Californication meets Tranpacificism

So, once upon a time I wrote an entry about being sick in Mexico, at which time my whole class and teachers headed off to the capital of Coahuila, Saltillo. That actually wasn’t the weekend that they went to the ‘Zone of Silence,’ it was Cuatrociénegas and I was well enough to go with them. I always kind of felt like they had a pretty/really good time, and like I missed something by missing the Saltillo trip, and so I decided that I should go there after the program ended. After that, I met 2 people who lived in Saltillo and said I could live with them, one thanks to Armeda for inviting me to her “mom’s” birthday party, and the other on the actual way to the Zone of Silence, a Tejano named David.
At the last day of class, we had a big lunch with all of us HSU’ers, some UTC students and professors, and all our Mexican families. At that point Carlos, the infamous videographer, whipped out a bit (~10 min?) of all the videos he had been taken that summer, and it looked kinda cool too. (Little bit of graphics to make it “cool”er.) There was also a picture of all of us on the CD itself which was kinda cool. However, there was one thing missing from the video and CD Cover: ME! EEK!! It was confirmed, by missing Saltillo, I missed the whole program (as that was what one may consider the CD as representative of–our experience(s).) I dunno how I missed the shots he took at school, but whatever. All the more determined to visit Saltillo the next day, I was. Though that night was the big coronation ceremony for the Queen of the Grape Festival, and I still had work to do on the project. (So I skipped the former, which wasn’t so bad because due to rain even mi familia did too, and worked on the latter.. d’oh, on a friday night!)
I was also glad that I had long-planned this Saltillo journey because it gave me a deadline to be done with _ALL_ things school-related, the project write-up and website being notable among those. Having a final deadline for those made it possible for me to truly enjoy my week off, so I guess I am learning a couple of things in life? Sometimes..! So how was it?

IT WAS A BLAST! Ohmahgoodness.. First, MEGA-PROPS to Armeda for inviting me to her mama’s b-day party, and I’m additionally super-glad that I wasn’t so shy that night. I think after most of the gringos left I like opened up or something, and I was just being super-talkative/hyper/something, really funny/silly/crazy/whatever, whatever I need to be to really (and entertainingly) engage with people. It was soo awesome, so much fun. The first fun experience I had was with a woman named Blanca (who apparently helped other people with their project), and when she left with some other folks arrived, the one I talked to most was the one seated next to me, César Iván Moreno Aguirre, a Saltillo native who was hanging out in Parras. arg! It’s the night of 8/15 and I finished writing most of this entry and it crashed! ARG GUIs!! I don’t remember what else was in this paragraph, so I’ll move on..
A few weeks later we went to the Zona del Silencio, and I met David Diaz, a community college student from Texas (pronounced: Tehas) that was on an exchange and studying at the UTC Saltillo (really, Ramos Arizpe) campus. (His pix from that trip.) He also seemed cool with me coming over and crashin at his place after the trip was over. More people to hang with, cool! unfortunately I never got his contact info, and as with many things in life, I was “meaning to,” for awhile. By some sort of luck, I saw him half a block from “my” house a week before departure date, PERFECT! And he was cool with it. I emailled him and César, and they both seemed down and cool. TiGHT! Ever systems designers dream, REDUNDaNCY!! Achieved. The only thing is that David wasn’t planning to be there, but I could crash at his place. That left some worries/questions, of course..
I got to Saltillo on Saturday night, and took the “Radio Taxi,” to his place. Once I found what seemed like his place, I was confused because the door seemed open (I was supposed to get the key from his neighbor.) to my surprise, he was there! His plans to go to Monterrey fell through! Right on. I was kinda skeptical about staying in his place solo, since that might reduce my chance of getting out, especially considering his complaints of living far from everything. So we ended up chatting for awhile, and by the time I called César, it was almost midnight, which I figured was late and whatnot, so I told him that, and he said to give him a ring tomorrow (Sunday). After I got off the phone, David said things are barely getting started by now, and surely enough the next day when I called Cesar around 1pm, I woke him up. They were out until ~5AM!! Aye! WICKED!
David suggested we go to the Cathedral in front of the Government Plaza (plaza del Gobierno), and check out what’s going on around there, and it was a pretty happening day too, tons of street vendors (not a few of which were selling lots of pirated CDs (music/Video/etc) too, heh.), folks (gente), etc. Cesar and his really nice friend Yvonne arrived, and we checked out the outside of the Cathedral. It was some sort of special day/occassion, so there were a lot of people going in. Next, we headed through the plaza to the palace (el palacio del gobierno). On the second floor was this mural.. OH! I found a Flash version of it, with spanish explanations. It was awe-inspiring/amazing! I can only start to explain it, and pictures just don’t do it justice! Since this is the part of my life with my camera being stolen, you can see more pictures of it from David’s pictures, which are pretty cool, and awesome he gave them to me. It was awesome to me not just because it was awesome imagery, but because of what was there. Many of the names I had started to learn, along with important events, from Mexican history. Francisco Madero, the dude from Parras, notably in my memory. I had learned that México had gotten a new constitution in 1913, but somehow, until I saw a mural with two constitutions of different dates on it, it didn’t really strike me. TWO Constitutions?! That’s crazy! It’s so weird.. this was just a continuation of my love affair with México I’ll try to tell you about.. Amazing, interesting, and all so.. beautiful.

From there we headed to the Museo del Desierto, Coahuila, which would be worthwhile if for the view alone! WOW.
(SIDENOTE: I just noticed this Amazing feature in Opera, when I use the keyboard shortcut for next in my album, it automagically takes me to the next page/image. How does it know?! Thank you Opera and IDS!! You rock!)

That’s TiGHT! Saltillo’s a city, of about 500k people, by the standards of Parras (~40k), my parent’s city (Milpitas, ~65k), and my school city (Arcata, ~20k), it’s HUGE! Of course, I live in a suberb of San Jose (~1 Million), and near SF (similar but smaller, and denser.) And.. it’s interesting, at least that’s what I thought by these views, which extended the idea I already had in interesting directions. It’s a cool place, if you ask me. Sorry, I still like big cities for some reason!
And the museo itself? Yeah! It was way cool! Hopefully Cesar, David and Yvonne weren’t getting too bored with me, I was having a really good time reading all the signs (which is of course slower than my slow english reading and checking everything out (including their (mock-up?) of a Man-sized Bat Skeleton.) WAY COOL!!! I can see why my class liked it so much. Which reminds me, when they all returned from the museo del desierto (day after my b-day (day I got sick) they went..) Jonathan Wu was the person who was really nice and really remembered me, he bought me soap from there! How sweet. THANK YOU JONATHAN!

So by then, it was semi-late, so we dropped David off at his place, and the 3 of us went to dinner, at a restaurant owned by a guy of Spanish decent. (It’s just semi-weird sometimes to see people with “White” skin and especially when they can speak seemingly perfect spanish!) That’s when I really got a chance to talk to his friend (who he was heavy mackin on Yvonne, and realized that she was a really sweet+nice person, which was cool. Later that night, we checked out the Festival (farea? farrea? ferea? however you spell it in spanish!) of Saltillo. (Yes, Parras isn’t the only one that has a festival! (Kind of like a county fair) It’s just that people in Parras are more interested in theirs, maybe that’s just because it’s not as big.)
We did a bunch of rides and stuff, which was actually a lot of fun. (Since I thought I had outgrown that. Wow.. the fun never ends!! The next day I went to school with David, to the UTC RA campus, didn’t meet so many people (they’re not welcoming enough, as David says, coupled with my shyness, well.. ya know!) But I got a few staffs people to give me tours and whatnot, and this was the other place my class went to when they came, with their particular interest/focus in the grey/black water treatment that they have. The whole tour was pretty cool and interesting. It’s a pretty big campus, with some rad technologies going on (HUGE contrast to the UTC Parras campus!). And the Director, Jaime, wanted to talk with me/us, and gave us this Libro del Oro (Golden Book, about Coahuila with a section on UTC), asked some questions, and finally had us do a mini-interview.. which was weird, since my colleagues were treated so differently. I got this personalized tour, special treatment here, my own schedule, etc. Weird! It was of course cool though.
Another weird part was them telling me how none of my fellow students could understand anything they were saying, they were surprised at how my good my Spanish was compared to theirs. (Which wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. Cesar or Blanca, and one of Armeda’s “relatives,” said something similar to me, and possibly others.) Which is just weird, since I’m, by comparison, sooo out of practice/learning compared to the rest of them! However, that’s ALWAYS a nice compliment, Yvonne complimented me too during dinner, it’s a thing so nice to hear, especially since I’m so self-conscious about it, since sometimes I feel like I can’t understand a darn thing someone’s saying!
Well, this is getting pretty long, and it’s getting late, so I should bid this entry adieu!
As a quick wrapup, my last day I Was going to just take the morning bus and head back to see what was crackin in Parras, but Cesar and his friend David(2) were cool to hang out and show me a little more. All we ended up doing was going back to the Festival to help kids which we didn’t, but it was cool because we got to see a circus. When the clown was looking for volunteers, David2 told me I should go. I said “nah,” and I think when I was looking at the clown (as he came looking for volunteers), he musta pointed at me or something, so I was like, crap! I said okay, and since I was afraid I’d screw up his act, I told him I didn’t speak good english, so he just talked to me in spanish. All the better, because he said he was going to throw knives at me.
WHAT?! KNIVES?! EEEKK!!!
IT was really.. interesting.. I didn’t trust the whole thing very much, I was very sketch. SERIOUSLY SKETChED oUT! I figured he must be really good or something, else he wouldn’t try it, so after the first, I relaxed a bit. I told David that he (and/or the clown) tried to kill me, to which he responded that while I had that bag over my head, his assistant was just sticking the knives into the board.
So obvious, right? Yeah, I guess it shoulda been, I felt silly for not realizing that.. and unfortunately, no pictures from that day. David2 took some with his camera, but.. you can imagine how those came out.

Ahh, so that’s it then, as ended my great and amazing trip to Saltillo. Since the bus I tried to catch was full, I cut my hair off while waiting for the next one, life was freeing once again..

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...