Stars & Bars

One of the big things we've been doing in our St. Eds "class" is our teacher has been teaching us traditional mariachi songs. In Spanish, of course. We're not so great, but he plays guitar, and we have lyric sheets and we practice singing. It's fun. So today we put our vocal cords (chords?) to good use and went and serenaded the old ladies that run the Conchi's taco stand right outside our dorm. They're very sweet ladies, and our professor calls the owner his mother. Which is cute. So today we went to sing 3 songs to them that we've been practicing, and they loved it. They sang along with us, and afterwards they gave us all strawberry ice cream.

I love this taco stand. For some reason I didn't really start eating there until last week, but now I eat lunch there almost every day. You can get a huge plate of chicken fajitas, with vegetables, guacamole and refried beans for $3.50. It's a total bargain, and you get a lot of food.

It looks like now I'm going to be coming back the night of the 2nd, and arriving back in Austin on Sunday morning, the 3rd. I'll be glad to be back by the 4th of July to have a BBQ and watch fireworks. It'll be a good welcome back. I have very mixed feelings about it. My time here has flown by, and it seems like only a week or so ago that I arrived. I'm glad it's that way, though, and not the other way around. I'll be so happy to have my own bed back, and all of my stuff, and to be able to see my friends that I've missed desperately, and I've missed my kitty cat. But I'll also be sad to leave this place. Monterrey is not horribly exciting, but it's grown on me in an endearing way, and I'm really going to miss some of the people. Luckily the people I'll miss the most go to St. Edwards, so I'll be able to see them again. And hopefully frequently. If nothing else, I've gained a couple of really great new friends out of this experience.

So, in honor of it being my last weekend, a big group of us are going out, and I'm actually going to go with them. Deneise got a scoop on some apparently really hot gay club downtown called Parking that's supposed to be cool. They have 3 different areas: one for techno music, one for pop music, and a rooftop "chill out lounge." So that might be fun. We're gonna go check it out. And luckily Jaisen's going, so if I want to bow out early, I'm sure he won't take much convincing to share a cab back with me. I'll let you know how it goes.

The only thing left here in Monterrey that I really want to do is go to the Planetarium. I'm going to do that either Saturday or Sunday night with my professor and whoever else wants to go. I love planetariums and got really excited when I found out Monterrey had one. Then I need to pick up a few souveneirs, and I'm off.