Holiday Inn Express Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico

After my first week of classes I decided to visit the neighbouring state of Michoacan. A couple of Mexican guys called Hugo and Raul were taking a coachload of students to party and see a bit more of the country. I was the sole Englishman but it was a real international group, mostly comprised of Germans, French, Mexicans and Americans.

We arrived in the state capital Morelia on the Friday night and took a brief tour around the city centre. It was fairly lively as the annual ...

... in English (Rutter´s "For the Beauty of the Earth" which I did with my girls at school last spring) and their English was so bad it was funny! I wanted to get up there and correct them, but I behaved myself!

Yesterday afternoon I went to a music workshop for children and adults. They taught guitar, violin and wooden flute in groups and then put them together at the end of the workshop. This takes place twice a week, so I´ll go again next week. I´ve borrowed a ...

Hello, all! Sorry for the long silence - been extremely busy!

I celebrated July 4 by taking a tour with other students in my school to 4 really pretty towns - Tiripitéo, Tupátaro, Tzintzuntzán and Pátzcuaro. The names are all from the P'urhépecha Empire, hence the difficulty in pronuciation. Here´s a quick resume of each:

Tiripitéo - We visited the first university in the Americas, founded by Augustinians in 1537. The monastery/college ...

... to remember the conjugation. (If only there weren´t so many exceptions!!) But this is only a short respite - subjunctive is coming!

I´m fighting the gringo tummy bug, but Martha is being really helpful. Made me plain rice (do you know how hard it is to find plain rice in Mexico??) and jello (jelly for my UK readers) yesterday, and fresh chicken broth today - guess it's Mexican penicillin, not just Jewish penicillin! (It took me days to realize that when Martha ...

... schedule of services - any church musicians reading this will realize how good they have it when I tell you there are 7 masses a day Mon-Fri, 9 masses on Saturday and 11 masses on Sunday. Don´t know if they all have music, but I´ve been in the cathedral 3 times during services and heard the organ each time. Haven´t heard any choirs though!

Other than this it´s the daily routine - classes and homework. Not too exciting, but I´m learning a LOT! Hasta luego!

... in that direction. I soon
realize that this was no small market -- but a gigantic maze market
selling everything that can be sold from gold fish to tea leaves, from
phone chargers to wrenches and saws and machetes, from tacos to used
and new shoes, from mirrors to mango smoothies to full bottles of
perfume (see pic). I spent probably an hour and a half walking around
the market ...

... in Morelia had wanted. We then returned to each others host families homes for a well deserved shower and meal. It was a beautiful morning here - warmed up to about 80. The sun was shining all morning and then in the mid afternoon we had a short thunder and rain shower. It is very nice this evening - reminds me of Yakima in June. Tomorrow morning we meet early and we will have breakfast at the Camalinas Rotary club.

... preservation of the colonial city but what did he know, he was a blow in. We ended up paying way over the odds for a beer in a poseur's joint off the main drag and then called it a night. 'Manana' said the locksmith. I supposed I could handle that. The weekend was over and the hostel was deserted. I killed time: wandered around, paid a cursory visit to a museum, sat in the zócalo reading a newspaper; spent a couple of hours surfing the Internet. Later in the evening Phil ...

... s'est gâté, j'ai essayé de me réfugier au musée d'art contemporain mais j'ai trouvé porte close... J'ai diné dans un super restaurant de poisson, j'avais les lieux pour moi seule! Dans la soirée j'ai rejoint les autres pour une expédition à la casa del salsa et...c'était fermé!! Là, la soirée a empiré, un type est passé en voiture et les autres ont pensé qu'on pouvait monter avec ...

... with gas. The guy that drives the gas truck told me that the previous tenent called them a couple of times to try to force gas into the tank and then just gave up and took cold showers. The apartment is a mess of paintbrushes, hammers, rags, cleaning supplies and scraps of wood right now, but I can already see that it is all going to come together really nicely. I have termites in the roof, so every morning I wake up with dust in my hair and ...