¿De verdad? De verdad.



So Jacinta, my dad's girlfiend, has two children, a 17 year old daughter and a 22 year old son. The daughter is your typical moody, antisocial teenager. (While I've been in México I've been working on my theory about teenage girls who tend to the literary, that they can generally be divided into two camps: those who worship at the altar of Jane Eyre and those who consider The Bell Jar their manifesto. I don't know if Jacinta's daughter has read either book or not, but she obviously falls into Bell Jar territory, so she's alright by me.). As for the son...well, he's been trying his damndest to get me to go salsa dancing with him since we arrived last week.





I know what you're thinking, but let me be clear - Jacinta's son is no Rico Suave. He's the Méxican equivalent of Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit, minus the moustache. He even drives a truck for a living. Thankfully I don't have to pretend that I don't understand him, because he speaks so fast and with such a heavy accent even his own mother can barely figure out what the hell he´s saying. I just stare blankly at him and occasionally mumble a¨"No sé."



We´ve taken lots of pictures, and a lot of them are really good, but my dad still uses a 35mm camera, so I won't be posting any until after we return.



Tonight we went to the movies and saw Los simpsons: La pélicula. It was the perfect movie for me to see dubbed into Spanish because I already know the characters like they are my own family and so many of the jokes are visual that I had no trouble following along. I'm hoping to see Harry Potter in Spanish also before we leave.

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Real de Catorce



Yesterday we left the house at 6am to drive a few hundred kilometers north of here to the town of Real de Catorce. After all sorts of adventures finding breakfast and avoiding a collision with a burro (I wisely slept through most of this), we turned off the highway onto a cobblestone road that wound up into the Sierra Madres 20 kilometers. 20 kilometers on a cobblestone road!! You can just imagine. At the end of the 20 kilometers was a tunnel that was 2 kilometers long, which is a really long ways for an old tunnel blasted out of the mountain over a hundred years ago. We paid our veinte pesos ($2), braved the tunnel, and soon found ourselves on the other side in the town of Real de Catorce. (My dad and I had a fun time explaining the expressions "rocky road" and "the light at the end of the tunnel" to Jacinta - "It's been a rocky road, but thankfully we can see the light at the end of the tunnel!")



We had a great time walking around the town. We bought a few souvenirs, looked at the church of San Francisco (the town's patron saint) and ate lunch at a little café that served coffee, crepes and sandwiches. I hadn't seen a sandwich in days and was amused at how excited I was to eat a sandwich again.



(On a side note, Real de Catorce was the town they shot the movie The Mexican in.)



Today my dad and I stayed home and did pretty much nothing. It's the first day we've really had to just lay around and be on vacation. Since we arrived, our time has been full of sightseeing and parties and everything else. It's been nice just laying around.



Oh, and our bags finally arrived Sunday night.

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Not in Atlanta



Well, here I am, typing this in México. My dad and I arrived about 10:00pm local time (one hour behind Atlanta) Thursday, but unfortunately our bags did not. Supposedly our bags are being delivered to us today, but we aren´t holding our breathe.



So far I´ve eaten lots of meals based around corn tortillas (the corn tortilla is to México what rice is to East Asia), purchased some toiletries and clothes to tide me over until our bags arrive, seen lots of sights, had a Spanish lesson (1 1/2 hours with a private tutor is 50 pesos, or $5), and learned lots of new Spanish vocabulary. I´ve also slept in the past three days, which is fabulous.



We're going to take several day trips out into the country, so hopefully I'll have lots of tales of excitement and adventure once we do.



Also, it is a little tricky typing on this Spanish-language keyboard. Many of the keys are in different places, which slows me down quite a bit.



¡Hasta luego!

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