Attack of the Cow Tongue

I recently traveled to Guadalajara for a meeting with Peace Corps staff and volunteers.  I arrived at the bus station to find Doña Lupe, one of our project participants, traveling on the same bus.  She’s a very warm person who loves to talk, so she kept company for about half of the ride.  Doña Lupe invited me to spend the weekend and tour the city with her, which I will definitely try to do in the future.  We didn't have our normal bathroom break on that trip but the driver did stop once to buy peanuts from a vendor on the side of the highway, as one does.  The driver was operating like a Nascar professional, so although I appreciated arriving 1.5 hours early, I had to down some Pepto to survive the screeching around each mountain curve. 

 You'll never guess where we are....

 Hanging with mis amigos.

 Electric trolley buses always remind me of home.

I decided to walk from the bus station to my hotel and about 20 minutes in, I heard someone call my name.  I backed up to see a member of our Pueblo Magico committee driving by.  We exchanged greetings, followed by “this is so strange! Have a great day.”  Nothing makes you feel more – shall we say, recognizable – than someone from your small town being able to spot you on the street in the second largest city in Mexico!   That night we went out to eat tongue tacos and something stung me on the neck.  I'm guessing it was a friend of the cow who was pissed that people were now eating the tongue of its buddy.

 Speaking of cows/art killers.

 Lots of cool metal art in Guadalajara.

 Metal profiles.

 Metal lady.

 Art in the grass.

The next day was full of meetings and bonding time with my fellow west-side volunteers, and our new Peace Corps doctor who told me I would not die from the swollen welt on my neck.  After 7 hours of meetings, we set out to explore some of the museums, historic buildings and street art in the city, and indulged in Japanese and Indian food.  We also passed a lot of time just sitting on benches, listening to an orchestra play music while a crane lifted giant pieces of construction equipment overhead – a little too close to the orchestra for my comfort.  

While lounging on the benches, I learned that volunteer Bob (who is a year ahead of me) also served in Moldova a few years earlier and in fact knew Yvette, a friend of my dads who inspired me to join Peace Corps!  I know Peace Corps is a small family, but that was a magical and hilarious finding.

 That's Bob in the background while my fellow volunteers get a new perspective on art.

 Murals.

 Kids playing in the fountains.

 Pretend waterfall downtown.

 Lovely old church at sunset.

 Orchestra in the plaza.

 Museum at sunset.

Saturday morning, I loaded up on chilaquiles before settling in for what turned out to be a six-hour bus ride home with one bathroom stop.  The big news is that you can now flush the toilets at this stop without having to fill up a bucket of water!  The bus was packed with people heading out for vacations and we had to stop every 30 minutes to let people on/off and navigate around the hundreds of religious pilgrims walking on the 2-lane mountain highway.  There were tons of nuns on my bus, along with families wearing matching shirts and carrying tents and chairs for their 1-3-day pilgrimage by foot.  I saw Doña Lupe again as she was traveling with her family to visit the virgin, so the journey came full circle.  

I listened to 9 different podcasts during my travels, all from NPR, and I had some really deep musings generated by discussions on the new WWII documentary on Netflix (Five Came Back), how to train your housecat, serial killers, the importance of being grateful, what happened in the weekly news, a new show on HBO called “Crashing”, how to create your own happiness and more.  It’s official – I cannot travel without podcasts because they are the best.  Also, I totally need to change how I interact with my cat and stop looking for happiness because I can create it anytime I want. 

 Go to your place of peace and tranquility.....

 Or go play in this tree, which looks amaze-balls.

This is a lovely church we toured with the Canadians.

Unlike my trip into the city, I did not pass any wildfires on the drive home, just a lot of scorched ground.  'Tis the season and the smoke has been very prevalent at times (along with visible flames in the hills above my street).  I arrived home to find only one cup of water left in my garrafón so I had to buy the largest possible bottle at the grocery store for drinking and cleaning food as there's been a shortage of water trucks in my neighborhood.  

The next day I headed out with a group of Canadian tourists, who now live in Mexico, to show them the sights of our region.  Five hours later, we arrived at the local "center of energy" where everyone took turns standing in the middle and looking for peace and guidance from the cosmos.  It's a tranquil place and one of the women said that her hip stopped hurting after she spent her time in the circle, so the cosmos were listening.  I had my own cosmic moment when I finally heard a water truck pass by the next day.  Lesson learned: go to the cosmic energy center whenever you need something really important - like drinking water ;)