First impressions

I've arrived safely in San Miguel de Allende, and am fully settled into my base of operations, a small room in the beautiful bed-and-breakfast known known as La Casa de Elvia.

Yesterday was the longest traveling day ever, so all i wanted to do last night was pass out. I got up at 3am (!) to finish packing, close up the home for a month, and head over to my pal Mike's house, who had kindly offered to drive me to the airport. Then the headaches of post-9/11 international travel ensued, compounded by the computers being down at RDU when i arrived at 5am--huge lines for baggage check. Thank god i'd already checked in and printed boarding passes online, so the bags were all i needed to deal with. (I should note that the last time i flew anywhere outside the US was back in the 1990s.)

Then the huge lines for security, and i got picked for the "look at you buck naked in the special x-ray-right-through-your-clothes scanner," followed by the "get groped all over every-which-way by a security officer who is clearly not comfortable with her grope-on-command job," which, whatever, but i find those things offensive. Not so offensive that i'd eschew travel over it, but given the choice, i'd rather take a chance on a jet-plane cage-match with a box-cutter-wielding terrorist armed only with inkpens and hate than allow airport staff free rein to ogle me naked and go to second base any time they please. But, maybe that's just me. I don't think so, though. They put a Muslim lady in a hijab in the naked-x-ray machine right before me, and i could tell she pretty much wanted to die over it, which broke my heart and pissed me off. But, what can you do? Submit or stay the fuck home, i guess.

I had a layover around lunchtime in Dallas-Forth Worth, where for a brief moment i considered having Mexican food for lunch, before i realized, hi, Mexican food for a MONTH, perhaps you want to choose something else just for variety's sake. The other option was Fuddrucker's Chilidogs though. Awesome. (Not.)

The plane that brought me to Leon--the closest airport to San Miguel--was one of those little cigar planes where you feel like at any minute you'll all be given paddle fans, asked to roll down the windows and help flap. The Leon airport itself reminded me of the airport in Tennessee where i grew up, TRI/Tri-Cities, not as it is now, but as it was when i was a kid, when you still debarked from little planes down rolling ladders directly onto the runway. Different climate and vegetation, of course, and the entire tarmac was covered with the bodies of theses large-winged flies that seem to have come in a plague earlier in the day and commenced dying everywhere. Luckily, they seem to be a plague which descended only upon the Gomorrah of the airport, and not up here in saintly San Miguel.

Next, a shuttle ride, two hours from the airport up into the mountains--a van of four of us on a two-lane highway with a leadfoot driver, speeding through the hillside housing projects of Guanajuato, funny identical prefab pueblos all peeling Crayola shades of paint. I saw small boys riding donkeys, and men in straw rancher hats plowing their fields with actual wooden plows hitched to pairs of oxen. I saw ladies sitting outside of breezy orange cantinas finger-weaving bright string cords, and plenty of brick ruins. I saw exactly why we aren't supposed to drink the water: it all comes from rooftop cisterns collected direct from storm runoff, quickly turned brackish and dispensed unpurified from gravity-fed faucets. I worry, i admit, about the cost of proper hydration. I normally drink tap water all day long in the US.



I bought two bottles to tide me over last night at the cantina where i had dinner--a open-air place a block away that had excellent cheese empanadas and fresh avocado salad. I tried a kind of beer i hadn't had before--Pacifico--with fresh-picked limes squeezed into it. I'm going with the Grog Theory of consuming liquid in public places that's not bottled water--something with alcohol and citrus in it is far less risky than what could potentially be straight-up bilgewater. As long as i can balance this with not getting accidentally shitcanned in the process, i should be good to go.

The whole town is covered in bougainvillea, ferns, lime trees and other unfamiliar plants and trees. So far, everyone is extremely pleasant and kind, though the fact that i speak the most minuscule amount of Spanish is making things a bit difficult in terms of communication with random people. It's okay, everyone's willing to try to understand, and at least i know the most basic things like hola, buenos dias, hasta luega, por favor, gracias. I'll learn more by the end of the month i'm sure. I spent a week with a family in Madrid in high school and was busting out a few simple conversations by the end of that, so i've got faith i'll pick up what i need soon enough.

One thing i'll say--this trip is kind of like going to NYC for the summer, psychologically speaking, in terms of how you have to kind of surrender yourself to the ebb and flow of life, and have faith that you'll get where you want to go, do something you want to do, that you like to do, whether it's something you planned or foresaw or is a total surprise, faith that you'll meet nice people on the way, and that it'll all turn out for the best. I haven't felt very in-control or secure in terms of what's happening when--it's been very seat-of-the-pants, so to speak.

For example, i made my shuttle reservation a month ago, but had no idea til i got off the plane and saw a dude with my name on a sign whether anyone would *really* be there to meet me. And, I booked this room through UNO months ago, but had no idea whether anyone would recognize my name or have a room for me for real, or what it might look like at all, until i arrived yesterday, dumped at an enormous wooden gate by my kind but no-ingles driver, who had to basically fling me out and drive away because all the streets here are one-lane cobblestone warrens, and about 10 cars were honking behind him wanting to get on with it.

La Casa de Elvia, wow, what a beautiful place. My room is small (though palatial by NYC standards), sparsely furnished with cool, sturdy wood furniture, woven serapes, and punched-tin lamps. It's shady and temperate and has a beautiful view of one of the courtyards. It's hard to determine interior and exterior space here--you think you are indoors, but when you look up it's actually open to the air with just a grating and some plants for cover. I imagine this place like a labyrinth in which all the pathways open into balconies and terraces and courtyards on levels upon levels. (So far, no sign of a minotaur--Elvia and her family are all super-nice and friendly.) My room, incidentally, has a ceiling.

I'd worried that i'd need to find an alarm clock--i left my cellphone in the states, without thinking that i rely upon it as a travel alarm. Oops. However, the town clock chimes on the hour starting at 6am, and the birds get up at 6:30, so i'm set.

At breakfast today, i met a couple fellow UNO folks--a second-timer named Heather, a fellow first-year, Keith, and his wife Tessa, who live in Brooklyn. Heather apparently won a grant to come this time around, the terms of which require her to serve as a sort of local-resource helper to new folks. She's taking a few of us to a tienda (shop) and a cambio (currency exchange) this afternoon, and walking with us to our orientation tonight. Keith is in my "Contemporary New Orleans Literature" class, and Tessa is just along for the experience. She said she thought she might use the opportunity to learn more Spanish--there are lots of language schools, and she has the Rosetta Stone program for Spanish as well.

Incidentally, breakfast was spectacular. Everything is fresh! Fresh-squeezed orange juice, local milk and butter and eggs and tomatoes and black bean paste, home-made strawberry jam and fresh-baked bread in tiny loaves. I'm more than glad to come back here the next two summers if that's how it goes!

So, that's it in a nutshell right now. I actually expect that i'm going to be too busy to update daily, judging by the calendar, but i'm such a fan of travel-journaling that i intend to prioritize updating at LEAST once a week.