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