Monday, October 24, 2005

There is a cultural festival going on in Guadalajara that lasts the whole month of October. Events are held in different locations throughout the city and every night there is something going on in the square closest to us. For the past few days it's been folkdancing. This was great, because it was groups of Mexicans performing for other Mexicans, not some tired and resentful people wearing cheap copies of traditional clothes and dancing for tourists at an overpriced restaurant. The crowd loved it and we stopped for a while every time we went by.

Some of the young performers were staying in our hotel. I liked that because it helped me believe that we were in a decent place after all. But that's when I found out that Michael is actually a grouchy old carmudgeon. "They're going to be up all night yelling, you just wait," he said. "Listen, they're already slamming doors. Do you hear how loud that music is? If they throw a ball over our fence, I'm keeping it!"

The boys were staying on the other side of the hotel, but the girls were staying on our side. In the evening there was a flurry of activity as a dozen girls overflowed into the hallway, making up their faces and putting on flouncy green dresses and shrieking to each other. As we were getting ready to leave the room, Michael asked me how to say good luck, and when we went into the hall he called out, "buena suerte!" and immediately a high-pitched chorus came back, "GRACIAS!"

The hotel made up for the noise and the porn by giving us another surprise: wireless Internet. Well, it doesn't actually come from the hotel. We don't know where we're "borrowing" it from. Michael searched for and found it after we had already been in the hotel a couple of days. We could only access it by squatting in the hallway on the street side of the hotel, so we decided to ask to switch rooms.

It was a big test of my Spanish, and I passed with flying colors. We went down to the front desk, I made my speech, and the guy gave me a key to room 307, which exactly what we wanted. The new room was not as nice as the old room, but the wireless signal was strong, so we happily switched. Still irritated at Michael's nonchalance about the pornonovelas, I carried them with me to the new room and put them in the drawer of one of the bedside tables. I was hoping to trick him into thinking that the hotel really did supply porn along with soap and towels. Just so he could understand my original qualms. Later on I oh-so-innocently asked, "Did you check this room for porn? I'll look in this drawer and you get that one." Well, he found them but he still didn't care. Man.

(I know what you're thinking: If you had wireless Internet, why didn't you e-mail me? Why isn't your blog up to date? Well, we had a lot of work to do, and Michael was hogging it. Ok, not really. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes work to be done and we tried to get as much done as possible while we had the free access.)

And the free access is nice. But the real bonus of our room? Gum! And lots of it! And not hidden out of the way under the bedside tables either. No it's right there on the lovely wooden headboard, so we get a nice view of it when lying down. Well, whatever. We had work to do.

So we haven't seen as much of Guadalajara as we could have, but what we've seen I like a lot. We're staying the in the Centro, and it's all imposing old buildings and open squares full of benches. The city definitely goes on my list of "Places other than NYC that I could see myself living in for a while." It's gritty from age and fumes and such, but there is no trash on the streets, and the buffet concept is very popular. It's as modern as you could want, with lots of public transport and the smell of perfumed air-conditioning drifting from the doors of department stores. Oh, and in the evenings, it's positively chilly! Like, I'm walking around and feel cold. I love it. That's true, by the way, and not sarcasm like with the gum.

But being such a big city, it also has beggars and homeless people. There are quite a few people who sleep along the sidewalk around the corner from the 7-11. I expect we'll be seeing a lot of them in our travels, but we haven't really yet and despite being from New York I wasn't quite prepared.

Last night as we were walking to dinner, a young girl ran up to me and tried to stick a sticker on me. She was very grabby and touchy and I actually wondered if she was trying to distract me and pick my pocket. I felt like a terrible person for suspecting such a thing of a little girl, but it does happen sometimes. She wanted money. I was caught off guard, confused, and uncomfortable with her approach, so I said no. But she persisted.

Michael and I started to cross the street and she swung between us. When a woman gets to be a certain age, her uterus starts kind of clearing its throat. Or maybe that's just me. Anyway, I have been looking (ok, staring) at kids a lot lately, thinking about the day when I'll have some of my own. And when this girl started walking between Michael and me it was, for a second, like she was ours. But she wasn't. She was all by herself, and she was begging. I wanted to change my mind and give her something, but she was so grabby and I hate to reward that kind of behavior. Or maybe that's just a copout? We were still in the middle of the street. It was a bad situation.Then she asked for the bottle of water I was carrying, so I gave it to her and she ran off.

Afterwards, Michael and I found a nook and watched to see if she was with anyone. We saw her lunge at some other people and then we saw who we assumed was her mother, holding another, smaller child, and walking into traffic to beg at car windows. She didn't have much luck. It's not so enjoyable to go to dinner after something like that.

 

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Gum.

More gum.

Minty-fresh gum.

Creative gum designs.

Next time I'll just buy some rum and some Coke.

Working hard or hardly working?

View from the hotel at night. Cathedral in the distance.

Hotel Las Americas, Guadalajara - much nicer on the inside. Except for the gum.