Ensenada Adventures

Movie theatre in Ensenada. $4 for a ticket!

Well the language studies have been continuing had a good pace. Today we learned the imperitive or command form, which is very good for handling a room full of hormonal adolescents. Sientente (sit down)! Trabaje (work)! Afternoon activities have been slightly robotic in drills, but I guess I need the practice.

My "social" life outside of class has certainly been worthy of quotation marks. I´m on my own, just here for a week, so making friends or going on outings with others hasn´t happened. Today the school went to the winery, but alcohol isn´t my thing, so I skipped on that and conjugated irregular verbs in the preterite and imperfect for 90 minutes. What fun!

I did make a point of walking 1.5 miles to the cinema to watch "Hancock". Just my luck, the movie started 5 minutes before I arrived. It was in English with Spanish subtitles, so I got a little reading practice while I mostly just enjoyed listening to the dialogue. During the movie, this woman´s cell phone kept going off and she had no problem chatting away during the movie. I almost turned around and gave her the evil eye, but then I realized that she´s just reading the subtitles and doesn´t need to hear the English because she and the other watchers may not understand it anyway. I chalked it up to another cultural moment, laughed, and read the subtitles along with her.

Tomorrow`s my last day of class, then I retire to my favorite local hostel for a day of r&r from my mostly relaxing week. Just a way to kill time cheaply before I go to San Deigo for my AVID conference.

Old Mexico

Another weekend. Another destination. Another Mexico. This time I went to Ensenada in Baja California de Norte, Mexico. Something in me wanted two more days out of the US, so Gilda and I took off on a Thursday afternoon to beat the weekend rush. Of course, LA would not let us go without at least one traffic jam. But Gilda and I were carpooling, so in this picture I think we're sailing by in designated lane for cars with 2 or more passengers. Kinda sad that most of the cars stopped to our right have only one person in them, eh?

The border station between San Ysidro, CA and Tijuana, BC is the most heavily traveled in the world. Gilda and I were all prepared to show our passports and answer scrutinizing questions by the border patrol. Instead a little camera took a picture of our license plate as we drove through at 20 miles an hour. Suddenly we were in another country. It was getting close to sunset and the Tijuana night life was just getting started. With ideas of Tijuana as a chaotic border down, we rolled up our windows and high-tailed it towards the toll road to Ensenada. Actually, Tijuana isn't that bad. Just don't go looking for drugs, shop for cheap souvenirs, or flash wads of cash around, and you should be left alone. It helps to speak some Spanish, too.

We stayed at the wonderful Hostel Sauzal, run by Maria. At $15 a night including breakfast, you almost can't afford not to stay there. Gilda and I didn't go for many activities while we were there. Just some together time at the beach, sitting around the Hostel reading books, and going out to taco stands and Mexican-Japanese restaurants to eat. Yes, there is a chain of fusion restaurants in Ensenada called La Cochinita. The portions were not Japanese (ie, huge) but it was still very tasty. I only wish that I could have tasted the other side of the fusion: Japanese-Mexican. Mexican food, being quite spicy, is not very popular in Japan.

Our trip was a short one, but it was fun to be immersed in another culture and language again. I got to practice some Spanish, but Gilda did most of the talking. I couldn't get enough of the tacos and paletas. But we had to get back for the start of the work week. Coming back, the immigration procedure was much more congested. We must have waited in line for 40 minutes. It is such a usual thing that vendors set up permanent shops right on the highway lanes leading up to the customs agents.

Now I'm back in the States for good. And the full re-adjustment begins. I'm struggling to figure out how to keep this blog going in a travel mood while I'm still in the States. Please bear with me in my efforts!