I once again remembered something I forgot to post the last two times (I obviously aged before my bday!) - I now have the experience of being so hot that I don't sweat anymore, instead there's a layer of salt on my skin. The moment when water has evaporated due to heat and you feel tiny pieces of salt on your skin when touching it. 

Anywho, wanted to write about my time in Guadalajara so far. I've been to two street markets during this week (wow, already a week in Guadalajara! What have I been doing again..??) and have to say it's prettty amazing! I mean there's like this certain feeling there. Tons of little booths, especially yesterday at Tonalá!

Raquel and I first went to her local food market on Sunday and as it turned out it wasn't just a food market. Well, mostly food but also tons of other things! I'd never seen 25% of the fruit and vegetables they had there. What also surprised me was that the music they played (because there were booths with cd's and dvd's of course and they played loud music) was from jumpstyle to regular trance. And I was expecting salsa/bachata/something more like that. But no. Oh well... What I really liked was that the merchants offered samples of all the weird things that they were selling. Raquel was very patient with me and answered all my "What are this?" questions without complaining and I think we had a lot of fun. 

Half of the things we bought from the market. Well ok, Raquel mostly bought them, but I was too distracted and the next minute she had already bought it and I could only offer to help carry all the things she got. Btw that bag of green stuff is cactus. 

I bought champignons, a mamey and this one fruit that's name I can't recall.

Despite not remembering the name it tasted really good and I really want to get more next week, when we go again.

Mamey also tasted good, it looks like a red avocado but tastes like a fruit. I took a chance with that, really. They gave me a sample of a smaller fruit, that was supposed to be a lot like mamey, at the market and it tasted kinda sweet and honeyish and I didn't like it much, but mamey tasted more fresh. I also saw green tomatoes, green lemons (they apparently don't have yellow lemons, I was at the supermercado the other day, trying to find lemons for like 10 minutes and then remembered they didn't have yellow lemons..), and well a bunch of other things that I can't remember the name of.. it was a lot of new information for one morning.

Raquel also bought corditas for breakfast and they looked much different from what I'd had in Nogales, but tasted good nevertheless. She also made guacamole herself when we got home, to eat with corditas, that tasted amazing! I've tried it a few times before at restaurants and her home-made guacamole beat all the previous guacamoles by miles!

My first breakfast in Guadalajara - corditas with guacamole and salsa. My corditas were with pumpkin flour, pork and chicken, I think. 

Julia also cut open a papaya and I got a chance to try it for the first time (don't ask me why I'm only now trying all these fruit, I tried pomelo like a year ago for the first time, I think.. I blame the poor selection of the stores at Häädemeeste!!). Anyway, I really don't like papaya, it tastes like blood for some reason (I guess I'm not a vampire, oh noes!!!! Crocodile tears!). 

So this week I've been trying to improve my Spanish/explore Guadalajara/find potential places of employment. I have to say a lot of people have been helping me with Spanish so far and I hope they don't feel like I'm using them, it's just when you're learning mostly by yourself you have a lot of ¿¿¿¿porqué's???? here and there.. We've had discussions on Spanish with Julia, Ricard and Raquel, too, which is nice. For example we had a discussion on acentos (the accents), after Raquel's friend Hiram had told me that in Spanish tu is you and tú is your (it's actually the other way around), even native speakers get lost sometimes. Julia is also studying thankfully, so I'm not alone, even though she's way ahead of me..
We've been to the centro a couple of times now and thanks to Hiram I've seen tons of catholic churches by now, he seems to know a lot on the style as well. He seems to get a kick out of pointing out all the churches to me, after my surprise that there are three catholic churches by the main square.

Here's the catedral de Guadalajara for you. And also the main square.

Also got the chance to try cordita with pig tongue, it tasted really good actually!

One day I walked around ten kilometers around the town, to exchange money. We tried banks, but failed, because I don't have an account there and since Hiram was supposed to take Ricard and Julia to see the stadium and to the market and Raquel was at work I set off myself. Feeling proud of myself, because I asked directions in Spanish and understood most everything people told me. But yeah, I had to walk and walk, because people weren't exactly sure on where to exchange money. But oh well... Then I was supposed to meet Hiram to go to his choir rehearsal, so I could maybe sing again, and ran (basically) the the historical center of Guadalajara, so I would be there on time and Hiram was like an hour late, hahaha. So there was an experience with southern people as well (I do not think all southern people are like that, of course.. just some, haha!). Ricard and Raquel said Hiram takes it to the extreme. :) But it's still fun to hang out with him, because his English is not the best and I try to speak a little Spanish etc, so he's excused. I have to get used to this kind of attitude anyway.

Here are the lemons you see in Mexico, as seen in the supermercado. They're pretty small.

Cinnamon at the supermercado

On Wednesday evening Ricard made traditional Spanish food, I don't exactly remember what it was called, but it tasted really good.

An omlet with potatoes and onions and bread with olive oil and tomatoes. 

Our merry company. 

After midnight they found someone singing the birthday song in Estonian for me (they actually tried to sing along, hahaha) and then each of them sang their country's birthday song to me (German, Mexican and Spanish versions) and I got to make a wish blow out the matches on my birthday muffin (the first time I ever got to do that, actually!).
In the morning I thought about once again spending my day studying Spanish and looking for places to work at, but Julia and Ricard invited me to go to Tonalá and Tlaquepaque with them, to hit the markets. At first we took two busses to get to the Market and saw some really nice views of the city. Then the bus driver allowed two street performes on the bus and we also had music. So full service.
Another thing I wanted to tell you guys is that in Mexico it's very popular for people to perform in the middle of the street during the red light - they juggle with fire, burst fire with alcohol, ride unicycles etc, ideas on how to earn money for Kaupo :)
So the best way to describe a Mexican street market is to imagine a nest of ants. You basically can't stop, because it will cause a chaos, because the flow of people never stops. They will try to pass you from both sides even when there's no space to pass from one side. And you've created an island in the middle of this flow, there's nowhere to go to get out of the way, because people are passing and passing yeah, passing. You just try to make yourself as small as you can and escape the island you've created on the first chance. This all happened to us, when Julia saw the cutest (mhm, they were cuter than all the other baby animals in the world.. maybe..haha) little puppies and we decided to stay for a few minutes to cuddle them and pet them (ok, I just have to tell you about them. They were one month old, grey, Julia said the breed was cute, haha. Anyway, we were petting them and they were so tiny and sleepy and the list of adjectives is endless, really. I don't think my vocabulary and skill in English is sufficient to describe the cuteness of these tiny puppies!). Anyway, we were walking around and the market seemed endless, I think we saw like half of it, because there was more on the other side of one of the bigger street. I have no idea why people would sell like half of the things they were selling there! Here are some of my findings:

Little booths going as far as the eye can see.

Drinks

The drinks were served with ice, so I didn't know if I should try them or not. We later saw many people with them so i guess it was safe.

 Yes, placenta shampoo, Julia told us that since it's the baby gets nutrition etc from it, people also think it has healing powers. But the wildest thing is that some of this liquid has been in someones womb at one point. Let that sink in for a while.

The Tonalá market is a crafts market.

Baby Jesuses in weird positions.. be sure to notice they offer them in various skin colours. :)

Another VERY popular thing they sell is remotes. TONS of remotes can be found at random booths even when it's just a lonely booth on a random street.

We also walked to the cerro de la reina (the hill of the queen) for the best view of town. 

On top of the hill there was a church, of course, haha.

But there was also a playground.

We all found something to entertain ourselves.

Couldn't see the city that well, better luck next time..

Also managed to get lost when walking home last night. Julia and Ricard went to wander around in Tlaquepaque, and I was supposed to go to a couchsurfing meeting in cafe El gato negro, but when I walked in there I saw no group of foreigners (there were a lot of foreigners walking on the street, though) and all the 8 guys sitting by the bar pointed to the ladies room on the right and said the women't toilet was this way, hahaha, I didn't even say I wanted to go to the toilet or anything, they just randomly thought that was what I was there for.. But yeah, no meeting.. So I walked around a little bit, to see if I can find Julia and Ricard again, but since I didn't and had been to Tlaquepaque before (when looking for a place to exchange money), took a bus to the centro and tried to get home from there. Of course my battery had to die then and I had no way of using google maps or calling my friends to ask how to get to the big Independencia street that would take me home. So I asked for directions, and I remembered there was something in front of Independencia and it was not calle (street), but I couldn't remember what it was. So I asked to go to calle Independencia, but I specified el grande calle, but of course ended up on calle Independencia, which was a small street that was not going in the right direction at all. So when calle Independencia turned into calle Juan Manuel all of a sudden, I finally decided it's time to ask someone for help. Luciana and David, who were the lucky 1182 in my hour of need, took me to Carzada Independencia (carzada meaning a big avenue) with their car and from there I happily walked home :)

Other nice things about this week:

We have mango trees and lemon trees casually growing on the street :)

Raquel's cat Dante is my new bestie now, likes to wake me up in the middle of the night by rubbing his nose in my face, so I would pet him. 

Also likes to sleep on my pillow. 

Btw this post was in English for my friend Ruy, who wrote:

"I tried google translator to read some of your blog posts and one of the following options apply:

1. You're not writing in Estonian, so google couldn't translate properly.

2. Estonian is too hard language, so google translator is still at school learning.

3. You're actually mental retarded and write no sense things in between sentences.

4. My cookiebrain doesn’t have enough imagination power to guess and try to figure something out of the text.

I could kind of have a broad idea what you wrote, but it's more guessing than reading. I don't know what word you use that it keeps translating as Switzerland!!! If you write in English I'll read, that's for sure :)"