“Can you help us? We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!!!!!!!!!!” Withnail & I



Dear all Amigas y Amigos,



Hola! Greetings from Guanajuato, Mexico!



First days…..February 1st to 5th, 2010


Oh it’s been a comedy of errors since we got here, but there are a lot of nice things and, as always, we are able to laugh!

First, the rain! It is non stop and yesterday it started coming in under the back door and across the kitchen floor. We did our best with rugs and towels for a day and then today the towels were so wet that they gave up. I went next door where the brother and sister in law of the owners live and said "Agua Piso!" (water on the floor!) everyone jumped up (except the Spanish learners who are staying with them) , yelling "Agua Piso" Until the students caught on and exclaimed also...

Then two tiny senoritas who clean the houses turned up and mopped and wrung out the rugs and towels then put them back down...that worked for about 10 minutos. Apparently someone is coming tomorrow to put in a gutter to divert the cascada of rain back there.

It is SO cold...54 in the house and we spend a lot of time in bed...hee hee, as that is the only warm place. The owner, Gustavo, went up on the roof tonight (in the torrents of rain) to see why we only have lukewarm water...oh for a hot shower... and he said it``s because of the wet/cold weather...hmmmm? He did turn the boiler up so our hopes are renewed.

Then on the way home from the restaurant tonight, we were slogging along and suddenly there was no sidewalk where my right foot went down and my leg gave way and I went down on my knee ...hard! To make things worse I was hanging onto David and as a result, he flipped over me and landed on the umbrella which he completely crushed. As we both struggled up he madly threw the umbrella over the precipice...there was quite a drop off...which upset me as I thought he had gone kind of crazy!

I have a bruised and bloody knee, but luckily David was not hurt at all. Hey! He was supposed to be the one that falls.

Doesn`t this all sound very grim? Well not really….


On the good side, everyone is so nice here....all our Mexican neighbors are so helpful. In addition we are almost surrounded by Texans (!) in our complex who are not related, but are all here to study espanol. Also they are mostly from Austin, so not so bad. One of the Texans came over today and told us all we need to know to get here and there and I will be going to their Spanish school with them tomorrow AM to enroll for next week.

Corvus and Violet(our Lopezian friends) have called and emailed and promise that this ridiculous weather will go away and it will be the normal sunny and dry soon We are to meet Friday which is Mexico``s national day of some sort so it should be lively in the town.



Thursday PM



More torrential rain all night…what have we all done wrong?



I was up early to accompany our neighbors, Mike and Jan, into town via a shared taxi. Guanajuato is a city set in a giant bowl in the mountains and there is a road running around the edge of the bowl…that is the Panoramica. We are up on the Panoramica, looking down at the city. There are, apparently, stairs running down to the Centro, but there are literally several hundred of them of different surfaces and very steep, so I will not attempt these in the rain. I could go, as David calls it, “Ass over tea kettle”!



So off we went into town where we were let off at the edge of the pedestrian zona…the whole center is pedestrian, hooray! We arrived at the school Escuela Mexicana” where I was interviewed by Orlando (very cute)…thank goodness in ingles,,,and it was agreed that I would take two hours per day, one on one, conversation and then grammar. I start this coming Monday. BTW, Orlando was completely Unimpressed by my knowing French, but I am quickly realizing that it will help a lot.



I then walked around this gorgeous town with buildings literally every color of the rainbow. Some great sights….a woman walking along with a Patio (!) umbrella…so wide it was bumping into both sides of the narrow street. The steep, STEEP roads with stairs, turned into cascadas..waterfalls! An amazing sight. A man working his way up a step street, carrying a steel propane bottle…4 ft long?...across his shoulders. A man emerging from a tunnel (more on those next email) pushing a small handcart loaded with a dozen boxes, towering over his head, and pushing this load over the cobblestones!



Buildings with Spanish balconies, cascades of tropical flowers, bougainvillea, hanging down. COLORS everywhere. Really a lovely city with the air of another world. Well, it is another world!



After a couple hours of exploring and getting lost, I hailed a taxi for our Casa Blanca. BYW, I am finding that I MUST learn Spanish fast as almost NO ONE speaks ingles, except for the gringos…who are few and far between. I am carrying a dictionary with me at all times and look up words in advance when I know I will need them. The Spanish classes can’t start fast enough.



After our usual “escape from the rain and cold” siesta, David and I ventured forth to take our mud covered jeans (from our falls last night) to the lavendaria down the street and then we hailed a taxi and went to the Mega store which our neighbors told us about. It’s kind of like a K or Wal mart, huge with clothes, household goods and lots of groceries. We absolutely filled our cart with supplies for the coming weeks and then headed out to a waiting taxi diver who wasn’t fazed at all buy our dozen crammed full bags…they went into his trunk with ease.



AND!!!!!!!!!! As we were coming out of the store….a Miracle (MILAGRA!) happened! The SUN came out!!! We just couldn’t believe our eyes….blue sky and fluffy clouds!!!!! Is it over?! Well, we went out this evening to watch the sun set over the city…pink clouds over red, blue, mustard, green, white, purple and orange buildings below…



Hey, all is right with the world….



Adios for now,



The Drenched, but Drying Out, Ones