SMA revisited

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Feb 13/09: It just gets better and better. I´ve shed the initial difficulties and am having a fine time. Thoroughly enjoying my co-residents at Casa Bertha.

Had a bit of a scare two days ago. When I approached Jorge to extend my stay at the hotel through Saturday, he said that my room was unavailable after Thursday. That put a bit of a damper on my spirits. Homeless!! I had tentatively planned to visit San Miguel de Allende Thursday but without a place to return to I was thrown into a quadary. Inquired about places to say in SMA but there were no vancancies. So I called my friend, JoAnna, in SMA and was about to tell her that my plans were up in the air when Jorge walked by and told me my room was available. Hooray!! Spirits soared and I confirmed my visit with JoAnna.

I met JoAnna 6 years ago in SMA at the B&B where we were staying. She never left. Absolutely loves living there and I´ve visited her a couple of times in subsequent years. So I caught the early bus yesterday along with Terry and Diane who were also visiting SMA. Met up with JoAnna in the Jardin there and we caught up on each other´s lives, then went for pozole at a place where we´d eaten pozole in years past. (Pozole is a Mexican soup made with chicken stock, garbanzo beans and some veggies and whatever sort of meat you´d like served with toppings of tostadas, lettuce, onion, lime, chile, sour cream. Very tasty.) Then we walked several blocks to a huge art mall; a complex of galleries and studios where artists work and display their work. Some good, some bad and everything in between. Some excellent abstract art. Then we trekked back to town and I satisfied another food fantasy/memory and ate chlies en nogada which I´d eaten in SMA before and loved. This time they weren´t great. They`re poblano peppers with a ground beef stuffing and a cream sauce with walnuts and pomegranite seeds to garnish.

After dinner I wended my way back to the bus station and home to GTO. Passing through the main plaza on my way back to the hotel, I noticed that groups of musicians were assembling to do the callejoneadas. These are groups of professional musicians and singers wearing traditional costumes who have adopted what was a Spanish custom of gathering a crowd of spectators and wandering through town singing and playing and drinking wine, encouraging audience participationç. They were in no hurry to commence the performance last night and I waited for an hour before a group started up. And, frankly, it was a bit anticlimatic.

It was nice to arrive back at the hotel where I got engaged in a conversation with Susan before bed.