así es….de mi punto de vista, pues

oh yeah….and i have taught the other salters here dabong…got that covered pretty quickly

i´m getting impatient to be able to speak spanish without thinking about it and, also, to go to my placement.  i know, logically, that learning to speak another language takes awhile, but it´s frustrating when i´ve learned a lot of this stuff before, but can´t remember it now.  much of it has been coming back with relative ease, but some of it (such as los pronombres) is taking a bit longer.

the schedule here is pretty relaxed…we have class five hours a day, but after that we more or less have off, except for our homework.  so we eat slow meals, go shopping (or at least window shopping), read, etc.  it is a nice change from the usually hectic schedules in the states, but i also don´t feel like i´m doing anything yet.  though i know that being able to speak with the people that i´m going to be working with will make the work a lot easier.  this is what i keep reminding myself.

every evening at 7:30 i watch a telenovela with my host mom….it´s getting pretty intense.

i began James Herriot´s All Creatures Great and Small last night, which made me want to be in Olinalá, out in the country with animals and wide open spaces as soon as possible. Herriot writes very engagingly…i laughed out loud a good bit.

Tanja (pronounced Tanya) and i are in the same class again this week and we have a great time…we mess up a lot and laugh at ourselves a lot.

Lisl and i are going running this afternoon to get some exercise in besides just walking…our host mothers think we are too thin and always try to push more food on us.  ai.  maybe we´ll get parasites….the nice ones that don´t make us too sick, while causing us to lose the weight we´ve gained.  perfecto.

Dan, Hannah, Lisl, Tanja (a German girl who´s in my class at language school) and I took a bus from Cuernavaca to Mexico City Friday afternoon, arriving back at the MCC reps´ house to an amazing meal of stir-fried green beans, beef and rice….did I mention earlier that Ana is Cambodian and cooks amazing food? It rained cats and dogs Friday evening, so we stayed in, played cards, Scattergories and took pictures of ourselves (soon to be posted, if I can figure out how to upload things to this blog).

Yesterday morning we got up early and headed out to Teotihuacan, a ruins site of some of the largest pyramids in the world. We took a forty minute metro ride (the metro system is really quite impressive here) and then an hour bus ride out to Teotihuacan. The site is pretty impressive…it would be more impressive if the ruins were more intact, like at Machu Picchu. As it is, the Sun Pyramid and the Moon Pyramid are quite amazing. Both were built without any metal tools, pack animals or the wheel. They had to believe very strongly in their divine reasons to build such enormous structures completely and totally by hand. The Sun Pyramid is the third largest in the world (the largest is in Egypt, the second largest is also in Mexico)…measuring 222 m at the base on every side. It is currently 70 m tall, though when it was actually in use for religious purposes, there was some sort of structure on top. It also used to be painted red. I can´t imagine either building it or painting it…the steps were extremely steep (as will be shown by the pictures) and if you fell, you could hope that some of the stones that are sticking out would catch you, rather than hurt you more. There was also a very nice museum onsite, in which most of the signs were also in English so we could easily understand what they were saying. Teotihuacan, at its largest, was around 75,000 people in 22 sq km.

Last night it also rained (it seems to rain largely in the evenings here), so we stayed in again and got lessons in how to make salsa verde and a red salsa made only from peppers. We also watched Blood Diamond…which I would recommend. Partway through the movie I decided that I was never going to buy any stone or metal without knowing where it came from.

Does anyone know any good minute mysteries? We have to keep ourselves entertained on our many public transportation journeys….

my class is studying direct and indirect pronouns. i have a cold and my fuzzy brain is not understanding them at all. my class is to the point where we laugh hopelessly as one of us tries every single option (lo, las, le, se, etc…) before we happen to land on the correct pronoun.  it reminds me of laura ingalls wilder, in one of her books, where carrie doesn´t know the answer and laura desperately wants to answer for her, but can´t…except that, even though we want to answer for the person who is painfully trying to put the pronoun with the object, we can´t because we don´t know the answer either.  luckily, our teacher is very patient and is willing to go over things again and again.

i don´t understand what pronouns are even in english, so this probably doesn´t help my understanding of them in spanish.  if anyone has any helpful hints, i´d welcome them greatly.

i´m going to go home and attempt to sleep off this cold.

We made it. Dan, Hannah, Lisl and I arrived in Mexico City Saturday afternoon with no problem other than the difficulties encountered attempting to maneuver the large amounts of luggage we possess around the airport.  The country representatives, Derrick and Ana, along with their 3 year old son Lukas, fed as an amazing traditional Mexican meal and then we all conked out for awhile.

We went out to a small taco restaurant for dinner.  The tacos in Mexico City are a good deal different than what I´ve always thought of as tacos…these were small corn tortillas, about four inches across, with your choice of meat, cheese, cactus, or avocado on top.   It was delicious.

Sunday morning we went to the church that Dan will be working with in Nalculpan, which is just outside of Mexico City.  We took a half hour metro ride (very nice metro system) and a half hour combi (VW buses turned into large taxis) ride to get to this very small church.  We were introduced and people were excited to meet us and very welcoming.  We spent Sunday afternoon eating, reading and packing our clothes for our first week of language school.

Early Monday morning we took the metro to the bus station…it doesn´t get light here till rather late..7:30ish…and took a Greyhound type bus from Mexico City to Cuernavaca, about an hour bus ride.  There was some gorgeous scenery on the trip south…mountains and forests…and everything seemed to be so green.  The four of us were split into different classes after a short entrance exam and we began class promptly.  All of us have no more than four people in our class so we get a good amount of attention and correction.  My class has a girl from Germany, a guy from Japan and our teacher, Carlos, in addition to myself.

It´s amazing to me how much grammar I´ve forgotten in the part four years that I haven´t been taking Spanish.   It´s also surprising how quickly things are coming back.  I think these classes will be a very good re-introduction to the Spanish language before I head out into the campo.

The four of us are all living with different host families.  I am the only student with my family at the moment, although they have another small house behind the main house in which students can live.  My family has obviously had many students live with them before and they want to make sure that I have everything that I need.  They are very willing to talk with me in Spanish and, despite the fact that my sister is fluent in English, she doesn´t use the language except to clarify something.  They have been very welcoming and kind.

The eating schedule is somewhat different here…we start classes at 8 am, so breakfast is at 7:30, lunch is at 2:30 and dinner is at 7:30.  There is a small bakery right up the street from our school that we can get a snack at during one of our breaks from class.  Classes are held from 8-1, with a ten minute break every hour and one 30 minute break halfway through.

I am still catching up on sleep, though I did manage to finish the last Harry Potter book, which is highly necessary to read for anyone who´s read any of the other books.  I´ve taken a number of pictures which I hope to put up on here as soon as I can figure this ancient computer out.  I´m not sure if this thing even has a USB port.  If not, then I´ll have to wait till we go back to Mexico City to upload pictures onto the country reps´computer.