Weekend fun with Victoria!

My first full weekend installed in my house has been a good one! Not that I've spent much time here, though...

Friday my friend Victoria and I, also here on a Fulbright ETA, tried to register our visas with the gvt. Mistake. They tried to make us do lots of crazy things like change the status of our visas... thankfully Jessica, our Fulbright go-to, told us she would take care of it. She's the bomb.

Anyway, Victoria and I spent the day in Toluca, where she lives, hanging around, chatting, catching up; I got to see her University (a few times bigger than mine, but I still like my U ;)), we went to lunch with her tutor, Kirk, who has lived here in Mexico for about 15 years... he has some crazy stories. I stayed at Victoria's house on Friday, and Saturday morning we returned to Lerma, and stumbled upon what I assume to be the beginning of Lerma's "diamond-ness..." a HUGE market. Selling lots of delicious things--we ate some quesadillas, some tlacoyos (stuffed masa shaped like a football), some freshly squeezed orange juice... I could get used to that. Bought some num-nums, returned to my house, cleaned up a bit, then we received an invitation from her friends Omar and Liz--for a "Noche Mexicana." We went to one of Omar's uncle's homes (it was huge), and proceeded to stuff ourselves with pozole (a soup with hominy and other delicious additions), tacos dorados (rolled up and fried tacos), tostadas (fried tortillas with meat and cheese and lettuce on top), pambazos (grilled rolls with meat and cheese and cream and lettuce inside--like a sandwich), and tamales... holy smokes. Obviously I had to try everything. It was all sooooo good... good thing we don't eat like that every weekend! :)

During the course of the evening, chatting with Omar's family, we had to admit that we haven't traveled very much, so Omar and Liz invited us to Taxco for Sunday. Taxco (pronounced TAS-co) is in the state of Guerrero (the same state as Acapulco), and is well known for it's colonial history and it's silver mining. They drove us, kindly, and we spent the day looking through the various "platerías," finding treasures in unlikely places, and of course, eating. :) I came home with a few pairs of wooden earrings, a necklace, a mobile of fish (that's currently hung up here in my bedroom), and some beautiful paintings of birds on a background of rough paper. And some new friends. :) They've also invited us to their other family member's house for this evening, which will kick off the festivities for Independence Day, which is tomorrow... more on that tomorrow. :)

Oh, and I have internet at my house now! Yay! I ended up getting it from a smaller company, so they were able to get right on it. It's AWESOME. Skype me! :)

Hasta pronto... besos!