On Jan. 18th, 2016 I wrote in my journal:

“I was in San Luis Saturday night, Sunday (staying with a friend of my friend Fernando–her name is Gaby) and then on Monday I discovered that Alejandra’s friend (Alejandra is a friend of Gaby’s here in San Luis), Oliverio, was driving to Ciudad Valles on Tuesday morning.

(talk about a friend of a friend of a friend once removed!)

I had been warned against cycling directly to Chical, and advised, instead to go a different route that would take me through Queretaro.

With that in mind, I figured it was time to go visit Ismael’s family in Chical and then I could return to San Luis and cycle from there via a different road.

As I write, I notice how a myriad of new, spanish words are trying to creep in to replace some of my english words. If I let this happen, my next sentence in the story might look like this…

Entonces, en la manana de martes, Oliverio picked me up a la casa de Gaby en el carro de el.

Monday night I stayed up past midnight trying to get some last minute writing done for my client. Whatever I could finish, Addison would have to cover for me, as I would be gone until Friday and wouldn’t have much or anything in the way of internet.

I finally went to bed around 12:30 am with my alarm set for 6 am.

I hadn’t put my phone on airplane mode because I wanted Oliverio to be able to reach me early in the AM if necessary.

So when Addison sent me a voice message at 4:30 am, I picked up my phone almost on auto-pilot and listened to it.

Addison wakes up every morning around 4 am to get the bulk of his writing done in the early hours of the day, than he usually takes a nap around 10 am.

In his voice message, he told me that around 4 am he had heard noises outside our apartment door, where his bicycle was locked up.

He went out to the living room and peeked through the peephole in our door and saw someone walking down the stairs from the landing. Since we share a landing with another apartment, he figured it was just the neighbor walking down there.

But when he heard noises again, and looked through the peephole, this time he could see that there was a guy out there, clearly cutting through his bike lock with bolt cutters.

Addison was ass naked, but did swing the door open and yell, ‘yo!’

Without turning to look at Addison, the guy quickly walked down the stairs and left the premises silently.

Given his lack of clothes and the impressively large bolt cutters in the guy’s hands, Addison did not pursue him.

All of this information coming to me in my sleepy state creeped me out. There’s something about bicycle thievery that seems almost evil to me. And the thought of some guy eye-balling our apt. for who-knows-how-long made me concerned for Addison’s safety.

Apparently our dog (Zoso) is not doing his job.

Maybe Addison should get a chihuahua. They make great alarm systems here in Mexico. 😉

Anyways, all of that is to say that I had trouble falling back to sleep again. When 6 am rolled around I was very tired but excited to hit the road.

Gaby’s housekeeper, Rosa, helped me navigate breakfast, and when Oliverio arrived I popped outside with my borrowed, pink backpack, my mandolin and a bottle of water.

Oliverio does not speak any english, nor did his two companions who joined us for the 3 hour drive.

Add that to the equation that none of Ismael’s family in Chical speak english, or anyone else in Chical for that matter, and you get ‘Jahnavi’s Spanish Immersion Week 101’!”

🙂

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