So this is Mexico..

It's been an interesting time adjusting to life in Mexico. It's 100 times easier than I thought it would be & thanks to great friends & a great new host family, there's really been no transition at all. But there are some very notable differences between life and daily rituals in Mexico to those in the U.S. Some are still startling to me even as I'm growing accustomed to everything here. There are different levels of police here, they're not all equal like in the U.S. There is your general municipal police, then the traffic police (which I haven't quite decided what they do yet), and then the scary Pancho Villa-looking police. They have multiple guns on them, one huge assault rifle type, then a couple little ones. Plus rolls & rolls of bullets strapped across their chests and to their belts. They're positioned in random places too, sometimes they're standing outside shops or just on street corners. They still surprise me every time I pass them. The traffic police don't seem to do much of anything. Like any big city, traffic in Xalapa gets crazy. Add in the tiny, curving streets that were built for donkeys, horses, and foot traffic rather than cars and the insanely steep hills everywhere & it gets worse. People swerve in and out of lanes, run lights, everything. I've been told it's a rule that you have to have your seat belt on in the front seat but you can have 10 people in the bed of trucks without any problem. The traffic police show up when there's been an accident but I haven't seem them worry about much else. People here also don't believe in turn signals but they sure do believe in horns. They honk their horns about everything, sometimes laying on them for 30 seconds or more at a time, no matter what hour of the night. Pedestrians also do NOT have the right of way, it's quite the opposite, which makes it very hard & scary to cross the street when cars seem to speed up when there's someone in the road.

Another thing that's hard to get used to is the milk. I'm not sure what is in it but it doesn't need to be refrigerated. It comes in little cardboard cartons & is good for 4 months. There's something about eating cereal with warm milk that I can't quite get used to.

I usually eat cereal for dinner rather than breakfast now. The meal schedule is very different than what I'm used to but it's growing on me. For breakfast my host mom usually makes something like eggs with ham, or some sort of sandwich, and some fruit. Plus coffee. They drink coffee with everything but it's really good here so I've started drinking some with them in the morning. Lunch is usually around 3:00 and it's the big meal of the day. It always starts with some sort of soup, then some big slab of meat that I usually don't recognize and rice and tortillas. I'll never get tired of the rice & tortillas (especially the hand made tortillas) but food here is very centered around meat and all things fried. I could probably count on one hand the number of times vegetables have been served with a meal, which is hard for me because I usually live on vegetables. Then around 10:00 is dinner, something small like cereal or a little sandwich, or a tamal. Everyone drinks bottled water here, so that makes it easy for me to steer clear of the water since even the Mexicans do. They drink a lot of flavored water though, water with pineapple, water with orange, lots of fruit flavored water. People double check they heard me right when I just ask for agua natural, just plain old regular water. My family is finally getting used to the fact that I just don't eat that much. My mom still offers me every piece of food they have in the house at meals but I don't think that's going to change, I think it's just the mother in her.

When to tip and who to tip are confusing things here also, for me anyway. You don't tip taxi drivers and servers and resteraunts you only tip 10%, which is hard for me to get used to. I have a tendency to overtip after working in a resteraunt. You are supposed to tip the bagger at any store though and they're usually much older people. Luckily, my teacher told are class about this before I had to go to the grocery store so I didn't rip off the man who bagged my shampoo.

Mexicans are definitly more of a touchy-feely bunch than those in the United States. Which isn't really saying much since everyone seems to have their own personal bubble at home. Everyone greets each other with a kiss on the cheek, whether you've known each other for years or if you've just met that second. Everyone also says goodbye with a kiss on the cheek as well. Even if you've just said hello the same way a minute before. There's an insane amount of PDA here too. Just walking down the street every other person you pass is either holding hands with someone or has their arm around another person, which isn't really that uncommon but you can find couples kissing everywhere here! Parks , resteraunts, schools, stores, anywhere, you name it you can find people kissing! And not just little pecks here or there either, lots of PG13 PDA. People walk & kiss, I have trouble not running into people when I'm paying attention to where I'm going on the crowded sidewalks, I have no idea how these people do it when they're faces are covered by another persons. It's a skill I definitely don't have, but at the same time, don't ever see a time when I'll need it in the future either.

It's been interesting and that's just the beginning..

Getting to Know Xalapa

My first few days in Xalapa (after my fainting episode) were long & tiring, but very enjoyable nonetheless. We took a couple tours of the city and had a very basic orientation to the school. My school is just a building on the street, seperate from the main campus of La Universidad Veracruzana. My school is called Escuela para Estudiantes Extranjeros. That's me, an estudiante extranjera, or foreign student. I've slowly been getting to know the city better. My house is about 15 minutes away from the school walking so every afternoon & evening after classes I walk home. The first time I really got lost was today, after a week of being here! I'm starting to recognize buildings & intersections though. I've passed some funny things on my walk home. There is a pizza place called Rhapsodia Bohemiana Pizza. In my head they play lots of Queen songs, especially Bohemian Rhapsody of course. There's also a place called Submarino Amarillo, basically a direct translation of the Yellow Sub in Lawrence. There's also a jeep parked in the driveway of one of the houses with an Oklahoma Sooners license place and as two grown men were saying goodbye in a doorway I heard one say to the other "see you later alligator" with a heavy spanish accent. It made my day.



My classes are all going well. All in Spanish, of course, but all going well. In my pronunciation class we made animal noises the first day. I tried to roll my R's and failed miserably. My teacher assured me I'd learn how by the end of the semester. I sure hope so because that is goal #3 for me in coming to Mexico. Right underneath improving my Spanish (obviously) and learning how to Salsa dance. Which, as I learned at the Salsa club we went to Friday night, I need some serious practice with. Hopefully I'll be starting classes with some other girls in my program soon to get a jump start on this goal of mine.

Saturday I went to a nearby volcano to hike with some other people in my program. It was so nice on the trail & the view of the city was beautiful. We found random offshoots of the main trail & made our way through the thick forest climbing over fallen logs & plants. There was a viewing tower part of the way up where you could see the whole city and beyond. One of the boys in my program tried to sit on the edge, which was maybe 6 inches wide. The people on the ground looked like tiny specs. I freaked out & told him not to sit there because he would fall. He simply looked at me and said, "You don't even know me!" Like we all hadn't been spending 24 hours a day together for the past week. And like that would make a difference anyway, I wouldn't want to see anyone fall to their death, even if I hadn't ever met them! Even he thought it was a pretty funny thing to say after he thought about it. It was so hot and sunny out that by the time I got home I was exhausted. We have to turn the water heater on before showering in order for the water to be warm but I didn't even bother. I just took a cold shower & collapsed on my bed.

^ starting out at the base of the volcano ^

^ at the top of the viewing tower where Eric tried to sit on the tiny ledge ^

^ the view of Xalapa from the top ^

^ part of the forest we hiked through. I'm not sure what this sign was referring to because we all made it out ok! ^

The next day I went with my host family to a town in the mountains called Naolinco. It's claim to fame is shoes. Almost every store in the town is a zapateria, or shoe store, and all the shoes are made of leather. The drive there was breathtaking though, we drove about 45 minutes or so through the mountains to get there & I had the distinct feeling that we were driving into the clouds. Everything was so green! Apparently, a lot of movies are filmed there, like Apocolypse. On the way back we stopped at a place that overlooked a valley & it was hands down one of the most beautiful things I've seen. To the right were waterfalls, in the distance was a mountain range, and in the valleys were little towns. And everywhere else was green. green, green, green. I was exhausted once again from a long week of transitioning & getting to know a new city, along with all the walking & hiking that I decided to take what was supposed to be a quick, refreshing nap but ended up sleeping for four hours! I woke up with just enough time to do my homework & eat dinner (at 10:00 pm, which is the normal hour here)

^ the waterfall ^

^ the rest of the view, this picture doesn't begin to do it justice ^

And now it's time for a new week & new adventures. So we'll see what's in store for me next.

First Days

I've been in Mexico for a week now but it feels like a lot longer! After my 7 hour layover in Mexico City I was ready for my traveling to be over & to get settled into my new home but I had to live out of my suitcases for 2 more days while we stayed in Veracruz City. I arrived late at night, just in time to meet everyone & then collapse on my bed. The next morning when we walked outside for breakfast & saw the ocean in front of us, I knew I wouldn't regret trading a semester in Kansas for this semester in Mexico. After consuming 3 huge plates of fresh fruit for breakfast outside on the hotels patio in the perfect weather I was completely sure I had made the right choice in coming to Mexico! We wandered around on the beach & everyone got to know each other before we set out to see the city. We visited the Fort de San Juan Ulua & went to a tiny town called Antigua to see the first church built in North America. Or the entire Western Hemisphere? I've forgotten the details but loved the church. I don't know why I love visiting churches so much but each one is different & this one was especially neat because it was tiny & colorful & just so cute. While in Antigua, we also saw the house that Hernan Cortez lived in. Then we all piled into the vans & began to finally make our way to Xalapa.

Our host families came to meet us once we arrived in Xalapa. That's probably what I was the most nervous for because I'm shy enough when I first meet people, let alone when I have to try & speak another language to them & live in their house for 4 months. I completely lucked out though because my family is wonderful. I live with a woman and her 25 year old daughter. My host mother is a lawyer & was at one time a forensic doctor. She's going back to school this year for teaching I think, I'm not 100% sure though, the exact reason kind of got lost in translation. Like many other things so far! The daughter is also a lawyer & speaks great English, a fact I didn't discover until a few days later. The first night was eventful to be sure. It had been a long day, I was still getting over my nerves of meeting my family, and I was dealing with the altitude change of the mountains of Xalapa. We were standing in the kitchen getting to know each other when all of a sudden I felt very dizzy. It wasn't anything horrible though so I thought it would just pass. I was wrong. I fainted right there in the kitchen, for the first time in my life, within an hour of meeting my family. I came to crouched on the ground with my host sisters arms supporting me & her mother yelling things in Spanish. All I could understand is that they were thoroughly freaked out & wanted to call the program directer, Cristo. Two seconds after I fainted I was completely fine again. I sat down, had some water, and breathed. My family however, took a much longer time recovering. They made a huge (and tasty!) sandwhich for me & assured me multiple times if I needed to go to the hospital it was only two seconds away. I, personally, thought the whole ordeal was pretty funny but decided it wasn't the time to laugh about it because my host mom (the at-one-time doctor) slapped a blood pressure cuff on my arm & announced my blood pressure was a little high. I finally convinced them I didn't need to go to the hospital & I'd be fine but they didn't fully believe me. Up until a few days ago they continued to ask me how I felt & if everything was ok. What a great first impression to make!