7. Summer life lessons

Sunday, August 16 2015

This year I've been extremely fortunate to travel to some amazing places. It has always been a dream of mine to visit Seattle & Portland which I was able to accomplish in Spring Break. Then the opportunity appeared for me to visit Guanajuato, Mexico.
In my previous blog, I mention my experience of flying for the first time which wasn't too shabby. Traveling makes one realize how insignificant they are compared to the rest of the world. Teaches you different life styles of people, culture, entertainment, etc. The two locations I visited this year are completely opposite in every aspect.
Guanajuato has a tremendous amount of history that one needs months of being here to get to truly understand things. In the several days I was able to notice some things that fascinate me and intrigued me to learn more about the city. Here are some observations:

1. The streets are completely narrow! There are mostly one way streets, cars barely fit (most cars are super compact) i don't understand how busses are able to operate here in the city. People are always crossing the streets they do not care if there are cars on the way. The whole city does not have a single traffic light. Its a very interesting phenomena to experience specially since back in California people can't even drive when there is traffic lights imagine what chaos will happen if we as a society were to adopt that system there!

Some example of how narrow the streets are in GTO

2. People are extremely nice! Civilians here were always willing to help with directions, and whatnot.

3. Since Guanajuato well Mexico in general is heavily influence by the Catholic religion, there are more churches here than OXXO's (haha if you are from TJ you know what I mean by that) For those who do not know what OXXO is well its a convenience store like 7/11's or AMPM but they are all over the city (in TJ) there are so many that people use them to give directions to people. Well here in GTO, people use churches to give directions which I found very interesting because of the large amount of establishments.

 One of the famous churches in San Miguel de Allende

4. Food here is not that great. The best place food place we have tried here was this Taco place by the Don Quixote museum I had like 9 tacos (don't judge me) and a michelada (its a concentrated tomato juice with chile, limon, and your choice of beer; I had a bohemia negra) The thing that I don't like about the taco places here is that you have to put everything on them, they do not come prepared like the do in TJ. We tried other restaurants that were not that good and they were a bit pricey for the quality of the food. WAITER SERVICE SUCKS here btw. People do not really check up on you, they just seem like they go do their job and go home, so that was a good experience for me since I work and deal with customer service like that then I was able to learn about some things to not do and how important it is to simply check on a table or provide a smile or whatnot to make the guest feel more welcomed and more likely to come back. Their Enchiladas Mineras (GTO's popular ones are not that great in my opinion) they are traditional enchiladas but they put vegetables like carrots and potatoes, versus how we eat them in TJ they are with lettuce, cream, cheese, etc.

The best meal I had, Enmoladas

5. There are so many street performers here that are truly amazing. We found this restaurant because of this couple that was singing and we were all blown away. We are probably going to go back today I hope.

6. We walked to the top of the "El Pipila" where you can see all of the city's skyline (Favelas) and you can truly see how the city is below sea level and why the houses are stacked on top of each other.

 

El Pipila & the view from up there

7. Traveling with friends is an amazing experience because you get to know them in a level of friendship that takes longer or other methods to do so when meeting other people.

(Elias, Juan & I in our hotel room; from left to right)

8. Im not really big on museums but seeing the mummy's of Guanajuato, Casa de Diego Rivera, Don Quixote Museum. Also got to see amazing things like underground mines (we went down like 60 meters into the earth and they turned the light off; I've never experienced pitched black like that in my life) This torture house from the Spanish inquisition, the callejoneades, el centro historico, the underground tunnels, San Miguel De Allende, etc.

One of Don Quixote's master piece

Fetus mummy at museum

At the Mines

Torture house (this method will cause
them to starved to death)

Some of the things listed above

Throughout the trip & summer in general, I've learned wonderful lessons that we take for granted sometimes and I want to share some with you.

1. Since I had to do summer school, I realize that I have to give it my 110% when it comes to school stuff. As much as Netflix is on, friends want to hangout, me missed the bae, etc. School needs to be a priority no excuses and I need to devote more effort towards it.
2. Sometimes we act on things on the stop because of anger or other emotions mixed up but what one needs to do is take a deep breath, try to relax, and talk things out without acting drastically.
3. Being inside the torture museum and seeing all these bad ways people die was horrendous. At the end the tour guy said "what I want you to get out of this is always smile no matter how bad the day might be, how terrifying the situation is, always have a smile on your face because you never know when it can be your time to no longer be living" I know its cheesy but its true and after that it had a bigger impact on me.
4. Waiting is a key component to life. most people are very impatient and yeah its hard to be patient because we want things NOW and we don't want to wait but when you wait for (person, places, things) the satisfaction of accomplishing that, doing that is greater than anything and we are able to be humble and appreciate the little things more often.

To my few views who have wonder who I am, that is me! I'll end the blog with this quote since I feel like it wraps it up pretty well.

"I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter." - Walt Disney

Me in the favelas