Phew, today has been rather exhausting. I’m ready to just curl up and read a fun book. You’d think actually at this point that I would be sick of reading, as I finally just finished homework. Apparently I’ve become quite the reader.
In any case, today, lets see, well I got up, that’s a start. I was actually ready on time and met Chelsea at the bus stop at 10 til. We got to sit together on the first bus but not on the second. But we were pretty early: we got to school with half an hour to spare. That being the case, I picked up Maximum Ride which is another Clare-suggested novel. It seems pretty interesting so far. We’ll see how it goes.
So I had class at 10. Out of 31 students nobody read. That kinda makes us all look bad but oh well. Getting the readings for this class in particular have been rather difficult, but for Thursday I have my copies currently sitting in the library photocopy section. I’ll be picking those up tomorrow.
After we got out of class (and I went and signed my liability for Diana and got the photocopies for Rural Anthropology and picked up other photo copies for Cavernas) I booked it to the bus station as it was coming around the corner. This was at 12:30. The goal was to be home for lunch at 2:30. So with that in mind, I boarded the bus, fished out my 3 pesos and student ID and went to El Centro.
The bus from school drops you off at Pinata Street. Streets don’t actually have names here, they have numbers. Which, if you’re in the correct neighborhood, there exceptionally helpful. If you have no idea what neighborhood you’re trying to get to, they are exceptionally not helpful. But in any case, I looked around a little on Pinata Street and went to the other bus station. From there, I managed to get off at the Post Office.
This was a little funny, in that we were stopped at a red light a little bit away from it and I was afraid I was going to miss it so I was like “Hey, I’ll just get off here” and the Bus driver was like “Woah I don’t think so, you can’t get off here” so I explained I wanted to go to the post office and he was like “Alright, well I’ll drop you off a little further up the street” and he closed to the door as if to make a point that I wasn’t getting off there. Which was perfectly fine, no biggie, I just didn’t want to miss it, you know?
So anyway, inside the pink post office I learned you are not, in fact, allowed to ship any liquids. Which is just dandy. But anyway. After the post office, it’s getting kinda late now as you can probably imagine, I try to hail the 52 norte on the other side of the street. Bus driver just keeps going. So I’m like, oh man, what am I supposed to do? So I walk up the street a little bit and wait, and wait, and wait for the bus. It’s a little after 2 and I’m fretting about getting back home for lunch on time. Not to mention my nerves were already high strung from trying to make sure I didn’t miss the post office. Only I could get that tensed up about something like that. It’s like playing the last level of the SNES Lion King Game. You get so far, and you get so tense and then – game over, hakuna matata. Actually no not really, well I got tense like I was playing a video game only I didn’t get a game over, It was just on pause for a really long time while I waited for my next bus.
As it turned out, I managed to get home at 2:31 which was just in time for lunch and then after lunch I had a bunch of homework to do. I hadn’t really gotten nearly as much as I had wanted to get done yesterday, well, done, so that meant I had even more to do today. That involved writing another 2 pages on an essay, answering 6 questions about a movie we watched in Spanish class, and reading and summarizing two articles for Cavernas class. …It was a lot. It basically took me the rest of the afternoon.
And here we are now. I’ve actually been doing homework in the house all day even though I really haven’t seen anyone… That’s kinda too bad, but I think it gave me the “work mode” idea. Doing work in my room is always harder than going somewhere else to specifically to it.
And it was nice chatting with Clare this afternoon for a little while. And I’ve been facebook messaging with Scott and I really super owe him a phone call. My bad. Tomorrow I’ll be on top of that. Sooooo with all that said and done I’m gonna just relax for awhile and hope you all have a good night. =)
Cheers! <3 Kate
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
January 26, 2009
I don’t really have anything to report of note today. After our crazy climbing expedition my calves let me know that they hadn’t done anything like that in quite some time and that surprises such as climbing up a bunch of stairs should come with a forewarning.
I thought I was actually going to have a bunch of time this morning that somewhere between sleeping and getting ready at a rather lazy pace disappeared. According to Chelsea I looked like Valentines Day today haha, so I guess I know what I should wear/how I should dress on February 14th.
Today in Mayan Hist/Culture I actually had a little mini presentation to give. It went well, the Spanish was rolling pretty decently which surprised me a little but hey I definitely wasn’t complaining. Somehow it didn’t seem to be coming to mind as fast as it used to, but I don’t know what the deal with that part is.
After classes today I was waiting when I got home for my youngest host sister to arrive to have dinner. Usually she gets back at 7 o’clock or so, but at 7:40 when she still wasn’t back I decided I need to go ahead and eat. She didn’t get back too much past 8 I think. They had stopped by to check out her cake and possibly look again at her dress for her birthday party. That’s pretty exciting I think.
For dinner I had relleno blanco, which was alright. I’d say it’s pretty similar to the relleno negro I had yesterday only not spicy. And definitely improved when had bean sauce/refried beans, as they make everything not so hard to swallow. Definitely the better way to eat those two.
And really that’s about it. I seem to be having trouble getting youtube to take my videos *sad*. I might try uploading videos on facebook as I think you can do that. I did, however, manage to get up the pictures so here the link for those: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026979&l=c8cf8&id=47802150
Thoughts though on talking with friends. As I’ve heard other people say since being here, or at least one other person today, having friends contact you = particularly good for the emotional health. I’m not sure if this is something that a lot of people when they go abroad don’t really care about, like, hey they’re abroad and woo-hoo for the time being the USA doesn’t much exist? I’m not sure. In my case though, and in a few other peoples cases, somehow getting an e-mail, or a conversation that’s somehow not initiated by yourself, is a blessing. It’s just nice you know? Now I’m not trying to be like “please, talk to me” it was more of just a thought process that I’m writing down more for my own note than for all of yours.
The other thought process that I had to day was as I was finishing up this little love story. It was an okay story, but I’m pretty sure that realistically, when the guy who we’d all somehow fallen for left her to back and be a pirate, as pirates are not honorable, that should have really been the end of the story. In real life, people don’t just turn over new leaves for the lady they meet on the high seas, and somehow that uncouth almost dangerous still manages to be attractive. I think that’s one of the most annoying things ever. And it was funny, because as I was reading I was annoyed at how easily it was to be charmed, too. Bah. Oh well. That’s beyond the point, and not at all related to Mexico. Somehow I feel like that’s more female theory related than male theory related as I feel like our pirate was unrealistic in that he came back to save the day.
Haha so cheers to you all, I hope everyone is having a good week. <3 Kate
Sunday, January 25, 2009
January 25, 2009
This morning started out probably not as early as it should have. I set my alarm for 6:45 (which wasn’t as early as it should have been set for) and then didn’t get out of the bed until 5 til 7. Oooh well. I also ended up with a cold shower, not due to a running late problem, but due to a, when the lady cleans my room on Saturday, she leaves the cold water on, and I didn’t realize this til I tried to turn off the water and it was still running when I had turned the hot all the way off. So I’ll need to try to remember that from now on. I may have said that last week. But hopefully from now on I’ll actually remember.
Moving on though, all that talk about making sure I had breakfast and I ended up eating on my way out the door. My host mom was really sweet though, she picked up a packet of Guanabana flavoring for my water bottle since I had mentioned liking guanabana at some point really early on in being here. So that was really cool.
I actually ate a ridiculous ton of breakfast (Will would be proud). But I had these two pieces of bread (toasted kinda) with beans and cheese. Moilletes? I can’t actually remember what they’re called. And then while we were waiting for the bus I decided to walk into the OXXO and get a banana muffin. Yeah, well at least I wasn’t starving like everyone else come lunch time hehe. OXXO (pronounced ox-oh), by the way, if I haven’t mentioned it yet already, is like the Mexico version of Wawa only on an even greater infestation level. Like one every two blocks. Which is, as I recall, kind of how we felt about Wawa when we first came to Maryland but there are definitely more OXXOs here than Wawas.
The bus ride was about an hour and a half to Uxmal. This was actually pretty nice because I just read my book the entire time. I finished it on the way to Mani. It was pretty good, I certainly enjoyed reading it. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It’s kind of a kids book, and I don’t remember when the last time I read a book with illustrations every so many pages was, but that’s okay. Sometimes you just have to do that. I liked it. In the end it actually really had me going it scared me so bad at one point hahaha it was like making you jump in a movie theater. Haha I scared Chelsea I jumped so bad. The book really wasn’t scary, I think I was just really caught off guard somehow by that part. (Looking back on it I’m not really sure why that was I totally should have seen that coming before that one line but seriously…).
Uxmal was pretty neat. The weather was absolutely perfect for this sort of thing. I took a bunch of pictures which hopefully I will soon be putting on facebook for your viewing pleasure. We went with my Mayan History/Civilization professor (who happens to be an architect…or maybe I should say that the other way around, he happens to be my professor). We spent about 2 ½ hours there. I actually went up to the top of this temple there twice. The first time to have my picture taken at the top, and then the second time because I wanted to have my camera at the top. Looking back on that there was probably a more effective means of doing that, as my muscles in my legs were quivering after I got to the top the second time, but that’s okay. Probably just means I reaaaaallly need to work out haha.
After Uxmal, we hopped back on the bus to go to Mani. We went to a pretty nice restaurant and I had Relleno Nego (which was in fact, quite black). We had a scare there for a moment, Nadini fainted on us. She hadn’t been feeling too well earlier in the day, and the doctor said she ended up really dehydrated. It was pretty scary though.
After we ate, we walked over to the Convent, and just took a couple pictures. Everyone was pretty tired by this time so we were back on the bus pretty quickly and headed home.
Today is actually my abuelita’s birthday, and I expected to see a fiesta going on when I got home. Chelsea came with me as we had been invited to have cake when we got back. But everyone was gone, and I think my abuelita was asleep. We did have a little bit of tres leches cake though and it was quite good.
I feel like I should probably have a lot more to say than just this, but pictures are worth a thousand words and I have a bunch of them including video so I’ll let them speak for themselves. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload these videos to youtube, and give the links. I’ll link you to them.
Cheers! <3 Kate
Saturday, January 24, 2009
January 24, 2009
On time today, woo. So I actually woke up at 9 when my alarm went off. My host dad told me he’d show me where the post office was and that was pretty cool. We went up there it’s this pink building on the corner. He was mailing a package to some friends in Chiapas. International mailing looks kinda expensive, though.
I did a little homework for a while after that (probably not nearly as much as I should have) and at 2:30 we had a sort of left-overs lunch. So I had chili con carne which is pretty tasty. =) I had it earlier in the week for lunch too.
At about 4:30 I went down to El Centro to meet up with Gustavo and some of the other IFSA people. We went to one of the Contemporary Art Exhibitions. Some of the displays were pretty interesting, others were not quite as eye catching but over all I liked it.
While we were there, we were invited to a birthday party. And originally I was going to go, but after we went and had dinner my stomach was hurting so I kinda had to back out. Actually though, all things considered, I’ve done pretty well not to have any stomach problems until now. Yay me. Hehe
So I came back here to the casa and went and sat at the table and had tea with my host mom. We chatted a little bit, but not about anything too important so that’s probably a good thing. Tomorrow the IFSA crowd is going to Uxmal (sp?) so we need to leave here around quarter to 7. And my host mom reiterated several times that I needed to have breakfast in the morning. I’m not entirely sure why that is, as I said ok the first time, and since I’ve been here have had a habit of eating breakfast, but hey, it’s all good.
So…even though this is a short day it didn’t really seem like it. I’m pretty tired now though so I’m going to keep it short as it is. I’ve done enough blog posting today with the other entry anyway. You guys should have plenty of reading material, hehe.
Cheers! Kate <3
I did a little homework for a while after that (probably not nearly as much as I should have) and at 2:30 we had a sort of left-overs lunch. So I had chili con carne which is pretty tasty. =) I had it earlier in the week for lunch too.
At about 4:30 I went down to El Centro to meet up with Gustavo and some of the other IFSA people. We went to one of the Contemporary Art Exhibitions. Some of the displays were pretty interesting, others were not quite as eye catching but over all I liked it.
While we were there, we were invited to a birthday party. And originally I was going to go, but after we went and had dinner my stomach was hurting so I kinda had to back out. Actually though, all things considered, I’ve done pretty well not to have any stomach problems until now. Yay me. Hehe
So I came back here to the casa and went and sat at the table and had tea with my host mom. We chatted a little bit, but not about anything too important so that’s probably a good thing. Tomorrow the IFSA crowd is going to Uxmal (sp?) so we need to leave here around quarter to 7. And my host mom reiterated several times that I needed to have breakfast in the morning. I’m not entirely sure why that is, as I said ok the first time, and since I’ve been here have had a habit of eating breakfast, but hey, it’s all good.
So…even though this is a short day it didn’t really seem like it. I’m pretty tired now though so I’m going to keep it short as it is. I’ve done enough blog posting today with the other entry anyway. You guys should have plenty of reading material, hehe.
Cheers! Kate <3
January 23, 2009
Indeed, well now so as not to fall behind, I’m going to go ahead and get writing on yesterday. Lets see.
6AM: Wake up. Actually this wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. On the other hand, I didn’t have quite as much time as I expected to have because the shower that I had taken last night no longer counted as my hair and everything else now smelt quite convincingly like I had bathed in smoke. So, clearly, I needed another actual clean shower.
I got out the door pretty much on time, eating a sandwich on my way out. The bus was taking quite a while to get there, and when I got to Plaza Fiesta I went ahead and just took a Motul since I didn’t feel like waiting for the bus (my patience, I noticed, was a little on the lower side. Not that I was being particularly impatient so much as I just didn’t feel like waiting…so impatience without the attitude).
I got to school and was chilling out. Spilt some water that I was attempting to drink but that’s okay. There are those little snow cone cups for the water at the anthropology school which is great…except that the edges are rather rough and I was tired which doesn’t make for the best coordination of water to mouth situation. Oh well.
We actually watched this super weird movie in Migrations class. At first I wasn’t sure if it was just me and I was tired, or if it was the movie. I think when they were swimming in milk I could say that it wasn’t just me. Either way it was some Canadian movie about Italian migration (lol maybe that right there should have been a hint in and of itself).
So we watched that movie and kind of ran 20 minutes over class time. Chances are the movie is only 2 hours long but we didn’t exactly get started on time. After that I hung out at the school til about 11 while Ashley made photocopies. Then we met up with Eric and made plans for getting to the beach. We were supposed to meet Mandy in El Centro soon.
While we were waiting for Eric to get there in El Centro, Ashley was petitioned by a guy on stilts to play and sing on her ukulele which she had in her book bag. She told him she’d do it for mil pesos and he wrote her out a “check” for mil pesos. Then she started to play and he went around collecting monedas with someone’s baseball cap. She actually made 9 pesos. Mandy and I decided that she basically wins at life.
When we did finally make it to Progresso, it was about 2 o’clock and I was pretty hungry. We stopped by the same restaurant some people ate at last time and chatted with the guy. He actually offered us a really, really good discount because we had been there before and the prices had been better, etc. But instead of 10 dollars my fajitas cost me 80 pesos, and so on around the table. So that was pretty sweet.
Of course, by the time we actually finished there it was 3 o’clock so the sun wasn’t so high in the sky anymore and we’d missed most of the good sun. It was actually a little chilly for laying out on the beach and certainly for going out in the water so I walked around and looked at some stuff. Apparently they don’t sell churros in Progresso, so just a note for future Progresso-goers.
At one point in time while I was there my Spanish had actually returned to its normal goodness and one of the guys I was talking to complimented me on it which was neat. I had good “timbre.” Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way, as fairly soon after I had finished that conversation and such I wasn’t speaking with the flow I had had.
We left the beach around 6 I think and went back to El Centro. At that point in time, I had Mandy and Ashley wanting churros as well, and we bought this huge piece of fabric to take to the beach for everyone to lie on. That’ll come in handy. And we did manage to find a churro stand, though Ashley wasn’t feeling so great so Eric went to take her home, but by that time it was 8 or 8:30 and Mandy and I were also ready to turn in.
And voila, that was pretty much my day. I talked a little with some friends from home before going to sleep and then slept like a rock. Ta-da!
Cheers,
Kate
6AM: Wake up. Actually this wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. On the other hand, I didn’t have quite as much time as I expected to have because the shower that I had taken last night no longer counted as my hair and everything else now smelt quite convincingly like I had bathed in smoke. So, clearly, I needed another actual clean shower.
I got out the door pretty much on time, eating a sandwich on my way out. The bus was taking quite a while to get there, and when I got to Plaza Fiesta I went ahead and just took a Motul since I didn’t feel like waiting for the bus (my patience, I noticed, was a little on the lower side. Not that I was being particularly impatient so much as I just didn’t feel like waiting…so impatience without the attitude).
I got to school and was chilling out. Spilt some water that I was attempting to drink but that’s okay. There are those little snow cone cups for the water at the anthropology school which is great…except that the edges are rather rough and I was tired which doesn’t make for the best coordination of water to mouth situation. Oh well.
We actually watched this super weird movie in Migrations class. At first I wasn’t sure if it was just me and I was tired, or if it was the movie. I think when they were swimming in milk I could say that it wasn’t just me. Either way it was some Canadian movie about Italian migration (lol maybe that right there should have been a hint in and of itself).
So we watched that movie and kind of ran 20 minutes over class time. Chances are the movie is only 2 hours long but we didn’t exactly get started on time. After that I hung out at the school til about 11 while Ashley made photocopies. Then we met up with Eric and made plans for getting to the beach. We were supposed to meet Mandy in El Centro soon.
While we were waiting for Eric to get there in El Centro, Ashley was petitioned by a guy on stilts to play and sing on her ukulele which she had in her book bag. She told him she’d do it for mil pesos and he wrote her out a “check” for mil pesos. Then she started to play and he went around collecting monedas with someone’s baseball cap. She actually made 9 pesos. Mandy and I decided that she basically wins at life.
When we did finally make it to Progresso, it was about 2 o’clock and I was pretty hungry. We stopped by the same restaurant some people ate at last time and chatted with the guy. He actually offered us a really, really good discount because we had been there before and the prices had been better, etc. But instead of 10 dollars my fajitas cost me 80 pesos, and so on around the table. So that was pretty sweet.
Of course, by the time we actually finished there it was 3 o’clock so the sun wasn’t so high in the sky anymore and we’d missed most of the good sun. It was actually a little chilly for laying out on the beach and certainly for going out in the water so I walked around and looked at some stuff. Apparently they don’t sell churros in Progresso, so just a note for future Progresso-goers.
At one point in time while I was there my Spanish had actually returned to its normal goodness and one of the guys I was talking to complimented me on it which was neat. I had good “timbre.” Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way, as fairly soon after I had finished that conversation and such I wasn’t speaking with the flow I had had.
We left the beach around 6 I think and went back to El Centro. At that point in time, I had Mandy and Ashley wanting churros as well, and we bought this huge piece of fabric to take to the beach for everyone to lie on. That’ll come in handy. And we did manage to find a churro stand, though Ashley wasn’t feeling so great so Eric went to take her home, but by that time it was 8 or 8:30 and Mandy and I were also ready to turn in.
And voila, that was pretty much my day. I talked a little with some friends from home before going to sleep and then slept like a rock. Ta-da!
Cheers,
Kate
Friday, January 23, 2009
January 22, 2009
So, I didn’t actually write about today on today, but one day late still counts as close enough, and you’ll see in the end why there was in fact no writing on the day of.
It started out simple enough, went to school, 10 am class, only not really. Apparently we gringas didn’t get the message, but there was no class again today. I’m not entirely sure why but I’m not complaining. Instead we spent about an hour talking to another gringa from Mississippi about the peace corp and traveling around Mexico. So that was fun.
After that, I didn’t have class until 3, so I just spent the time working on homework in the library which allowed me to accomplish a pretty good deal of stuff. The homework for the next day and all that jazz.
In Spanish class at 3 we watched La Misma Luna (aka Under the Same Moon by the English title). It’s an excellent movie that I like quite a lot and would highly recommend to whoever. It was neat watching it with people who hadn’t seen it before to hear little guesses in the plot or gasps, and then, in the end, to turn around and see all these wet eyes. Hehe, it was cool. We also watched it in this movie-theater type auditorium on campus so that was pretty sweet. Get the whole big-screen effect going on.
In the evening I stopped by Plaza Fiesta to see if I could possibly find a migration novel but ended up turning up empty handed….until I went to the panaderia and bought some sort of really good chocolate cookie-cake thing which I’m going to plug under the “cultural enrichment” part of my trip.
That evening, as decided earlier, Chelsea and I went out (now, attempting again to make it via taxi). Her host family actually has some sort of preregistration thing signed up so that it wasn’t nearly as difficult. We just had to give them the number of the house phone.
We went to Mambo Café which is a really nice looking place. There are lights up on the ceiling and that sort of thing. Very tasteful. No cover charge either. (So at this point you’re thinking, wow, that’s really nice). Yeah, it is, until you get a bill. Apparently it’s super expensive if you actually want to order anything there, so we didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. That being the case, we kind of split up and some of us went to Envy.
Chris and Joe actually have a taxi-friend. They have his personal cellphone and they called him up to get us from Mambo to Envy. So that was pretty cool and made for a pretty quick transition all things considered.
At Envy there’s a cover charge of 60 pesos for girls. I don’t remember what it was for guys (seeing as how that wasn’t particularly applicable). In there it was super-smokey though, and when we first arrived I thought I was surely going to have to leave en seguida. It’s like a million Castrignanos all lighting up at once (since I was “cloning” him earlier this week I figure I might as well put that one in there too… which is very similar to the lines along which I was thinking when we first got there but that’s beside the point). And if the smoke didn’t kill me, then the strobe lights were certainly going to which in and of themselves are a little disorienting.
In the end, I ended up hanging around, dancing and such there til 2 at which point I went home and fell asleep sometime around 2:30 in time to get up 3 and a half hours later for my 8am class. Woo. I think I get to mark off the dancing in a night club from my list of a 100 things to do before I die though, which is a pretty sweet deal. And thus ends January 22, 2009.
It started out simple enough, went to school, 10 am class, only not really. Apparently we gringas didn’t get the message, but there was no class again today. I’m not entirely sure why but I’m not complaining. Instead we spent about an hour talking to another gringa from Mississippi about the peace corp and traveling around Mexico. So that was fun.
After that, I didn’t have class until 3, so I just spent the time working on homework in the library which allowed me to accomplish a pretty good deal of stuff. The homework for the next day and all that jazz.
In Spanish class at 3 we watched La Misma Luna (aka Under the Same Moon by the English title). It’s an excellent movie that I like quite a lot and would highly recommend to whoever. It was neat watching it with people who hadn’t seen it before to hear little guesses in the plot or gasps, and then, in the end, to turn around and see all these wet eyes. Hehe, it was cool. We also watched it in this movie-theater type auditorium on campus so that was pretty sweet. Get the whole big-screen effect going on.
In the evening I stopped by Plaza Fiesta to see if I could possibly find a migration novel but ended up turning up empty handed….until I went to the panaderia and bought some sort of really good chocolate cookie-cake thing which I’m going to plug under the “cultural enrichment” part of my trip.
That evening, as decided earlier, Chelsea and I went out (now, attempting again to make it via taxi). Her host family actually has some sort of preregistration thing signed up so that it wasn’t nearly as difficult. We just had to give them the number of the house phone.
We went to Mambo Café which is a really nice looking place. There are lights up on the ceiling and that sort of thing. Very tasteful. No cover charge either. (So at this point you’re thinking, wow, that’s really nice). Yeah, it is, until you get a bill. Apparently it’s super expensive if you actually want to order anything there, so we didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. That being the case, we kind of split up and some of us went to Envy.
Chris and Joe actually have a taxi-friend. They have his personal cellphone and they called him up to get us from Mambo to Envy. So that was pretty cool and made for a pretty quick transition all things considered.
At Envy there’s a cover charge of 60 pesos for girls. I don’t remember what it was for guys (seeing as how that wasn’t particularly applicable). In there it was super-smokey though, and when we first arrived I thought I was surely going to have to leave en seguida. It’s like a million Castrignanos all lighting up at once (since I was “cloning” him earlier this week I figure I might as well put that one in there too… which is very similar to the lines along which I was thinking when we first got there but that’s beside the point). And if the smoke didn’t kill me, then the strobe lights were certainly going to which in and of themselves are a little disorienting.
In the end, I ended up hanging around, dancing and such there til 2 at which point I went home and fell asleep sometime around 2:30 in time to get up 3 and a half hours later for my 8am class. Woo. I think I get to mark off the dancing in a night club from my list of a 100 things to do before I die though, which is a pretty sweet deal. And thus ends January 22, 2009.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
January 21, 2009
This morning started at what I’m going to consider way too early. But I did manage to get myself out the door. I actually ran to catch the bus so it was pretty good timing all things considered. When I got to the Plaza Fiesta, I waited for quite awhile for the bus. Emily showed up though, and after waiting 10 minutes decided it was time to catch one of the Motuls. These are white vans that say Motul on them. Admittedly, it felt a little sketchy climbing into a white bus that pulls up on the side of the road but hey…that’s okay…right? No it’s actually totally legit don’t worry about it.
We got to school without a hitch. Instead of the 3 pesos it costs 5 to take the Motul but it’s significantly faster and I’d say more comfortable as well. On days when the bus from Plaza Fiesta to school doesn’t come readily (it’s somewhat unreliable I feel like) then I’ll totally just catch one of these Motuls.
My first class, which is supposed to be my best class, was actually rather terrible this morning. First off, she launches into how she’s going to have us read a novel about migration. Now, immediately, this isn’t such a bad thing because it seems like it’d be pretty interesting, it’s our choice. If I can find a relatively short one or one in English I should be pretty much set. But also keep in mind I’m reading *a lot* for this class. Not to mention having other classes. And then she looks at us like “what’s the matter? What do you mean you haven’t heard of ______ and _____” and why haven’t we watched a gazillion movies about migration and read a thousand books about it? Clearly that’s the only thing we would be interested and her class is obviously the only one that should matter. We should supposedly be reading 3 to 4 books a month. *ALSO* she supposedly made a compendium we were supposed to get photocopied at the library. It’s not there? Well she left it with some teacher 2 years ago, I have absolutely no idea why it’s not there, but that’s not *her* problem. *We* had better figure out where all those readings went. Seriously woman. ARGsa;jr3’[q 32jeoifdkc; makes me soooo mad. RArh. Seriously. Ugh. She also kept us for 10 minutes after class was over. And was all like “so you should be here on time” and as an after thought, since she was 20-30 minutes late herself (I was 10 minutes early) she added that she would work on that, too. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Moving on though. After that class, which was a horror, I still had homework to do for my class in 2 hours because I was tired last night and didn’t feel like finishing the reading and writing up the summary. So I did that for like an hour and half. It was pretty interesting reading. The class is pretty easy all things considered so I’m not too worried about that class. It was probably a good way to debrief after that…atrocity.
Then I had an hour for lunch which was cheery, and Spanish class which was pretty fun. Our teacher was pretty chill and all. I think he gives us a little bit of slack since we don’t exactly know what we’re all doing. We’re actually going to change meeting times, too, from 3-5 to 2-4. That way we can all leave earlier (woo!)
In class today we actually read a story that I had already read in one of my other Spanish classes. So that was kind of odd because I sort of more or less vaguely remembered it, and some points more than others, but I didn’t feel like there were any comprehension or vocabulary problems on my part since I had already discussed it in another class. That’s okay though. Maybe I didn’t look too lost for once =D
For dinner tonight, somehow, which…I’m not quite sure how, but I ended up with a mango. Now, at first I’m thinking, okay, that’s cool. I like mango-flavored things. I probably wanted a little more for dinner than just a fruit but hey, no problem, I’m actually not all that hungry. So then I take a bite of this mango. Honestly, I’m going to put the taste of that fruit somewhere in between pumpkin and that little bit of throw up in the back of your throat that never quite rises to your mouth but leaves you wanting to gargle with Listerine. Mmmm yum. And I’m looking at this thing sliced up on my plate going, oh dear…I don’t know if I can eat this. So I’m a little ensnared. Do I like, swallow the little gooey pieces like pills? Maybe it’s going to make me sick? If I eat this one does this mean I have to eat another one later? Because I really don’t think I can handle this. So a few more slimy orange pieces spooned into my mouth and someone asks if I like it, which, at this point, I go with the truth “no…not so much.”
In the end, my abuelita ate the rest of the mango and preceeded to inform me that it was very delicious. There’s obviously something mildly wrong with my dislike of said mango, because I’m the first person they’ve ever had who hasn’t liked it. I’m not really sure what the deal was myself. But yeah. That’s the 411 on that.
So I’m going to take the rest of the night which is quickly waning to do a little pleasure reading as I am simply not reading for rural anthropology tomorrow because the photocopy figuring-out thing is too confusing and I had no idea what was going on. Oh-Well.
Cheers! <3 Kate
We got to school without a hitch. Instead of the 3 pesos it costs 5 to take the Motul but it’s significantly faster and I’d say more comfortable as well. On days when the bus from Plaza Fiesta to school doesn’t come readily (it’s somewhat unreliable I feel like) then I’ll totally just catch one of these Motuls.
My first class, which is supposed to be my best class, was actually rather terrible this morning. First off, she launches into how she’s going to have us read a novel about migration. Now, immediately, this isn’t such a bad thing because it seems like it’d be pretty interesting, it’s our choice. If I can find a relatively short one or one in English I should be pretty much set. But also keep in mind I’m reading *a lot* for this class. Not to mention having other classes. And then she looks at us like “what’s the matter? What do you mean you haven’t heard of ______ and _____” and why haven’t we watched a gazillion movies about migration and read a thousand books about it? Clearly that’s the only thing we would be interested and her class is obviously the only one that should matter. We should supposedly be reading 3 to 4 books a month. *ALSO* she supposedly made a compendium we were supposed to get photocopied at the library. It’s not there? Well she left it with some teacher 2 years ago, I have absolutely no idea why it’s not there, but that’s not *her* problem. *We* had better figure out where all those readings went. Seriously woman. ARGsa;jr3’[q 32jeoifdkc; makes me soooo mad. RArh. Seriously. Ugh. She also kept us for 10 minutes after class was over. And was all like “so you should be here on time” and as an after thought, since she was 20-30 minutes late herself (I was 10 minutes early) she added that she would work on that, too. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Moving on though. After that class, which was a horror, I still had homework to do for my class in 2 hours because I was tired last night and didn’t feel like finishing the reading and writing up the summary. So I did that for like an hour and half. It was pretty interesting reading. The class is pretty easy all things considered so I’m not too worried about that class. It was probably a good way to debrief after that…atrocity.
Then I had an hour for lunch which was cheery, and Spanish class which was pretty fun. Our teacher was pretty chill and all. I think he gives us a little bit of slack since we don’t exactly know what we’re all doing. We’re actually going to change meeting times, too, from 3-5 to 2-4. That way we can all leave earlier (woo!)
In class today we actually read a story that I had already read in one of my other Spanish classes. So that was kind of odd because I sort of more or less vaguely remembered it, and some points more than others, but I didn’t feel like there were any comprehension or vocabulary problems on my part since I had already discussed it in another class. That’s okay though. Maybe I didn’t look too lost for once =D
For dinner tonight, somehow, which…I’m not quite sure how, but I ended up with a mango. Now, at first I’m thinking, okay, that’s cool. I like mango-flavored things. I probably wanted a little more for dinner than just a fruit but hey, no problem, I’m actually not all that hungry. So then I take a bite of this mango. Honestly, I’m going to put the taste of that fruit somewhere in between pumpkin and that little bit of throw up in the back of your throat that never quite rises to your mouth but leaves you wanting to gargle with Listerine. Mmmm yum. And I’m looking at this thing sliced up on my plate going, oh dear…I don’t know if I can eat this. So I’m a little ensnared. Do I like, swallow the little gooey pieces like pills? Maybe it’s going to make me sick? If I eat this one does this mean I have to eat another one later? Because I really don’t think I can handle this. So a few more slimy orange pieces spooned into my mouth and someone asks if I like it, which, at this point, I go with the truth “no…not so much.”
In the end, my abuelita ate the rest of the mango and preceeded to inform me that it was very delicious. There’s obviously something mildly wrong with my dislike of said mango, because I’m the first person they’ve ever had who hasn’t liked it. I’m not really sure what the deal was myself. But yeah. That’s the 411 on that.
So I’m going to take the rest of the night which is quickly waning to do a little pleasure reading as I am simply not reading for rural anthropology tomorrow because the photocopy figuring-out thing is too confusing and I had no idea what was going on. Oh-Well.
Cheers! <3 Kate
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