Look! A new post!

Hey y’all! Ohhhh I’m so sorry it took me so long to write something. :( This is going to have to cover a lot. I don’t even know where to start…

I guess with school stuff, cuz that’s supposedly what I’m here for. It’s going fine, I guess, but it’s a whole lot more work than last semester. AKA I actually have to do homework. My classes are… Spanish (good); Syntax (good); Mexican Literature (tolerable, though I’m doing terribly. Jessi’s gonna bring me some of the books in English, so hopefully that’ll pull up my grade); Society, Development, and Citizenship in Mexico (don’t really like it and I’m positive I’m going to get a terrible grade, unless I get a bunch of stuff published in newspapers here. Otherwise, I’m going to end up with a 69 [yes, that’s a failing grade here too], assuming I do my one page writeup of a chunk of a book I read for every single class. I probably should have started a new paragraph to rant about that.); and Cooking! That one is really fun, obviously. Now I just need to start actually cooking at home… Not the preferred option when there are so many tacos to be eaten in this city. I did try to make flan here, and it turned out ok, but I kind of forgot that it was in the oven and burnt it. Next time, next time.

Kitchen talk leads to the next item on the agenda, which is my housing situation. So I switched host families from last semester, as most of you probably know. (And so you understand why the following sentences are in the past tense, I’ll just go ahead and tell you that I switched to an apartment.) The house was pretty far from the Tec but close to everything else…since Tec is most definitely on the outskirts of town. And this is a big town. It was with a middle aged lady named Blanca, her mom who they call Jechu, and her 13 year old son Alex. It was cool because we talked a lot more than Zabel and I talked, and they were pretty much always home. Alex was a lot of fun, as well as some of the millions of family members that came over on weekends. Except that part was kind of awkward too. BUT there were some bad parts: we just got kind of a weird vibe from Blanca (ooh, roomie’s next on the list), they didn’t have internet, and there were a bunch of other unnecessary rules that they put in place in addition to the Tec rules (which are generally reasonable), like…we could only use our laptops in certain rooms, do one load of laundry one day a week and before 10, weird stuff like that. So…we moved. My friend Megan from last semester had just moved into this apartment, as well as her friend Emmanuel AKA Snake…haha. It’s all furnished, nice, in this little gated neighborhood, and about half the price of the other place. Ooh, and I have my own room with ample closet space and even Disney princess stickers on the back of the door...hahaha. It stinks, though, that it’s so far from everything and that I hardly ever speak Spanish with Erin and Megan. And Snake speaks English well, so that’s tempting, but we generally stick to Spanish. Anyways, about Erin… She was in Blanca’s house with me. She’s from Chicago-ish and goes to the University of Illinois. And she’s pretty awesome. So one night when I went to hang out at Megan’s and came back and told her there were two free rooms here…After talking with our parents, making pro/con lists, etc., we decided to move. I think we spent 3 weeks at Blanca’s, just to give you a reference of time. I really like it here, though. It’s close to the Tec, plus Emmanuel starts class at the same time as me three days a week, so I can bum rides. And we can use the internet, use our laptops in whatever room we want, eat in our rooms, invite people over, etc. etc. etc. That last part has especially been fun, like last weekend we invited people over and made a swanky dinner of stuffed portabella mushrooms, salad, fettuccine alfredo, stuff like that. That’s when I made my flan too..jaja. And we never would have been able to do that in the old house. So that’s that. Whew. Here’s a pic from the dinner night. These people are… Edgar, Me (after setting the self timer and running in), Snake, David (Megan’s friend), Tom (from USC!!!), Erin, and Megan:

And then here's a few shots of my room. Sorry I'm too lazy to go downstairs and take pictures of that.
Sometimes I even make my bed. But didn't today, obviously...

And backtracking a little bit, here's Alex, the ex-host brother; Erin; and ex-host cousin who came to visit. They bet that we couldn't eat tortas ahogadas with chile and said if we could they'd pay for it. We did, though it was very painful.

Next…ummm…got it. Three weekends ago, a bunch of us went to Puerto Vallarta. The weather was glorious and we got to go to the beach and everything. The only thing is the waves were among the biggest I’ve seen in person and I almost died. Moving along, it was also really fun to get to hang out with new friends (international kids from the Tec). And some old friends! Of course I miss everybody from last semester like crazy, but what can you do? In that same vein, Jessi is coming to visit in a couple weeks for a couple weeks and I couldn’t be more excited! Anyways, this is the kind of place we got to go to in Vallarta:
And of course we went out some. In case you want to start getting accustomed to this semesters’ faces, the following people are: Sarah (Texas), Erin, Irene (Germany), Tere (Mexico, hopefully you recognize her haha), and me.

Here are some random pictures. My Spanish class went to this little town called Tuxpan, whose nickname is like the town of the eternal party or something because apparently they are always celebrating some saint’s feast day—we went for Saint Sebastian's party. We, along with some other classes, met at the Tec, piled in one of their busses, and went to spend the day in Tuxpan. I think it’s in southern Jalisco. I really should know that…If you’re really curious, there’s always Google. There day mainly included a huge parade and a ton of really cool dressed dancers:
Those things sticking up up front are some lifesized saint statues.
And they give out free food! Some guy we met in the plaza in front of the church, where the parade started after a mass, told us about how a bunch of women cook and serve free food till you’re stuffed. So a few other kids and I walked around FOREVER watching the parade, the dancers, and searching for food. We finally found some, and dang was that stuff good…It was some soup called I don’t remember what, that you eat with homemade corn tortillas…yum. And this drink called ponche, with some kind of alcohol that they make there and chopped up fruit. And there were a ton of “aguas,” or juices. Side note: if you order “agua” in a restaurant here, they are going to ask you what kind. “Agua natural” or “agua de botella” = bottled water. And then there’s “agua de this fruit” and “agua de that fruit.” Some random old guys came and sat down with us..so that was kind of hilarious. Oh, and we were completely out of place and got a good number of stares, because it’s a town full of indigenous people with a million traditions and not a ton of international tourism, I think it’s safe to guess. My Syntax teacher said they spoke an indigenous language till like 100 years ago. And there we were, these funny-dressed white kids speaking English and terrible Spanish and taking pictures of everything. Anyways, here we are with our lunchtime companions:

Other random tidbit, I finally found a volunteering gig!!! Every Wednesday after my cooking class, I head over to this school for blind kids. For a couple weeks I was helping in their music class, but last week they started swimming lessons, which we’ll do for the rest of the semester. Last week though, I came late and missed them. :( So I’ll start with the swimming next Wednesday. Anyways, they’re really amazing! I felt funny at first, you know how it’s always awkward before kids get used to you. Also, I’m not used to being around blind people so I was afraid I was going to treat them weird or something. But it was easy to get used to the things they do differently and the things they do the same as people that can see. And they’re blind to different extents: some don’t see at all, others see that I’m there, and others can even see when I’m smiling at them. But they’re great, and I’m so thankful I found out about that.

One last random thing, I think. This isn’t really Mexico-related but whatever. I just applied to an internship for this summer (in the US)! It’s with this organization called Student Action with Farmworkers, and they do a bunch of stuff for farmworkers (presumably latino immigrants) in the Southeast. My top 3 preferences for the specific area in which I’ll help are education (informing the children of farmworkers about their rights in terms of school, college, etc. or teaching English, I think that would be my fave), community organizing (planning community events be it cultural stuff or protests), and health stuff (for example teaching farmworkers how to protect themselves from pesticides). In a couple weeks they’re doing interviews and then a couple weeks after that they make their decisions. Oh right…I forgot the crazy part. They put you in “very minimally furnished” housing in “remote” locations with other interns and give you a little per diem so you can buy food. I think 1/3 of the placements are in North Carolina and the rest are in other states in the southeast. And it’s from June 1 till like August 10 or something, AKA 1 or 2 weeks after I get back from Mexico till like a week before I start my senior year at USC. I could be in for a big adventure.

Ok, I’m finally done. I was going to keep going to explain this other trip I went on, but I didn’t take very many pictures so I have to wait to get them from Edgar. So there’s that to look forward to! Haha…

Time for the random Mexican Spanish word. I feel like I might start repeating because I’m so not creative. Buuuuut…this time…it’s “este,” which means “this.” But they also say it for “umm.” That really threw me off at first…

Aight…well I am pretty tired of talking about myself, so I’m gonna post this thing and call it a day. Again, I’m sorry it took me so long to update y’all on my life. :( And there’s that other one coming soon! Anyways, I’m impressed that you, dear reader, made it this far. I hope you have a peaceful rest of your weekend!