Probably my last one.

I've had a crazy couple weeks and, as I'm sure you all realized, much to busy to actually sit down and write out all that's been going on. This will likely be a quick update and a few stories. Let's see how this turns out.

DF: I went to Mexico City again and had an excellent time. This trip gave me a lot more free time to walk about and just explore/enjoy the centro and the people. Found a couple cool new places including an absolutely phenomenal restaurant that had an awesome environment, great food, good prices, and was incredibly cheap. This was made all the sweeter by the fact that just two of us found this restaurant and all the others went to VIPS which is basically Shari's but with more Mexican food and really expensive. So, essentially they got ripped off for mediocre food. Normally I wouldn't be happy over the misfortunes of others (this could potentially be a lie, but it depends almost entirely on who exactly those others are), but VIPS is such an American style place, and Kristin and I took some extra time to really scope out a legit restaurant and it paid off. I was pleased with that. After food Kristin and I went and got lost in the city for a while, which was fun, then got directions and headed back to the hotel. The night before Dwight and I went to the Plaza de los Mariachis (which is actually called Plaza Garibaldi) which is a plaza that fills (fills) with people and many many mariachi bands. We walked around for some time listening to the bands and just generally enjoying the atmosphere. We also bought a song and enjoyed the attention as four men serenaded us with Puerta Negra. Saturday night, however, we all went to a rave (dance club, but it had lots of colorful lights, so I prefer to say rave) that was at the top of a tall building across from the Plaza Zócalo, which is the primary plaza in DF, and got to dance and listen to really loud music with an incredible view of a huge super elegant cathedral and also the nation palace (which is basically the White House). If you wanna see the plaza I would recommend googling it because I did not have my camera at the party, so there won't be any pictures from mine (although I might be able to steal some from others off Facebook...).

After DF we headed to a City called Xochimilco (Show-chi-meal-co), which is sometimes referred to as the Venice of Mexico. The City has a lake/system of canals that you can get rides on in these large canoe type boats (that come with a guy whose got a stick to push you along and everything, ours was an obese middle aged man with a surprisingly pleasant toothless smile) and just generally relax. Well, relax.. hmm, that's probably not the right word. It was completely enjoyable, don't get me wrong, but man it was pretty crazy at times. There are way too many boats for these canals, so these incredibly colorful/painfully decorated crafts are slamming into each other in a manner not unlike bumper cars, which the exception that there are no bumpers, just wood. So between the jarring halts (one boat hitting another) and the vendors coming up along side you like practiced pirates ready to raid, there isn't much time to relax, but the fun was ubiquitous and I think everyone had a legitimately good time. I know that I did. (This I do have some pictures of and will try to put up on facebook soon).

The week after returning passed with out much worth mentioning. It was mostly just essays, speeches, readings, and preparing for presentations. I had very little free time this weeks, but it was fairly productive in finishing the over all work load of my classes.

Last weekend I returned to the town of Xilitla (He-leet-la) in the Sierra Gorda and enjoyed another weekend of swimming in rivers/waterfalls, and being entirely too wet the whole time. This time, however, I only smashed my toe a little bit, and we visited a different location on our adventure. We went to a place called Sotano de las Golondrinas, which is just a huge, huge whole in the ground where thousands of birds live. In the morning, they all fly in great big circles around the cave and make there way up and out, and in the evening they all circle and dive into the cavern which tremendous velocity. We went for the evening 'show' and were quite stunned. It was very impressive and beautiful at the same time. There are some pictures of me sitting with my feet dangling over the edge of this pit (I'm sure Carrick is going to love this) that, from it's highest point to it's lowest point, has a depth of about 376 meters. That's 1233.59 feet. We weren't on the highest point, but I am still pretty proud of how little it bothered me. I think that my brother got all of my vertigo.

This week has been a lot more of the same scholastically. I've just been working working working. I am, however, done with one of my classes except for some readings and participation, and in another I just have one exam left and that's it. My third class, however, I have to prepare and deliver a 15 minute speech, a pamphlet filled with like information, and also have an individual interview with the professor on Monday. I'm so close to finishing, I just have to really buckle down this week then I'm done. As I'm typing this I officially only have one week left. 7 days.

Last night was Friday, and for a kinda, 'hooray we're wrapping up the program' shindig we had a talent show. People sang, people danced, person did poi (which is fire spinning), and I, along with Marc (the resident director) and Jared (fellow student) we delivered a poem that Marc had written. Marc said his part in English, Jared in Spanish, and I singed it. It was actually a lot of fun and went really well. I think the other dug it. After the talent show I went to a play that one of my local friends is in, then we went to a bar and played what I think was a drinking game, only no one felt like drinking so it was just a silly game with animals. After the majority of the group dispersed a few of us walked to a nearby late night food place and ordered a late dinner. We went upstairs to sit down, and not only did our food take a really long time, there was also a family sitting near us (which is a little strange considering it was right around 1:00 in the morning at this point) and they would NOT stop staring. I even tried my normal tactics of waving, smiling politely, saying hello, and finally staring back with what can only be described as mildly uncomfortable intensity. They would look away for about 10 seconds, and then start staring again. Sometimes one at a time, sometimes all four of them. I can't even believe how persistent it was. Then after the rather uncomfortable dining experience (the waitress was also quite rude, but the food was delicious so I'd actually probably go back) I walked one of the chicas home and then returned to my house. However, while I was walking I heard a car coming down the street noisily, with the people inside yelling out the windows and all that. This is on a very large street that's near my house, me walking against traffic, the only reason I heard it at all is because there is a speed bump (there are speed bumps every where here) so they had to slow down a bit before they got to me. I prepared myself for what I assumed would be a barrage of insults that I wouldn't understand or perhaps a rude word or two in English, but the car became strangely quiet as they passed, and I thought, 'huh, that's strange'. Immediately after thinking this I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a CD bouncing off the brick wall next to where I was walking. It's funny because I think at the beginning of this trip something like that would have really bothered me, but now I just don't care. At all. Besides, now I have a reasonably interesting story and a scratched-to-hell blank CD out of it.

That's pretty much me up until now. My health has been decent but I'm still having issues on a regular basis. I'm beginning to think that that's just how it is for me here. My knee has been hurting quite a lot lately, I'm thinking I tweaked it while hiking in the river in the Sierra Gorda, so I've been going easy on it when I can. Oh, I also threw up for the first time in Mexico just this last weekend. My Senora made me a sandwich of avocado and cold hot dogs which almost immediately caused me to vomit, and then the following night as well. So my stomach and deal with Salmonella, but cold hot dogs? Forget about it.

Alright, this is me. I love you all and I'll be returning again in just a week. I may post another blog if I have time/something interesting happens, but in all likelihood this will be it other than a final 'I'm leaving now' sort of post.

Keep on rockin', keep on readin'

Love,

-Connor

We have New York, New York; they have Mexico, Mexico.

Salutation: Hey everyone! Hope all is well in the world of the Yanks.

Health: I'm feeling pretty darn good lately. My stomach is much stronger than it's been for the past few weeks, my foot is doing really well, I've no pain from in it for sometime now. My new problem is a strange pain in my lower abdomen that is rather inexplicable. In they beginning for the trip we were warned about bladder infections, so I'm drinking as much water as I can/is reasonable for a human body and hoping that sorts it all out (as I've been told it should).

School: It's still pretty loca, but I'm starting to get a little bit better at handling the stress, the readings, the essays, and the presentations all along with keeping up in my exercises and attending the new conversation circle that's been happening at 'Gabbi's school' in the middle of town. However, I do think that our teachers seriously overestimate our abilities (at times). For example, today we had an exam that our Teacher told us, 'Si, es un examen muy corto, entonces tenemos tiempo para hablar sobre otros temas' (Yes, it's a really short test, so we have time to talk about other things). Well we talked really briefly about some other things, and then jumped right into the test. I was the first one done, and I finished about two minutes before class was over. The test was short, but extremely time consuming considering what it was. That being said the test was completely fair, just not quick at all. That's also absolutely my favorite class.

Extra Curricular: Like I mentioned above I'm keeping up on some fun things along with school, and I've added another thing that I'm probably going to be doing four days a week for the next two weeks (and did it four days a week this week as well). It's a conversation circle that a girl who is a student at the university is doing as part of her major (which is linguistics in spanish, and literature(!)). She's very friendly, and knows a lot about Spanish in terms of metalanguage, not just how to speak it. These being my last few weeks I think it's a really good idea to spend as much time as I can speaking and practicing, not that that wouldn't have been great from the get go, but A: this is only available now and B: now that I can understand more and speak better I think that this will be more beneficial. I could learn a ton from just practicing my in my classes, a little on the streets, and in my house, but now I feel that more time just explicitly speaking a listening will really benefit my speech.

Excursion: Since I'm here for twelve weeks, and almost everyone else involved in this program is only here for 6, We have plans to repeat most of the excursions that we did in the first session. This weekend we will be returning to Mexico City, which here is called two things: DF (Distrito Federal) or Mexico. Since I've been hearing that a lot lately, it's getting less confusing as I am now able to remember that we are, in fact, in Mexico, so the mention of it as a place to go or where something is generally means the more specific DF (remember, this is pronounced day Eff'eh). This trip is going to be from tomorrow (Friday the 13th (!!)) until Sunday the 15th (stupid mundane dates...) Needless to say I will be out of contact for that time and will be unable to post a new blog, which is partially why I'm getting this one up here now despite the fact that my life is really much too boring right now to bother reading about, but of course now that you are this far in the blog you might as well finish (Muwhaha, Connor, the life thief). And on that note, I would like to tell a story from awhile ago that I'm pretty sure I have not put up on the internet, but it was one of the more fun experiences so I'm really not sure why I didn't blog about it. Possibly because it's a much better story in person, but I'll do my best.

Funny Story: The director of the program from the Queretaro side of things is an awesome lady named Gabbi, and she has some pretty awesome connections. One of these connections she used to get us $15 tickets to a comedy show for a mere, well, free actually. The show was in extremely rapid Spanish that used lots of puns and just a general playing on words, that being said I spent a great deal of the show just enjoying the more obvious spoken jokes and the physical comedy that requires no language to appreciate. At one point in the show, they were running with one of the jokes I actually understood, they took out a coat rack filled with ridiculous clothing and starting given them out to the audience to wear. Myself and my friend got more or less matching jackets that looked quite formal and were unfortunately made of something like wool (it was already hot in there). Just a little bit later in the show, a group of people came out dressed like soldiers and were about to start something, but started looking around nervously like they were missing someone; the soldiers were wearing the same jackets with which we had just been adorned... The "Director" of the show, who actually played a very large part in it, ran over to us and hurried us onto the stage with the other soldiers who actually turned out to be dancers. So as we are moving onto the stage (in front of a crowd of.. 60? 70? 90?) we have to watch what they are doing and try to mimic it (at one point I broke from the learning process and did my own silly little dance until I could again actually see the feet of the people I was trying to learn from). After dancing around for a bit and trying to follow the stage directions not only without knowing what was going on but also unable to understand what they were saying to us in whispers and playful commands, we had to rush to the fountain that was in the middle of the floor, grab a cup of water, make a Cherub like pose, and spit into the fountain. I did everything but the spitting into the fountain quite well, but the last bit ended with me wiping my chin furiously with my hand trying to save my shirt from being soaked for the rest of the night. We went back up on stage and danced for another few seconds and then ended in a dramatic (see: absurd) pose and the dance was over. Scott (my fellow jacketed amigo) and I returned to our seats and to the group of gringos who had come with us. They thought we were awesome, which was nice to hear, because I had a blast and it's nice to know that that didn't come at the cost of the show. I guess I'm just a born entertainer; language barriers can't stop me!

Departing Words: And there you go folks, I hope that is sufficient awesome to hold you over until I return from my trip to Mexico (the city not the country) and some how find time to post again.

Love you all. Keep rockin' keep readin',

-Connor

San Miguel de Allende (possibly is Spanish for 'awesome'); Differences part 5

This weekend we (Stacy, Jordyn, and I) decided to take off to a new location and get out of Queretaro a little bit on our own. Jordyn and Stacy both have senoras who recommended strongly that we head to San Miguel de Allende. I was skeptical of the idea at first because it is such a touristy town that I thought for sure it would suck (the last tourist town we went to, Guanajuato, I really didn't enjoy because of the way the locals treated us gringos). I decided to go any way just because if I didn't go I probably would have past the day doing homework and playing Diablo two, both related to spanish, one more so than the other, but not actually the Mexico experience that I'm looking for.

Friday night we headed to the bus station, but bus tickets for the trip (which were only 25 pesos with the student discount (that's about two dollars and ten cents for a trip that took two hours)), and headed out on the bus that showed up just an hour late.

The bus trip was pretty easy going, just sat and enjoyed the movies that were playing and watching as they pilled people onto the bus in a way that you would never see in the States. So this is not an ordinary public bus, this is a buy a ticket get a reclining seat with TV's that come down from the ceiling bus, and they had people piling on from random stops on the side of the road and standing in the isle completely smashed together. I had my seat and my 'Meet Dave' movie that was dubbed in spanish, so I got my $2 worth.

We arrived at the central station in San Miguel with just a little confusion on 'I really hope one of these random stops on the side of the road is ours, because I really have no idea what San Miguel looks like...' and took a taxi to our hostel. We Chatted with the incredibly nice lady at the counter, got our room, dropped off our stuff, and headed to the centro (with directions from the sweet lady at the front desk). We walked down a relatively unexciting street (it was dark by this point) and laughed at the 'great' idea that none of us thought to bring coats seeing as we were all under the impression that we are in Mexico. We walked just about six blocks, and the street opened up into the central plaza and I was absolutely blown away by the church that stood in front of us suddenly. It is a HUGE gothic church that happens to be one of the main tourist attractions of this whole city. We went to the church immediately, not unlike moths to the light, or Icarus to the ocean subsequently after going to the light (like a moth). Mass had just ended, so being good tourists we entered the church against the crowds and sat down in one of the front pews to enjoy the gorgeous and intricate work of just about every aspect of the place. Not three minutes after entering, however, the lights began to be shut off and we walked out to the sound of be singing quietly through my teeth 'Closing Time' by Semisonic ("Closing time, one last call for Jesus all, so finish your rose'ry or prayer" (not that I was quick enough to think of this before just now)).

All of that touring the church for five minutes and walking seven blocks really took it out of us, so we decided to go get some food somewhere we could sit down and relax. We didn't, however, want to pay a lot, so we decided to get a little out of the central. We walked for about ten minutes and found an awesome little taco place, sat down and order, then were told after about five minutes that they were out of propane and couldn't make our food, so our sodas were free. We were happy about the free sodas, but had all been excited about the tacos too. We left, and walked through what was quickly going from a light ran to a torrential downpour. At one point we were actually running through the streets asking places if they had food or quickly checking menus to see if they were gonna charge us $10 dollars for a meal (here that's really expensive). We finally ended up settling in at a nice italian place and splitting a pizza three ways. It was nice, and worked out financially really well.

After that we headed to a local cuban dance/restuarant/bar and each had a drink or two. The waiter was hitting on me, which was flattering, but HE refused to speak Spanish with us, which was a little obnoxious. In fairness to HIM, however, HIS English was way better than our Spanish.

We left the cuban joint and headed back to the hostel. Sleeping went very well save for the street light that was directly out side of our window (those shades tried so hard, but just couldn't quite cut it) and the inconsiderate drunken people running through the halls at around 4 in the morning yelling with all the force there inebriated selves could muster. These same inconsiderate yellings that woke me up and convinced me that something terrible, like a fire, was happening and that we needed to get out of the room quickly. I waited to see if they were gonna come pounding on our door, but then they started laughing and there voices drifted off as they went the other way down the hall and into their room... Needless to say the adrenaline kept me awake for a solid ten minutes (I'm a good sleeper).

In the morning we headed to breakfast and just generally toured the town. We went to the hot springs and got wicked ripped off by a taxi driver (who was really nice so I'm super confused) on the way out, but were offered a ride by a really nice Mexican couple for the trip back (it's only about ten minutes driving), so it really evened out.

The town was beautiful, the people were incredibly nice, and pretty much the whole trip was just awesome. There was, however, a clear winner in the highlight reel. It's a personal victory and I'm wicked, wicked excited about the whole event. Upon returning to the hotel, before the hot springs, we walked up to the extremely nice receptionist (I've said it three times now you better understand just how awesome this lady was), and were just about to ask for directions when she asked for a favor. She told us that there were some people there who didn't speak any Spanish and didn't have reservations for the same room, so they had to move. They didn't have to leave the hostel, just move to a different room upstairs. We went to their room, I relayed the message, translated and responded for the English speakers, and returned again what the receptionist was trying to convey. It was a very simple conversation and I believe that either of my companions would have done equally or better interpretation, but for me it was an incredible experience. The thrill I get from passing messages either between English and Sign for my deaf friend Sarah or between Spanish and English for things like this really make me think that being an interpreter is something I could do. Maybe it's not a lifetime sort of gig, but it's something that I really would like to pursue.

Here I am, back in Queretaro, enjoying the last of my time, but also eagerly awaiting my return home.

---------------------------------------------

Differences part 5 (it's like time travel!)

-Four wheelers (ATV's for some of you) are street legal and often used by both civilians and police.

-Water heaters need to be prepared about ten minutes before a shower.

-The summer vacation for students is only three or four weeks, depending on the grade.

-When a party or celebration is being held and you're invited, it is not only okay to invite all your friends, it's expected.

-Classes want to take away any sort of life outside of the classroom/homework (for architecture majors at the UO that's really not a difference)

-The hamburgers here are better.

-Simpsons are extremely popular and well liked by everyone (simpsons in the states has lost a lot of steam)

-A lot of businesses infringe on trademarked characters or phrases and no one really cares.

-Many stores don't have names.

-Many stores have names that are things like (english equivalents given) 'shoe store', 'jewelry store', 'bread store', 'chicken store', etc...

-People hang dry their clothes as opposed to using a dryer

-Clothes that are never dried by machine have more lint come time for wearing

-My bellybutton is FULL of lint several times a day

-There are only 31 states here

-People who put the Mexican flag on everything they own, aren't typically thought of as overly patriotic

-Fire works are only permitted by certain organizations including government buildings and churches. They are also really, really loud and going off at almost any given time due to the fact that everyday seems to be a different saint's day and every church seems to have a different saint that they consider their main.

-People here have never heard of ultimate frisbee

-The law states that smoking in enclosed areas, such as buildings, is illegal. Now that's the same as the United States, the difference is that in the United States people actually sometimes abide by this law.

-English here isn't even close to the main language, but it is the cool thing to do.

Love lots, hope this is enough reading for you all for a bit.

-Connor

That was...Wow.

I only have about twenty minutes to write this if I want to post it before I leave to go finish up the gigantic project I have tomorrow. However, I really wanted to get this up on the web because I'm still a little shaky from the adrenaline.

As a family we sat down around the table for comida, this is completely normal except for the fact that Aida, my sister, is here. I'm not exactly sure why she doesn't have work today, but it's cool to have her in casa, she always adds a nice little bit of sunshine when she's about. Any way, so we're eating carne asada, which is a very simple dish. It's meat, that's been fried in a pan. Pretty straight forward. Part of my meat was not cooked so I was kinda eating around that carefully trying to avoid any more reasons for my body to just completely give up on me and stop functioning all together. Aida takes a drink of water and then very abruptly puts down her glass of water and get's up from the table in an extremely rushed manner and heads for the sink. I assume that she's taken a bite of likewise uncooked meat and it rushing to the sink to spit it out, however, she then turns around with an extremely (one of the most if not the most I've ever seen) panicked look on her face with what can only be described as pleading in her eyes, and begins waving her hand in front of her face and neck. She also isn't saying anything. I get up as fast as I can, cross the short distance to her at the sink give her what is technically called an abdominal thrust, but most folk know it as the heimlich maneuver. This is something that I learned two winters ago in a first aid class, and have fortunately not forgotten it. It only took one and she began coughing and spitting into the sink. I stood with her patting her back and telling her 'esta bien' (only after I said, 'yes that's good, keep coughing' then tried to translate, realized I didn't know any of the words and stuck with the simple, 'it's okay'). She thanked me, explained briefly what happened to me in rapid Spanish. She then sat down, everyone kinda looking stunned and began eating again, but this time very slowly and with deliberately smaller bites (which both her parents recommended to her immediately upon her sitting back down).

Now, I don't actually know if she was choking, so I can't say for sure if I did the right thing or not, but I honestly can't think of what else could have happened.

Alright, other than school this is the only thing that's really happened. I'm feeling much better and almost done with my meds, my foot is healing up nicely (finally), and I'm getting back into the gym and loving it.

And now to steal an idea from my Carrick's blog:

Love you all, stay safe, chew your food, and take a first aid class if you haven't already.

-Connor

P.S. I've got a mental 'differences part 5' going so I'll probably have that posted soon as a nice little supplement to this.

Short one

This is the first week of my new classes, two of which are 400 level and the third is a difficult 300 level. This is the Thursday of the week and I already have a three page essay due on Tuesday, an eight minute presentation tomorrow (Friday), and an hour group presentation the following Thursday (!!).

Basically this has been the majority of my time since I last posted. I go to school, come home and finish my homework as quickly/well as I can, and then read Harry Potter y La Camara Secreta, play Diablo 2, or chat with people online. That will probably continue until I get more well established with this new group, which is likely to be happening very soon.

Speaking of exactly that, there is a new group here for the second six week session. This is cool, because although a few of the people in the last group were rad, most of them really just got on my nerves. This group doesn't appear to be a whole lot better, but at least there are some new people who want to speak Spanish and if I'm lucky my assumptions about them will be wrong. After the first session of school and a group comida (lunch essentially) Scott had the idea to go to the movies, I had the idea to invite a few people and the idea spread like an idea that spread really quickly... (Sorry but I've had to deal with way too many similes and metaphors in my literature class, you get no flair).

Essentially 18 of us ended up going to the movie theatre (in a comically small bus) and watched El Origen, which is Inception to you folk. The movie was absolutely phenomenal, it is definitely one of my new favorites and I highly recommend that you go see you if you haven't already. After that I just sorta taxied/walked home and did as much of my homework as I could before going to sleep. It was a grand night out and I wouldn't mind repeats in the future.

One last thing before I quite typing to go work on my substantial mountain of homework (it's not a weak or flimsy mountain, it's substantial(?)). Today, very near my school, was a crime scene that seemed to be left over from a serious deed. At first when I walked to school there were two officers watching the area and a police car with the lights on. There were also a bunch of beer bottles in the alley (both were I walk through to get to school and where the crime scene was), many of which were half or so full (optimistic crime scene). This seemed weird, but I figured that maybe there was a disturbance of a fight or something and the cops were just kinda holding down the fort. Of course they had automatic weapons over their shoulders, but that's incredibly commonplace here. The strange part was when I was walking from school the same corner for my bus home. The crime scene was now defined by 'precaucion' tape, not just an area the cops were looking at with a seriously-don't-walk-right-there expression, and there were people wearing semi-formal clothing walking around in the crime scene taking pictures and samples of the stuff on the ground as well as swabbing things with what appeared to be large Q-tips (which I believe are officially called swabs, but swabbing with swabs just seems a little too obvious). I then turned the corner, about two feet from the edge of the crime scene and 8 feet from my bus stop, and nearly ran into the same officer I saw this morning, but now with a much larger gun. I'm really not sure why that's necessary (bullets from pistols will likely kill you, an automatic weapon is probably gonna kill you, and a slightly larger automatic weapon will do the same just with a bigger mess). In nearly running into the large man with the big gun I kinda stepped back suddenly with 'what-the-hell-is-going-on' ('que-esta-pasando') written clearly in my eyes and across my forehead now filled with eyebrow. The police officer either mistook this as guilt or was just F-ing with me because for the rest of the time I was at the bus stop he would keep glancing over suspiciously as I looked at the crime scene.

That's all I've got, the most interesting stuff going on is pretty much not. I'm homesick and miss all of my friends and of course my family. I'm ready to come home and relax for a while, but Mexico has other plans with five more weeks of ridiculously difficult classes.

Love you all, please comment I need the attention,

-Connor

Dead Week; Updates and Hate Crimes

Dead Week.

(22-07-10)

This week was the last of the term, and today specifically was the last day for any actual work. That in combination with horrible internet and a relapse of rather debilitating stomach sickness has kept me from posting in awhile. Apologies to all.

Updates on me. I'm sick, but I just recently went to the doctor who thinks that because of the short time between basically identical symptoms that I might have a more serious infection that just kinda laid low after the first beat-down provided by the antibiotics. I have complaining to do that will go into more detail about all this sickness business later. As for my foot I believe that it is much better. The pain with walking has stopped, the cut is (finally) starting to close, and I believe that the infection has gone away as well. In hindsight I should have gone to the doctor when I first cut it open, I can only assume I would have needed stitches or some butterfly alternative. Other than those two things my health has been relatively stable (in a state of moderately good, but not actually good) for about a week now. The stomach issues only got serious two days ago.

Speaking of two days ago (man that was a solid segue, go me) I went to a Lucha Libre show/fight/dance and actually enjoyed myself immensely. Lucha Libre is a lot like WWE only with masks and a lot more impressive feats of acrobatics and much less talking and macho challenging (instead of talking they just slap each other's chests...).

I started off the evening with a bad decision, which later turned into a pleasant evening with a show, than morphed into a horrible night of frantically running through the streets. My initial bad decision was to believe the map and think “oh, the arena is not that far” and end up walking for well over an hour (an hour to get to the area and another half asking directions from people who I kinda doubt actually live here due to their lack of knowledge of the whereabouts of such a “well known” building in Queretaro). An additional mistake to thinking the map was going to tell me an accurate distance was thinking that the map might, perhaps maybe, use the correct name of the street... I was tired, hot, hungry, and a little irritated at the amount of time I'd spent lost so close to my destination, but I had made it and that was good enough. I entered, found my seat and waited for the match to begin.

At first when I went I didn't know what to expect, but I thought there actually might be real wrestling. I was WAY wrong, but the show turned out to be very good regardless. Many of the moves are based, extremely loosely, on actual techniques seen in jujitsu or wrestling, only with all the aspects that might make it hurt somebody taken out. There were a lot of cool flips and jumps off the ropes (they use a boxing ring) and some comedy mixed in. It was completely worth the $12, but I honestly think that I'm set for life. If I never return to a Lucha Libre match, not a tear will be shed.

Immediately after the lucha, I realized that my stomach had indeed taken a turn for the worse, and I needed to get home immediately. The unfortunate thing about that was the sheer number of people and the small exit (in retrospect that was probably a serious fire hazard...). We took a long time getting out of the building, and once out had to wade through crowds of people to get to the street, to walk to the bigger street to try and catch a cab. We finally managed to flag down a cab and the four of us piled in. It was myself, another guy and two ladies. Of course we went to the furthest lady's house first, to make sure she got home safe, then we headed to the second lady's home from where I proceeded to run home. Now when I say run, I don't mean walked in a manner that was speedy, I mean I literally ran at my 1500 pace all the way to my home (because of the lay out of streets it probably would have taken longer to have the cab take me). When I arrived I entered with half quiet caution (it was mid-night at this point) and half with desperation. This experience, I'm happy to say, ended without a mess. However it was entirely too close to disaster.

Like I've said earlier, however, the sickness thing is being taken care of. The other good news is that I have officially finished classes for the first term. The process of finishing the term was rather hellish though... (see: title)

So, this week the professors really piled on the work. Assignments, studying, reading, preparing for presentations, and just a lot of general learning things. This is pretty normal for the college student life, which I am currently leading, however this week was particularly rough, and last night especially. On Tuesday night I finished my essay that was due today, and yesterday I asked for help from my Papa here to edit it. We sat down and went over the three and a half pages I had completed. We talked about every little grammatical issue, word choice, sentence structure, and a lot of the ideas and content of the paper. The whole process took probably two hours, and that was just for editing, not to mention the actual rewriting. This was pretty late in the evening already because my studying had been interrupted by sickness, a short siesta (necessary due to the extreme discomfort I was dealing with from the sickness (it's kinda like the flu in that your whole body hurts and moving or sitting up for more than 20 seconds is painful)), and a trip to the doctors office. So we spent two hours editing my paper, then I still had to prepare for two tests, a presentation, and also have an interview to include with my essay. Having only accomplished the essay thoroughly (all other tasks haphazardly) I finally got to bed a little before 2:00 in the morning. This is pretty bad when I normally have to get up at 6:30, however this morning I needed to go to a laboratory to have blood drawn and tested to see if I actually have Salmonella. Crawling out of bed at 5:40 this morning wasn't actually too difficult, but staying awake during class and trying to think during my presentation (which was BAD) was very hard. As for the blood test, I find out at 5:00 today, so that'll be kinda cool. I've never had salmonella before, and if they know what it is it's more likely they can fix it more completely than last time. Also, since I'm typing this on a word document because we don't have internet right now, I might post the results in this very blog! Also that reminds me of another aspect that made last night extremely difficult for studying and such. The internet here is basically down. It's kinda like an infant, occasionally you can get it to do what you want it to, but a lot of the time it just sorta acts up or does it's own thing completely, and the majority of the time its not functioning at all (I equate this to sleeping).

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Updates and Hate Crimes

This morning I found out two important things regarding my health for the rest of my stay. The first is that I will have to take antibiotics twice a day and carefully monitor my diet for the next two weeks because of the infections (Yeah, that's an intentional -s plural marker), and that bus drivers can get really angry when you try to use your legitimate discount...

The two infections I have are the two different kinds of Salmonella (according to my Papa here who I'm pretty sure knows everything...) One is Typhoid (tifoidea en espanol) and the other one I only know in spanish: Proteus. Needless to say I'm rather ill right now, but it doesn't stop me from functioning relatively normally, which is lucky. Sometime my stomach hurts a lot, and I'm still having bathroom related issues, but for the most part I think it's just gonna get better from here.

As for the hate crime, I got on the bus this morning and gave the bus driver the correct change and showed him my student ID. He went on to say that because it is vacation (for the locals, yes) that my card doesn't work. Not only is that not true for students during vacation, but I also don't have vacation because I have classes now. He didn't except this answer, gave me my money and asked me to get off. I said of course but that I needed his name (so that I could call his supervisor later) he gave me his name (after some coercing) and then asked me to get off the bus again. I should him the paper I was using to write down the name and asked if it was correct, he then shoved me toward the stairs. I, with my limited Spanish and generally pacifistic ways, pointed at him ferociously and said in my most bad-dog voice: “No!” Then asked him again to confirm his name. He did and I thanked him, stepped off the bus, and flipped him off. As the bus drove off I turned my head to watch it go, and in the corner of my eye noticed that everyone at the bus stop was looking at me half nervous half curious. I threw out my disarming smile and wished them all a good morning. On my way home I had another incident of the same variety but of a different degree completely (which is fortunate, getting pushed twice in one day I might have punched him). As I got on the bus to come home, I gave the guy 5 pesos for a 3.50 student fare (the norm is 6:50), and showed him my credentials. He took my five with an obviously bitter look on his face and slammed the 1:50 into my hand, and did exactly the same thing to the another student in my group immediately behind me. I really don't get why this is such a big deal to these bus-drivers. It's not like our fare pays their salary and by being a student I'm actively taking the food from the mouths of his children! I suppose that this begs the question, why is the fare not fair?

That's the gist of what's been going on with me and I'll do my best to update you again soon.

Much love,

-Connor

Anoche: El Partido. Esta Manana: Bano De Muerte

Last night I found out that there was a futbol (this means soccer) game in Queretaro. It was between the Queretaro Gallos Blancos vs. Argentina (or Venezuela?) Colon. I talked to my senor about how to get there, then headed out and waited for the bus, there was a decent amount of time waiting for the bus because of all the traffic. However, when the bus finally came around the corner that it was packed and had people hanging out the windows with flags the colors of the Gallos Blancos. The bus stopped for me, I squeezed in and payed my fair. I turned around (kind felt like the moving part in a washing machine filled with far too many clothes), just in time to see everyone in the bus start singing in unison as drums started playing. I was completely shocked at the amount of noise and animation in this forest of black and blue (the colors of the team). I thought, "this is crazy! There's a bass drum on this bus?" Of course that was ridiculous... there were actually two bass drums, a snare, and people playing little cymbals as well. The bus ride to the Stadium was one of the cooler experiences of my life, I just wish that I knew what they were singing so I could join in. You know how hard it can be to make out the words of a crowd of people singing in unison(ish), now imagine that in a second language. Good luck.

The ride finished after the much music, singing, yelling out the windows and passing around about three or four cigarettes to what must have been every single person on the bus minus myself, the bus driver, and the guy whose job it was to stand in the door and make sure everyone who wanted on was on before the bus driver took off, and also to make sure people didn't fall out. We half shuffled half fell out of the bus and rushed to the stadium. I then bought both a ticket for the game (while doing my best to not be ripped off my the people standing around the lines (it was ridiculous, the people would stick out there hand and say: "five pesos for buying your ticket" A transaction which they had absolutely nothing to do with except for watching you uncomfortably intensely while you purchased it from the legit box office)) and a jersey for the team (which I've wanted since I moved here).

The game itself was pretty awesome. The home team lost, which was unfortunate, but a lot of the people we were sitting with seemed much more interested in gossiping, smoking profusely, drinking underage (which is impressive since legal age here is 18), and just generally showing an uncomfortable amount of machismo (guys here are very controlling of their girlfriends. It's cultural (and the women don't seem to mind) so I just kinda have to bite my tongue/pocket my fist).

After the game I walked home without incident, talked to Alexis for a few minutes over skype (which rocked) and headed to bed exhausted.

Today was just school as usual. Nothing particularly exciting came about except for a bit of an epiphany (yeah, again) when I realized that it's not just that the group here speaks almost exclusively English that bothers me, it's that I don't like most of them as people. It think it explains a lot of my random annoyance/anger issues here. I'm not just frustrated by my inability to communicate most of the time, but also by the fact that this is kinda like Vernonia High School all over again. There are an extremely limited number of people, about 90% of which I dislike, and I'm forced to be in the same places as them much of the time. I'm being pushed back into my little recluse bubble that I've been fighting to break out of for years. I'm generally able to find time to break out when I chat with locals in the streets or my family here.

After my epiphany (and class) I figured it would be a good idea to use the bathroom before I left so that I would have a more comfortable bus ride/walk (takes about a half an hour to get home). I walked past the janitor, who looked at me with the same kind of interest as you would at anyone walking past you, and into the bathroom. I went to the urinal area, and felt a sharp chemical sting when breathing in. I thought, at first, that it was just a bit of bleach or something, so I didn't really thing much of it. Then on my second breath I realized that it was absolutely more than a little bleach, and definitely more than the extremely vascular tissue that is my lungs was capable of handling. At this point I started coughing and gasping bits of air as full breaths were refused by my diaphragm. I just barely zipped up before stumbling out of the bathroom coughing, were the janitor looked up at me from his casual work, then went right back to it, again as if nothing had happened. I figured it would be best just to hold it until I got home rather than risk dying face down on the floor of what was in the process of becoming a very clean bathroom. It took a few minutes of walking and quite a bit of water to get my throat back into a happy condition, and I'm completely fine now, but that experience really makes me feel for Mr. Hoerauf who went through the gas-chamber in marine boot camp.

Harsh chemicals and lungs are horrible together and should be kept apart whenever possible. That's my piece of worldly knowledge from Mexico for today.

Love you all, keep on rockin' in the free world.

-Connor

Nothing exciting, just a general update; Differences Part 6

The first thing that comes to mind for this update is that my foot has gotten only worse, until today. So yesterday I looked more closely at the damage to my foot, which for it's location requires some yoga, and realized not only is the cut far deeper than I had initially thought, but that a lot of the skin around it had turned a jaundice-yellow (that should be a crayon) and in the depth of the cut had some fun different shades of various colors that skin should not be. On top of that the pain, when compared to the previous few days, was getting worse rather than better (although I should mention that it was still better than the first week when I was limping). So yesterday afternoon my senora put a heap of antibiotic cream on/in the cut, put iodine soaked cotton over that (between my toes where the cut is) and tape to hold everything together. This morning my foot still hurt a lot to walk on, but this afternoon it was a little better and just now when I arrived home from school and took off the wrap to check on it, everything seems better. Cleaner at least. If this progress continues I shan't pursue professional attention, however if it doesn't I certainly will.

As for everything else I seem to have really found a niche here. Everything has calmed down and except for continuously pissing off my feminist friend and now avoiding English as much as I can (blog, facebook, and people here who cannot speak Spanish being the exceptions) nothing really particularly aggravating has occurred (I really don't like having to wade through the English whenever the group of exchange students is about). I have a regular workout schedule that I'm keeping up and really like. It's funny how much like therapy lifting is for me. When I have a crappy day or am in a bad mood for whatever reason all I wanna do it head to the gym. Unfortunately this has been happening more and more recently. I'm not exactly sure what's got me so wound up, but I keep being set off my little things (often things I don't notice, I'll just find that I'm sad or angry). Part of my problem I've realized is pride and I'm working on that one constantly since my epiphany yesterday. In the United States I'm generally an intelligent person, but here that just doesn't count for anything. I need to get used to knowing virtually nothing here. The other day my teacher said something to the class which I didn't understand and I stated what I thought she said for clarification, needless to say I was wrong. But she, and the class (which is only 5 other people) looked at me like I had just asked why, since heat rises, isn't it hotter in the United States. Fortunately this was at the end of class. I got the correct information from the professor, packed up my bag, was the first one out of the room and practically sprinted to the gym. Since then I've been trying to dial back my pride and just roll with the blows and laugh with what would have previously been at my expense. Don't get me wrong, I can take a joke, but when it is someone legitimately thinking that I'm stupid... That genuinely bothers me. I suppose this is part of the personal growth that everyone keeps telling me I'm going to experience from this whole trip.

Speaking of the trip, I've now officially been here for over a month. I'm a little more than one-third of the way through. I've got some 53 days left, and am both excited to return and realizing that when I do leave, I'm really going to miss this place. I have every intention of returning to Queretaro in the future, as well as using my new found Spanish ability to explore more of Latin America and probably someday visit Spain as well.

Like I've said I don't really have that much exciting news to publish, but I figured I'd just talk for awhile so you all have something to read about (DON'T FORGET ME!).

Much Love, please comment, I love to read them.

-Connor

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Differences part 6

Police:

-Here they drive around with there lights on at all times. And I don't mean their headlights. If they want you to pull over, they'll get on their speaker and tell you to (although that's kinda an issue because of the terrible, terrible quality of their speakers. The native folk here can't even tell what they're saying).

-Generally are more scary looking

-Often have semi-automatic weapons with them, and it's taken rather casually. Today I watched one of the policemen get out of the car (which had four other policemen in it), set his semi-automatic weapon on the seat with a kind of 'hey can you watch this for a sec' look to the others and headed up to the convenience store. I can only hope/assume that the rifle was unloaded.

-Many Smoke while on duty

-Many are women and equally scary

-Wear their bulletproof vests (almost?) all the time.

Dogs:

-Dogs in yards (or on roofs depending on whether or not the house has a yard) bark A LOT of the time. Often at nothing, but typically at me.

-When said dogs are barking, no one seems to care. For example, Andrea, which is the German-Shepard that lives here, barks (so much) at the wind, rain, bugs (I think), people, and goes ballistic when another dog goes by. It drives me crazy. The family here just lets her bark... and it's not my dog so I really can't do anything about it (I imagine disciplining their dog would be a bit taboo). (Maybe it's a German-Shepard thing, right dad?)

-Dogs, owned or feral, aren't spade or neutered (Bob Barker would be so mad.)

-Respond equally well to Spanish or English petting.

Alright, that's all I've got for now.

Adios y se amo todos,

-Connor 'Chaparro' Flynn

Differences part 4

Bus drivers:

-Often will have conversations with people on the bus, and not reserved 'I'm driving' sort of conversations.

-Eat while driving

-Listen to their ipods if not to loud music on the radio

-Smoke, a lot. In fact, just yesterday morning I had a bus driver (who for whatever reason looked incredibly insulted when I showed him that I was a student in order to get the discount that is rightfully mine) who actually stopped the bus, got off, walked into a convenience store, bought a pack of cigarettes (I was watching all of this half in awe half chuckling to myself), and returned to the bus. He then proceeded to pack his cigarettes, open the packet and start smoking all while driving aggressively through traffic.

Gym:

-The idea of not resting on the machine you are using is completely non-existent to most of the people who lift (which is odd considering the signs posted on the walls regarding exactly that).

-When I go to the gym in Eugene (or anywhere else) everyone else is a lot stronger than me, and I'm always in awe of how much they lift, here, I seem to be one of the people who lifts the most. I don't really understand this...

-Most of the weights are in Kilograms which is really inconvenient when I'm trying to remember how much I did in eugene and match it here ("Okay, let's see, I was squating 205 in Eugene, so I need two forty-fives and two thirty-fives. They only have 20 kilo (44lbs) and don't use anything close to 35lbs. So I'll just take the 10 kilos (22lbs) and add a 5 kilo (11lbs) to each side so that's 199lbs total..." This doesn't seem like much of a problem, and it's not, but it's just a little bit funny trying to work everything out to a close equivalent.

People in general:

-Automatically you are very interesting and worth staring at just because you're white. I get so much attention here when I get back to the states I'll probably go through withdrawals like some child-actor.

-Generally people assume that you don't speak Spanish. At all. People handing out papers on the streets (for shows or stores or cafes or etc..) will be handing them to everyone that walks by, but then they see you and completely just leave your group unpapered. Some people might feel this a boon to being white, I just kinda feel insulted.

-People look at us as a chance to practice their English, which would be fine, except for the fact that we are here, specifically, to practice our Spanish. I have had a surprising number of conversations where I am speaking broken Spanish, which is being matched by their broken English, and neither wants to switch to their respective mother-tongue.

Buildings:

-The buildings here are mostly really old.

-Many of these previously mentioned old buildings are filled with restaurants or cafes or clothing or sun glasses or just about any combination of the two. Oh, or bars. It's really strange to see these old buildings, all ripe with history, turned into these establishments of everyday life.

Alright, that's all for now. Must complete my mountain of homework before I head to Cuento de juego tres (Toy Story 3).

Much love,

-Connor

It's been awhile

The phrase 'it's been awhile' has forever been stolen by Staind. I'm gonna have this song stuck in my head for sometime. Although it's less embarrassing than 'since you've been gone' by Kelly Clarkson.

Now that that's out of the way, it really has been awhile and I apologize (OneRepublic (uh-oh, is this gonna be a theme?*)) for the the crazy delay. I have been absolutely swamped with homework, excursions to new (insane) places, and just occasionally trying to grasp this language people keep using at me. I'll to my best to keep this chronological, but I really am not gonna make any promises about short.

Last weekend at ridiculously-early o' clock myself and the entire group of students met up at the corner of Pasture and Zaragoza for the long bus trip to Teotihuacan followed by a weekend in DF (DF means Mexico City. Just go with it). The bus trip was fairly uneventful, but I'm really grateful that the bus is actually of the distance variety and I don't have to sit in a school-bus style bench for three hours at a time. Despite the fact that the bus trip was untroubled and that the bus itself was quite nice, I still was fairly irked much of the ride. As I have mentioned in my blog before, the people (gringos) hate to speak Spanish. So when we are in a big group, it is nearly impossible to practice the language I came here to learn save for a few (literally three other than myself) people who prefer to speak Spanish when given the option. My being irked, however stopped abruptly when we arrived at Teotihuacan. If you want to see what this city looks like you should buy a ticket and come down, because words and pictures really just don't cut it. However for those of you too busy/stingy/uninterested to actually make the trip, I've got a few pictures on my facebook and I'm sure there are just a metric ton on google. Upon entering the area you are harassed by some truly hard-sell people. They will walk right up to you, push their merchandise in your face and, typically because of the intense glow coming from our group, speak in English. other times they will just try to let the merchandise speak for itself, this is a bad idea in my case. Two of the most popular items for sale were a whistle that 'sounds like an eagle' which is a stretch but I'll let it fly, and the other that 'sounds like a bobcat/cougar'. This is completely laughable. Literally laughable. There were a couple times when I was holding my side in pain because of this awkward choking/coughing sound that was sputtering from these 'instruments' while we were touring an beautiful ancient Aztec city. It was so out of place and inappropriate (both the laughing and the whistle). The main three attractions of the city, for me at least, were the temple of Quetzalcoatl, the pyramide of the sun, and the pyramide of the moon. The temple of Quetzalcoatl was covered in stone carvings (carved exclusively into softer stone using obsidian) of two of the Aztec gods. The amount of time to cover these huge structures in such intricate art is just completely beyond me. The next was the temple of the sun. This is aptly named due to it's location in the east of the city, and for the fact that we climbed it (many 'stairs' that were really more like a ladder) at almost exactly noon (little after). Lot sun on the pyramid of sun (see what I did there?). The view from this gigantic pyramid was just amazing. You could see the stretch of what used to be the city as well as far into the mountains and the surrounding communities. Next was the temple of the moon. The pyramid itself is much shorter, but the view, in my opinion, is more impressive. The pyramid is at the most northern point of what is left of the city and looking south down 'the road of the dead' with the pyramid of the sun on the left, many many ant like people straight ahead, and other smaller step pyramids with unknown names/purposes on the right. That view was by far my favorite part of the city.

Next we hopped back in the bus and powered out to DF. DF is a huge city that is kinda like a doughnut, only the dough is extreme poverty and the lack of dough in the middle, is the lack of poverty. The barrios populares (slums) surrounding the city were extreme in their lack of basically everything. I felt bad to be powering down the roads in an air conditioned bus allowing the everyday lives of the population to whiz by in a blur of shanty houses with many colors (a testament to the scrounging necessity of the area) and dirty everything. Much less depressing (although in a way more) was when we arrived at the hotel in the middle of the centro. The city center is absolutely gorgeous, but still has that real-Mexico flavor. The first night was spent in a restaurant with a large group of students forced to use more Spanish (I was happy) by the presence of our Spanish speaking guide/professor. The night beyond that was fairly uneventful because we had arrived late and would be getting up early.

The next day we saw the house that Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera shared (at times with many russian/communist leaders), saw most of the America vs. Ghana game**, and then headed to the plaza of fine arts. Inside was a collection of absolutely gorgeous murals by various artists (Diego Rivera, Jorge Gonzalez Camarena, David Alfaro Siqueiros) that were just stunning. I like art, but I'm not typically moved by pieces in the way I was move by these. That Saturday night I spent a few hours up in my hotel room with three amigos smoking Cuban cigars (as I have mentioned, here you can smoke pretty much anywhere), and talking about lots of various things. I actually allowed myself to break into English for the three hours because I really don't wanna try so hard with the Spanish that it becomes a chore. Trying too hard can be detrimental to the acquisition process (more advice from Carrick, dolled up in more linguistic terms).

The next day was the day of the, what turned out to be final, Mexico game in the world cup. In the centro of DF is a plaza that they set aside for the game (a couple huge screen TVs) and something like 90,000 people watching. Seeing as it was likely their last game, we were advised to stay away from the crowds. After the game ended (my friends and I watched from a restaurant) we went back to the centro to meet up with our group and head home. We were, however, diverted by about a hundred DF police officers in full riot gear. We went a slightly roundabout way to our destination, got up high, and watched as the police more or less herded people through a small gap to keep the crowd thinned out. At one point a couple people started getting really riled up and started yelling and waving their shirts and yelling at and about the police. I can only assume they were trying to start a riot to release some of the pent up feelings from the stout loss. The some people in the crowd started to take to the idea of a getting violent, but the police moved in tighter and just their crazy robot like presence made things calm down pretty immediately.

Week of school followed, and zipped right along with the help of a gym membership and tons of homework to prevent me getting a handle on time. This last weekend, however, I had a great time and did almost no homework (although that last part was really by no choice of my own).

This last weekend was an excursion of the pueblo of Xilitla with some stops on the way to swim in the pools created by water falls. It was awesome, save for a small incident with a large stone. At the first swimming hole, I was one of the last ones to arrive (due to a large distance to cover and a lack of the little shuttles (see: pick-up with a cage in the bed that isn't really connected so much as set on). Upon arriving I saw a friend, who had been there for some time, jump off of a large stone into the water, I got ready for the water (kinda) and stepped up on the rock. He told me "jump left, their is a rock to the right" this was clearly true, however there was also a rock to the left, he just hadn't found it. I looked, and I leaped, and I entered what was actually extremely shallow water and landed, with my right foot big toe in the lead, on a rock. I have a tendency to laugh when I'm in pain as a method of coping I can only assume. Man, my friends must have thought something was really hilarious for the fact that I didn't stop laughing for more than a few minutes for the next hour and a half or two. The swimming was painful, but the walking the mile back to the place where the shuttle arrives in flip-flops (which I now affectionately think of as flip-OHDEARGODWHYs) was quite a bit worse. My amigo took some pretty neat pictures of my foot as it bleed profusely into my flip-OHDEARGODWHYs and slowly mixed with the mud that coated the hilly walk. The area was extremely beautiful, but it was a little difficult to enjoy on the trek back. Oh, I think I forgot to mention, but the blunt impact that nearly broke my toes (I say nearly cause I can kinda bend them) also cut me (you might have figured this from the blood soaked flip-OHDEARGODWHYs comment) right between my big toe and the middle toe. So I walk for a bit with the flip-OHDEARGODWHYs on my cut, then later one toe gap over. The worst part was walking down hill, because my feet were wet with mud and blood and on the down hills my shoes would grip and my feet would slide forward holding my in place by only my toe-gaps. On on side it was uncomfortable, on the other it was much, much more uncomfortable (the word is excruciating). But, I honestly was laughing a lot of the way, I think I'm a junkie on adrenaline or possibly one of the other endorphins released by pain.

Once we returned to the area for pick up, my night got much better. We stood around and had a great chat, in Spanish, with our guide, rode in the back of a pick up in the rain down a dirt/rocky path through what can only be described as a jungle and back to the bus. It was absolutely phenomenal. That was followed shortly after with dinner and a show. The dinner was delicious and the show was an absolutely insane lightning storm. Some of the strikes were not more than a quarter of a mile away (one one-thousand, two one-thousand, thr- BOOM!). After dinner we hopped in the bus and headed to Xilitla for the night. Our hostel was completely legit. It was a normal looking hostel from the front, but once inside it was a bunch of separate rooms connected by slippery paths and precarious stairs that wove through a garden/yard that was basically taken from a post-card of the amazon. I have pictures to share via facebook soon (it's late here and I've been composing this for over an hour now) of this crazy jungle-hostel. The town of Xilitla was also completely beautiful. It is not a rich town, but it's buildings are all very real-world Mexico, and they happen to be placed in the middle of the jungle with a gorgeous view of much of the surrounding area. The only real problem I had with the place is one that Carrick got to deal with (and probably to a worse extent) in Kenya for six month. The humidity of this place was nuts. If you got wet, you were going to stay wet. And if you were dry, you weren't. I washed my towel by hand in the sink of the hotel, wrung it out, and hung it up to dry over night, in the morning, I wrung it out again.

The first day were spent in Xilitla was passed in a forest influenced heavily by LSD, and I'm actually not really making a joke here. I am, because it's funny, but I'm not because it's also completely true. The is a forest/jungle on the outskirts of town that is infused with buildings and structures and sculptures made out of concrete in a fashion very very Alice in Wonderland. The designer of the park has a book where he talks about all the ideas inspired by Acid. It was one of the coolest places I have ever been in my life. It's wide open and crazy and beautiful. One of the best things about Mexico is the lack of restrictions created for fear of lawsuits. Many of the structures were high, without guardrails, and completely opened to the public. You are welcome to climb the high stairs to no where, but if you fall it is your own damn fault. I love it. Many pictures to come from this experience but as for words it's difficult to put down. I passed my time swimming in more waterfalls, sliding down natural-ish slides (both the one intended as a water slide and the paths that just happened to be slippery as hell), and hiking at a good clip enjoying the old rush of forest exploration and sweat pouring off any exposed skin or into the clothes that we keeping it in-exposed.

The next day we left Xilitla, saw a couple missions (yay colonialism!) and had an extremely long bus ride back to Queretaro, arriving about three hours later than intended (and thus homework was not done).

Today was Monday and the first day back from this aforementioned excursion. Today was unexciting.

As for my everyday life here in Queretaro not much has changed. I now have a schedule I hope to stick to in terms of working out in the gym, and also in terms of actually finishing my homework with enough time to type out a blog or chat with my family. As for everyday life of Queretaro in general, a lot changed last week. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it because all my readers are adults and I think deserve more than to be kept in the dark. Not my place to keep you from worry I suppose is what I'm getting at. Queretaro potentially got quite a bit more dangerous in the last week and a half. To start, Queretaro is one of if not the safest town(s) in Mexico, and part of that is because there are a lot of families of drug cartel people living here, so this city is generally a haven that is kept off limits to the feuds (yeah, it sounds like a movie and maybe be exaggerated but this is what I've been told my many different people). A week and a half ago, however, there was apparently the idea that some of the cartels wanted the right to sell here and began to fight over it, and not particularly diplomatically. Police were also involved and seven or so people wound up shot dead. The rumor that is tagging along with this is that things could potentially get worse because of this bad blood that's gonna be floating around now. It really does sound like something out of the Godfather, but it's what I've heard and when I have more time I might actually tried to read about it for myself. I hope that it's all some built up ghost story and I'll be sure to tell you all more when I know. But, to put this in more perspective, this is a city of a million and a half people, seven people dead (not just random innocent people but criminals/police officers) does not make this a dangerous town. It's tragic, certainly, but it's not like it's time to cut and run.

Love you all very much, please comment, I like the attention.

-Connor

*No

**=(

Starting to get a groove (Warning, this blog is mostly just my daily schedule).; Differences part 3

Last time I posted about my homesickness as well as my beginnings of a recovery. I'm well into the recovery now but of course still miss you all desperately (as made fairly obvious by my frequent postings). I feel that I'm starting to find a place for myself here and everything is starting to tick away, it has a very clockwork feel. I can see why people would say the time flies, it's because once this groove begins time and events sort of start to blur together.

Just in case anybody cares, here is a vague outline of my routine:

I wake up about a half an hour before the sun (yeah, I get up and it's dark) and do the things I need to do in my room, such as make the bed and put all my school supplies back into my backpack and get my shoes on and basically anything else that needs doing. Then I make my way out to the kitchen and eat a delicious breakfast, typically of something with some of or all of the following: potatoes, eggs, tortillas, beans, avocado, and/or meat. I get a juice box to bring with me to school (!!) and sometimes a piece of sweet bread as a snack. I walk about 15 minutes to the bus stop and catch one of three different buses. That makes the wait time very minimal. I ride the bus about ten minutes to school, get off and walk another three to five minutes past a bunch of primary schools (lots of adorable hispanic children running around in school uniforms) and arrive at the university. I have class for the next three hours everyday. Same classes, each one an hour long with a nice fifteen minute break in between. After class I ride the same bus home, but because it turns at a weird spot I have to walk about 20 minutes home (which kinda sucks because it is much hotter by this time). I get home, do the first half of my work-out routine and then do my homework. After this (right around 2:00) is comida, which is basically lunch, but with the family significance of dinner in Holiday movies or hallmark cards. Then siesta, futbol, more homework, or just sorta mill about and converse or read my book. About five (I'm thinking later in the day in the future though because today was BRUTAL) I go for a run, come back and finish the rest of my work daily workout, gratefully take a cold shower. After which is any home that needs doing (by this time of the day, that never happens unless I've slacked off), read my book, talk more with the family, or post blogs that are probably really really boring to everyone.

I am liking it here and my classes are both exhausting and not too hard at the same time, it's kinda odd. Listening, speaking, and (sometimes) thinking in Spanish is exhausting, but the classes don't require too much homework, and what they do require is typically readily available with the internet or my family. I am happy and safe here, I'm doing by best to enjoy by time and really get a lot out of the experience, but I know I have a lot to look forward to with all of you when I return home.

Differences 3:

-Police here sometimes carry automatic weapons (most often the ones on motorcycles, how bad-ass can you get?)

-When wiping after going to the bathroom, toilet paper goes in the garbage next to the toilet, not in it.

-I've said this one before, but I'll go ahead and repeat: buses are hardly stopped when they expect you to get off. You need to be on your way down the stairs before the bus has slowed down to a safe exiting speed, but long after the doors have opened for you.

-Attention. I get a lot of people who just stare at me.

-The intensity of the sun. Stepping out into the light you can really feel it, especially if you're wearing black. It isn't a "Mmm, warm glow" it's "oh damn, I should probably find shade in the next twenty seconds".

-People here are often very friendly if you just give them a nod or a buenos dias. Sometimes that is completely unnecessary.

-There are a bunch of stores here that sell, as far as I can tell, exclusively costumes, especially for children, and they are opened year round the same hours as you would expect any other store.

Love you all, comments accepted and expected.

-Connor

Homesickness; Differences part 2

I felt the crushing blow of homesickness for the first time in a very long time or the first time ever. I think I've had homesickness before, but it wasn't like this. Carrick described two big dangers right around the time of the first week, one was homesickness and the other was a huge freak out filled with regret at the decision to go abroad. I haven't had a freak out but I did have a "Maybe this wasn't the best idea" moment. That moment has passed along with the homesickness, and now I'm back to knowing that coming here was the right thing to do. My familia here has helped with me becoming refreshed to the idea of living abroad and learning Spanish the face-to-brick-wall method unlike anything else here. There have been other signs that point to me doing the right thing, but mi familia is absolutely incredible.

Yesterday was our first group excursion into the great Mexican unknown, and it was absolutely brilliant. We went to the Piedra del Bernal and had a blast (there are pictures on my facebook for those interested in seeing what's up). The trip was only tainted by two things, one: The entire group insisted on speaking almost entirely English, and two: the homesickness. I think the reason that it really hit me yesterday was because I was away from my new family, so I didn't have that comfort and security to fall back on. It's incredibly strange and awesome how much my familia here reminds me of my family in the states. Mi mama definitely has characteristics of my mum, mi papa definitely has characteristics of my dad, and mi hermana definitely has characteristics of my sister. It's actually the connection between mi hermana here that I feel is the strongest and most beneficial, and I know that that in part is because of how much I felt I already knew her and could trust her. I'm extremely lucky that she is half as amazing as the original (love you DeeDee).

Now the other signs that have pointed to me being here are generally very small and kinda forgettable after any amount of time, but I know they are there when they happen. I will give two examples that have happened recently enough that I can remember them vividly. The are also a bit more salient than the others so I doubt that I'll forget them. First off is that last night I had a dream in which I spoke Spanish. I've had these dreams before, but usually when I wake up I realize that what I said was actually incorrect, or that a lot of it was actually just gibberish I was pretending was Spanish. Last night in my dream I had a clear decently formed sentence. It wasn't perfect, but neither is my Spanish when I'm awake by any stretch. The other sign, that's a bit less abstract, was today in the market when I spoke to a man and explained that my friend and I were exchange students from the United States and were studying at the University here in response to his question where were we from (which my friend missed because of background noise). The man looked at me a little bit taken aback and told me that my Spanish was very good. Man, I'm still glowing from that one.

Switching gears here a bit. The trip to La Piedra del Bernal was absolutely amazing. La Piedra is translated as 'the rock', and that is exactly what it is. It is one absolutely huge rock, not many little rocks making a pile or mountain, it is one solid rock. This one solid rock is actually the third largest in the world, and yesterday me and my friends got to climb it. The climb was exhausting at first, but once I got a bit more used to the thin air it was an absolute blast. The other people I was climbing with (we separated to the front of the pack) were also athletic and we just blasted to the top. The tour guide estimated that the trek would take an hour, but we did it in no more than thirty minutes. It was the middle of the day and sweat was just pouring down my face, it was absolutely incredible. I wanna do that every day. And the view from the top was absolutely stunning. It was just an amazing addition to a ridiculously fun hike/climb.

Today I had my own little excursion with a buddy. We basically just finished walking through La Mercado de Cruz which is basically Saturday Market on steroids/crack. The place was HUGE and completely packed. Long narrow isles ran between little booths packed with merchandise and people. The food there often looked either really disgusting or really delicious, but I wasn't brave/stupid enough to try any of it. My friend, however, seems to be practicing to take over for that guy on the show "bizarre foods" when he keels over from a strange mix of bacterial infections and parasites. We went to a little restaurant (not nearly as dangerous as the booths of food) of sea food. Fortunately I hate sea food so I wasn't tempted into trying anything except a delicious grape soda that came in a bottle. He, on the other hand, had a ice cream Sunday cup filled with, I believe, raw shrimp covered in some sort of sweet red sauce. He loved it, but I'm just hoping that he makes it through the night. (No he doesn't feel sick from it, but it's only a matter of time.)

Differences part 2:

-Bus stops here aren't generally marked, you just have to know which corners to stand on.

-Buses don't stop unless you wave them down, and sometimes they won't even stop then.

-Buses open their doors and seem to expect you to get on/off long before they've actually stopped.

-There are only a few pedestrian lights in the whole city, people just walk with the green light.

-A few of the walk signals they do have are animated. It is a little outline of a man walking, and there is a count down beside it. As the count down get lower, the man starts walking faster until the last few seconds when he is straight up running.

-People sell everything from cow testicles by the kilogram to pirated video games for pretty much whichever console you wanted.

-People seem to just keep driving after fender-benders.

Again, I know that I had more, but I tend to forget them the minute I put fingers to keyboard. I'll keep this differences thing going whenever I get/remember new ones.

Love you all very much, please keep/start posting comments, I love to read them.

-Connor

P.S. if you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments and I'll try my best to answer them.

Doctors here are amazing! And Differences part 1.

This morning I hadn't gotten any better (well the whole body ache things hadn't gotten better, but the crazy diarrhea had gotten worse) so I went to the doctor instead of school. I can't believe how quickly off the street, I got in, seen, and medication. And in addition to that I was able to pay right at the desk (no bill later) and it was ridiculously cheap. To see the doctor was 150 pesos, or $11.50 for those of you not up to date on the exchange rate. The two medications on top of that? 73 pesos or $6.08 for those same people mentioned above. The doctor was also extremely friendly and obviously very capable seeing as I'm not dead and in fact feeling much better.

Next up is my half tangent half segue. So right after the doctors office I my host family and I went to the club campestre (basically a country club) because la senora is taking a dancing class there. While she was in her class the Senor showed me around the place and we chatted a bit. After that he went and did something (when you don't speak the language you really only know about 1/4 of what is going on) and the Senora, finished with her dance class, showed me around briefly and then went into the gym to walk on the tread mill. Well I wasn't allowed in the gym, but I sat outside on the edge of a flower plateau (I can't think of a better word...) and half listened to what she said through the open window and half read her lips. Needless to say it was a fairly fruitless attempt. But I managed to catch enough to know that she was telling the guy next to her (while often pointing directly at me) all about my recent experiences with diarrhea and how pitiful I looked the morning when I first fell ill. The man just listened and they continued to have a conversation about it for some time. It was quite obvious that this is not at all a taboo like it is in America. We say diarrhea and people kinda wince or say something like "dude, I'm eating/about to eat/just ate" (as is always the case).

Differences part1:

This will be in no particular order and I say part one because I've been here for 4 days and I've already got quite a few.

-Everyone speaks Spanish.

-The green traffic light flashes a few times before turning yellow before turning red. Extra warning?

-The rules of the road are not.

-Light switches flip right for on, left for off.

-Hot for taps is on the right and cold is on the left.

-There are taxis EVERYWHERE it's like new york but they are all Nissin Sentras...

-...Nissin Sentras are called Nissin Tsuru here.

-The food. Drastically so.

-Apple juice, and the apples here, taste the same. Not like the "apple" juice in America.

-I think I had fried cactus for a snack before comida (which is basically a late lunch), like I said though, you really only know what's going on about a 1/4 of the time.

-Pesos instead of Dollars (the pesos kinda have a monopoly thing going on with lots of colors and whacky pictures) which includes the peso coins which go up to about 10 pesos (or a little less than a dollar).

-If you're white, people will stare. It's not rude, it's just a sorta "the hell is that?"

I know I have a ton more that I've been running through my mind all day but the second I sit down they flee like all my Spanish when some one asks me a question ("Como te llamas?" "uhh *points at self with a grunt* Connor"). I'll try to include the ones I missed in part 2.

Love you all, feel free to tell me about your summers so far in the comments below or in email/facebook. I do wanna know how you are, this whole blog thing has been very me focused... Perhaps I should have named it "little everyone in bit lots of places".

-Connor

P.S. I publish my blogs without going back over for mistakes, sorry but that's how it is.

What the hell Mexico, I thought we were friends!

Why is he posting again so soon, you all may be asking, well there are a few interconnected reasons for that. The first is that I don't have any homework to do because I finished yesterdays homework already, the reason I don't have today's homework is because of the fairly horrible food poisoning I'm dealing with suddenly.

No I didn't go eat at some super sketch local food stand and order fresh fruit and a glass of water. What I did do was go and eat at a restaurant with every other person from my group and their host mothers. It was an event that was planned through the program and I am not the only one feeling the pain. At least three other students and the resident director herself are all sick as well.

I'm hoping to be back on my feet again soon, well at least back on my feet in a way that isn't both pathetically shuffling and fairly painful. I feel like I have the flu the way my temperature cannot regulate itself, which is sorta exacerbated by the sun, and also the way every part of my body is in pain. I know this isn't anything like what Carrick experienced with his bouts with malaria, but damn it sucks. I can't help but think: “I wonder if the next elven and a half weeks are gonna feel like this?” I should definitely note that my host family is being incredibly sympathetic and taking good care of me.

On the plus side I can feel the Spanish washing over me and my confidence as well as my competence are on the rise.
Alright, love you all and I'll write again soon, must try to get my homework from the any of the students who were not sick.

PS I wrote this this morning and just wanted to point out that I'm feeling much better. I may or may not go to school again tomorrow (if I don't go I'll head to the doctor's instead), but either way I'll try to update again soon. Keep up the comments people, they really make me feel wonderful.

Made it

This is the first real entry of my Mexico blog, but I'll just go ahead and say it's my second. I'll start with the pre-game. Thank you so much all who came to Shari's night, it was truly wonderful to see you all and I'm sure that when I get back we can do something painfully similar to ring in the new (academic) year. Special thanks goes to my ride to the airport, Alexis, who not only wanted me gone enough to let me go, but so much that she actually took me to the air port herself.

Now for the travels. I woke up around three the morning after shari's (which had me going to bed around one) and got ready to go, which mostly consisted of stressing over things I may have forgotten but couldn't think of. Left the house around four with my driver who was actually both crazy enough and kind enough to get up that early after also being at shari's. Arrived at the airport to find that there was a huge line for the bag check-in. Now this seems a little silly that they even bother having an online check-in for baggage. I get that if you don't have a bag to check and you tell them you're coming it is way faster to get through line... but if you have a bag and you tell them, you still have to wait in line to check it. I don't see the point. So got through the wicked long line and rushed to security, because everyone knows that's the slow part, and got through in about five minutes tops. Met up with some other Queretaro people and just sorta waited until the plane arrived. I slept on my flight to San Francisco, the my flight to Mexico city (after being awake for the two hour lay over in San Francisco), and the bus ride from Mexico City to Queretaro. After the plane landed in Mexico City we decided to eat in preparation for the two hour (actually three hour) bus ride to Queretaro. That was fairly uneventful (except for the horchata I threw away after buying because I forgot I can't have the water here...) and we proceeded on to buy our tickets for the bus. I looked at the amounts on the board and calculated the amount I would give and the change I should expect. After receiving my ticket and change, I looked at it for awhile (to make sure I wasn't missing something with the unfamiliar money) and turned back to the guy in broken spanish and said something along the lines of “possible accident, twenty more”. He looked at me blankly for a second “400 for 256, *holds up change* twenty”. The man pulled out twenty pesos (about two dollars) and handed it to me unapologetically turning quickly to the next customers. My friends looked at me with shock “did he just try to cheat you?” “Probably an accident” I responded despite the fact that my brothers words of advice about not letting people mess you over, even in a small way, was exactly what had me turning back. A two dollar honest mistake would not have been worth the embarrassing misuse of Spanish. We arrived at the bus station in Queretaro, after a long ride through some really nice areas as well as some others that kinda looked like those commercials with that Christian guy who wants you to support shoeless children's education, and had to figure out how to get a taxi to the part of town with the hotels. Getting the taxis was surprisingly easy, and the driver was very nice. The whole experience would have been outstanding but for the questionable driving, the fact that rules of the road are really more like vague ideas, and complete lack of seatbelts (my brother's other piece of advice that I had to ignore, not through any choice of my own). Fortunately the scary driving gave me inspiration to talk to the driver (perhaps he would have less motivation to kill us all) and later look out the side window for distraction when the driver seemed completely uninterested in conversing or possible was too confused by me terrible Spanish and thick accent. Through the window I saw other drivers doing their own crazy seatbeltless things, lots of people on motorcycles (helmets optional), and a couple of prostitutes. The driver dropped us off at the Hotel and helped us with our bags, so I tipped him, as much for the custom as for the not killing us. The night was fairly uneventful and consisted of three of us looking for a hotel room because the hostel we had was really far away (we went to the hotel because we were supposed to meet our resident director there, but we arrived later than planned so she was not). After getting a hotel we wondered a bit and then headed back to some sleep. Upon waking up I decided to take a shower and realized that hot water was really not an option. So, one freezing cold shower and bruised elbows due to the tiny bathroom and therefore hazards of toweling off, I exited the bathroom, packed up my stuff, and we began to wander in search of the rest of the group. Everything up until after breakfast went very smoothly, and I decided that instead of hailing a cab and getting a ride to my host families house, that I should walk to get to know the town. So I walked. My map at the ready and asking directions from people whenever I got lost (a surprisingly large number of times) I slowly made my way to the correct part of town. My biggest problem came when I walked down a small street expecting the road I needed to be in the right, however, there was only a huge wall with razor wire on top. The map didn't bother to explain that the road didn't actually run through there, it was just pretending and what I actually needed to do was walk an additional mile past that to get to the other side of the secure community in which my family lives. All in all the walk took me a little over an hour (it was far, hot, my bags were heavy and the altitude here is over 6,000 feet), so you can imagine the surprise my host mother experienced when she found out that I had walked all the way from the center of town. I waited for the security guard to get off the phone with Senora Rodriguez, after he finished (the conversation that lead up to him believing I was supposed to be there was fairly comical) he told me that he spoke a little English. He then asked my what I thought of the country, I responded with an enthusiastic and earnest “Muy bonita!” He looked at me flatly and said, “yes Americans come here for a short time and love it, but to live here is bad”. I sort of shifted the weight on my feet uncomfortably and gave a forced nod of pity and agreement when actually trying to not show how much I felt it unfair to be the bad guy all of the sudden. He continued to rant about how much he did not like his work and how America's big problem is that we have too much work (after actually laughing at me when I told him I was in Queretaro to learn Spanish). Fortunately Senora Rodriguez called back and I was no longer to wait but to walk down the road and meet her. I gratefully speed off down the road.

So here I am at the house that will be mi casa for the next three months. I'm skipping over a bit because it was just more or me awkwardly trying to speak this beautiful language with the three incredibly kind and patient people who will be keeping me company and taking care of me, and now it is time for bed. I get to wake up at around 6:00 or maybe 6:30 for the next six weeks. Wish me luck.

I love you all very much, and despite the fact that it is the first day and I am incredibly excited to be here, I have already begun to miss you. I will see everyone when I get back and until then I hope my blogs are enough. If you need more feel free to facebook or email me, but don't expect a speedy response.

-Connor

4 days

Hello all,

here is my very first post of what will hopefully be many. I'm honestly not sure how good about this blogging thing I will be, but hopefully I'll turn my crippling loneliness into hilarious prose.

To start off, I still have a lot to do before I go. I'm not even finished with finals and I'm already beginning to stress about the micro-aspects of the trip. "I haven't packed, what should I bring? I'll probably need at least two toothbrushes for all the time I'm there... will brushing my teeth with unboiled water make me sick? If I get sick will the host family take care of me? If I am sick can I still play with their dog?" All of these ridiculous chains of worry roll through my mind and push aside lesser things like my plans for the summer once I return or actually doing work on my finals/passing my classes.
I would have to say that my biggest problem is that planning and preparing provide me with an excellent way to procrastinate from working. I can bash my head against yet another indecipherable syntax problem, or facelessly rant and complain on my brand new blog!

Alright, I'm not going to continue this pseudo-post. I will be leaving in 4 days and unless something really exciting or important happens before then I won't be posting again until I'm in México. I just didn't want to start a new blog, tell folk about it, and then just have a blank page to greet them upon first visit.

Love you all (or at least a sizable majority),
-Connor