A Busy Day

During our leisurely breakfast this morning of eggs over easy, toast and coffee, we flipped through the weekly English/Spanish newspaper Atención and its insert Quepasa?  We reviewed scheduled activities and circled items of interest. Events included Musica y Vino, Concerto con guitar flamenco and so on. Yes, its tough being us.

For today's activities we selected a narrative video of the Historia del Mexico and a pretty esoteric video / lecture / discussion of Non Duality with Ravi Nathwani. This last selection also gave us an opportunity to visit the  northwest section of the town that we had not yet explored.

Historia del Mexico

Helen seated in Theater

The Historia del Mexico video was presented in the 85 seat Teatro Santa Ana at the Biblioteca Publica. This public library is actually a private enterprise that relies on donations and money raised by events and the Cafe Santa Ana. The Biblioteca Publica is also a perfect example of a public square. Folks gather at the library to practice their Spanish, others to practice their English and others to attend films and performances at the Teatro.

The Historia del Mexico was a one hour, 334 animated slide show in video form covering their history from the pre-Spanish days, Spanish conquest and turmoil, revolution, assassinations, revolution again, turmoil again and so on until the late 1930's. In our life time we have known only a relatively stable neighbor to the south. Our sliver of Mexico here in San Miguel de Allende is upscale and trendy. We hope that stability and prosperity continue for our southern neighbor. We are acutely aware that we mingle only with well-to-do light-skinned Mexicans, but occasionally we we see dark-skinned, native stock Mexicans begging on the streets or selling trinkets. We know there is vast poverty in the campos (countryside) just outside of town and out of our sight. We are making an extra effort to remember that these people, too, are our neighbors.

Train made of straw

Toy Museum

Between our two intellectual endeavors, we decided to stop at the Toy Museum. Just to let you know, the regular entry fee is 100 pesos per person ($5.55), but as seniors we were admitted for only 20 pesos each ($1.11). We wandered through the four floors of handmade toys. Many of them were made for competitions and had won prizes, but it was abundantly clear that these toys were for viewing only--they were not to be handled and played with.

Life size models with dozens of masks

Some were reflections of everyday life; there were many examples of toy dishes, trucks, planes, etc.
Additionally, there were many masks that seem to be a big part of the Mexican culture. One big exception were the Frieda Kahlo dolls. These were made in adoration of one of the country's most famous female artists.

Lecture on Non-Duality

We continued to walk to the northwest corner of the city for the lecture / discussion that started at 5:00. In the tiny 65 seat theater, there were a dozen expats there for the presentation. We had no idea of what to expect. We discovered that this session was the second in a series of time and space and most of these people knew each other. We watched three short videos; the first one was about being present "here," and wherever you are is "here," the second was a cartoon video starring Puppetji about letting your baggage go and the third 19 minute video was an Indian swami talking about being and existing in such a way that neither of us couldn't figure out what it was all about. Needless to say, both of us were glad when we were able to escape at 6:30!