anika in mexico

We had another meet and greet conversation in my Spanish class. It was with another level one class, and it was conducted entirely in English. It was kind of funny because one of the guys in the class is from New Zealand, and as near as I can tell he’s an artist, but he introduced himself as an alchemist, and my eyes glazed over a bit. He was totally loopy in that very artsy way, and very funny to listen too. When we were talking about what kind of transportation we preferred (I said driving was fun here, and everyone laughed), the New Zealand artist guy said that he absolutely loved the Metro because it is truly beautiful because you can see “real” Mexicans. How delightfully pretentious, and yet fully committed his ideas was he.

The other guy is from Australia and works for the World Bank, and seemed genuinely interested in practicing his Spanish, but the New Zealand guy would complain that he couldn’t understand what we were saying everytime we spoke in Spanish.

The professor of their class liked to talk about tacos and made a lot of poop jokes about the effects of chile on one’s system.

The whole thing was totally random, yet highly entertaining.

I think my up-tight, by-the-book professor was more than a little flustered, and as we left she said, “well, at least you got to know another part of the campus.” Ha.

The rest of class went by ok, if not very quickly. I talked a lot which is what I prefer.

After class it was a beautiful, sunny day, so I decided to go right to the Chapultepec park to go for a walk. I parked and started walking, and not 5 minutes later I saw Siggy’s car driving by, and she parked nearby. She had swung by my house to see if I had wanted to come to the park with her for a walk. She had her roller blades, and while she kept me on my toes, we were able to stick together for our walk/roll.

Peluches was with her too, and he is kind of dumb we decided. He can’t hear or see very well, but insists on wandering around all over the place, not caring if he gets lost. He’ll get a little panicky if he doesn’t see you, but the moment he sees you he feels secure, and then turns right around and wanders off in the other direction again.

We had a good time and after the first lap we stopped and got a fresh juice and a small fruit plate from the stand on the circuit. It was really good and the owner realized I was not from Mexico, so he practiced his English a bit while I practiced my Spanish. He lived in California for 8 years and was familiar with San Francisco as well as Southern California.

We did one more lap together before Siggy went to meet a friend for lunch. I did yet another lap around the lake, then drove home.

I had a simple, but really great lunch with Sigrid. Some kind of thin meat with noodles and beet salad. Just perfect.

Afterwards I headed over to Starbucks to catch up with this here journal, and catch up with some email too.

I’m going to predict that I’ll go home, have supper and then do my homework and/or draw or get some more photos ready to upload, so I can post this journal entry early and not wait til tomorrow. I wonder if I’ll be right, or if I’ll have more to add.