The Templo Expiatorio del Santísimo Sacramento, Guadalajara

One last post for today (ach, it's well gone and yesterday now, I need to go to bed...) I have a backlog of things I want to post, I need to put some stuff up if I am ever going to write it all out..

And besides, I forgot to publish the very good news concerning my camera.

First, I am in Guadlajara. Which is itself great news.

Here's a map, zoom in and out as usual if you want. The marker is my hotel, the Expatorio, that I am posting pictures of here, is three blocks to the west, or left of my hotel:


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I've been here once before, back in 1997, when I flew down from Obregon (where I was then teaching) to spend the weekend with my father who was there to interview for the headmastership at the American school here. I remember it was grey, and grubby, but still more cosmopolitan and various than provincial Sonora.

I liked it then. I like it even more, now.

It's a great place. Vibrant, and more prosperous than I remember. These last ten years or so have been good for Mexico, it seems. The grubbiness I remember is mostly gone, and the old PRI stagnation (stale one party corruption that tainted everything, you could feel it, a certain monotonous lethargy, everywhere..) has mostly evaporated.


It must have been NAFTA that did it. Viva the ascendent neoliberal world order!


Right. Anyway, I came here hoping to replace my camera battery recharger that I'd lost in San Antonio. I was concerned, because I had been looking everywhere I'd hitherto been in Mexico, and even stores dedicated to photography do not carry the newest Nikon accessories (an EN-EL14 battery recharger, specifically) and I was a little concerned that my camera would be out of action until I got home, or that I would have to order it online from the States and wait at some hotel for it to arrive.. Not a happy prospect.

The first three or four places I went to were all void - Best Buy had a charger for older Nikon models. Could not order the newer ones. Other camera stores told me it would take 4 to 5 weeks to order. I'd given up hope after being told that three times. I noticed one more store (they group stores together here by speciality, like a Middle Eastern Bazaar or Medieval marketplace..)

I walked in, and asked just for the heck of it. And they had it. For 30 some dollars more than I'd pay at home, but I wasn't going to complain. I had my re-charger, and I was content.

Quel grand bonheur..

So, you shall all be also blest. I've been taking a lot more pictures. Which I will post forthwith.


I've rented a room for the coming week at a very groovy hotel. 30$ a night, which is less than Motel 6 at home. An American establishment in a major city like this would start at least 120$ - at the very freaking least.

It makes me very happy to be here. I am going to stay in this country. Maybe for a very, very long while.


And let me show you one of the proliferating reasons why. One only three blocks from my hotel. I did not even know it was there when I rented the room, I only discovered it when I began wandering around:

The Templo Expiatorio del Santísimo Sacramento.

It's one of the things that makes me happiest: a great gorgeous church that is always open, with frequent masses and an open confessional. There is perpetual - and I mean perpetual - adoration, and there are always a few dozen people at least in the nave praying.

This is why it is so great being Catholic. God found amongst us in the bustling midst of the polis, here attended by the people who clearly love him. It makes me cut from up deep inside with gladness, to be so privileged as to be one of them.


Here is the church, a very beautiful neo-gothic place built by the people of Guadalajara in the last century. The place is charged with warmth, the pillars' and arches' feminine lines pull your eyes and heart up and light and color flows from the great panes of stained glass, enveloping you. The melded scents of incense and candles and flowers charge the air, you can feel electricity of air pregnant with ions hit your skin as you walk through the great wooden doors..


And, of course, the symphonic wave of the presence of the Blessed Sacrament waiting silently for us, there.


Without any further comment, here are some of the pictures I've taken. There are a couple sets of near duplicates. I couldn't choose, I liked too many of them to decide:

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