Walkabouts

I was given four different locations to go and be at for an hour on Friday. Just purely be there and observe and listen. I was told to turn off my cell phone and just watch and listen to the place I was in and try to not think about all the other things I had to do this weekend.
It was difficult to just block out my life completely and just be there. The place I chose to go to was a Mexican Restaurant called Guadalajara. It was at 4pm so no one really was in the restaurant besides the workers. There were a few people coming in and out that were friends of the family that decided to eat.
I just sat there and ate for awhile. I had a view of the open kitchen and I watched as the workers went in and out bringing out food and taking breaks. It was nice just to watch them talk in Spanish. It reminded me of how I have taken Spanish for four years and traveled to South America twice. It also made me feel terrible at how awful my spoken Spanish was. An hour seemed like a long time just to eat.
The waiter and I ended up having a conversation for the last ten minutes I was in the restaurant. He told me how his family saved up their money just to open this place, it has only been open for about a month. He then went in depth about how authentic their food was. And how his mom was in the back of the kitchen making homemade tortillas. It was nice to be in a new environment and just be there and not worry about everything else going on.