Spanish classes in Cuernavaca

I've been here for two weeks taking spanish classes at Chac Mool. The school itself is beautiful. The "classrooms" are actually those thatched roof areas you can see on the web site. The classes run in the morning and there are activities in the afternoon. I'm also staying with a host family that makes my meals and with whom I practice spanish.

A dog lives outside my window who wakes me up every morning at 7am barking. Click to watch a video of him eating a brick.

I have a 20 minute walk up and down hills to go to school. These are some things from my walk: a little ad hoc restaurant on my street and a typical rusty gate:

Every house has a gated lawn or parking area for the cars. There's an element of exclusiveness to this city which, I think, dates back to its colonial past. Sometimes you can peak through gates like these to see manicured yards with tropical flora.

It's been in some ways very hard and in some ways very easy to live here. It's hard because almost every detail of my life is unfamiliar. It's also a struggle for me to understand and speak spanish, so much of the time I feel unable to be myself and unable to follow what's going on around me. On the other hand it's easy because my days are, to a large extent, structured. I don't have to worry about what to do or how to get by because I need only go to school and do what my teachers and my mexican "mom" tell me to do, or follow the other students around in the evening.

I thought I'd have free time to work on some projects, study spanish, photograph, and explore music and art in the city. So far I really haven't had any time or energy for these kinds of things. (That's possibly due, in part, to the fact that I've got a group of friends that go out drinking until ridiculous hours of the morning so when I'm not at school I'm sleeping.... but they are leaving this weekend, so my next weeks might be different.)

I've taken some photos in the city center which includes a palace built by Hernán Cortés:

The Cortés has a beautiful photography exhibit now

as well as Diego Rivera murals depicting the history of Mexico from the battle between the Aztecs and the conquistadors to the integration of spanish and indigenous culture:

One day I went to the Robert Brady Museum. It's his house, converted into a museum since his death. It includes works by the two Mexican superstars, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, among others.

The place is stacked floor to ceiling with his art collection

His house has the most beautiful bathroom I've ever seen - not that I think about bathrooms much, but this is really incredible. The toilet is behind a wall on the right, and the bathtub is below floor level in the back under the buddha. It also has a sky light.

I went on a few excursions which I'll write about some other time. I'm also pretty excited about checking out Mexican wrestling next week: