and myself to safari near Cleveland and a camel stuck it´s head in my window.

Volunteering:  I started my volunteering on Thursday.  Not sure it´s what I´m looking for but since I´m only going to be in Guanajuato for 4-6 weeks I´m not too concerned about it.  There were three volunteers and only two kids.  I spoke with the volunteer coordinator (an American) afterwards and while she´s happy to have my help, it wasn´t clear what I´d be doing.  Mexico doesn´t really have a culture of volunteering and it sounds like she´s fairly overwhelmed just trying to keep any volunteering afloat.

Where I’m living: I think I forgot to mention this but right now I´m living at the school.  They have several rooms for rent so I took one of the cheapies. For $10 a night I get a fairly spacious room with bed and desk, free drinking water (huge in Mexico) and free internet access when the school is open.  I also obviously have  a very short commute to classes.  The only downsides are the lack of hot water in the shower (a problem all over Mexico), the walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night (up a set of stairs, down a set of stairs, around the corner, then down a dark, creepy set of stairs), and the fact that the school isn´t that close to the downtown (about a 20-30 minute walk).  Still, all in all, I´m not complaining.

Spanish made simple…

Spanish:  In an earlier post, I mentioned the problem with masculine and feminine nouns in Spanish.  I´ll be working on changing that in the upcoming months.  Here are some other changes I´ll be working on:

• The letter ¨h¨will be eliminated.  Did you realize that, ¨h¨never makes a sound in Spanish?  What´s the point of having an entire letter that never makes a sound?  If it doesn´t do anything, I say get rid of it.
• ¨v¨will be changed to ¨b¨¨ and ¨z¨will be changed to ¨s¨.  Did you realize that ¨v¨and ¨s¨don´t have their own sounds?  ¨V¨makes the exact same sound as ¨b¨and ¨z¨makes the same sound as ¨s¨.  If ¨v¨and ¨s¨can´t make their own sounds, then let´s get rid of them!
• Either ¨ser¨or “estar” will be eliminated.  Spanish actually has two verbs for the concept of “to be”.  Why?  I have no idea.  There are rules for when to use which one, but who has time to memorize all these rules???  The concept of “to be” is too important to risk any confusion over which verb to use.  I´ll be flipping a coin this weekend to decide which one stays and which one goes.
• Seven verb tenses will be eliminated.  As I´m sure everyone knows, there are 7 verb tenses in English.  Okay, probably no one knew that but here´s the thing…Spanish has 14 verb tenses.  14!!!  Why?  Again, I have no idea.  It´s way too much to learn.  English seems to work just fine with 7 verb tenses.  Think about it…have you ever been talking to someone and said to yourself….”boy, if I only had 7 more verb tenses to use, then I could really get my point across?”.  Somehow, I doubt that´s ever happened.

Three odd/unusual things: These all happened on Wednesday:

• A little boy, about three years old, came up to me and started speaking to me in Spanish.  He had a plastic bag with food in it and at first I thought he needed help opening the bag of food.  But he proceeded to open it himself and continued to talk to me.  How do you tell a three year old that you don´t speak their language?  I ended up walking away.
• A Mexican couple asked me to take their picture on the steps of the Teatro Juarez.  Not so unusual except that everything they said to me was in English and all my responses to them were in Spanish.
• A group of four Mexicans (an older woman and three people in their 20s or 30s) were walking down the street and I was trying to pass them.  They realized they were blocking my way and apologized to me.  The one woman said a few things to me in Spanish, then she decided she wanted her picture taken with me.  The next thing I knew she threw her arms around me, and our picture was being taken.  Not much I could do other than play along and smile. 

I love earplugs!!!

Earplugs I first used earplugs when I was a freshman in college.  Many of you don’t know this but my first roommate was once on the cover of People magazine.  They did a profile of overweight high school football players and he definitely qualified.  He was about 6′ tall and weighed about 300 pds.  There’s actually a photo of us together (and I weighed about 20 pounds less than I do now) which presents quite the contrast.  He was also African-American, which heightened the contrast.  Anyway, he snored.  And when you’re that size and you snore…well, I’m sure you can imagine.  A friend of my parents worked in a factory and suggested earplugs.  They helped but not enough to keep me from moving to a different room after 3 weeks.  I couldn’t to use earplugs though since they helped drown out the rest of the noise in the dorm.  In fact, for a long time, I wasn’t able to sleep without earplugs in, even if it was relatively quiet.

Anyway, now I’m in Mexico where noise is rampant – cars, music, barking dogs, etc.  There’s no way I could survive without earplugs.  My friend Hazel was somehow able to go to sleep without earplugs despite the continuous noise from dogs and roosters where she was staying.  I’m not even willing to try.  I jam my earplugs in as deeply as I can every night.  They don’t block out all the noise but they do enough to help me get a good nights sleep most evenings.