Perhaps it was a mistake to let 8 days pass before writing about San Miguel de Allende. So much has happened in a single week, and we have so many wonderful impressions of this place that it'll be hard to summarize the events and thoughts of even this short time. Alongside this text you'll see photos that Gary has taken on our walks around town of details of beautiful buildings and churches plus people we've seen on the zocalos (town plazas) and elsewhere.
First off, a few corrections to our initial post: The clay tennis courts at the RV park where we're staying, which looked to us last Thursday to be under an inch of water, took less than a day (!!) to drain. We actually played Australian doubles yesterday with Wayne, a guy who is staying here too, and I played singles with him again today. It's both Gary's and my first experiences playing on clay: The ball bounces differently and feels to us like it's coming at twice the speed as on a hard surface, and the loose dirt underfoot is unnerving as you start to go for a ball or try to stop and find yourself sliding. Also, after only a game or two, I found myself breathing hard, and I chalked it up to not having played for a few weeks. But Wayne reminded us that San Miguel is at 6,700 feet elevation, which is a much different scene than sea level in Baja or Zihuatanejo, our usual winter stomping grounds.
Secondly, I mentioned in the first blog posting that I was starting a Spanish class last week, but I decided to take a few days to explore with Gary before diving in. So today I started 3 hours a day of one-on-one instruction at Instituto Allende, a language school that's been in SMA for about 50 years. I was with Alicia, a wonderful and experienced teacher, for two hours, then with Tomas, a retired school superintendent and lovely man, for one hour. Muy intensivo!!! Next week, I may move to the Warren Hardy language school here for a 2-week group class. My Posada friends Cheryl and Wendy and I used a Warren Hardy workbook this fall for our Spanish self-study and liked his approach.
As mentioned earlier, we arrived in San Miguel to highly unusual weather. Last week I drafted a post tentatively titled "40 Days and 40 Nights" about the 72 hours of unrelenting rain we experienced. In our little 19-foot motorhome, we have about 70 square feet of living space, and 30 of that is the bed, which is the only place to sit. So as you can imagine, it was ... cozy! We watched pirated movies that we'd bought in the mercado (they sell everywhere for US$1.50 each, and across the screen during the movie a few times will roll the phrase "For Academy Award consideration only....."). We watched the previous day's news on PBS and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We did email. We wrote the first installment of this blog. We played cribbage (Gary was leading 7-6 when the rains stopped). We did yoga and calisthenics in the 10x4 aisle space. We started Happy Hour early!
Then the sun came out, and all of us in the 10 tiny RVs in this park emerged from our rigs like moles from their holes. The socializing began, and before long plans were made for the sports fans to watch the Super Bowl together yesterday and the shoppers to go to the weekly "tianguis" (huge open market) tomorrow. It's a fun group here -- 50-somethings and 60-somethings and one couple of 80-somethings who've been coming in their RVs to SMA for anywhere from one to 10 seasons.
After the rain subsided, Gary and I immediately headed out to resume our walking exploration of town. That day, on our walk to the center of town, we passed a modest storefront called Optica Allende. Gary, who's noticed a change in his vision recently, decided to get some new glasses here, and we made an appointment with the old optometrist at the store for the next day.
When Gary arrived, the old doctor's son, also a doctor, was waiting for him. The young doctor conducted the exam using, shall we say, old technology: a pair of thick, black-framed, round glasses into which he inserted various-strength lenses until he found the correct ones for Gary's bifocal prescription. He asked Gary to go outside and walk around to check the correction for distance, and he offered some small-print text to check the correction for reading. Gary picked up the new glasses three days later, and they are perfect.In that closet-sized store were a few cases of eyeglass frames, all priced differently. But in the end, no matter which frame Gary considered, the cost of exam+frames+lenses was $2000 pesos (about $175). The young doctor spoke some English but we never could get to the bottom of why the cost didn't change if Gary chose the more expensive frames instead of the cheaper ones :-) ... In the same vein: In one display of eyeglass cases with sample frames, tucked into two cases were dead hummingbird carcasses. I asked about that, and the doctor explained that colibris (hummingbirds), even dead ones, are a symbol of good luck in Mexico, and that lovers will often give one to their sweethearts. Viva la cultura mexicana!
On one of our walks downtown, we had a huge stroke of good fortune in meeting Heather Hanley, a terrifically generous woman who came to San Miguel a few years ago after living in Italy for 30+ years. Her home is an art-filled condo in a renovated convent in the heart of San Miguel. Serendipitously, Heather was to be gone on vacation for 8 days and offered to rent her lovely home to us for that period. We get to be there starting Wednesday, February 10. Here, a photo of Heather and Terri on the rooftop terrace of her building. 
There's much more to say and show about San Miguel, and we'll post again soon.
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