Week in Review

Nothing too much to report from Mexico. Sunday, I went with Alfredo and Gaby to a town about an hour away called Huaquechula. We visited an old convent/cathedral here. The church was closed for renovations but the convent was open and had been turned into a museum. This convent was more interesting than others because of how old it was and how old it really looked. The convent hasn’t been renovated or maintained that well so everything looked very authentic. It’s amazing how sturdy these buildings are that were built without any modern machines or technology. I am enjoying being in a country with such an old and rich history. Every small town or pueblo in Spanish has an interesting historical background. After visiting the convent we went to the local market to buy produce. Each town has it own market and on Sundays everyone comes to buy their food for the week. The produce is extremely fresh since it goes from the fields directly to the market. There are fruits and vegetables that I have never seen or even heard and the majority of them are very delicious. My favorite fruit right now is ______, it’s kind of like a mix between a strawberry and a kiwi. The mangoes are also delicious.
Monday night, I ate fish for dinner with my host fam. It was prepared with tomatoes, onions, and peppers (like most food here) and it tasted very good going down…a few hours later I learned that this was the cause of my sickness. I let Alfredo know that I wouldn’t be eating anymore fish because I like keeping my food in my stomach, haha. Besides this last incident my stomach has been handling the food much better. Obviously Dos Amigos, Los Arcoiris, or whatever your favorite Mexican restaurant is, and authentic Mexican food are two very different things.
I bought a headset for practically nothing at an electronics store so that I can use Skype to talk to friends and family at home. Whoever created Skype is a genius and I’m very happy to have this technology. For those of you that don’t know about it; you can call computer to computer for free or you can call from your computer to a phone (land or cell) for only $.021. This is such a great deal and a must have for anyone traveling abroad. Needless to say I’ve been catching up with Tyler, Mom and Dad, and my friends for the past couple of days. The only tough thing is switching back to Spanish after speaking English on the phone for a couple of hours.
This afternoon I returned to the boarding school. Francisco was napping on the playground so I played with a group of girls who enjoyed calling me “Kiwi” it’s the same word in English and Spanish, lucky me. We ran all over the playground playing “eres” or tag. I also learned some Spanish hand-cheers which was very fun.
I’ve spent the rest of my evening studying for a grammar test tomorrow. This class is very challenging for me. It’s more of a linguistics class where we study why words are the way they are and why sentences are arranged in a particular way. I never learned any of this in English so I’m having to study a bit more to understand it in Spanish. Thankfully I have a good teacher who goes at a slow pace to make sure that we (all 6 of us in the class) understand everything.
Hope everyone is well, and thanks to you all for reading. I wasn’t sure I was going to have any audience when I started writing but it’s much more fun to write when I know someone is going to read! I will write more this weekend. Ok, Peace :)