Food and Guitars

Earlier this week we had a birthday party at a coworker's house. We ordered pizza from Domino's, and guess what, it came with hot sauce on the side! It was actually pretty good with the sauce, and after I tried it, I had to use it on all the slices I ate.



On Wednesday a couple of us went to a free guitar concert by a talented Mexican guitarist, Cristina Macías. She is currently studying abroad in Italy on a fellowship, and she played some amazing classical songs.

Random updates

This last week the Peace Corps coordinator for my program came to visit. He met with the managers and counterparts in my office to try and ferret out real feedback on my service so far. The challenge for most of us is that the local culture is kind of anti-feedback...for example, in the US, I could ask my boss how I was doing and what I could do better at (communication, teamwork, etc). Here, whenever I ask that question, I always get "you're doing everything just great!" Right. No one wants to offend you. So the program coordinators kind of act as a neutral third-party, with the hopes that the counterparts will be more open and honest with them. In reality, I think everything that came out was still sugarcoated (to counterbalance my overly negative point of view) because the people in my office don't want to lose the prestige of having a volunteer. I did, however, get some good tips on things to try that might help me integrate into my office better.

This weekend also started my adventure to find non-work related activities. I took a placement test for a Spanish for Foreigners class at a local university. I did not do so hot on the grammar part, but since I can speak decently, the teacher put me into the Advanced 1 class! I will be starting this week--two nights a week, after work. I also went to find the local Casa de la Cultura, and found out that they will be offering acoustic guitar lessons on Saturday mornings, starting in February. This was enough inspiration that I whipped out the guitar and practiced on Sunday, for the first time in months. Later on Sunday, I took my first salsa class at a dance school. It was tough! My feet just do not seem to stay coordinated with themselves or the rest of my body, even without throwing in the music. Plus, I couldn't quite understand all the Spanish that people were throwing around...

Roller-coaster week

So this week has been full of ups and downs. It started out with a pretty interesting morning of trying to find a tennis court at 7:30 AM on a Sunday. But all the courts we went to (about 30 in all) were full! The people of Monterrey apparently love their tennis! We wound up going to Parque Chipinque to hike, instead. It was a really nice park and had a completely different atmosphere than the city. The trail was surrounded by pine trees, and the morning mist made it a very relaxing, mystical hike. Unfortunately, I didn´t have my camera!

Monday night after work I had my first guitar lesson! I got to learn the basic notes, a simple song, and got lots of homework. I've been trying to practice every day for a little bit, and I am slowly picking up more easy songs (like Mary had a little lamb). Next week, chords!

One of the big disappointments of the week was the complete falling-apart of our housing search. For the first month at our sites, we live with host families again to integrate with the community, and then most volunteers move out afterwards. We wanted to move to this pueblito outside of the city that had a great sense of community. We had found a great apartment complex and had been going through the Peace Corps checklist to make sure that it would be safe to live in. Well, the contract review revealed a lease that was basically illegal according to Méxican law! We even tried negotiating with the landlord´s lawyer. No go. So, I skipped out of work on Friday afternoon and went looking for houses. Again. And I did the same thing on Saturday. Hopefully the alternatives will work out...

On a slightly brighter note, I stopped by the cafe in the pueblito in the early evening on Friday. It's a very relaxing, zen-like cafe that, honestly, we're amazed even exists. So we try to provide a bit of economic stimulus whenever we can. On Friday nights there is someone who teaches Japanese to whoever wants to learn, so I'm hoping that will be something else I can pick up here. The owner asked me if we could start up an English conversation club on a different weeknight--gladly! Just another reason that I want to finally move there...

MARCO and Pixar

Downtown Monterrey has a lot of interesting activities, and last Sunday my host and I headed to MARCO, the Museum of Contemporary Art. They have an exhibit from now til June 28th about Pixar and their animation process. It was a great exhibit! They had some animations from the original Pixar shorts (mid-1980's), which I had never seen before. Also on display were hand sketches, pastel and oil artwork, storyboards, and digital prints from all of their movies. They even had a couple of panels from their new movie, Up! No pictures were allowed inside the exhibit hall, so I could only get limited photos.



Also this week, one of my very nice coworkers took me and another friend guitar shopping! I wanted to learn something artistic while in México, and my top choices were singing and guitar. Luckily, my coworker teaches at a music school, and she is willing to trade guitar lessons for English lessons. I hope to find a singing class soon, so that I can do both. She actually showed me some piano songs last week, and it started bringing back memories. From almost 20 years ago! Some things you just never forget...