Guanajuato

For the next 2 weeks, I'm hiding out in Mexico, working for GM in Silao.

Everyone says "wow, you're so lucky! Have a blast!" I am lucky, but it's not the Mexico they are thinking of. It's not all cruise ships and beaches and MTV and mega-hotels and pools and babes in bikinis and margaritas.

It's better.

Silao is next to Guanajuato, a college/art town built in the mountains on top of a network of old silver mine tunnels. The "Festival Internacional Cervantino" is going on during the next two weeks; Cervantes wrote "Don Quixote", so it's a kind of spanish-language Shakespeare festival.

Guanajuato is the little multi-colored houses stacked up on the hills above the tree-ringed town square. It's the terra cotta and pink stucco cathedrals around every corner. It's the stairwells that suddenly appear in sidewalks and lead down into tunnels? parking garages? night clubs? lavatories? It's the "estudiantinas", the roving bands of musicians that lead groups of 50-200 folks in songs and parades through the town. It's men selling rugs, women selling silver, shops selling sugar skulls. The mummy museum, the Diego Rivera Museum, Plaza Cervantes.

I really love it.

But spanish is hard.

We met one of the GM guys at a bar on the square. He arrived after we did; he asked me how I liked "Bar Ocho" - the name of the bar. I thought he asked me if I liked "barracho" - being drunk.

I said "it's great!"