It seems so long ago already, but was just last Wednesday.  That morning I skipped my morning Spanish classes to play some music with these young men.  They go to a school called Communidad de Niños, which is just a couple blocks from where I've been staying.  It's a school where all the kids only have on parent.  Nicholas, who is one of the people that run the school, and I met at Mario's taco stand the week before.  I volunteered to come in and share my music.  Nicholas and I made plans using my broken español and a lot of smiles.  I didn't know what to expect, but I really wanted to visit a school and share my music.

It was great to be there.  The kids, who's ages range from 4 to 10, were all very excited to have a visitor.  The room we were in just happened to have a giant picture book style atlas.  So we looked at the map and found Chicago, and then found Cuernavaca.  The older kids, particularly Brian and Irving, where very curious about learning words in English, and they were very understanding and helped a when I didn't know a word in Spanish. 

So, we sang in íngles y español and learned about the banjo. One of my proudest moments of the trip was being able to share Jump Jim Joe, which is a dance that my students and I do all the time in Chicago.  First you find a partner and tomen sus manos (hold h.  Then it goes,

Jump, jump, jump Jim Joe.
Shake your head and nod your head
and tap your toe.
Round, round, round you go
Then you find another partner and you
Jump Jim Joe!
                       and then it starts again.

This is a picture of the cheat sheet I used.  I was so nervous to try it, but I'm very glad I did!  And of course, like everybody who jumps Jim Joe, there was so much laughter and smiles and hugging, we could have Jumped Jim Joe all morning.

This was a great experience and in it's own way similar to the experience Shana and I had in Morelia. What if there was a way for me to do this all the time?  Hum . . . . .

This is Pavel outside his workshop in Santa Maria, a puebla just outside of Cuernavaca.  I met Pavel last Friday night at El Manojo.

Pavel is a Laudero, a person that makes instruments.  En íngles = luthier.

This is his taller.  Taller = workshop.

We played a bunch and he gave me a great lesson in the basic rhythms of jarocha.  A funny moment happened when he was talking about playing in 6/8 time.  As the beginning he used the phrase "sies octavos" which I took to mean six octaves.

I didn't understand what he was talking about, but I kept thinking, "Six octaves.  Wow.  That's a lot."

About five minutes later after much more miscommunication, "Oh.  6/8 time.  Yes, I understand that."  Very funny.

One thing that I didn't expect was for me to go through the beginning process of making a jarana.  This is going to be a mosquito - a very small jarana.

In addition, I really appreciated the patience he had with my lack of español.  It's still very frustrating that I can't say so much, and it takes so long for me to understand anything other than the simplest statements and questions.  I think we were both pretty wore out by the end, but it got done.  I was very glad to get to know him and his work and I hope we stay in touch. 

Sunday was much slower than Friday and Saturday, but it wasn't without it's musical excitement. 

There was a book fair outside of ES3 today on Calle Comfort last Saturday.  This is the book fair where I first found out about the music happening last Saturday. 

This is Miguel.  He's a pretty cool guy.  He was working at one of the booths and saw my banjo and asked me to play a song.  I ended up sitting with him for a while.  I didn't realize it, but everyone in the book fair was gathering around as I was playing and after a rendition of Oh, Susanna, the crowd gave me a pretty good ovation.  That felt really good. 

Miguel remind me of the older guys that I used to meet hanging around Ann Arbor.  He's got lots of opinions, swears every other word and smokes too much.  I couldn't quite put it all together, but he's kind of a intellictual vagabond.  His advice to me, which he gave me many, many times, was to drop out of school, and stop being one of those people "who never get nowhere."  His advice - read the dictionary if I wanted to learn to speak Spanish.  He said that's how he learned how to speak English. His English is pretty good.  

Who knows?  Maybe he's right.  I must admit that I've been reading about 10 words a day since.  I don't know if I remember them, but Miguel says that's not the point.  He warns, "You may not remember them, but when you f#$%ing need them you'll remember them."

Later I went to have dinner and coffee at Cafe Gringo.  I ran into this guy, Alejandro, who I had seen walking around.  We hung out for maybe an hour, trading songs and instruments. 

After school, I went home, dropped my stuff off, and when back downtown to Cafe Gringo to meet up with Erensto.  Cafe Gringo is awesome.  It's beautiful inside.  The building that it is in is 200 years old.

Like a lot of places in el Centro, it doesn't look very big from the outside, but when you walk in you find that there's a pretty good sized garden area.  So Ernesto and I played some improvised music pieces, which was great.  And then some of his friends showed up.  I took a break from playing with Oscar (on keyboard), Richardo (on guitar) and Ernesto, played some post-bop standards.  One this I learned yesterday was that there is a lot of young people in Cuernavaca that like post-bop and fusion music.  Who knew?

After we were done at Cafe Gringo, we went over to El Manojo, one of my favorite spots in Cuernavaca, to hear some music.  The place was packed!  Turns out, there was some sort of a fusion variety concert or something.  I never quite understood.  Ernesto, Oscar and Richardo played again.  This time they were joined by Julian on drum set, Andres on congas and Agustin on bass.  Pretty cool stuff.  I joined them, as did  some other players for a big jam session at the end of their set.  Very fun, but I couldn't hear a darn thing.  I recorded it with my phone, but it's too much sound and didn't record well. 

Two interesting people that I met last night.

This is Pavel.  He plays jarocho music and makes jaranas and requintos.  He's a really interesting guy.  He's studying how to make an instrument called the banjoquinto, which is the traditional instrument of Morelos, the state where Cuernavaca is.  I hope to get to his workshop this week to see his instruments, and learn about the music of Morelos. 

Also, he knows about the Old Town School.  ¡Qué padre!

Another interesting person I met (I don't have a picture yet) is Catherine.  Catherine is from San Francisco and is now a music teacher at an elementary school.  She has an Irish music session today (Saturday) at Cafe Gringo.  Can't wait to check that out.

OK.  Onwards!

  Great day!  First, I finished my first week of school without embarrassing myself, too much.  Turns out that I was in a class that was much too difficult for me.  Next week I'm heading back a level or two and I've very happy to do it.  I really want to leave with some solid improvement. 

  This is my class.  That's Serina (Swiss), Sonke (German), Christina (Korean), Tiffany (Arkansas) and our maestro Edel (México).  We were having a little fiesta with some juice and snacks because it was Tiffany's last day at school.  What's a fiesta without music?  So I pulled out my banjo and noodled around a bit.  It was fun to share.

One thing that I was dreading that turned out to be really fun, was playing Boggle in our conversation class.  If you know me, you know that I hate games that need spelling.  Spelling never been my strong suit.  But I ended up doing OK and it was really fun.  There are a lot of words in esañol that only have 2 letters.  I would have been in trouble if I would have needed more.
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With school over for the week - onward to adventure!

I took my banjo to school today and I was really glad I did.  We have ten minute breaks every hour and during a couple of those breaks I took out my banjo and played for a few minutes.  It's not much, but it certainly is relaxing.  It just makes me feel like I'm really being myself.  It's surprising the difference even a couple minutes of playing makes in my mood.

Today was the day that I was supposed to meet with Ismael en El Centro to learn some songs en español.  I waited outside the bar ES3 like we talked about,  but he didn't come by.  No big thing.  I just sat and played and relaxed.  And look who ran into me!  This is Jennifer.  She is a high school teacher and she used to work at the Old Town School.  She teaches íngles at elementary schools now.  It was great to catch up.

During this vaijo perqueño, I ran into some interesting people though.  This is Carlos (in the blue shirt) and his friends.  They work at a music shop that I stumbled onto.  They all play heavy metal guitar, but they were interested in my banjo.  They asked me to play some tunes, and then I handed it over to them.  I love watching people figure out how the banjo works.  Musicians take to it right way.  

I also ran into Ernesto, who I met last weekend at ES3.  He was one of the musicians that couldn't play in the street.  He invited me to play some music with him at a place called Cafe Gringo on Friday.

So, while I did miss Ismael, lots of other opportunidads sprung up.

Anyway, after I didn't see Ismael, I played for a bit more and then went back home.  When I got home I got the sad news that I my friend Felipe, who lives in México, D.F., isn't going to be around this weekend.  I had planned on staying with him, learning some música Huesteco, and visiting the Anthropological Museum.  That was disappointing, but what can you do?

I needed to work, and was feeling a bit stir crazy, so I thought I'd go back down to el Centro, and study and have a beer at ES3.  That's it on the left.  It's a great bar.  Very friendly and full of interesting people.  I ran into Mario and his friends, but I didn't hang out with them.  I really wanted to concentrate on my taraja (homework). 

So glad I came back downtown! This was really interesting.  There was a poetry reading outside the bar!  The bar is too small to set up any sort of a stage or anything, so all these people read poetry in the street.  They had a megaphone which one person would hold and one person would point at the audience.  So cool!  

After I got done with my homework, I hung out for a bit more and ended up meeting a couple of the bartenders and the owner, Marcela.  She told me that the "tres" en ES3 is because Tres because it's a bar, a gallery and a performance space.  Muy chido, no?  I found out one of the bartenders, Eric, has a blues band that is playing tonight (Sabado) at a bar called Bar Fresh, right downtown.  Really looking forward to that.
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That was that.  Nothing too big, but a really fun and very interesting day.

Hey everyone,
    I'm back in México.  I'm in the town of Cuernavaca, which is just outside of Mexico City.  I was here for 2 months back in 2008.  I'm back to continue studying español and generally relaxing.

    Just like last time, I took and early flight so I could get in at a decent hour.  It was a long day (I was up at 3:30am), but I was able to arrive where I'm staying by 4:00 in the afternoon.
    Jorge was waiting for me when I got there.  He thinks I look much older.  Here is a picture of me (taken on the third day of my trip) and this is a picture of me on my first night in Cuernavaca two years ago.  What do you think?

    This is me with my friend Mario.  In a great moment of coincidence I ran into him on Friday night, my first night back.  He's working at a tienda where I stopped to get some tacos.  It was great to run into him on my first night back because he was actually the first person (other than my host family) that I talked to when I first came to Cuernavaca.  At that time he was working at a stand called Tacos de Don Beto.  He was so nice that first time and he was equally nice this time.  We were happy to see each other and had some laughs.  At one time in his life he worked in Naperville.  As with many people in Cuernavaca, we've agreed to trade lessons in Spanish and English.  But I'm going to leave the taco-making to him.