Guanajuato Day 5

7.25.06

Okay, so this sorority house bit is getting old. I get myself to bed at a good hour after watching the Kristina show, "women who´ve been abused by doctors adn the lawyers who represent them" which was great practice in listening. 7 year old granddaughter of host switched it to Disney Channel and i was completely lost. Seems talk shows use simpler more universal language to appeal to other countries and the teen shows us more "eslang". Go to bed after finding a little place to eata nearby restaurant and order tacos which of course are nothing like what i know in teh u.s. I don´t eat Mexican food so it´s all new to me and i must say, I´ve never had so many lettuce-tomato-onion salads back to bac. They have yet to discover arugula or I to find it at the mercado. Anyway, I enjoy them and my beer and need/want my ciggie so swithc tables so as not to pollute the air of the table behind me where a young girl sits. I move to the other end of the restaurant where it says prohibido fumar and the waiter merely brings me an ashtray. love some of these lax rules. Except the no seat belt/no car seat practice here. I wince every time I see a car go by with a kid on someone´s lap or jumping around in the back.

Get to sleep only to be woken at midnight by a squealing voice talking into her cell phone "oh, honey, i just LOVE you!" cellphones are wonderful, but i remember the day when a dorm had one old rotary one stuck to a wall somewhere and you had to wait in line to use it.

More class work today and a special talk on El Dia de los Muertos, hence my picture choice for today. I really do like this idea of embracing death more and I don´t mean taking unecessary risks (except in my case of course, as i suck down disgusting narcotics via a tobacco produc, but hey, it´s just one a day, i´m on vacation and... well there´s no excuse). I mean not letting fear dictate one´s life. Fear is good when it keeps you from putting your fingers in elevator doors and walking alone at night in a new city. But when fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of not achieving, fear of making a fool of one´self, keep us from living life in the here and now, then it´s really an early death after all. Not living up to our full complex potentials, our dark and our light sides, that feels like a slow way to go.

So, not much sight seeing again until this weekend when my family shows up and, these long days at school are exciting and challenging and make me aware of old patterns and opinions as many of our conversations classes talk about topical issues. Sometimes I think I nkow things and then realize, wait, I´ve been saying-thinking that for years but, now I´m not so sure, or shit, I´m downright wrong about that. Fun to get whupped upside the head every now and then.