Gringoland

What does one do after a day in the country? Explore the city, of course. But this city is huge and my coworker will be here on Friday with nothing to do during the day while he waits for his lady friend to get off work. So I´m trying to save site-seeing until he gets here. Plus the thought of taking one of these city busses by myself scares the crap out of me. So here I am in Gringolang (so called because this is where most of the backpackers end up). The area truly caters to us. There are three internet cafes on every block. Lots of bars, lots of restaurants, lots of hostels, lots of Spanish language schools. And everyone seems to speak English. Unfortunately this also brings in opportunistic crime. Sitting in the internet cafe I have listened to several mugging stories. Fortunately, no one seems to have gotten hurt. Because of the stories, I´ve generally stuck within a six block radius of my hostel. With Spanish class four hours a day and the homework adding another 2-3 hours, I don´t have a whole lot of time for exploring anyway.

But the coworker´s girlfriend is still lookin´out. Yesterday she had friends pick me up around 7pm to take me out for some dinner. She mangaged to get out of school early and meet us (thankfully, since she is the one that speaks fluent English). We went to a trendy, artsy bar/restaurant near her university. The place was great. Art all over the place, great colors, cool decor, a few suits, and best of all: the most amazing mojito I have ever had. The converation was mostly spanish until various points when they noticed my glazed-over look and translated what was going on. I tried to keep up. I couldn´t. But damn was that mojito good. And it was good to get out of Gringoland for a bit. I´m sure no one there knew I was a backpacker. I tried to keep my boots hidden under the table.

Earlier that day, I had my first of 10 four-hour spanish classes. I walked in the door at 10am and was immediately hit with a barrage of Spanish. You´d think at a spanish school they would first ask you what you need to learn in your native language. No one seemed to even know english. This changed a bit when I pulled out the $180 I owed for the class. Suddenly the owner could speak a bit of english. My instrutor is this hip woman who told me in Spanish she hasn´t studied English in more than 10 years. She only spoke English once during the entire four hours and that was to say, "I will not speak English to you". It was tough, I won´t lie. And four straight hours made it even tougher. I was looking forward to a lunch break around noon, but all i got was a 15 minute break where the instructor ushered me to the hot water heater for some tea and more conversation. I was led into a false sense of security at first when I knew the meaning of every vocab word on her flashcards. I thought these classes would be a breeze. Danielsan, you learn so quickly. But then we started conversation. So much for all those vocab words.

When 2pm hit, I said chao and bounced. The first priority was to find a new place to stay. My current hostel was booked solid from Wednesday through the weekend leaving me homeless. So I checked out a couple of the places near school that my teacher recommended. The first place I checked had a private room available but the blanket was littered with cigarette burns. And there were at least four dogs milling around that I could see. So on to the next place. This place opened three locks before the door opened a few inches to see who was there. I said something about having the wrong place. Then I found a place one block down with my own room, own bathroom, and both were spotless. All for $16. But there was no one other than manager in the building. I reserved the room anyway, just in case.

Next it was back to my current hostel to study. That was rough. Who wants to do homework when they"re traveling? The view out on the terrace proved too much of a distraction, as did the hippie playing guitar and singing to himself, so I went into the dining area to continue. With two grande beers. My homework was marked all to hell in red ink the next day.