Guanajuato

Guanajuato (wa-na-WA-toe) is a wonder.  Set in the midst of rolling hills, the city of 140, 000 is an exuberant expression of the glory that was colonial Spain.   Built before building codes or the automobile, cobblestone streets follow the contours of the land.   Homes tumble up the hillsides in a jumbled riot of multi-colored facades, and single lane tunnels thread their ways below and among the neighborhoods. The effect is charming.  Instead of ‘calles’ (streets) the addresses are given on ‘callejones’ (lanes), and my taxi driver had to back down the narrow lane to my homestay location, as the street was too narrow for him to turn onto it.

The trip from Guadalajara – again on the premier bus line – took us from the verdant foothills into a higher and drier terrain, banana plants and papaya trees yielding to more pastoral and drier terrain, much like driving from western Washington to the palouse.  The weather here is not tropical – jeans and t-shirts are the order of the day.  Instead of a shower each morning and night (in humid, tropical Puerto Vallarta), I’m feeling right at home in weather much like the northwest in July.

My homestay hostess is a woman about my age, Elena, who is very excited about the prospect of becoming a grandmother in February.  Her mother and a friend were visiting with her when I arrived, chatting about recipes and baby clothes and neighborhood gossip and I was pleased to see how much I understood.  Lots of progress since my arrival in La Paz, even though I have spent a lot of the time with English-speaking gringos.  We had dinner and chatted and then Elena walked me into the center of town to show me where I will need to report to the school.

I fell in love with the ‘centro’ at first sight.  Much like Guadalajara, the downtown is full of people strolling, selling, socializing, sitting on the ubiquitous cast iron benches.  Life happens in the streets, not in front of the TV.  Restaurants, coffee shops, wine bars open onto the plaza, and their tables are full of families, young couples, and groups of friends.  But where Guadalajara is grand, imposing, with large open plazas and wide boulevards, Guanajuato is intimate and snug, the basilica standing cheek to jowl with the university and right across the lane from the theatre. 

After four days of class, I am (as usual) cansadisima (VERY TIRED!).  The typical day starts with the call of the propane man in the streets at 6:30 announcing the availability of propane canisters for those whose showers have suddenly gone cold.  Since the rooms front on the lanes, it is hard to ignore his plaintive “Ga-a-a-a-z”.   I try to squeeze in another 15 minutes before getting up, doing my homework and heading downstairs for breakfast.    The walk to the school takes about 5 minutes, and I share the commute with many others hustling all directions. 

The town bustles with life throughout the day and night.  On the steps of the Theatre Juarez, a mime engages the audience in some improvisational posturing.   Wandering mintrels, dresses in Spanish/Renaissance dress actually wander and minstrel in the streets, with a participatory crowd following as if they were pied pipers.  Everywhere you look, walls are dripping with cast iron, bas relief, and tilework – it feels like I was dropped into a Shakespeare festival with a Spanish flair.

School starts at 10 (más o menos – we are in Mexico after all), and runs until 2 with one break, during which Sherri (my fellow student) and I slip over to the pasteleria for something sweet and gooey.  Back to the homestay for the main meal of the day and some conversation, and then back to school for an hour of culture or history.  On Wednesdays we get our culture fix heading to a bar for happy hour.  It’s always amazing how much better my foreign language gets after a glass of wine or beer.  Friday, ‘culture hour’ is a Spanish language film.  And 2-3 times a week there are salsa classes at 8 pm.

Which leaves little time for sightseeing.  Nevertheless, Sherri and I have hiked up to the top of one of the surrounding hills for some photo ops, and wandered the lanes and streets staring up at cathedral spires, temple domes and plaques announcing the location of important historical events.  The photos I have included here will hopefully give you some sense of the city.  A fabulous place – literally the place of fables.

This weekend, Sherri and I plan to visit San Miguel de Allende (an artsy town, although one that has become a virtual gringo home away from home) and Dolores Hidalgo (the home of the Padre del Pais, Hidalgo, who led the initial insurgents in the fight for independence against Spain.  I plan to do a second week of homestay here before I fly back to Rockville Maryland.

My reason for flying back to Maryland to help my Dad as he starts chemo.  Despite the surgery and radiation he had in late 2010, early 2011, his melanoma has metastasized and new growths appeared on his scalp and in his lungs in December.  He is determined to do what he can to fight it and starts chemo today.  Various siblings will be hanging out with him to help him out in case of side effects.  Once I heard about the reappearance of his cancer, I decided to suspend cruising and work my way eastward with Spanish immersion while we waited for the doctors to come up with a game plan.

Heading Inland

If you have to travel on land, this is the way to travel.  I’m on a bus from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara.  And what a bus this is!  On the advice of the person in the Tourist information center in PV, I bought a ticket on the ETN line, the ‘premier’ bus line in Mexico.  For $5 more, these buses have 3 seats across instead of 4, and they are at least as large and comfy as a first class plane seat. Each passenger gets a free lunch, and there is no security check-in or long drive to the airport.   The terminals are clean, modern, and evocative of an airport.  Each seat has its own DVD player mounted on the back of the seat in front, with a wide selection of fairly recent movies from which to choose.  Although the movies are in Spanish (good way to practice) I’m preferring to watch the scenery as the bus climbs into the verdant foothills of central Mexico.

It’s hard for me to believe that just a few days ago, I was sitting on the back of a whale off the coast of the Mexican Riviera.  Things have been moving so quickly that there has been little time to write much more about the Wendaway leg of this adventure.  So I’ll back up here and fill in a few gaps.

When I arrived in La Paz on Minggat, I put the word out on the cruiser’s net that I was willing to crew for someone who might be heading to the mainland, and Mark, Wendaway’s skipper responded.  He was looking for crew to help him take the boat, a cutter-rigged Norseman 44, from La Paz to Puerto Vallarta.  He had already recruited Frank, a friend of a friend, who was flying in from San Diego, and he needed one other person to make the trip comfortable.  We met, exchanged expectations and sailing resumes, and I came on board on the 26^th.

Frank arrived on the 26^th after Mark and I had done some grocery shopping, and we took off on the 27^th after Mark had given us his customary safety briefing and we had stowed our gear.  So, from the beginning, we were three perfect strangers, brought together by our mutual love of sailing.  Frank had a lot of experience with local and offshore racing out of San Diego, but had never done any serious cruising.  Mark had owned many boats over the years, and had spent a few years sailing in Mexico.  I was looking forward to doing a passage that would require night watches, since I anchor up every night in my northwest cruising.  I had expected a simple 3 day passage, but Mark was interested in making the experience a true cruising adventure, with side trips to Isla Isabel, San Blas and Chacala.  Both Frank and I were overwhelmed with Mark’s hospitality, his organization and his genuine interest in making sure that the trip was fun and safe for all of us.

As a former OD consultant, I appreciated the fact that Mark convened the morning meeting to allow everyone to lay out their hopes and objectives for the trip, as well as the strengths that they were bringing to the team and what they wanted to learn.  I was really happy to hear about Frank’s racing experience, esp. when he said that he was the mainsail trimmer – mainsail trim is something I want to learn more about, since my first boat was junk-rigged.  Over the course of our trip, we had a few intervals of fairly boisterous sailing, and there was never a time when I did not feel confident in the abilities of the people I was working with to sail the boat.  When I reported weather helm in 30-knot winds, Frank and Mark were right on the main, working together to reef the sail and increase twist to spill the wind.  We were all conscientious about clipping into the jack lines whenever we went forward to clear a fouled line or set up a preventer.  And it was very satisfying to have Mark say how much he appreciated having people on board who knew what they were doing.

There was really only one time when we had any kind of scramble, and even that is kind of humorous…Single Side Band radios use a lot of power when they are transmitting, and transmission quality is affected by inverters and refrigerators.  So, those appliances have to be turned off when transmitting…requiring everyone to remember to turn them on again.  Unbeknownst to me, Mark’s SSB consumes enough power when transmitting to trip the circuit breaker for the autopilot.  So three days out, Frank and I were in the cockpit chatting while the autopilot silently shifted the helm to left or right to keep us on course.  Sitting under the canopy, engrossed in conversation, shielded from the sun, with no land in sight, we were startled when the boat suddenly jibed and we realized that the boat was no longer on course.  Frank and I scrambled to tack the back-winded genoa, and tack again to get us back on course before we could figure out what had happened.  Mark, hearing the commotion above decks, poked his head out to find out what was going on, and realized that he’d blown the autopilot breaker when he’d decided to participate in an SSB conversation.  From then on, I kept my ears peeled for SSB static when I was on watch!

The Mexican Riviera has been an unexpected pleasure, much different from the arid Baja coast.  The mainland landscapes are lush and jungly. Instead of craggy, iron rich mountains, there are rolling foothills, cloaked in a verdant tapestry of banana plants, coconut palms, mango trees and mangroves.  From the water, viewed through a haze of humidity, it looks like the coastline Gilligan dreamed of.  Although Baja is a desert, the daytime winds and nighttime cooling meant that I needed a jacket more often than not.  On the mainland side, by contrast, we swam daily from the boat and showered on the back deck.  That’s cruising in the tropics.

Arriving in San Blas, after the whale adventure, Frank and I spent an afternoon scrubbing the water line and diving on the rudder to scrape off barnacles.   Mark was reluctant to leave the boat unattended, so he ferried us into the town and I had ample opportunity to practice my Spanish picking up a few groceries.  While in town, Frank and I hired a panga to take us through the mangrove swamp, where we saw a variety of tropical birds as well as at least a dozen crocodiles.   Unfortunately, 2 of the boats in the anchorage with us had their dinghies stolen overnight.  Outboard theft is a problem in Mexico and cruisers are cautioned to bring dinghies up on deck or into davits overnight.  It can ruin your day when you find out that you now have no way to get to shore.

The last leg of our passage was a fitting sendoff.  We left Mantenchen anchorage with a light southerly and soon found ourselves in 25 knots from the SE.  As the wind built and the gusts came in at 30 and 35 knots, we put on life jackets and shortened sail for a boisterous ride to La Cruz.  Along the way, we were treated to the sight of dolphins swimming alongside, as well as humpbacks breaching, spouting, sounding and enjoying their time in the south.  I wondered if any of them were the same ones I had seen in Icy Strait in 2008.  Frank was clearly no longer on the humpbacks’ black list, as he saw them all as well.

And then the trip was over.  With Wendaway tied to the dock in La Cruz, we pitched in to scrub the boat, wash salt spray off the stainless, do laundry and vacuum cushions and carpets.   Frank took a taxi to the airport, dropping me off in Puerto Vallarta on the way. 

I’m now finishing this entry over breakfast in Guadalajara – a word I LOVE to say!  The silent G and silent J, and the rhythm of the word evoke Mexico for me, even though I have never been here before.   Arriving in mid afternoon, I only had time for a walk around the historical central district close to my lovely colonial hotel. 

What a city!  Founded in 1530, this city of 6,000,000 astonished me with its vibrant inner city life.   There are more church bells per block than Starbucks in Seattle.  Standing on any corner, I could see church spires every direction, all of them centuries old.   Cast iron benches line the plazas, occupied by ardent lovers, book-bound students and old folks feeding the ubiquitous pigeons.   The city literally teems with life – people selling, walking, arguing, preaching, photographing…the energy is amazing.

Today I head for Guanajuato, again by bus, to start another two-week immersion program. 

Whale rescue

Frank was on the humpbacks blacklist – that was clear.  Every time he went below, they appeared, broaching and spouting and slapping the water.  Each time we would shout ‘Frank, they’re back!’ and his head would appear just as theirs disappeared below the waves. He had begun to accept that whale sightings were not to be a part of his Mexican cruising adventure.

Yet, here we were, the two of us, sitting in an inflatable on the backs of a mother humpback and her calf, as he hacked relentlessly at a nylon drift net that enveloped them both. 

The morning began routinely enough…oatmeal, coffee, and anchors aweigh as we set a course for San Blas from Isla Isabel.  We’d agreed the night before that we would try sailing – maybe set the asymmetrical – if we had any wind at all. Underway, we were relaxing in the cockpit talking about our respective searches for meaning and direction in our ‘jubilada’ years.   Mark was interested in the concept of curiosity, and how the lives of ‘curious’ people differed from those of people who were less driven to ask why. Somewhere the conversation, Frank had shared the fact that he tended to become calmer under pressure, as do I.

Idly scanning the horizon, I noticed what looked like whale blow, but it looked a little odd – there was something yellow, something white, something that did not look quite right.  Mark swung the helm over and we motored over to investigate.  It took some time for all of us to register what we were seeing: a mother humpback with her calf right alongside, enveloped in a drift net of green nylon monofilament.  A yellow polypropylene float line, strung with orange floats was woven through the net along their backs, knotted to a bright yellow jerry can.  Enveloped in it all, the whales were still breathing, but neither could move.

Mark was on the radio, asking anyone monitoring 16 or 22 for advice.  Did anyone copy?  Was their anything we could do?  Back comes The Rose with the instructions that we should send someone into the water, sending supportive thought messages to the whales, letting them know that we were there to help.  Yeah, right.  Attempting to convey support to the whales made sense to me, but I had seen those tails hit the water and the prospect of being alongside a trapped and frightened behemoth in a medium not my own was sobering.   I was not sure I had enough anthropomorphism in me.

But I also knew that I had to help.

More advice on the radio…send a dinghy.  This made sense, and somehow, without explicitly articulating the decision, it was made.  Frank and I would take the dinghy to the whales and Mark would stay in the mother ship.  Into the life vests….gathering knives, handheld VHF, the ditch bag…lowering the dinghy….we were ready.  Mark, the responsible skipper, “Do you two both understand the risks you are taking?”  We reassured him that we did, and that we would comply with any instructions he radioed about returning.  Frank and I agreed that either of us could call it off at any time.

Ironically, in that moment I was more concerned about the outboard, since I had somehow ended up at the driving end of the boat – me, the person for whom outboards NEVER start.  And yet, amazingly it did on the first pull.  And we were off across the waves. 

About 50 feet off the whales I cut off the outboard and we rowed the rest of the way in.  We felt it best to approach the mother from the right side, since her calf was on her left.  I was on the oars while Frank hung over the bow of the dinghy with his knife.  On the scene, we could see how much trouble they were in – both whales had wads of netting caught in their mouths, and a veil of net effectively lashed them together. 

Frank began working on the net about a foot ahead of her dorsal fin.   I did my best to keep the dinghy off the back of either whale, yet with the bow pressed against the mother’s side.  At times, I could tell that the dinghy was no longer supported solely by the water, and on more that one occasion, my heart leapt to my throat when an oar got caught in the net.

We kept working at it over the course of, I would guess, 90 minutes or so.  Frank would pick the next area to work on and saw away for a while, while I tried to keep the dinghy in position.  Eventually he was able to report that the mother’s head and mouth were free, and we began to believe that we might actually be able to accomplish something meaningful.  From time to time we would back away and give the whales a chance to sink below the surface for a few moments and test their willingness to allow us to continue. 

In addition, I maintained a near constant stream of verbal encouragement to the whales, thanking the mother for staying calm, and reiterating that we were there to help her and her baby.  Although I have no idea if she could hear me, it seemed like a natural thing to do.  Frank reported later that my stream of encouragement (some of which was directed at him) kept him from crying!

By our third or fourth approach, we began to believe that the mother was aware of what we were doing, and we decided to approach on the side that the baby was on, since by this time the baby was the most involved in the net.  About this time, a panga with two fishermen arrived on the scene, and they pulled up to the whales with no hesitation and set to with their own knives.  Watching them pull their panga right alongside gave me more confidence about the whales willingness to tolerate our proximity.

I also realized that bringing the dinghy was the smarter thing to do, for the net now seemed to pose more of a risk to us than the two whales.  On several occasions, an oar got caught in the net and I had to stop rowing to release it, and once the towing ring of the dinghy became entangled. 

And then there was their breathing – the constant reminder that we were dealing with two living creatures.  The regular shower provided a point of levity – the first time it happened, Frank groaned with disgust, “Mary, I think they had the garlic shrimp last night!”

Frank tried to keep his own hands from getting ensnared, but managed to slice his finger pretty badly on the taut monofilament.   As he dripped blood on Mark’s immaculate dinghy, I dug through the ditch bag for the first aid kit.  Ironically, the kit had never been used and Mark had to use the knife to cut off the wire tie that kept the two zippers together.  (NOTE to West Marine: put a warning tag on new kits telling buyers to immediately cut those wire ties.)  Keeping the knife away from the dinghy was another concern.

One two or three occasions, we sensed the whales becoming restless, and we pulled away to see if they could work any of the net free themselves.  They did appear to make a couple of serious attempts, perhaps sensing that they were less tightly bound.  We gave them space to thrash a bit and allowed them to resurface before returning.    On one occasion, we saw the mother try to sound, her tail coming to the surface, before they sank from sight and reappeared a few minutes later.

All the while that we were working away, Mark was hovering nearby in Wendaway, providing status reports to other concerned boats and checking in with us on the handheld VHF.   He had reported the incident to the San Blas authorities and had requested help from the Mexican Navy. He reported to us later that we were actually being towed by the whales as they moved slowly through the water.    Although I could see the mother’s head to one side of the dinghy, I could never see her tale, and so I presume that she was using her tail to stay on the surface, which would have provided some forward propulsion.

Frank continued to report success as he cut away more and more of the net – freeing the baby’s head, and working his way down the baby’s torso.  At times, we realized that the mother was completely submerged, and was actually lifting the baby on her back.  On another occasion, as we rowed back to the mother’s left side to work on the baby, she seemed to be turning away from us.  But as we got closer, we saw that the baby was now on her right side, and she was actually moving to present the baby to us.  This was heartening on two levels: the net had loosened enough to allow them to change their relative positions, and she clearly was trusting us to continue.

Meanwhile, Mark was becoming concerned about the rising wind, which was making it harder for us to stay in position, and he had given us 15 minutes to do whatever else we could.  It seemed to me that more than 15 minutes had elapsed when Frank reported that he had cut away all of the net that he could reach.  If there was any more, it was unreachable to him, and neither of us felt it would be safe to get into the water with the possibility of entangling ourselves.  We pulled away and returned to Wendaway, hopeful that we had succeeded, but not entirely sure.  As we pulled the dinghy back onto the davits, we kept an eye out for the whales, who disappeared from sight.  

Mark set a course for San Blas as Frank and I kept lookout.   There they were!  We could clearly see the mother and baby, still swimming in tandem, and as the mother arched her back to dive we could see no shred of nets along the length of the body.  They were free.

It wasn’t more than 15 minutes later that the Mexican Navy appeared, in a very fast boat with several men in camouflage on deck.   As they pulled up along side, we reported that the whales had been freed, and indicated where we had last seen them.  As their boat spun around (very impressive bow thrusters), we thanked them for coming out so quickly, and turned for San Blas.

Frank and I were both exhilarated and exhausted – him from sawing at the net, and me from non-stop rowing.  We were thrilled that we had been able to help these clearly sentient beings, although the entire experience still seemed surreal.  Mark had managed to shoot some video on his camera, so we could see that it was not a dream, and the three of us spent many hours verbally processing the incident.

In retrospect, we all felt that we had taken quite a risk, but we all felt quite confident in doing so.  We had the right equipment – a solid RIB and motor, three knives (Frank did lose one), a handheld VHF, lifejackets in case we got thrown out, and a first aid kit.  A good pair of scissors or pruning shears might have been useful. 

We had excellent communication, and the three of us made a good team watching each other’s backs throughout the endeavor.  Mark, for instance, reminded us by VHF to raise the outboard – getting the lower unit caught in the net would have been a huge problem.  Facing backward as I was, I could see the whales below and to the side of us, but not the net, and Frank did a great job of directing me into position. We both agreed that it was serendipitous that we had had our earlier conversation about how we each reacted to pressure: we each knew that we had a partner who would not panic.

And, clearly, Frank had redeemed himself with the whales.   In subsequent days, others appeared, even while he was on deck.  

More amazing adventures en route to San Blas

My Internet access time is limited, so this posting will not include pictures or much detail.  We are currently in San Blas, where there is FREE WIFI in the public square, and Frank and I are picking up a few provisions in preparation for our departure for Puerto Vallarta.  A couple of stops are planned enroute, but they will be too remote to have Internet.

It has been an incredible week, one I will remember for a long time, and you will see why when I am able to post photos and more detail in a few days.   To recap:

We left La Paz on the 27^th and headed for mainland Mexico.  It was a brilliant breezy day and we set sail in seas that were still unsettled from the norther that had been blowing for a few days.  The troughs were 4-8 feet deep and from different directions, making for very lumpy conditions.  I was the only one who wanted lunch a few hours later, and it took another 36 hours for Frank and Mark to regain their appetites.  Seasickness is no fun – that was clear to me – and I was grateful to be spared! 

We set up watches for nighttime, which was a new experience for me.  Sitting in the cockpit, sails drawing the boat at 7 knots, water sluicing through the scuppers, radar glowing under the dodger, I began to appreciate the importance of the stars to the ancient mariners.  As the wind slowly backed to the NW and I adjusted our course to keep the sails full, the starts were my only point of reference.

By morning of the third day we were motoring in slight swell and very light airs.  We did put up the asymmetrical spinnaker just for fun, but took it down after 45 minutes or so.  It was near dusk on Thursday when we sighted land in the form of Isla Isabel, a sickle shaped island that had been a volcanic peak.  We anchored off between two other boats and got the dinghy ready for the next day’s adventures. 

Isla Isabel is a fishing village and a rookery for blue-footed boobies, brown boobies, brown pelicans and frigate birds.  If you were ale to look down on the island, I doubt you would find a square meter that did not contain a bird, although they did seem to keep to their own neighborhoods – the boobies on the grassy ridges of the former crater, the frigate birds in the trees along the shore and the pelicans on the rocky coastal area.  A single red-beaked tropicbird was snuggled in a nest at the very peak of the island. 

On Friday we dinghied over and climbed the hill to the ridge, cameras whirring.  The frigate birds were nested in short trees at eye level, their snow-white chicks standing out against the emerald foliage.  The boobies nested on the ground and few of them moved an inch as we picked out way among their nests.  They were, however, quite vocal, whistling and cawing to warn us off, but they rarely moved from their nests.  In the span of out 2-hour visit, I took 168 pictures – thank God for digital cameras!

After that it was time for a swim and a shower on the swim step, followed by a dinghy ride over to a shrimp trawler to buy some shrimp.  The trawler looked like the tender to Waterworld, a guano- streaked metal ship with arms wung out, scores of birds perched in the rigging and shrimp carcasses lodged in the scuppers.  The shrimp, however, were sweet and flash frozen, so the processing plant inside the ship (we can only hope) was not represented by the exterior.

On the way back in the dinghy, Mark and I sighed whale blow and went over to investigate – a mother and her two calves were cruising for dinner.  My camera got pressed into service again, but the digital camera time lapse meant that I saw the broaching in the viewfinder but captured only the splash of the landing.  I have way too many shots of whale splash.

Saturday we headed out for San Blas, motoring in very light airs and a bit of swell.  It was shaping up for an uneventful passage when we sighted whale blow and turned off to get a bit closer.   There was a yellow flash that seemed odd from afar, and we were horrified to find that it was a jerry can attached to a monofilament drift net that had completely enveloped the mother humpback and her calf.  Unable to swim, they were forced to stay on the surface to breath and were going to become exhausted. 

I’ll be posting more about this at the next opportunity, but the short story is that we launched the dinghy and Frank and I motored over to the pair.  Turning off the outboard, I manned the oars to keep the dinghy pressed up against the part of the whales that was most entangled while Frank sawed away at the net with his knife.  At intervals we would back off to allow the whales to sink below the surface and rest a minute and figure out the next place to tackle.  A couple of times, the mother tried to sound to shake off the net, but each time she would come back to the surface within a couple of minutes and lie calmly below or alongside her calf.  We became convinced that she was orienting herself and the calf to help us, although we could have done without the frequent shrimp-scented showers.

It took about 2 hours, and we were towed a few miles off course, but we finally pulled away having cut away everything we could reach without going into the water and risking getting tangled ourselves.  We motored nearby while the whales sank out of sight, and you can imagine out excitement when we sighted them a few minutes later without a shred of net visible anywhere.  Mark had managed to capture the expedition in mini movies on his camera, so the next morning we were able to see that it had not been a dream.

I’m now posting from San Blas, a sleepy Mexican town where most of the tourists are Mexicans from the interior coming to the ocean.  We were the only gringos on a tour of the Tobara yesterday – a panga ride through a mangrove maze inhabited by crocodiles, egrets, herons, osprey, turtles and even flamingos.  It’s the kind of place that Disney World sends their ride designers for inspiration.   I had many occasions to practice my Spanish to find internet, talk with our guide and figure out where to pick up the crocodile tour. 

Today we leave for Puerto Vallarta with a few stops planned in between.  Frank will be leaving the boat to head home and I have not yet decided my next steps – I may find another crew opportunity or may head inland to study Spanish some more.