Guanajuatooo!

What a week it’s been! I haven’t written in a while, so there’s a lot to catch up on…
Anne-Marie, my new French housemate, moved in last Tuesday. She is officially the bomb. It’s so much less lonely with her here… it feels like I’m back in college, with my friends built-in. ☺

This weekend we (Anne-Marie, Victoria, Memo and their housemate Heather and I) went to Guanajuato, the site of the Festival Cervantino, one of the largest music/art/dance festivals in Latin America. This was its last weekend, so things were extra crazy.

Friday morning, we met up with a group from their university in Toluca, and taxi’d to another university, where we boarded a suuuper sketchy bus with some equally sketchy characters around noon. We stopped several times for potty breaks, and during the last one, we realized that we’d gotten a flat tire. Oh wait, but don’t worry, there was a tire replacement shop conveniently located at the rest stop—the only problem was that it didn’t have our bus’s-sized tire. Sad. So we drove slowly for about an hour and a half, with the bus listing to the left, until we got to the larger city of Querétaro. We waited for another hour or so, with the lights of the food places across the highway making our mouths water… we got back on the bus, everything good to go, and got to Guanajuato at midnight. That’s right, a 5 hour bus ride turned into a 12 hour bus ride. Thankfully, Anne-Marie and Memo’s French friends in Gjo. were kind enough to let us crash with them—we added to the total number of people staying there (in a studio apartment) to make 15. Things got pretty crazy around bedtime, but we were grateful that we didn’t have to stay with the other 50 people from the bus-eek!

Saturday we got up late, shopped, and made a delicious breakfast with eggs, fruit, bread… it gave us great energy for the walking around that we did for the rest of the day… Guanajuato is a beauuutiful city! It was chock-full of people, but for the most part that wasn’t a problem. We hiked ourselves up to the mirador, walked around the city, heard live music everywhere, saw live sculptures, and just generally enjoyed ourselves. Saturday night we tried to get in to see some of the musical groups, but just ended up walking around for a while, and heading back to Amaya and Pitu’s house…

Sunday morning Victoria and Heather went back to Toluca to catch up on some work, so Memo and I and some newly arrived friends (Alexis, Nina and Rachel) got up early and hiked up (not kidding—very hilly, Guanajuato) to see the Mummy Museum… it was a little morbid, but FASCINATING to see some people’s clothes and hair intact after being buried between 2-7 years before being exhumed… the world’s smallest mummy, a 5 month old fetus, is at this museum. After the Mummy Museum, we wound our way back down and then up again to the Valenciana mine… Guanajuato was one of the main Spanish mining sites, mining mainly silver and gold, along with some copper, lime, quartz, and other minerals. The gold especially is obvious in the church directly above the mine—the altar is nearly almost gold-plated!

Some quesadillas for a snack, and then back down the mountain… Sunday night was the largest concert, the Mexican group Café Tacvba, and the closing ceremonies, so things were getting crazy even from early in the morning as people lined up for tickets and seats. We didn’t end up getting in to see them, as we had to meet our group for our departure at 10 pm, but they were broadcasted onto huge screens all over the city… lots of dancing, lots of excitement, lots of overcrowding…

We boarded our bus at 12, and we all slept for a while, and then between 2-4 we were at a dead stop on the freeway from all the people trying to get out of town. Literally. Not moving. Thankfully, we cut our time down to 10 hours instead of 12, and we got home around 10 am. Overall, a blast of a weekend, so fun to meet the Frenchies, hear live music everywhere, see beautiful Guanajuato, and generally take part in a big deal in Mexico. ☺ This week is our second exam, so I have to write the bugger, and then go to bed early. ☺

Thanks for reading! Besos~