Variety is the Spice of Life

I'm guessing you're all getting bored with these heady and seemingly very unhelpful updates about what I've been up to here in Maneadero. I get caught up between pouring my heart out into cyberspace and giving you all tangible things to think about!

Just to give you an idea... Last weekend was jam-packed. Saturday, we drove down to San Quintin in the van (which Casey and I have lovingly dubbed the "Man Van").

One thing I am quickly learning is that EVERYTHING in life is an adventure. :o) It was an adventure just organizing this trip because between all of us who wanted to go, we had to figure out who could drive. There were about 30 of us who WANTED to go, but no one has cars that can make the two and a half hour trip to San Quintin (besides us with the Man Van). Not wanting to squeeze 30 people into the van and be responsible for them while driving down crazy winding highway in Mexico, I had to put my foot down and only take as many people as I had seat belts (8). That's not the Mexican way, but, like I said before, I'm not Mexican. :o)

So in the end, only about 20 of us went, and Isai's car was packed well up to maximum capacity, not at all taking into account the number of seat belts. But even once we had the transportation settled, it was crazy to figure out when to leave. We agreed, after much discussion, on 12pm, in order to get to San Quintin with enough time to enjoy the festival and then be there for the concert.

We have a running joke here that whenever you make plans with some one, and you set a time, you usually also have to specify whether you are talking Mexican time or American time. American time means that it WILL happen at the hour agreed upon, Mexican time, however, means that you could wait up to an hour, or even hour and a half, before the plans actually come to fruition.

We wound up leaving on Mexican time... 1:15pm on Saturday. After much waiting, stalling, coordinating, we were FINALLY on the road to San Quintin for this concert that was promised to be AMAZING! Casey and I really wanted to get there because, thinking like pragmatic americans, if we were going to drive 5 hours (there and back) for this thing, we wanted to at least BE in the place we were going longer than the travel time it took to get there and back! With each minute that passed our pragmatism diminished slightly...

So, we were at least on the road at 1:15--not so bad. We're driving along, I'm following Isai because I have no idea how to get to San Quintin, and after about 15 minutes of travel, Isai pulls off the highway and into the "parking lot" of a convenience store... mind you, we had just been at a gas station where they had a convenience store only 15 minutes earlier...

I'm the kind of person who embarks on a road trip and DRIVES until the gas tank runs out, making people "hold it" until we either run out of gas or reach our destination! (Must have something to do with how we did road trips growing up...) Casey and I exchanged glances and both threw our hands up in the air... "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!". We walked in, grabbed some grub with the rest.

::NOTE:: Please know that all this is being written with a huge smile on my face, because you can't help but embrace the differences in culture, the differences in views on time, planning, and road-tripping. I LOVE these people and it makes me laugh to experience all these things that are SO far out of my normal realm of experiences. Please also note that not ALL Mexicans show up late. Very many of my friends here try to be VERY conscientious of punctuality ::NOTE::

The trip itself was not all that bad. We drove down highway 1, the only "major" highway that goes from the top of Baja to the bottom. It was windy and curvy and nestled in the mountains that run along our beautiful peninsula.

We got to San Quintin at 3:30ish to find that there wasn't actually a festival at all, but rather, a long line of people waiting to get into the concert (that started at 6). So all our rushing and planning and pushing really was a joke in the end anyway, because we really didn't need to get there as early as we did! It seemed like icing on the cake of our day of inside-out, upside-down, cultural baptism by fire.

The concert itself was AMAZING! One of the best parts was that it was FREE! Other than paying for gas and food, we didn't have to pay a thing. The headlining artist was Alex Campos, who I had never heard of before. He is from Colombia and has a really cool latino rock sound to his music. I really enjoyed the concert and bought his CD on iTunes when we got home! His lyrics are really powerful and he has a great mix of sounds and beats on the CD. I highly recommended you go get it if you can (and if you speak Spanish)!

The concert ended at 11, we were all tired and ready to go home, but we couldn't find Perla and her friend Blanca. We sent the men out to look for her and the rest of us waited in the cars. Finally, the two girls materialized with the "search party".

The way home was fine, everyone fell asleep, but I told Casey that if she was going to sit in the front, that she wasn't allowed to fall asleep--it's the rule! It started to rain on the way home, for like the third time in the past 100 years (haha, not really...). Since it barely rains here, the people are not used to driving in the rain--they are EXTRA cautious, so cautious that they drive 20 miles an hour on the highway. It drove me nuts, but once you get to a certain point, all you can do is laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

Great day... great concert, great drive, great people, great cultural experiences, great cold weather... just great.

Then, on Sunday, I was baptized in the Pacific Ocean. They dunked me. I will have a whole separate blog on that complete with pictures and video once I get them from Casey's camera. I promise. For now, this blog post is TOO LONG, so I will leave you itching for the story of my baptism in the next post. :o)