If only to stem the tide of “What have you been up to since seeing them charros on Sunday” questions that have been filling up my inbox, here´s a summary.

Photojournalism classes: 2 per week, 4 hours each in the Hospicio Cabañas in the centre of town. Intriguing stuff, if a little long. I´m remembering why I gave up academia in the first place. I can´t deal with people talking in dark rooms for hours on end. But it has its highlights and the bloke doing the seminars has a lot to teach, definitely glad I signed up…

Yesterday, some fine tuning of the tequila pictures for G.Tulum tequila and a visit to the place where they´re making the bottles.

They’d actually already finished making the bottles for my client, but they were busy making bull and machine gun shaped bottles for someone else.

I’ve also been doing bits and bobs for www.sit2007.org and today and last night I had a go at designing a logo for the Flickr’s Vivir Guadalajara splinter group the recently christened El Lente Tapatío… Here’s the latest iteration, judgement tomorrow…

This morning I read Sita’s latest chapter and it’s excellent as usual, all about the neo liberal politics of tequila protection. And it’s actually hard to put down. Right now Sita’s watching Ay, Jalisco, no te rajes as part of her research and is gasping at every plot twist and loving it. I think I’ll join her. A bientot, mes amis.

I promised to take Sita to the charreria before we left the city, but in the end she couldn’t make it and I went on me own with my trusty camera and zoom lense. I’ve nothing more to add really to my last post about it when I went with Anne and Stu. I took 297 photos in 2 hours and then cherry picked the best 50 which are now over at Flickr… Best entertainment 1 pound 30p can buy you, I reckon.

This photo’s from one of the first events, where the charro has to gallop at full speed then do an emergency stop when the instructor taps his notebook on the dashboard within a chalked area. Then they measure the stopping distance. The shortest wins the charro a round of applause.

I start my photojournalism course today. I’m going to be networking to try and get some kind of press credential too… I might resend that email to the Gazette to another desk there as the sports people are too busy attending skittles and Great Mills League football matches to reply.

Had a nice soirée round Javier’s yesterday too, he lives in one of my favourite areas of Gwod (well, Zapopan technically) called Seattle and met a couple of new peeps. One of whom might want a website for their ecotourism business.

Mixup of the original.

In other news, I just opened the door to Sita’s office and was attacked by something that looked for all the world like some kind of crazed diurnal bat. I armed myself with my camera and went to investigate upstairs where it had fled…

Just a moth. A huge bloody great moth. Brooding on the window with murder on its mind. With big mothy mandibles. It’s still there… I’m sleeping downstairs tonight.

more here…

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So Sita took the Schipperke back to the states yesterday. There’s a tongue twister in there somewhere… Everything went perfectly smoothly apparently. Sita’s back tomorrow afternoon. It’s strange being able to pick up keys and put shoes on without a 25 pound black dog leaping out of the shadows and expecting a walk.

Yesterday I though I’d take advantage of having the car and being dogless and headed of to explore the banks of lake Chapala. Jocotepec was first on the list, which was having a little market so I stopped for tacos and bought some new headphones and wandered round the centre. Nice place. But I couldn’t live there. Pueblo chico, infierno grande… Same goes for San Luis Soyatlan, even though it has beautiful views of the lake and smells of roasting corn on the cob. I stopped several times for agave fields and views of fishermen in boats on the way to Sahuayo, Michoacan and had an amble around the centre there. It had a huge fruit and veg market but they weren’t used to tourists with cameras so I didn’t take that many pics. I’d only heard of Sahuayo thanks to Flor de Sahuayo tacos, and according to Fernando it’s also famous for zombies but I forget why. Anyroad, it’s a really pretty town. It still had its decorations up from el Dia de Independencia and had loads of little shops and hardly any chain stores which is admirable. Photos abound over at Flickr.

Maximum zoom and cropped…

I’m listening to the new Rilo Kiley album as I work today and it’s a big disappointment. A real shame, because their last album, More Adventurous was fantastic. Its a Hit, and Portions for Foxes being my favourites, slices of country tinged indie pop… Maybe it’ll grow on me.

No word from the Taunton Gazette peeps yet…