End of Day Three . . .

I got brave last night and went to a bar called El Pegaso I believe - though if my subconscious memory serves, there are about 5 other bars/restaurants with the same name in town.  It was a nice roof top bar looking down on the edge of El Jardin.  They were preparing for some big - thing. . . fiesta or something.  They've been working on a stage all week, and today there was actually stuff on it and chairs being set up and tons of people milling about.  I thought - man, I have definitely been going back to my pad waaaay too early if this is how it gets in the evening.  I remembered it was Friday, and then when I saw all this stuff going down I realized this may not be your average Friday night crowd.  Still - it was the most excited and invigorated I've felt since arriving, which was good.

There was only one other group at the bar; four Americans.  After a while I mustered up enough courage to crash the party and ask for suggestions on things to do and see.  Turns out I had just stumbled into a small pod of a group of almost 100 creative writing students from the University of New Orleans.  Well whaddaya know.  I ended up drinking and having great conversation with them for several hours, and then, THEN I finally felt that "I'm on an adventure!" buzz.  All it takes is a little camaraderie and I'm on my way!  Yes, I know, meeting a group of young American writers isn't exactly language immersion, but I'm doing that all day, and I think exciting conversation with people I actually ended up having a lot in common with (sci-fi, Sam Raimi, skateboarding and snowboarding, Seattle, New Orleans, drag shows, drinks, love of travel. . . ) certainly won't kill me.  Of course I'm catching them at the tail end of their stay - they've already been here a month or so, and most are leaving in the next week.  At least it gives me a few things to do (readings, poetry slams, drag shows, karaoke) until I've been in class for a little bit and am feeling a bit braver to interact in Espanol.  And now we can all breathe a big, collective sigh of relief that Jen isn't locking herself in her casita every night catching up on True Blood (I'm all caught up now anyway).
At about 9pm they were getting ready to head to the next bar.  I hadn't eaten yet, so I thought I'd run home, eat some leftovers (so economical) and then come back out to meet them.  El Jardin was PACKED.  Live music - marching bands, mariachi; stilt walkers, papier mache characters. . .

It was pretty freaking awesome actually.  The buzz was invigorating and I was feeling on top of the world and like I was finally ready to get out there and have fun and do that whole convincing myself I'm not shy shtick.  And then I got home and ate. . .and completely ran out of steam.  I got a raging headache - maybe from the wine, maybe from the altitude, maybe from waiting too long to eat, I'm not sure.  Point is, I did NOT go back out and meet up with the group.  Lame!!  But I'm on my way out of the house now to explore and I don't know what.  Tonight I will certainly stalk some of the bars they were talking about last night to see if I can run into either this same group, or some of the other people in their program.