First Days in Queretaro

Today is Friday, viernes, and I am settling in to a morning routine which is more or less what it was in Burlington except that I turn on CNN in English.  I never watched the news on TV at home.  I would read the newspaper.  Granted it was not a great source of news, but I enjoyed it.  In the evening I sometimes watched TV news.  I'm interested to find here that there is much more news about the world -- floods in Turkey, strikes in India, and, of course, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the fact that Argentina may not make it to the World Cup.  Maybe I didn't watch the right news channels at home --- I will remember to check that out when I return.  But my impression is that we in the US tend to think of ourselves as the most important and interesting country in the world.  We know the rest of the world exists and things happen there but it doesn't have much to do with us.   I'm sure I'm overgeneralizing, but I am struck with how much more aware I am here that we are all on the same planet.  And maybe these are just the ramblings of a new temporary expat.

Yesterday, Thursday, jueves, I spent the morning hanging my exhibit of Vermont fall landscape photographs at the Casa de la Cultura.  Silviah loaned me some nails (claves) and a hammer (martillo) and I began to work on my own to arrange how to hang them.  After hanging the first 2, I was realizing how difficult it was going to be to hang all 13 without someone to stand back and say whether things were even,etc.  And then Armando appeared and offered to help.  He teaches sculpture at Casa de la Cultura and had a very good eye.  He was also very patient with my Spanish and had about as much English as I have Spanish so we did well enough together.  He also advised me about how to price the photos and what the Mexican conventions are for what information to put on the labels for each photo.

That accomplished, I made my way walking back to mi casa by way of Jardin Guerrero hoping that was where my favorite gordita place was next to Restaurante Archangel.  Buena suerte, it was!  So I bought a gordita de queso para llevar and a soda poured into a plastic bag with a straw and got home in time for my meeting with Jorge Luis to pay my rent.  $12,000 pesos for 2 months and $235 pesos for a month of cable TV.

The most wonderful thing about this house is how central it is to everything.  I can easily walk to whereever I want or need to go.