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The Fiestas are Getting StartedSeptember 13, 2004 -- Just a quick postcard to let you folks know the latest. I am sad to report that my camera broke a few weeks ago, so no pictures till I stop grumbling and do something about it. All the stores around here have last year's models at high prices, so I may have to wait to go to a bigger town to shop around a bit. It's a lot of money to plunk down, so I'm still trying to decide what to do. Jillian is really enjoying her private spanish lessons with Maria Teresa Frazee. She is making great progress and her accent is excellent. Maria Teresa and her husband Tom have been very kind to us and have invited us over for dinner and to several parties. One of them was held at this guy's house: http://www.flyingconcrete.com. He builds wild houses down here reminiscent of the style of Gaudi. The live music and food have been especially nice here. I've never been in a mid-size town with such a great concentration of restaurants. Feast on everything from Irish food to Tex Mex. Fine dining abounds in various styles. Come on down and enjoy. For my future reference as much as yours, I'm going to list a few that we've tried here:
September is the month of fiestas for San Miguel de Allende, and they are getting started in royal style now. Many of the banners, flowers, lights, and decorations are hanging up. More and more people are milling about. There is a hushed anticipation as people await the start of the fiestas. The town feels very alive, the weather is perfect, and I couldn't imagine being anywhere else. some people seem to loathe the arrival of the muchedumbre borracha (drunken crowd), but others seem to get into the wildness of it all. Tens of thousands of people come for some of the main events, which happen the last two weeks of September. On Thursday, I will get to live out a lifelong dream of attending a real Lucha Libre (Mexican Pro Wrestling) match. I turned on the tv this morning and there was this weird 1960's Lucha Libre movie on with strange science fiction groovy movie soundtrack and voluptuous girls running around as the men fought in odd locations. I took it as a sign that I definitely need to attend the match. Jillian isn't quite so enthusiastic... Handicap accessible? Not! ........Sometimes people ask whether people with disabilities would have a hard time visiting mexico. Here is a sad anecdote for you. There is a local guy in a wheelchair around town who maintains a CONSTANT WHEELIE to negotiate the cobble stone streets. He has arms like popeye and is obviously very motivated and coordinated to enable him to do this. My camera is broken, or I would have a picture to prove it to you. He keeps it in a wheelie because the front wheels of his chair are so small that he would be impeded if he tried to locomote in a normal fashion. Staying on the sidewalk is not an option (constant stairs, dropoffs, and odd angles), so he flies down hills in the middle of the street. Honesty, understanding, environmental, and generosity campaigns. There is a series of ads on the tv that show a little vignette and then flash one word like Honesty or Generosity on the screen afterwards, plus a web address. The vignettes will be something like a poor person thinks the apples are too expensive, it bothers them, so the vendor slips an extra basket of apples in the poor person's car as they drive off. Then the word Generosidad flashes on the screen. Sometimes it's the Catholic Church paying for the ad, sometimes it's unclear who the sponsor is. There are also lots of ones about alcoholism and the daughter being embarrassed that her father is going to mess up her quinciniera unless he seeks treatment. I think the ads are good and find them interesting. Most ads in the states involve some profit motive for the people putting on the ads, these just seem to be general public service announcements. First bus crash in awhile! .......we were coming out of the movies at the Gigante shopping center last night. Bad Tom Cruise movie called Collateral, but it was suspenseful so we were a little tense when we got on the bus back to town. There are competing local bus companies, and apparently there is a code of conduct where if one bus is stopped at gigante, it is impolite to go roaring past. The stopped driver (ours), assumed that the other guy cut ahead to steal more of 'his' passengers, so he roared off to catch the offender in a testosterone filled crunch of gears and revs of the engine. After about 6 blocks we caught up to the other bus, and our macho driver goes to teach him a lesson by passing on the topes with a motorcycle coming at us in the other lane. The motorcycle wisely yielded, as did the other bus driver. To drive it home though, our driver tried to swerve over quickly to scare the other bus. BIG MISTAKE. Haha. He cut it too close and busted out ALL of the glass in the back door of our bus, and messed up the front left corner of the bus we were passing. Jillian and I got off that bus in a big hurry and walked the rest of the way back. I hope it costs our driver a lot of money to repair the bus and his job. what a loser. We are literally talking about 4 peso bus rides here. Road rage over such a small sum is pathetic. A lot of people could have gotten hurt. In the daytime, he never would have crashed his bus, but at night, he couldn't judge it correctly. Viva machismo. Residents of San Miguel. My hats off to the mexicans and ex-patriates who live here! in our five weeks so far, we have met tons of kind locals and foreigners living here. We've been invited to lots of parties, and have generally enjoyed the benefits of such a welcoming community. I can't say enough about the great restaurants and general ambience of San Miguel. Come check it out for yourself. That's it for now. Hope you all are doing well! |