Sunday...
The Sunday morning church bell ringer needs to be fired. It's not a pretty sound, at all.
I'm always the first one awake in this house but today I was by far and I didn't get up until 9 a.m.. I think everyone must have partied a little too hard last night. I had cereal for breakfast because I was feeding myself today. Unfortunately, today there was no purified water in the house.
I really enjoyed myself today! I studied all morning and then went to a park all afternoon. I had heard about a big park from one of the English teachers at my school. It was exactly 30 minutes walking distance from my house. You have to pay 4 pesos to get into the park which is nice because it keeps a lot of bums out and people who are up to no good. The park itself was pretty cool. It had a 717 meter (.44 mile) low impact track that is mostly shaded by trees. Needless to say, I was in running heaven. After I ran for some time I went to watch a soccer game that was going on. It was fun. A couple of players got into a shoving match that lead to several players fighting which lead to a couple of mothers shoving each other. I got to practice listening to lots of bad words again, but this time they all made sense to me. Mexicans are like pit bulls, they just don't back down. It made me miss summer basketball when games were intense. The park also had a BMX course, a soccer field both indoor and one outdoor, four wall-ball courts that a lot of people were waiting in line to use, a few basketball courts that were used for soccer (not cool man), three pitching nets, and several slides and lots of playground equipment.
The walk to the park was interesting. It's so dangerous crossing streets here. It's definitely not a place for my step-mom to go running. Just kidding, but seriously it's not a place for people to run which could help explain why I haven't seen a single runner. Also, there were no street signs on the way to the park except at major intersections. I don't understand how people know where they are going unless they all have a global positioning system which I doubt. Guadalajara quickly gets pretty dirty and ghetto and a little sketchy as soon as you are outside of downtown Taquepaque. There is trash everywhere, graffiti on EVERYthing, and bad smells wafting up in my face every several yards. It's a fun experience for me though.
For the rest of the night I plan to study and chill out.
Things I've noticed/learned:
-There are a lot of fairly decent cars here because they are easier and cheaper to get.
-People don't stop at stop-signs, ever.
-People keep their dogs on their roofs because there are no yards.
-Apparently the sewage doesn't flow much at night and kind of settles in the pipes so every morning when I walk into the bathroom it is almost unbearable. I don't know if that's something a person could ever get used to.
Que te vaya bien! (Have a good one!)
How do you stay so safe? As a white girl walking around especially by herself? I hear so many bad things that happen even in the better parts of Mexico. My mom has a friend whose nieces were kidnapped and held up at gun point...what do you do to insure your safety?
ReplyDeleteGood question. Here in Tlaquepaque it's very safe in the day and night. There are always many people around and not very many sketchy people. Guadalajara is also pretty safe especially in the day time. You don't want to hang out at the "mercado" (market) at night because you have no business being there. Prostitutes hang out around there at night and is not really the scene you want to put yourself in. Also, in the mercado during the day, it's a good idea to keep your purse on you and in front of you because it can get very busy and have some mischievous people in there. Mostly, (not always) but most of the time that a girl gets kidnapped it's when she is getting drunk at night and/or hanging out with people she doesn't know. Just be aware and make responsible choices and you will have no problem at all!
Delete