I swear I'll come up with a catchy title next time

Oh dearie me...now like three more weeks have passed. I will definitely use the tests as an excuse. They took up a good two weeks which involved a lot of catching up and a LOT of coffee. This partial, as I told myself last time, I'm gonna try to actually do work along the way so the next round of tests isn't miserable. A ver.

No huge trips or anything like that have happened since the my last post. Generally my life looks like this: get up, do homework, go to school (11:30...love it), come home, nap, do homework, go out. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I had to share this picture. Nothing too special, just Eva, me, and Jessi at a club being really cute:

Two weekends ago we went to another Chivas game...
The game, the "clasico tapatio", was the Chivas vs. their GDL rivals, Atlas. We won, 1-0. It was quite fun, but made me miss Gamecock football (of course)--knowing the cheers, actually feeling spirited, etc.

Hm, now I'm thinking in terms of what I have pictures of... For my "Mexican Culture and Thought" class, we were talking about prehispanic medicine and had to ask our host families or friends if they knew any natural remedies. I think the funnest thing I learned was that if you have a toothache, to put a clove on top of the tooth and bite down...and it numbs it. Pretty cool. Another part of the assignment was to go to one of the markets in town and find a natural medicine place, ask them what they do, and buy something. When I say market, I'm not talking like fruit stands. We went to one called San Juan de Dios and it is this HUGE building with a ton of restaurant-type things and a bazillion shops selling pirated goods. Eva (roomie) and Tere (friend) went there the other day and bought 16 movies for 200 pesos, which I think is still $20ish, if our economy hasn't completely crashed since the last time I checked. We've already watched one--La Misma Luna--which never came to SC but was so good. Generally my Spanish capacity is that I understand most things...except jokes. Oh well. So here's Christie and Teo (from California...I'm not doing a very good job of mixing with the international kids) at the market holding sticks of stuff called "hierba de perro" that you make a tea out of and it supposedly fixes upset tummies. Not sure if it works, but I can tell you it tastes dreadful.


Another exciting thing was that on Sunday I finally went to a church I like. It was uber contemporary and the last chunk of songs greatly resembled a concert, but the teaching was awesome. The speaker is from the US, I think, but I'm pretty sure he, Christie, and I were the only gringos in the room. He spoke Spanish really well but was also really easy to understand. I'm so excited... After church, we met up with Jessi and Edgar and went to his house to watch The Office. The nbc.com clips don't work here, so he offered to download it and host us. It was so much fun to watch it after so many Office-free months.

In the beginning of the year, Eva, Christie, Candice (from USC, remember her? She had to go back in order to graduate on time) and I made a deal that after October 1 we would only speak Spanish. So on October 1 I woke up to Eva's "Buenos dias!" and some gibberish about whether she could get in the shower first, but I can't really handle foreign languages that early. We don't speak it all the time, but definitely more than before.

In other news, just last night I found out Candice will probably be coming back for a visit! When she was leaving, she said she was going to, but we didn't know if it would actually happen. She'll be here at the end of the semester, during Thanksgiving! Jessi and I had just decided we want to have a Thanksgiving feast. I can't wait...

I think the most random occurrences since my last post include going to a banda club for Christie's birthday (it's a hilarious dance--look it up) and "learning how to drive a stick," which everyone here drives. It actually just involved the car moving a few meters and making a terrible noise, and me giving up. Another fun random thing is that this morning, I saw a horse and carriage while I was walking to the bus stop, driven by some guy with a sweet sombrero. I've seen it a few times before (not sure if it's the same guy), but it's just cool because in GDL there are oh so many modern and really US-like things, and then all of a sudden you see a horse on your way to school. Ooh, something else-- I saw the Mexican High School Musical. Not dubbed, as I originally thought. Like with Mexican actors and "reggaeton" songs and everything. It was amazing. I think that's the extent of my random activities as of late...

Ready for the Mexicanism of the post? Not a word this time, but here goes... In the US, you use a nod to emphasize an affirmation. Here, they use their hand like you're doing the "hold on a second" motion, except you wiggle the top joint up and down. So that was a terrible description, but maybe you get the point. Anyway, it's a lot of fun. We're trying to pick it up but failing miserably.

As usual, I didn't think I had anything to write about, and here we are, like 10 paragraphs later... In keeping with tradition, I shall update on future plans too. Right now I'm either going to take a nap or do homework and then go to an antro. Then do those same three things till the weekend, when I am going back to Puerto Vallarta--yay! It's going to be Eva, Jessi, two of her friends from home (cough cough hint hint I'm just saying, if any of y'all come I promise we'd do something just as sweet), Edgar, and Tere...I hope I'm note leaving anyone out...

So yep! That's all on my part. Ah, shoutout time-- happy birthday Dad! I hope it's great! And that Mom makes you some delicious sugar-free goodies... :)

Love!