First Impressions

The countryside between Leon, Mexico and San Miguel de Allende is a very dry. We have come to Mexico visit my grandma who lives in San Miguel for a month every year. My first impression of this part of Mexico is that there are a lot of unfinished buildings everywhere. I learned that the reason that there are unfinished buildings is because the government doesn’t charge taxes on unfinished buildings. I guess nobody wants to pay taxes. However, most of the buildings that are completed are very small and crowded. Everything is made of stone or bricks.

The grass is very gray and dusty. Cacti are everywhere. To make the long drive from the airport more interesting, I started to count cacti. I got to 312 after about 2 minutes and stopped. My dad made me average the number of cacti that I would have seen in one hour. It came out to about 9,360.

We got to the house that we were staying in and I think that it had to be one of the nicest houses in San Miguel. The house was complete, there were flowers everywhere, and it had three floors. All five of us had lunch together that was made by an amazing house manager named Lourdes. The shrimp was different than what we serve in the US because it was covered in lime, tomatoes and cilantro. Delicious!

We finally finished our lunch and of course I was still hungry. I would be glad to be Mexican and eat lots of great food every day because I can eat a lot. We went to a nice seafood restaurant for dinner and I got shrimp that had to be at least five times as big as a regular shrimp and it only cost about 8 dollars (100 pesos).

After dinner we went to the Jardin (pronounced har-deen), which is the main town square. In the Jardin people come to sit, play, buy, sell and celebrate. The Parroquia, a large colorful cathedral, sits at the top of the Jardin. It has many different statues and colors that light up at night like the Eiffel Tower. The architect who built it used styles of different churches and put them all into one unusual building. San Miguel always has a reason to celebrate, everything from religious holidays to the dancing of the Aztecs, and this main square is a perfect place for that.