A little of everything

The weekend was a good one and was spent doing a bunch of things...

~Friday~

Went to class as usual in the morning and got done around 12:30. From there, I went to Cafetal with some of the girls for a little while to get a coffee and gossip about who knows what. We were there for a couple hours I think and then I decided to head home around 2:00 for lunch. On my way up, Anai and Miguel were leaving the house to go pick up supplies for making chocolate chip cookies again, so I joined them just to make sure that they got all the proper ingredients. A little while later, Yuri and Sara came over to make cookies with us - this time we made a double batch because everyone liked them so much last time. It was again exhausting and left me pretty tired afterwards, but I had to wake up because I was having some friends over to drink. We played cards for a little while & then moved on to beer pong which was fun as always...I'm getting pretty good. After staying at the house for a while, we headed downtown to get tacos and after we ate we went to Los Lobos for a beer.

~Saturday~

I slept in until noon and once I finally got up at showered, I headed downtown to meet up with Yuri. We headed to Embajadoras to get ceviche for lunch which was delicious. After eating, we went to Antik in an attempt to work on some homework....instead of that we uploaded pictures on Facebook and drank a michelada. I swear if I go to a café in an attempt to do homework, it never works. We stayed there for a while, Ambre met up with us, and later we had movie night at Yuri's house...Rebecca & Andréa joined us too. It was kind of nice to just relax...I was kind of hungover so I wasn't ready to start drinking again...although the michelada helped my hangover a lot.

~Sunday~

Slept in again on Sunday morning and when I woke up and had breakfast, Norma asked if we wanted to go to a pool to swim for the afternoon. So instead of working on homework Sunday afternoon, the family and I spent the afternoon in the sun. Later at night, we met up at the house and played a little bit of lotería (bingo) and had dinner. The family left around 11:00, so I started my homework soon after. I didn't have too much to do, but found more motivation when everyone is sleeping and the house is silent.

Other than that, I'm getting excited to go see my parents in Ixtapa on Wednesday. I'm going to be there until Saturday, so it should be a few nice days to skip class, relax, and catch up with Mom and Dad.

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”

This week has been pretty low key so far. I haven't done too much homework...only because I'm becoming more of a procrastinator and saving everything for the last minute, like my two presentations for next week. My motivation for school work hasn't picked up at all.

So instead of doing something productive today, I got the inspiration to make a list of all the places I want to go in my life. It's still a work in progress since the world is a pretty big place but this is what I have so far:

-Machu Picchu, Peru

-Oaxaca, Chiapas, & the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

-Bari, Italy (where my great grandma is from)

-Bergen, Norway (where Nana & Bapa's parents are from)

-Kenai Peninsula & Denali National Park, Alaska

-Australia (I haven't narrowed down a place yet because it all looks amazing)

I'm kind of worried about how big this list is going to get, but I guess I have a lifetime to try and go everywhere. The only problem will be money - I hope I win the lottery. Now I know the answer to the question "What would you do if you won a million dollars?" ... I'd probably buy my parents a house or a yacht or something for all the things they've done for me in my life so far in addition to funding all these trips haha.

April Weekend

Like usual, the weekend began on Friday....

The family and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies Friday afternoon. Of course it would be too easy to assume that all the ingredients would already be in the house, but things just aren't that easy here in Mexico...We had to go out and pick up brown sugar, baking soda, walnuts (which we never found so we used pecans), stick butter, and chocolate chips. Let me tell you, we literally searched high and low for these few, simple things. First we went to a little store on the side of the street near Jack's old house; they didn't have everything we needed to we went to the Mega (it's a grocery store). Unable to find brown sugar, walnuts, and baking soda (seriously!?), we headed back downtown to look at La Costeña which was closed. Then we went to the market which only had baking soda. And finally, we went to another little store that gave us like 30 mini-packets of brown sugar. I was not in the mood to bake cookies after driving everywhere around Guanajuato for the most basic ingredients.

Anyway, after we got home we continued to make the cookies which was pretty simple. I never thought the hardest part would be finding everything. Anai almost had a heart attack when she saw how many chocolate chips I put in the batter (she doesn't like chocolate for some reason I don't understand)....I continued to pour them in regardless haha. We all hung out in the kitchen waiting for them to finish baking. They were definitely worth all the work. They didn't taste as good as Mom's, but oh well I guess.

After all that work I definitely needed a beer and a shower...so I took them together. Later I met up with some friends at the Irish bar for a michelada and after a drink we continued to Zilch where a live jazz band was playing (they were really good). I had another michelada, hung out with my friends while listening to some good music, and met Gerard Butler's mexican twin. I swear this guy looked identical...but I'm still not sure if he was gay or not ha. I went home around 2AM because I was tired and out of money.

On Saturday my friend Yuri and I went to San Miguel de Allende for the afternoon. We mostly just walked around and took pictures. We stopped at a couple little places that sold a bunch of stuff...Yuri bought a really cool apron and purse and I bought a bracelet for 15 pesos. After all that walking we got pretty hungry so we went to this restaurant that had 2 for 1 margaritas. Unfortunately we didn't know until we sat down that it didn't count as sharing like we had planned...only for each individual (super lame!). Instead of leaving from that warning, we were stupid and stayed...

Yuri ordered a steak and I ordered the "house tacos" - HUGE mistake. Once our food arrived, I was not-so-generously given two tacos. "Are you kidding? My stomach won't even feel this." The worst part - it cost 72 pesos for these 2 spectacular tacos. (To give you an idea of how much I was gipped off, one taco from the stand by my house costs 7 pesos...you do the math). What a rip off...if you decide to travel to San Miguel, I suggest you don't eat at the fancy restaurant - I never will again. It would have been a better idea to go to some little taco place that was way cheaper and better. Effff.

After that ridiculous experience, it was starting to look like it was about to rain so we decided to head back to the bus station. Once getting back to Guanajuato around 7:00 we decided to lay low and just have a movie night. We bought a few movies and headed to Yuri's house -- Abram joined us too and we watched Precious and Million Dollar Baby. Two depressing movies was a little too much for me. I went home after and slept like a baby.

Today I woke up around 11:30 and went to get breakfast downtown with Miguel and Norma - Gorditas! Delicious! After eating, we went back home, I did laundry, and hung around my room. In the afternoon, I went to Cafetal with Yuri, Ambre, and Kim to grab something to drink and dink around on the computer. We were there for a few hours and then Yuri, Ambre, and I went to La Diabla for a pitcher of beer. (Hey, why not on a Sunday)? We were talking for a while and then called it a night. Now I'm home and about to go to bed because another week of classes start tomorrow =[ boo.

Who needs light?

I feel like my house always has some kind of adventure going on, and today it just happened to be with the electricity (again). I got home from class around 11 and when I was about to shower the lights went out. At first I was thinking the breaker just had to be fixed, but after Anai tried to get the lights back on, we both knew the bill hadn't been paid. The first thought that came to my mind was, "great, now we're going to be without electricity again for another 3 days like what happened last time" (about a month ago). Anai called Norma explaining the issue...I guess they had thought the bill was paid, but it wasn't due to some "lack of funds" on the credit card. So after Anai and I took a shower, we headed downtown to the electricity place, paid, and asked when the electricity would be turned back on. The guy said probably not until tomorrow, so Anai did a little bit of begging so the guy gave us this number to call at 3:30 so this other guy would come and turn it back on.

Once we got home from downtown, we ate a really good lunch of milanesa, pasta, and salad and were anxiously waiting for 3:30 to arrive. There is seriously nothing to do here without electricity. So after lunch we sat out on the terraza and talked for a little while. Finally 3:30 rolled around and Anai called the guy, who happened to be in a meeting until 8 - oh shit is right. Luckily, the husband of the señora that works at our house knows how to fix the problem (illegally) without having someone from the company turn it back on. He couldn't come until around 6 so we again had more time to waste. It was good timing because Norma had just gotten done at work, so Anai, Miguel, and I went to go pick her up. She was so excited that we all came to get her...she was joking how there must be some reason that Anai & I came instead of watching TV or being on the computer...right away I told it was because there is nothing to do in the house haha. Seriously, not having electricity or anything to do definitely contributed to us eating all afternoon. We were sooo bored!

So thanks to illegal tricks, we now have electricity and I am able to entertain you with this post. Tonight, I was also supposed to meet with Sara and this girl from my class, Paulina, to talk about our upcoming presentation in our literature class. Paulina never showed up (luckily - because I didn't really feel like working on the project) so we left after waiting/talking for about a half hour. I forgot how much I missed walking around downtown Guanajuato at nighttime...it's really relaxing. That's about all my day consisted of. I didn't even think about writing a blog until Sarah told me to (we must be more consistent!). Turned out that I had quite the day ... oh Mexico... =]