My first week in Mexico!

So I've been planning to write for a while now, but things have been pretty busy here! I don't even know where to start. The trip here the Sunday before last (July 27) was uneventful, but long. After a 1.5 hour drive to Charlotte, a 2 hour wait in the Charlotte airport, a very tearful goodbye :(, a 2.5 hour flight to Dallas, an 8 hour layover in the DFW airport, a 2.5ish hour flight to Guadalajara, an hour to clear immigration and customs, and a 45 minute cab ride, I finally got to my host family's house at 11pm. My host family is extremely nice and immediately took me on a tour of the house, and I also got to meet my awesome roommate, Vanessa. On Monday morning we survived our first bus ride to class…holy crap. I didn’t know it was possible to get that close to vomiting in a 5 minute ride. Our medical Spanish teacher told us that someone is killed about once a month (I think usually a pedestrian) by a bus in Guadalajara, and I’m actually surprised it isn’t more like once a week. We made it to school safely though, had orientation, and then we started class right away. I got to meet the other four people in our program besides Vanessa and I, and they're awesome. I guess most of the other programs have had more people, but since ours is the end of the summer we have less. I love our group of six though--we're from all over the country with all different backgrounds and it's a great mix.

Monday through Thursday of last week was pretty routine--class for 6 hours per day, home for lunch at 4ish, homework, internet time, and bed. I was pretty homesick on Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday I was feeling better. Then, on Friday the fun started. First, we went on a school sponsored trip to Tequila, Mexico where we toured La Rojena, the Jose Cuervo distillery. The tour was complete with samples and margaritas :). We also got to meet other estadounidenses who are in different programs, and I met several UNC people (apparently they’re down here as a big group). It was nice to talk to some people who have been down here for a while and could tell us the cool things we should go see. Then, later that evening we went to the Chivas vs Tecos fútbol (soccer) game. Although I know next to nothing about international fútbol/soccer, I hear the Chivas are a big deal and they're definitely one of the most popular here. The game was pretty rowdy and I learned some Spanish curse words. Unfortunately, there was only one goal and the Tecos were the ones who made it, so I didn’t hear the big GOOOOOOOOOOL I was looking for. Oh well. After the game, we met up with some of the people we’d met in Tequila and ended up in an outdoor taquería. I love how the tacos are teeny tiny here, but they’re like 60 cents to 1 dollar, so you just get as many as you want. Vanessa tells me that lengua (tongue) is one of the best, but I haven’t been brave enough to try it yet. I’ll get there. I also discovered agua de horchata, which is sweetened rice water with cinnamon and it’s delicious.

Then, on Saturday Vanessa and I went to Chapala with our host family. Chapala is a cute little town on a huge lake (which though it is beautiful, happens to be severely polluted and is unfit for swimming, womp womp). We shopped around the mercado, and then we went to the nearby town of Ajijic for dinner. According to my host dad, Ajijic boasts the largest proportion of US Americans of any other town in Mexico (ie retirees). It also has some funny birds that burrow in the ground to get rid of their lice.

On Sunday, the group of 6 of us went to the downtown Centro Historico. We toured around a lot of cool places, most of which are depicted in pictures (see link at the bottom of this post). The neatest thing was seeing the murals by Jose Clemente Orozco. I’ve studied him in Spanish classes before, so it was cool to see the paintings in person. On the way back we had a slight adventure where we ended up in a bad neighborhood and a nice shopkeeper and a boy (her grandson?) helped us get a cab back home. All’s well that ends well…

Since then, it has just been class as usual. One of the things I love here is that everything is really open. Most places don’t have air conditioning, so the windows are open all day and the inside temperature stays decent. Even the places that have air conditioning aren’t so frigidly cold as they are in the states, which I like. The weather is cool in the morning, warm/hot in the afternoon, then usually rainy in the late afternoon/evening or at least cooler. Other than the sometimes hot bus ride/walk home in the afternoon, the temperature has been wonderful.

Overall, I’m learning a lot and having lots of fun. Class only goes through the end of this week, then I go to clinic for a week, and then since my 2^nd program overlaps with this one by a week, I start the 2^nd program after that (which is class in the morning and clinic in the afternoon). I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve been able to remember just by being in class for a week, and my Spanish is definitely improving (although still a looooong way to go). This weekend our group is planning to go to a couple of places within Guadalajara, and then the weekend after that we’re hoping to go to Puerto Vallarta. I’m looking forward to it!

My host family is also wonderful. They very patiently put up with my inability to quickly conjugate verbs in anything but the present tense, and they don’t laugh at me too hard when I use the completely wrong word (ie birds and planes are very different things, even though they both fly). My host mom makes wonderful meals, and I think my favorite so far is the chiles rellenos that she made today. She also makes delicious aguas frescas, which are like juice but more water based (and not as ridiculously sugar-filled as juice). It’s wonderful how cheap the fruit is down here, and there are several new fruits I have yet to try.

Hope everyone is doing well! Send me emails/facebook messages/comments/Skype me/etc!!! I promise I’ll update more often and the next post won’t be so ridiculously long!

Link to pictures (my host family's house, Tequila, el partido de futbol, Chapala, and el centro historico de Guadalajara) : http://picasaweb.google.com/rachel.holston