2023 Mexico Day 6: 6/30/23

 

225 feet of pain awaits

First full day in Guanajuato today. We didn't have any groceries anymore so we grabbed a cup of coffee and some breakfast at a place Kate used to study at: Cafe Tal, which was only a ~10 minute walk, but included ~225 ft of elevation change.

Went back up all ~225 ft and set out for a run after that on the Calle Panoramica, which is generally a rim road high up on the hill. It's where our Airbnb is and is generally low traffic with a sidewalk to hop up on when needed. Hills the whole way, but nothing killer. Usually within a half mile, you are switching directions again (up/down). We ran over to the old mine ruins that made the town wealthy, then cut through a dirt path for a bit, detoured down to the place Kate stayed her first summer here, and headed back to our place. I felt a lot better than the first couple Mexico City runs as we've slowly acclimated to the altitude. Still not easy though.

We set off for the University to meet one of Kate's former classmates (also a Jon) for lunch. Grabbed a bite at a cafe with a sweet patio (although I think many of the places here probably have sweet courtyard or rooftop patios) and decent food. It was great to Kate to catch up with her friend and nice to meet him. He's also from Minneapolis and a sharp dude.

After lunch, right across the street, we hit up a smallish Museum situated in Diego Rivera's birth house. Not much of it was in English, but it was nice enough to wander around and look at some of his work, even without a lot of context.

Hitting up all of Guanajuato's greatest hits for tourists, we next walked over (and up) to the Museo de las Momias (Mummy Museum) as it's a well attended attraction in town. Despite the popularity with a lot of tourists, it's actually kind of a morbid back story. There was a cholera outbreak in the 1800's and a bunch of people died. There was also a burial tax that some (poor) families couldn't afford to pay. The bodies instead were simply stored in a building and because of the arid climate, they eventually mummified and started paying to see them even in the early 1900's. In general, it's interesting as it seems to me like Mexicans have a fascination with death and the afterlife, etc. This seems like no exception. 

It was rather expensive, given that the entirety of the museum took ~25 minutes, although we admittedly didn't dwell. It just didn't seem like a respectful thing to gawk at. Our time was extended a bit with an afternoon rain shower/down pour, so we waited it out before walking back down the hill to the city center again.

The evening started with hearing some action research projects from fellow University students of Kate also finishing up their masters. I assumed that it would be all in Spanish, but they were all in English and actually really interesting to listen to. The first presenter was a Junior High Immersion Science Spanish teacher from St. Louis Park trying to infuse language objectives alongside science objectives as she taught. Her findings were inconclusive. As a science person, I generally hold the results of any sort social study of humans with a confined sample size as sketchy, even if the process is still valuable qualitatively. I also think that Science-Spanish immersion is frickin hard. There's just a lot of moving parts and it's hard to get them to fit all together.

The next presenter was a Kindergarten teacher that used an app to record herself pronouncing words, then adding pictures and the written text and mashing those together into an interactive resource that her students could use to help form sentences (re: La Mantis es verde). Really creative use of "app smashing".

The final presenter was one of Kate's friends, Josh, who taught in a diverse school in a vaguely metro D.C., Maryland. He had an animated presentation about using authentic resources to increase engagement when talking about street food in Mexico.

We grabbed some dinner afterwards at a pizza place with a bunch of her classmates and a few spouses before reconnecting with the "afterparty" celebrating Josh's successful defense. Cool to see Kate connect with her school friends again and to get a feel for what her time her was like (intense class time aside)