Posts (page 2)

Every day here I find myself learning more and more and becoming confident with my spanish. This city is so rich in history and even though we all hate having to learn taxonomies, I can't help but ask myself every time I see a plant or bug, what the class, order, family and sometimes species it is .... yes, the Bio nerd in me has never Been more apparent :-P I know I've been writing alot about the cultural aspect of the trip, but the academic one is important too. The intensive spanish grammar everyday from 9-12 is really helping me - It's a great review of preterite and irregular verbs, as well as words that are used commonly in every day conversation. The culture class is really interesting as well, because it lets us apply the things we learned in grammar in a hands on atmosphere. Today, we played the spanish version of Scattergories, aka BASTA! The only difference being, if someone finished before the buzzer went off, they yelled BASTA (stop) and everyone else had to stop where they were.

Today was also just an all around great day, the weather was absolutely gorgeous - a balmy 82 degrees with a beautiful breeze, and lunch today was also really incredible. Mi mama, Mimi, is an amazing cook, and today we had rice and beans, and she made me this mixture of squash, onions and some other green vegetable that I can't pronounce, along with tortillas and picante. It was probably one of my favorite meals yet. Afterwards, was pretty exhausted so took un poquito siesta, and then went to work on the bird taxonomy for our quiz tomorrow. Just as Ash and I were ready to make dinner for ourselves, mama returns with tons of groceries, so we all help her unload, and then Ash and I make dinner, which consisted of peanut butter and bananas for me, and peanut butter and jelly for Ash. Mama and Brandon, there are also 3 guys living here from Ohio University, got quite a kick out of us eating only peanut butter and bread for dinner. When Dereck and Nick came out of their rooms, they were immediately asked if they wanted crema de cacahuete, aka peanut butter. It turned into this whole thing of how on Mondays in Mexico, its a tradition to eat peanut butter for dinner. I know its one of those had to be there moments, but it was really fun to be able to laugh and sit at the table with everyone and eat dinner. I also finally dropped off my clothes at the lavendaria down the block. You pay by the weight, so since my clothes weighed 2 kilos, I paid 20 pesos (about 2 USD) for them to wash, dry and fold my clothes.

Tomorrow brings a quiz on the bird taxonomy and a trip to the botanical gardens, where I'm sure the Dawleys will have a field day helping us "review" for the plant quiz on Thursdays.

Last night, we all ventured into the city. Every Saturday and Sunday night, they close down many of the streets in el Centro and have street vendors and live bands playing everywhere! I picked up a really cool pair of earrings for $30 pesos, and then we split up and some of us went out to La Parilla, which is quickly becoming "our" place, the staff are getting to know us by face, and I wouldn't be surprised if by name sooner or later :-P Then we went out into the street and danced to one of the many bands playing salsa music. I ended up giving a few dancing lessons and got to use some of my salsa moves ;-) Dancing in the middle of the street with many other people was soooo much fun! I hadn't realized that they do that every weekend! This morning when I was talking with my host mother at breakfast, and told her about our night, she told us that that happens every weekend! Very excited that all we have to do to go dancing is find a street with a good band and dancers, and its totally free!

This morning, we got up and ate some pretty amazing quesadillas and then ventured out to Progreso, the nearest beach. The last time I was at a beach, was when I was 10 or 11 years old, so I was pretty excited. When we got there, it was like something out of a resort brochure - incredibly beautiful. We then went to a restaurant on the beach that gave us free appetizers if a few people purchased drinks, so we ended up with this table full of incredible food. One thing that has really floored me, is how nice the people here are. In my broken spanish and with the help of my friends, I was able to communicate to our waiter that I do not eat meat, and cannot have anything that contains any sort of dairy or eggs. A few minutes later, he brings out 2 plates that are completely vegan - one was potatoes and onions in tortillas with a sauce made out of cacao and chili sauce (sounds odd, but was really good) and baked/fried potatoes wrapped up in corn tortillas with lettuce and tomato, and everything he subsequently brought out, he had a vegan version ready for me. It was so wonderful and I have yet to have a problem finding things to eat - everyone I have encountered has been more that happy to accommodate my wonderful eating needs :-P In the states they either look at you like you are some sort of freak and a pain in their side for making a little more work for them, but here it is totally different. Really cool.

Alrighty, well back to the bird taxonomy .... oh joy

Updated pics :-)

Today we saw the most AMAZING natural creations I have EVER seen!!!! We took a trip to see 2 cenotes, which are these under ground caves made of limestone, that have somehow evolved over time through erosion and whatnot, to contain spires, roots, and an amazing pool of crystal clear blue water. First of all, to even get to them, we had to drive and hour out of Merida, and then take a 10 minute ride on donkey driven carts on a rail track through the woods. Every day here I am loving my amazing camera more and more because I remembered a really cool feature called StitchAssist, that allows me to take panoramic shots and them "stitch" them together on my computer. My new banner at the top of the page is the second cenote that we visited. I stitched about 10 pictures together to create this view of the cave. We got to go swimming in both of them, and one would think that being underground, and a pool of stagnant water, that it would be dirty and cold, but incredibly enough, it was amazingly clear and even a bit warm! The first one, had a winding ladder that went down into the cenote, with a few platforms that we all jumped off of :-P. The second one was really incredible, with a pretty small hole, that one had to duck to fit through, and also had vines and rock formations. We got to the first one pretty early, about 930 ish, and while we were there, a news team from Mexico City showed up and we got to be on Mexican TV as "the people from PA" swimming in the cenote! After about an hour and a half in the first one, we boarded the donkeys again to venture on to the second one. Shortly after arriving, MANY more people showed up, and as they kept coming in like Lemmings (anyone remember that really old computer game with the lemmings that you had to get from one side to the other and they dug and built stairs and stuff, and if you got them corralled in one spot, they would just keep walking and coming in no matter what you did???) So there were tons of people on this rickety old platform that was holding all of our stuff, so we decided to go before anyones camera or money got taken or accidentally thrown into the water. Returning home, everyone in our van passed out from swimming and whatnot. Tonight, we are all going out to what sounds like a massive block party on Paseo de Montejo. Apparently, they close down the entire road and all the restaurants put their tables and chairs on the road. (I had to have the concept of a block party explained to me, because I guess these types of things don't really happen in rural PA :-P) Then afterwards, we are going to Mambo Cafe, to try out some of our salsa moves we learned on Friday during our Spanish culture class.

Just uploaded the cenote pics, sorry they are in reverse order, still trying to work out all the bugs :-)

Cenote pics added to rest of Mexico

Alrighty, so I created a Photobucket account, and dumped alot of my pictures so far into it. I dont know that much about the website, but I'm pretty sure that you do not have to create an account to view the pictures, but if you do, let me know and I'll try loading them onto here. It's just that Vox is really slow and does not let me organize them easily. As I take more, I'll upload them onto there from now on, with the exception of maybe a post or two with embedded pics. So have fun! And live vicariously through my AMAZING Canon PowerShot SD800 :-p

http://s254.photobucket.com/albums/hh98/kawilson10/Mexico/

So last night was really fun with going out for Aakash's birthday, but we didn't really think through a huge group of 16 of us, trying to walk around downtown, find a place to eat and all agree ... For starters, Ash and I, neither of us with a sense of direction radar after only 2 days here, got off the bus at the right place, but ended up making a wrong turn which put us about 8 blocks out of our way, so we called and got the right directions and made it to the meeting place which was a pseudo-Christmas tree near Paseo de Montejo. When everyone finally showed up, we were this huge swarm of Americans trying to navigate the city and all agree on a place to go. We ended up at La Parranda in el Centro and ate dinner. Ended up being a pretty good night, but all of you out there know how much of a time freak I am - always have to be early and the such. I had told our host mother that we would be home between 1030 and 1100, because none of us wanted to stay out that late, and we had class this morning anyways. By the time we got the check paid and everything, it was already 1030 which did not ease my uptight self ... :-P. We find our way to the corner where we usually flag down the bus, and by now it is about quarter to 11, and in my head am freaking out because we are going to be late, and Im already thinking up ways on taking a taxi, how much it would cost, thinking how and what I would say to the driver to get us back here and trillions of other things. Ash is the COMPLETE opposite - she's all chill and telling me to stop checking my watch or she's going to take it from me. All of you who know me well, know that I usually dont flip out on the outside, but that millions of things start going through my head about the next step and worse case scenarios, so we decided that Ash is going to teach me to go with the flow and not give myself a coronary, and I am going to teach her Spanish. HA :-P, but I digress. So we are standing on this dimly lit corner, although I have yet to feel unsafe in the city, waiting for our bus to come by and after a bit another group of us who take a different bus but at the same stop show up and a few minutes later our bus comes. But I have to admit, I have never said so many Hail Marys in my entire life up till now for our bus to just come :-P My nerves were lessened once on the bus, but then my mind went to "are we going to be able to identify our stop in the dark because we had only done it once and it was in the afternoon" and so on, but we made it, and again I have never been so happy to see Winnie the Pooh and a gold Chevelle in my entire life! Haha. So that was quite the adventure to say the least.

Today we took a historical tour of Merida, which was really interesting and in both spanish and english. What was cool, was that halfway through I realized that I hadn't really been noticing when he was switching between the two languages, so that made me happy and was a little ego boost for my language skills. The tour itself was really interesting and I have many many pictures to prove it! We saw this Gorgeous church that is the second oldest in the world, and I think that a group of us are going on Sunday for mass - granted we only saw it fomr the outside, but it is one of the most beautiful buildings I've seen here. We also realized that we are going to still be in Merida for Ash Wednesday, so to be able to go to a huge cathedral in the center of Merida will be pretty amazing. Again, when I have more time and energy, I'll attempt to dump then into an album on here.

Once again, off to do Spanish and Bio homework ....

So today Ash and I had our first experiences with the bus system and getting ourselves to and from the school. Was quite interesting but we made it without too many hitches. We got the right bus at a corner about 4 blocks from our house and actually missed our stop, but the thing about the bus system here is that there really is none. This aspect floored me at first because while I am absolutely horrible with directions, if you give me a public transportation map and plunk me in any US city, I can get myself around. Here, the buses stop for you wherever you put out your hand and flag them down, and they stop when you either get up and move to the front, press a button (which usually does not work) or yell "BAJAN!" So it was quite interesting to say the least :-) Coming home for lunch was a bit more interesting but Winnie the Pooh, a 1972 orange Chevelle along with Ash's gut feeling saved the day. She remembered a painting of Winnie the Pooh a few blocks down from where we got off the bus and then to make sure we were walking in the right direction, we saw the orange Chevelle we remembered seeing last night when we were walking around exploring and buying our cell phones. Speaking of cell phones, we were unsure how to activate them, but figured out that all we had to do was put in the SIM card and go.

Tonight is Aakash's 20th birthday, so we are venturing into the center of Merida, el Centro, to go to dinner and maybe some dancing. I am going to try to get our host mother to write down the directions for the buses we need to take to get there and back safely.
Hopefully these pictures loaded: the first one was taken today, 90 degrees today, in the courtyard of CIS Centro, our school, with all of us, Prof Dawley, 2 other exchange students from Holland and a couple of others that are also taking classes there. The second is Aakash blowing out the candle on the cakes they bought him

Hola mis amigos!

Well, I'm finally here! Really hard to believe! We arrived last night, and the daughter of our host mother picked us up and took us to la casa. This house is AMAZING! It is so gorgeous on the inside, Ash and I share a room with our own bathroom and a walk in closet, and today, the wireless was hooked up! This afternoon, we went around Merida and our teacher attempted to teach us about the bus system .... will be very interesting in the morning when we have to get up and actually take it ourselves to and from CIS (the school). Aaah ... Our host mother, Mimi, is very nice and does not speak a lick of english, so its been very interesting and at times frustrating, but I know it will get better with the classes and being around it all the time. Even now, my mind is in spanish mode and I actually have to think about writing in english .... very surreal feeling :-P Right now I should probably go study for the Bio quiz I have tomorrow (Insane right? already a quiz - although I got myself into this knowing it was with the Dawleys, so cant really complain :-P)

Tomorrow brings trying to activate the pre-paid cell phone I bought without screwing it up completely, taking the bus and getting off at the right stop, and who knows what else .... Pray for buenas suerte, good luck.

Buenas Noches, hasta luego!

P.S. - when I have more time and energy, I'll try to get some pictures up here :-)

Well, yesterday I Finally unpacked all of my stuff from moving out of school because the realization was starting to set in that I had to first unpack to repack. I know - novel concept. So now there is stuff strewn allllll about my room and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to pack everything. I escaped by going to the library and continuing to read the massive packet of papers on Artebeus jamaicensis, Jamaican fruit eating bat, my Bio 220 paper topic. Went and made copies of my passport, license and other random items yesterday and its finally starting to sink in that on Wednesday I go "back" and on Sunday we fly out .... aaaah! :-) Insanity. It will be quite interesting to see how I fare living with people who do not know any English. Spanish class is one thing, but actually having to have people comprehend what I'm trying to say will be a challenge .... I have enough trouble with people attempting to understand me in English. :-P

Apologies for the disjunction of this post...this is my first venture into the "blogging world" so hopefully I'll improve with time :-)

I suppose its back to staring at the growing pile of stuff and trying to devise a way to pack ....

Happy New Year!