Exploring the City

We woke up this morning earlier than we thought we would--10am. You would think after an early plane ride, a 2 hours bus ride and only eating an apple turnover in la mañana would have caused us to sleep in. We dressed and were downstairs by 10:30am.

We had mangos with yogurt first (which I didn't like since I don't eat mangos or yogurt in the Estados Unidos). Then Mamá brought out juevos con hamon! It was so good--she even brought out totillas!

We told her we wanted to explore the city, and asked her to mark our location on a map that el escuela provided to us. She didn't like el mapa, so she gave us one she had made. She explained how to get to certain places of interest and told us the correct amount of money a taxi should charge two American students.

I wanted to walk to the school primera so we followed our homemade map. I was really glad to learn that la escuela is muy close to el casa. Aunt Wendy said I should walk to school and now I'll get to follow her advice. It's only a 15 minutoes walk.

After finding the school, we wanted to find el centro de ciudad, or the zocolo. We walked down a one way sreet for about 30 minutoes trying to find it. We came upon an iglesia that was on our map, but we still couldn't find the zocalo. Austin and I thoguht we had gone too far, so we walked norte on another calle.

I became frustrated because our map placed the zocalo in the exact spot we were walking in. Then I figured it out-- there were dos inglesias and el mapa wasn't to scale. Dos blocks sud did not mean dos blocks. I guess that's the "bello" of a handdrawn map.

During our unsuccessful trek, I needed water and stopped at a small tienda to buy water. When Austin tried to buy el agua, the person told him it would be $5.50 pesos. Austin had a confused look on his face when he reached into his pocket for money. He continued to have a confused face until he realized the exchange rate. The water was only $0.55 in American dollars. I teased him abuot that.

We found the zocalo and also found some students in our group.

I bought my first food off the street--a churro. Well, I bought a bag and shared with Austin. We also saw a large Catholic church and walked around in a nice jardin.

We took a bus home (since both of us had blisters from wearing sandals). Mamá made chicken, rice, and brocolli for lunch. As we sat down, she started crying, telling us that Alonzo, her son, left to go to school in Baja California. She kept apologizing, and I had no idea what to do. Austin put his hand on her and told her it would be okay.

After lunch (about 4:30pm), Austin and I watched the Bodyguard on telivision. It was in English but had Spanish subtitles. When the movie ended, I said, "I never thought I'd be watching the Bodyguard in Mexico with Spanish subtitles with another guy." He laughed.

We studied verbs and tenses until 9pm and then we started talking. I'm really glad that Austin is my roommate. He's smart, funny, and can keep up with me in a conversation. We're meshing very well, better than I expected. He's exactly the kind of roommate that I wanted.

Oh! I can't believe I forgot this! We talked about me being gay on our long walk. He said he didn't care at all and said that others shouldn't care either. When I told him about my reservations, he laughed. He told me that he's hung out with gay guys before and thought they were fun. He also said that he took a class where there was a lesbian with a kid. He said it wasn't until he met her that he realized how hard gay people can have it and therefore can only have respect for them. He said that people need to put themselves in others shoes, and until he thought about what it would be like to be gay, never understood.

I'm sunburned on my face, arms, and feet. The weather here is awesome! Much better than cold Utah.