Sallie in a Sombrero: Apartment Hunters: International

Yesterday, after our unintentionally long nap, Danny and I woke up ready to tackle the day. We had a nice little breakfast at the hostel and, after fighting with my old Blackberry, which contains an international SIM card that should TOTALLY work here, I gave up and we decided to just go to Telcel and get a prepaid phone and call it DONE. We asked Abraham for the closest store and he saved us a trip by letting us know that we'd need our passports in order to get phones (Thanks, buddy!). At Telcel, we encountered a person at the door dancing in a moose costume (I guess it's their mascot but, who knew there was such a strong moose population in South America?!). Danny approached a nice saleslady in simple Spanish who then directed us to what appeared to be the only person in the store who spoke English. Again, please forgive my naivete, but whenever I've traveled in Europe, it seems like you can't walk two feet without tripping over someone who speaks English. It's sort of the language of business (possibly to be replaced by Chinese at some point?? who knows) so I just assumed that in a large city such as Guadalajara there would be a fair amount of people who know enough English to get by...not the case. It's actually awesome because just one interaction with someone who doesn't speak any English is enough to send you running back to your room to spend some time on Rosetta Stone. Needless to say, I've got some work to do in the language department. So where was I? Oh yeah, the phones...We did the typical 20 dollar cheap little phone with 950 pesos of credits (about 50 minutes of talking time) to start with and were then on our way, passing by the dancing moose on the way out.

After getting our phones we stopped at a place called Cafe Providencia that had WiFi so we could begin the apartment hunt. We ordered a couple of juices and ordered food. Juices seem to be pretty big here. They're all freshly squeezed and you can get interesting mixes. I had a "Mixto" yesterday which had at least Mango AND carrot and Danny had some green concoction that MIGHT have had cucumber and mint and who knows what else. Foodwise, I had the taquitos pollo and Danny, I think, had the enchiladas and they both came in a salsa verde. Delicious. One major difference we noticed between the Tex-Mex we get at home is no queso dip (sad...) and they don't drown everything in cheese and sour cream here. The food seems lighter and the portions are slightly smaller, but not much.

Danny ran across the street and bought "El Informador" from Oxxo (a popular convenience store here) which has real estate listings in it's classifieds section. We went through and circled the ones that sounded promising, using Google to check out their locations and the translator to decipher the descriptions as well as to compose Danny's speech he gave whenever we would call a prospective landlord which went a little something like this:

"Hola! Hablas Ingles? No? Ok, no problema. Estoy estudiante y voy a estar viviendo en Guadalajara durante quatro meses. Es el departamento sigue disponible?"

I was amazed at how well he did. He did spend several months in Medellin, Colombia and studied some Spanish in school, but speaking to someone in a foreign language over the phone, especially about real estate, can be pretty tricky. We ate lunch and drank coffee and spent a few hours setting up meeting times and getting rejected (a lot of people only wanted to rent for a minimum of a year). We went and saw two units in a really nice neighborhood (the landlords assured us in broken english, that there were "No Fiestas, No big men drinking beers"), but the upstairs unit was tiny (one room studio with a tiny dining room table that could only seat one) and the downstairs was dated and gloomy. The price was right at 5000 pesos ($364 USD per month), but we told them we would think about it and be in touch.

Passed by this major roundabout, Glorieta Minerva, during our apartment hunt

We returned to the hostel late in the afternoon and a new guy was there. His name was Moises and he and his brother run the hostel. After telling him of our day spent apartment hunting, he mentioned that they had been considering renting out a private room at the hostel for 5800/month which we are now seriously considering because we love the neighborhood so much and everything here is within walking distance (except Danny's school which takes a 30 minute bus ride to get to everyday). It's an odd idea, living in a hostel for 4 months, but it might be the best thing. That way, Danny and I will always be interacting with new people and when else during our lives will we be in a place to do something like that? We are here one more night and are going to see one more apartment this afternoon, but as of right now, we are pretty set on staying.

We went and had dinner last night around the corner at this amazing restaurant called "Pig's Pearls" that cooks their "hamburguesas" over a wood-fired grill. It's an adorable place that serves craft beers, tasty food, solid music, and has a really pleasant staff. We had some appetizer which was sliced, crispy baguette with melted cheese in the middle covered in sundried tomatoes and the Lambburger. Yeah, that's right. I said "Lamb. Burger." why doesn't this happen more often, I ask you?

Fuzzy/dark pic of me and my half of the Lamb Burger. They even put little olives on the toothpicks. Cuties.

MMMM...Perro Negro Porter, dipping sauces in the background (Tzatziki, Corn Mayonaise, and Spicy Salsa)

After dinner, we took a walk around to explore and digest. Found a beautiful church, interesting street art and statues and fell in love with the city a little more.