February 6, 2009

Eventually I managed to get out of bed…and out the door. My host mom left breakfast waiting: eggs with cut up hot dog and a side of beans. Well, if I mixed the hotdog eggs with the beans I was able to eat it. And I’ve also discovered that I’m not a big fan of Chamomile tea. But yeah.

So I went to class…migrations, and inspite of my participation that class went *so slow.* I looked at my watch thinking class was almost done, and we were only an hour into it (ie half way done). But then I took the bus back to Plaza Fiesta, and from Plaza Fiesta went on the walk home. This time I brought my iPod so that was kinda nice. People were out cooking really good smelling food as I walked by but I managed to resist.

When I made it home, I took my laundry (9 kilos worth…seriously shouldn’t let it get to be that much) to the Laundromat, and then hopped in the shower. I read for a little while to pass the time, and then it was time for lunch. We had chicken which I managed to eventually place as tasting a lot like Chic Fil A (if you get like the sandwich and it comes with the pickle). It was really delicious and then we also had a brownie for dessert. Yummm.

And that’s really about the extent of the day. After lunch I took a nap, and somehow after I woke up I managed to pass some time until 11 o’clock where I went to bed. I played a little RA3 but made a huge mistake after I captured some ore refineries. Apparently, unlike in prior games, the harvesters don’t automatically convert into your own harvesters, so when I was suddenly not hooked up with the cash I thought I had, I realized that and then the enemy took out the refineries and that was pretty much game. But it had autosaved at some point right after I took the refineries I think so I’ll be able to go back and get my own prospectors in there.

So…yeah. Exciting I know. I need to work on that whole … I’m not really sure what you would call it, taking the initiative or something. Not like I didn’t already know I had that problem but still. Okie pokie, that’s about it. Cheers~ <3 kate

February 5, 2009

My goodness it would seem I’m behind the ball yet again. Last night wasn’t for any particular reason other than when I realized I hadn’t written, I was already in bed and who knows if I would have been able to get internet access anyway. So…I just stayed in bed.

I actually woke up before my alarm, though this day. This is a little surprising in the sense that I was not able to go back to sleep to get that last half an hour. So instead I just piddled around on the internet for a few minutes until the alarm went off.

Classes were pretty easy. In both of them (Rural Anthropology and Spanish) we watched movies. The Rural Anthro movie was reaaaaallly weird. Basically what happened was this pretty nice guy was “promoted” to be the municipal governor of this…state or city or whatever. So he and his wife drive out there and the city is in the middle of nowhere (hence the rural application to the movie). Now…he’s all about big ideas and bringing the ‘modern’ to this pueblo, but there’s no money in the treasury. He ends up taking a really nice sized bribe from the owner of a brothel which he went to shut down, and it’s all downhill from there. He raises taxes, sleeps with all 3 (4?) of the prostitutes, kills…I don’t know how many people. Really weird. And I’m not really sure if I understood the ending…he may have become like…the president of Mexico.

In Spanish class we watched Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) which is based on a book I read back in 10th grade. So I’m thinking that was pretty cool, but the book was significantly better. The movie made it seem kinda tacky. So in the end I wouldn’t really recommend either of these movies to you even if I did know the title of the first one.

After class I came home. And I don’t think I did too much after that, really. I had dinner with Maria Regina, we had croissants with cheese. I went to bed rather early actually, at like 9. I’m not sure if I was actually tired, or more like I had just accomplished everything that had to get done for the day by quarter of, and then did the math wrong and thought 9 o’clock meant I’d be getting 8 hours of sleep. I think I got about 8 ½.
And that’s a wrap. Cheers! <3 Kate

February 4, 2009

Happy Birthday Andy!!!! Today is Andy’s birthday for those of you who don’t know. Now he’s 22 and for all the single ladies he’s also on the market ^.~ Good catch. …and I realize that has nothing at all to do with Mexico but that’s okay ‘cause I’m pretty sure once I struggled to get myself out of bed this morning I was figuring out when I was going to be able to call and with him a happy birthday (yay) and we talked for like… 45 minutes…part of which I was apparently a stalker girl for until he realized that it was just me, and I was in Mexico and indeed not following him around. ^.~
Today was a good day. After I managed to get out of bed. And I was suffering with you all through the cold weather, and by that I mean I wore that white hoodie that Craig changed a tire in oh-so-many years ago at the Putt Putt Fun Center and generally found the temperature of 70 degrees to be below my preferred temperature by about 10 degrees. =D Enjoy the freezing guys.
Moving on, Wednesdays are the long days, we had Migrations and even though we have a sub the amount of reading we’re being assigned is insane. I’ll spare you, but suffice to say it was a huge packet that I’m not going to spend the money to photocopy because it would be too expensive and I’m not going to read it anyway. And if my prof is somehow reading this, I have absolutely no problem admitting it because that is *way* too much (and we have two other packets on top of that one… and the novel).
After class I went to the library and read for said class and then we had Cavernas and Spanish which is always fun. We’ll be finishing up with our prepositions soon but I have an absolutely amazing Spanish teacher which is a bunch of fun. He whistles a lot to indicate a ‘fill in the blank’ and just is generally very energetic and smiley.
Classes behind me, I got home around 5:15, and was starving, so I had a snack, and then called Andy (insert conversation here) and then 16 of us went to this Italian Restaurant in Gran Plaza for Joe’s birthday. It was pretty sweet, his meal was actually completely free. And then we went across the street to 5 Time Lounge and Bar. Unfortunately, we didn’t time this quite as well as we had thought. The buses end the last one around 11:30, however while we left at 10:30, that was apparently too late for any buses to come and Chelsea and I ended up splitting a taxi. In reality though between the two of us it only cost a dollar each. Cool, huh?
Aaaaand that’s basically it. Seemed like a pretty busy day even though it doesn’t fill up an entire page in Word. Maybe I’ve kind of skimmed over some of the details. I thought of New Years as I ate my fettuccini alfredo. There’s nothing wrong with eating the same thing. ..And it was never a big deal before New Years (or at least it had never been pointed out to me). Maybe I should add that it also came with a caesar salad. There you go. Exactly what I eat. It was a special promotion, all that and a soda for 99 pesos (like less than 9 dollars).
Well, that’s all for me I think, toodles~ <3 Kate

PS: I didn’t mean to make my walk seem like a boring trip, I just meant for an hour long trip I don’t have any profound thoughts to share with you. Lol if I didn’t want to keep walking I would’ve just hopped up on the bus. =)

February 3, 2009

I figure I should get moving on this before I forget again, hehe. This morning started out pretty easily. I mean, having slept as much as I did it shouldn’t’ve been a problem, right? So I went about the routine, had two pieces of toast with some apricot jam (I mentioned that here in Mexico they have pre-toasted toast, right? Like the point of it is to have cracker-crunchy bread instead of making the bread warm? Yeah.)

Rural Anthropology dragged on just like it normally does. I’m really not going to like it very much when we have our midterm in that class. Maybe we can all study together…with some of the people who actually know what’s going on. Sitting through that for 2 hours is rough…and we even got out 15 minutes early lol. But we’re watching a movie on Thursday so that’s pretty fantastic.

And then I caught the bus home. Only one class on Tuesday even if it is a bore. Then I got to Plaza Fiesta and my stomach was rumbling rather obnoxiously so I got a little bit to eat. I tried to get something small, and it kind of was, but it was still kind of a meal, and I also stumbled across a chai tea latte. The Chai was something I’d been wanting for almost a week now. And whatever it was I ate, something that looked like it should have been Chinese food but wasn’t, was exceptionally mediocre, and I felt a little bad because I wasn’t hungry at all afterwards, and wasn’t exactly starving for lunch either.

But after this escapade, I decided I was going to walk for a little while, and then catch a bus for the rest of the way back. I stopped at a place that does mani/pedicures to see what their prices were, too. Pretty cheap I think when it comes down to it, 80 and 100 pesos respectively, so that’s less than 8 and less than 10 dollars which…pretty good. Might have to take advantage of that. Just maybe. Especially since I have the same fingernail polish on since New Years and a month later it’s not looking so hot. …and I don’t have any fingernail polish remover (oops?).

So I was walking and walking and eventually just walked the entire way home. I don’t even know what I thought about really, it was all pretty mundane, and fairly repetitive, but it took me an entire hour to walk back. That’s okay though.

At 2:30 I sat down with my family and we had lunch. I tried not to eat quite as much as I would have while at the same time eating enough that it wouldn’t look suspicious, ya know? I think I succeeded. Unfortunately that’s still probably more food than I really needed. I think the whole change in food schedule really has messed with my dietary practices.

And I’ve been doing some homework. Well…not probably as much as I could’ve accomplished but I did read one of the entire packets for Migrations class tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even have something to say tomorrow morning but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, ne?

I’m trying to decide if I want to go eat something for dinner or not. I’m really not that hungry but it’s kind of at that ‘well, it’s dinner time…you should go eat....’ type thing. And I’m going to need to put the internet on too…Bah. Ohhhhh welllllll.
Ciao~ Kate <3

February 2, 2009

Woops! So the lack of post on the correct date this time is due to finding the cure for insomnia. You see, if you read a text book, you get tired. Unfortunately, however, this is just a remedy for an average afternoon. If you read your text book in Spanish, this is transports you to dream land pretty quickly, but you might have a fighting chance at making it out of the trenches with the lectura finished. On the other hand, if you read your text book in Spanish in your bed at 9:30 at night, this, my friends, is the sure fire way to cure insomnia. And…yeah so basically I have no excuse only that my day lasted an entire 12 hours where in I didn’t do a whole lot but in my attempt to do homework I found myself thwarted.

I got up just before 10 and did some homework outside, just some reading for Rural Anthropology which I did not in fact finish, and then I tried to read inside on the couch the novel for migration but somehow my eye lids kept drooping closed. After lunch though I talked with my mom for a while which was fun, and then Chelsea and I went to the movies.

There are a ton of malls around here. It’s pretty uncanny, actually. But anyway, we learned that there’s a difference in regular going to the movies and then VIP seatings. VIP seatings cost 80 pesos (roughly a little less than 8 dollars) and regular seatings cost 50 (roughly less than 5). You could also go to a discount theater and pay about 30 pesos, and there’s even the possibility that here it’s a 2 for 1 type deal so two people enter on one ticket. Pretty sweet, eh? Anyway, I’m not entirely clear on what the VIP seating involves, but it sounds like they bring you food to your seat or something along those lines which sounds pretty fantastic to me. But we went to see Bride Wars in a regular setting.

Chelsea’s a big fan of chick flicks, which is dandy. As for this movie I didn’t think it was super fantastic. Like it was fun to see, but not something that’d I’d go watch again. And I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone planning on seeing it but the ending I thought was a little deceptive…if you see it and think about it afterwards maybe you’ll see what I mean.

We also went to Burger King, which is basically our favorite place now. But we got blizzards, or the BK equivalent which I think is called a BK storm. Very tasty. Andd….that pretty much brings us back to hoping on the bus, heading back home, trying to do homework and falling asleep in the process pretty much. Hehe well that just meant almost 10 hours of sleep for me today which is lovely.
Pues, Cheers~ <3 Kate

Learnings on Life 01

So every once in a while, hopefully, I’ll be able to say “hey…I’ve grown a little.” Which is kind of what you're supposed to do whilst studying abroad (so I get points to count against the failing at studying abroad aspect of this trip ^.~) In this case, the story is dancing. Dancing, or the idea thereof perhaps I should specify, has been something I’ve liked. High school dances were pretty sweet, for some reason H2O was a good idea at some point during senior week, and you can continue in that vein right on up to now. But um, you can also continue with this snap shot that generally involves me chilling in whatever local chair happens to be unavailable and, if I’m lucky, with a pepsi in hand. I can think of more than one occasion where in I’ve dragged Will out, and while we’re actually at whatever place you’d think it was the other way around. A severe need, probably, on my part, to loosen up.

Now being here, people go to these clubs on the weekends and dance and that sort of thing. It’s one of those “hey well you should at least experience it type things” and the first time we went out, we’ll just say through a series of events I went from being very much the same girl who enjoys sipping her drink and chilling in a chair, to dancing my little heart out. Now, you might be thinking “so why are you telling us this tonight when we know you went out the first time in like, the middle of January.” Well, that was something of a one-time thing I thought. In this case, however, the whole affair came a lot more naturally and I was thought to myself, yo, I could do this even in the States. The whole “people you know would be there” bit (which here in Merida tends to be nonexistent and helps in the whole cracking the shell) doesn’t seem nearly as intimidating.

And basically that’s it. We had a good time at Ky60. I like it better than Envy—it was no smoking inside which = <3 .Very very good. Aaanyway, I just thought I might share. Hopefully this’ll be the start of more than just one manner of growing. Perhaps this counts under the ‘confidence’ facet or the ‘not worrying so much about what other people are thinking’ sect. Classification to be determined at a later date. And this time, with the taximetro functioning, it only cost 55 pesos. Much better than 90 or however much it was to get home the first time.
Cheers! <3 Kate

February 1, 2009

FEBRUARY!!! Yay! One month down (or 4 weeks if you want to look at it like that) and 19 more days to go until Mom comes =D So that was exciting. 4 more months sounds like a long time, but somehow rolling out of January and into February makes it seem like time is passing. Like when you lay in bed and look at the clock and watch the numbers change…Anyway it seems to mark a certain amount of time passing. So 4 more months/ 16 weeks (for those of you who have more trouble with math than I do).

This morning I got up all bright and early to go to church at 7 AM. I’m not really sure why it was decided that we would go to church in the morning when there was an evening option, but that was indeed the way things were decided and we did in fact go.

Chelsea and I popped onto the 52 Norte and road until we got to calle 50 at 51. We needed to get to calle 74 at 49. So we walked, and walked. I think I’m going to really need to invest in a pair of flipflops for skirt wearing because as comfortable as the heels I have are, walking long distances isn’t really the best.

But we finally made it to church if not a little bit late, and we sat down behind Arianna and Mandy who managed to be on time. …and we sat down for…choir practice…? We got in, and the woman singing at the front leading (who mind you wasn’t exactly the next Madonna) was teaching the congregation to sing the song…and I don’t mean like I’m going to sing it then you sing it, she was literally showing them how to go up and down with their voices… It was…really odd. Then we sang a different song and she told us we did a good job and there was nothing to correct! …seriously? …like…for real?

Then the pastor came up to the front, and he seemed like he’d be a pretty lively speaker…and the message…if you can consider it a message…was…I’m not really entirely sure what to say about it. Not substantial? Maybe that’d be the best way to put it. To give you an idea, the service lasted for an hour. In that hour, the first half was probably spent learning to sing, and then there was praying over the kids when they exited for their own program, and then the message and then offering. That doesn’t leave much time for talking. I should also mention we four gringas were the only people between the ages of like… 16 and 35. Yeaaaaah.

After that though, because it’s Sunday this is sort of a special affair in Merida. They close down the centro in terms of automobiles and set up vendors in the street and that sort of thing. I didn’t actually buy anything. While we all looked around I didn’t think Mandy and Chelsea were really shopping. They were saying that we’d have plenty of opportunities to buy this sort of stuff later. Which is probably true. Eh, oh well.

So we made a round of El Centro and sat down for what we thought was going to be a Mayan dance of sorts. As it turns out, we sat down for a puppet show. This was entertaining for a little while, as in, in the beginning, but we were kind of tired and so we left before the show was over.

Chelsea and I then got on the 52 Norte where we were told our student IDs weren’t valid on Sundays when it comes to the buses, which means we either ripped the original bus driver off or we were ripped off. We were also ripped off when we bought some churros which is annoying. Note to self: do not converse in English while buying anything.
For lunch my family brought home Kentucky Fried Chicken, haha. So that was alright, and I shared the part of the cheesecake Diana had given me (oh let me sum up here really quickly for your sakes, on Friday a small group of us went to Diana’s (the resident director’s) house for dinner and it was really good she fixed us curry and for dessert we had chocolate cheesecake) with my family and they all enjoyed it.

Basically after that I fooled around on the computer a little more. Watched a small portion of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and took a nap for an hour. I have been trying not to make a habit of napping while I’m here. I’ve done a good job of it over all, but today I gave in.

Aaaand this is being posted rather early (as you may or may not notice via the time stamp) because we may or may not go out tonight to this place called Kyu {I don’t know about you guys but this makes me think Japanese not Spanish} which is supposed to be really cheap for girls on Sunday nights and since we don’t have class tomorrow it’s the perfect opportunity to try it out. So we’ll see. I’ll talk with Chelsea and see what’s up.

I’m reallllllly getting sick of cigarette smoke. The smoking population here makes SU look like a sterile doctor’s office. It’s *everywhere*. Bleh. I think I’m going to end up with a black lung before I leave without ever needing to smoke myself. Isn’t second hand smoke worse, too?

Anyway. That’s about all I have for today. I ate all my cashews. I really need to stop eating so terribly. As I’ve been eating much more than I should/need. In part I think it’s because I’m not entirely in control of what I’m eating, ie, food is being prepared so I eat what I’m served, and then sometimes you just want something that’s ‘normal’ or that tastes particularly good when you can have it since you don’t always have that option. Bah…I should probably end that reallyyyy quickly. We’ll see though, it’s kind of hard. Pues, Cheers! <3 Kate