Our last days in Guanajuato

Our days in Guanajuato are numbered!

As I am writing this, it's our last day in Guanajuato, and we are packing our bags and trying to throw away as much as possible! It's incredible how much stuff we managed to collect in those 3,5 months we have been here..

We tried sending some of the movies we bought here with Heidi, but she got stopped in the customs in Amsterdam, and the took away about 40 movies! :( Pinche Customs!
The rest of the stuff we are dragging with us, hope we don't have to pay anything extra for overweight!

Anyway.. We are leaving with a cab around 3 at night, going to Leon, and taking the plane from there early in the morning! It's a 30-45 min car ride to Leon, then we fly to Mexico City, change planes, and then fly to Cancun! Woohoow!
As long as we get our stuff to Isla Mujeres everything will be allright, then we can send the stuff home with our friends from Norway that are visiting us this Christmas!

We had a wonderful time in Guanajuato, met tons of great people, got to travel the areas around Guanajuato, Leon, Maruata and lots more, learned some Español, concerts during Cervantino, BarFly, Cuba Mia, Los Lobos, Bar Ocho, La Kech, and ofcourse our favorite, Cafè Santo!

Thanks everybody for being friends, partying, studying, and travelling with us!

Sarah & Luis

Maggie & Erin
Maggie & Sara (freaky nails!)
Sarah (nordlendinga) & Merethe
Crazy times in Guanajuato during the Cervantino!
Decorations in Botellita
More decorations.
Drinking tequila with Erin
Oooh! I forgot to tell you guys I had a 25 pesos haircut!
That's about 12.50 NOK and around 2 USD!
Cheap stuff, he was done cutting my hair in about 5 minutes, and gave me a "choirboy" look when he was done! And to think we pay around 800 Pesos (400,- NOK /80 USD) in Norway for a haircut! It is truly insane!
Damn! I'm handsome! :P (Bob says Hi!)

Pamela & Mark
Hallgeir (El Pirato) We'll be seeing you on Isla Mujeres this xmas!

Heidi :) She will be joining on Isla Mujeres!
Chris Arenz (Shaggy)

Nadine

Enrique (Kike)

Pino & Mike
Michelle & Enrique (Kike)

Gene

Margareth and Mike

Suzan & Margareth and her kids :)

I probably forgot to post a picture of YOU here, but if you feel you should be here to, send me a mail! :)

I am guessing that I am not going to be online that much when I arrive at Isla Mujeres, but we'll see what happens! :) We have a lot of things we want to do there, including diving with sharks, swimming with dolphins, go see the sea turtles, enjoy the sun, enjoy our hammock, and just relax and put our feet up!
I will be posting pictures here as soon as I have any! :)

Oh, and for christmas, money is fine! :) No need to stress with gifts, as money is the only gift I need nowadays! :p

Life's GREAT!

Rotary Club gone insane!

Wow!
I never thought I was going to have any trouble at school here, but this is just a ridiculous story..
Every monday at school we tell of something that has happened in the weekend or that we read about in the papers.

Our class consists of 2 Norwegians, a German, two or three Japanese (they are not there so often) , an American and a girl from Turkey.

So as we tell our different stories, and a story pops up from one of us about how the borders between Turkey and Irak has a major dispute right now, and that there are 50 000 soldiers and thousand tanks from Turkey just by the border to Irak, and that Turkey claims that they are being invaded. And that this is a silly thing to do of the Turks as they may be attacking American Allies if they decide to enter Irak.
The Turkish from class then says that this is probably just a lie from the media, and that the Turkish are so kind to it's people and "all other countries, and never wants to join the EU" etc.

We then discuss this a little while, and move on to the next story, something about how another nuclear test has taken place, and how sad this is both for other countries, the environment and so on... We carry on with class as normal, and don't think any more about the stuff..

Then the next day after the first class we see a bunch of people speaking with our teacher, the look our way a lot, and seem mad for some reason.. They speak with the teacher a long time, and when the German is passing them, they stop him ask him if he speaks Spanish, when he says yes, they start to accuse him of being a racist, and bashing Turkey, and being hatefull against the Turkish student.
He is so shocked by this that he says he doesn't want to speak with them anymore, since they are accusing him of being a racist, which I know for a fact the he isn't.

Later that day the teacher wanted to speak with both me and the German about this, and she says that 4 people from the Rotary Club in Guanajuato came to school because the Turkish student told the family she lived with about what we discussed in class.
We are guessing her version of the story was a little different, because they were threatening our teacher that they had "contacts" in the University we attend, and that they could get us thrown out of school for talking about this.

The teacher told us that whatever happened that we discuss in class, is not going to affect us in any way, and that we should not worry about this, but who the hell do those Rotary people think they are?! Are the people there so brainwashed that they can't have other opinions ?
What the hell?

Is the world really this crazy nowadays that we can't discuss subjects that happen in the world, and point out other countries differences and errors without it boiling down to people being racist?!

For me, this is just a incredible story to tell, and I was somewhat hoping that they would try to get us kicked out, just so I could have an excuse to really tell them off! This is truly incredible!

Oh well..

To hell with the Rotary Club if this is how they treat people that are not in their sacred "union"

Cervantino festival 2007

Today, Sunday is the last day of the 3 week long culture festival Cervantino, which has been an incredible experience!
I have been to three concerts, Baaba Maal, Orquestra Alejandro y Los Onyx and Buika, very interesting all of them, even though Baaba Maal was the best!

The festival started out pretty nicely with not too many tourists visiting our little town, but then more and more people came, it was ok in the middle of the week the first days, but then it got crowded, more and more street vendors showed up, they have a HUGE hippie market, where we have been 4 times already, and going there once more today to shop some more before they close it down.

There are performance artists everywhere, clowns, dancers, hippies, small kids showing off, and stuff to shop almost on every 2meters of the street!

Crazytimes, but what an experience..

The people that run the Quart music festival in Kristiansand could probably have a lot to learn from this place.. It must be at least 10 x bigger than the Quart festival here..

I was lucky enough to get to film this Spraypaint artist in action, hope you like it!



Nice, eh?

Other than that, the last few days have been wild! Just to get from one end of the street to the other, you have to fight your way through large crowds! Never seen anything this crowded in my life, people everywhere! I wonder how many people that come to Guanajuato during this festival, it must be 10-20.000 at least!

And there are police on every corner, just a 5 minute walk, and we counted 50+ police officers.. They seem to be doing their job, and we haven't been bothered by any suspicious ones.

Drinking in the streets is not legal in Mexico, and they uphold this pretty well.. Compared to Norway, the police here just take your drinks, pour them out and let you go with a warning.. In Norway you get a HUGE fine, and sometimes even have to go to the police station..

We saw a couple of hippies with large peace signs on their clothes getting checked by the police, probably looking for drugs, but very ironic to see these peace loving hippies getting stopped by "the man" :p

As you will see in the pictures, it was totally insane!


Some random guy that wanted to be in our photo! He was so happy because he just got one of the last cases of Cerveza from the nearest kiosk

I hope this isn't dog poop!
Yo!

Lots of people!

The same guy that i filmed earlier is displaying some of his artworks
Mr.Scorpion set free!
Pirates of the Caribbean, Gold edition!
FOTO!FOTO!FOTO!
The clowns putting on a show at one of the squares..
Mr.Silversurfer.. This guy was dangerous if he touched you.. You got silver all over your clothes, and it was almost impossible to get rid off!
Walking around with their instruments.. not easy when there are so many people!
Merethe, Mark, Sofy and Pamela
Candy! (dulces in spanish)
Trying on crazy hats at the hippiemarket

More people!
My tickets from the Cervantino
My lovely chicken salad

More people, this is actually when its early, and not so many people..
A huge globe was rolling around in the streets..
Yepp.. even MORE people!
Some of the local "circus" artists showing off
Don't fall!
Heidi and Pollo giving each other weird looks! :p
My wonderful Narañada!
Merethes Pollo y champiñones, she wasn't that happy! :p

Merethe and Hallgeir :D
Here everybody started shouting PIRATO! PIRATO! PIRATO! And when they saw that I took pictures, they all charged towards me and Merethe and started shouting FOTO!FOTO!FOTO!
Merethe caught by the festivalpeople! :D
Crowd after crowd!
Police doing their job.."Is there any alcohol in this?!"

Someone got busted! The streets were wet with all the bottles the police had poured out!
Even more people!
Here they charged a clown just walking by..


To sum things up, a wonderful festival, and I wouldn't miss it for anything!