holy crap i live in mexico

lots of interesting things happened today, and it's only 4pm, i haven't even started drinking.  the first day of spanish class was awesome, there are 3 of us.  tracy is a personal trainer from texas with 2 kids, and kate is an actress/singer/chant leader/sound healer/i could go on forever who moved here 2 months ago.  tracy has been coming here a few times a year for several years and is going to show me her running routes, as i can't imagine walking out my front door to run, i'd get smooshed by a bus or break my ankle on the cobblestones.  and i always thought that texans all knew spanish.  wrong.
socorro is our grammar teacher, enrique is our conversation leader, lots of good things learned today.  every time we try to say more than we know enrique stops us and says 'you talk pretty one day', meaning, stick with the few words you know.  patience.  k.
after class i took a walk with kate (and her dog, alma, who came to class too).  we went to an organic cafe for lunch, i ordered vegetarian tamales (con cebellos!) and they were fantastic.  this is where kate spent time telling me about her many talents as a singer, artist, actress, healer, etc, and she fit very nicely into that general category of 'eccentric'.  older woman loaded with turquoise jewelry wandering around with a dog, oblivious to the fact that dogs aren't welcome everywhere.  that was quite noticeable when we walked up through the artists alleys and into the open markets.  she would be on one side of the alley and her dog on the other, basically clotheslining everyone trying to walk by, and being the only white people around it was kinda embarrassing.  doubt she noticed.  she did notice, however, the woman waving the pointy end of a knife at her dog, she got quite upset but it was pretty funny.  this mexican woman is sitting in a hot hot room making food to sell and someone's dog sticks its nose in?  i think waving the knife is a good warning.  no language barrier.
yesterday i didn't find a single english speaking person while i was wandering.  today i found myself in an entire room of non spanish speakers.  it wasn't at all how i imagined it would be, like the ex-pats of hemingway.  i could drink with those people.  but not even close.  these were all dressed for the country club but too old to play tennis anymore.  i was by far the youngest gringo.  but that's what i get for wandering around with a new age tour guide.
and finally, the sad things for today.  hulu doesn't work here.  i won't ever get to see who passed their boards in grey's anatomy.  and google has figured out that i'm in mexico, and will only do my searches in spanish.  and translation doesn't matter because it will only give me spanish websites.  i was desperately trying to find online tv to watch last nite to help me sleep and eventually found a website with every episode of the simpsons in spanish.  maybe that's why i did so well in class today, subliminal learning.  aye caramba.

ps.  please stop texting me.  everyone.  that's gonna kill my travel budget.  email is good.  call me and leave a voicemail.  also good.  skype is m3lissab33.

a small section of the artists' markets