Churros, chuchos, chacos and churches!

As usual, I haven't updated this as often as I would like to so I have a lot to say. Last week, on Wednesday, we went to Cholula. At Cholula, we visited the largest pyramid in the world. It's considered the largest in the world, but has to give that title to the pyramids in Egypt because it's partly undergroud. The pyramid was built originally in the 3rd Century BCE and then was remodeled and more was built on top of the original material about 4 times. The final time, the Spanish built a cathedral on top of it all in 1594. There were lots of people there on that day because it was the first day of spring and everyone was wearing white. The myth is that you can absorb the sun's energy if you wear white.

This week, our excursion was to Tlaxcala. First, we tried the pulque we have been learning about. Pulque is an alcoholic drink made from the liquid honey-like substance in the maguy cactus. It is kind-of thick and sour tasting. We decided that it tasted similar to sourdough bread. Many from the group liked it, but I couldn't take more than a couple sips because of the awful texture. Then, we took a quick look at the plaza where they have bull fights. After that, we visited the oldest church in Mesoamerica!! It was gorgeous and had a lot of history all over the walls as well as many names of the first Spanish people who arrived here. Our next stop was a museum with beautiful, brillant, brightly-colored murals containing history of Tlaxcala and all of Mesoamerica. It was really cool to see images of some of the things we have been learning and the murals were gorgeous! Our last stop was a museum about some of the cultural traditions here. It included traditional costumes for special occasions, pottery, tools and the famous masks that they use for dances. The masks cost about 20-30,000 pesos and some of the embroidered shirts cost so much, our guide compared them to Armani and Prada.

In addition to our group excursions, I have been going to museums with my guide during my conversation times. I went to the museum of the revolution, which is actually the house where 4 families that initiated the revolution lived and were killed. The bullet holes were still in the walls, and you could walk in the places where they lived and died, as well as view some of their clothing, furniture etc. One interesting part is that during the battle, the police climbed 3 different churches close to the house to shoot at the revolutionaries. We also walked around in the "Biblioteca Palofoxiana", a library built in 1647 by two men as apart of the first seminary established in the area. The library has books in more than 8 different languages and topics ranging from religion to history to famous literature to philosophy. We found a book about sermons written in 1631. The library originally contained books that were the only original copy written, but now of course all of those books are catalogued on the computer. I think my guide told me that today and tomorrow we are going to see art museums because we happened upon an art exibit at the seminary, and she saw my eyes light up.

The group is in good spirits for the most part. A few of us have felt a little under the weather, myself included, but nothing too major. Most of us are trying to find the balence between being excited to go home (as we have less than a month left) and still enjoying our time here and not missing out on any experiences. I was very lucky to be able to talk to my parents and brother last Sunday on the phone for about an hour. On Sunday, we leave for Mexico City and we will be there all week. We are visiting a bull ranch, museums and temples and watching a traditional folk ballet, then the last part of the week we are celebrating Holy week with the Mennonite Church there. We are all very excited about it!

Oh, and I suppose I should explain the title for those of you who don't know all of those things. Churros are a little doughnut-like tube-shaped food often filled with chocolate, sugar or pie-filling type stuff. I ate one this last week from a little stand, mostly just to say that I had one while I was here because I'm not a huge fan of them. Chucho is the name for stray dogs that we used in Guatemala. Dogs here tend to be pets, but you still see a few dogs running around loose. Chacos are the wonderful sandels that I have been wearing often and are fairly popular in our group. We often joke about it and take a picture with everyone who has them wearing their Chacos together. Churches, well I would certainly hope you know what those are! We have seen so many old and beautiful churches here, including many with so much gold, figures of people, angels and intricate detail it almost makes you dizzy! I guess that's all for now...until next time.

One more thing..

It was my turn to write for the EMU cross cultural Guatemala blog, and so my post is up at this website if you would like to check it out! :)

http://emu.edu/now/crosscultural/

13 canaries and a rooster

On Saturday morning, after many problems at the airport with tickets and such, thanks to Profe, we ran through security and boarded the plane just in time. We flew to San Salvador, and then to Mexico City. After going through customs, we took a bus to Puebla, which is where we will be living and studying for the next 5 weeks. Puebla is the 4th largest city in Mexico and has some of the most rich history and culture in Mexico. Also, for you worried parents and friends out there, even though it is a large city Puebla is very safe. As soon as we got off the bus, we met our host families and left with them for the rest of the weekend. Kelsey and I are staying with Mari and Alfonso, an couple who have grown children and grandchildren living in other places. They are both very nice, and Mari assured both of us right away that mistakes are part of the learning process. That's good, because I've already made some. They are hosting another person, Alejandra who is about our age and is from Guadalajara, Mexico. She is studying at another university. They also have 13 canaries and they used to have a rooster, but Mari told us that the neighbors complained about the noise. Haha, we were just glad it wasn't keeping us awake while we are here.

On Sunday, we walked with Mari to the center square (or zocalo) and watched an orchestra performance. There is always a lot going on in the zocalo like dances, music and other activities because the city has a lot of history and culture. Kelsey and I are lucky because our house is about 5 blocks from the university and about 8 from the zocalo. Kelsey and I walked back later in the day to the zocalo and there was a band area set up where groups were taking turns playing rock music and one group played "Twist and Shout". It's amazing where random things that I know from the US show up.

Today was our first day at the university. We had an oral test and a written test and afterwards they placed us in classes depending on our level and how well we did on the tests. I am in a class with 6 other people, and there are 3 different levels of Spanish represented in my class, which I love because then I can be challenged more! Our group class is mainly about history and culture of Puebla and Mexico in general, but it is all in Spanish and includes what we would like to learn about history or culture, or what we need help learning as far as grammer and stuff in Spanish. Tomorrow, I have my first individual Spanish conversation with a guide. In our conversations, we are going to be exploring the city and going to museums, churches, and other places around the city. We have a lot of freedom to tell our guides where we would like to go or what we would like to learn about. The director gave us materials including a Spanish-Spanish dictionary...which means that we are supposed to use Spanish words to look up other Spanish words. The goal is to start thinking in Spanish and not translating from English. The other goal is to be able to speak Spanish and be pretty much fluent when we are done. We are going to have lots of homework, but hopefully I will become really good at Spanish! It's hard to believe we only have 5 more weeks in Mexico! I plan on making them count! Hasta la vista!

Hola, I mean Hi...wait, what language do you speak??

Well, hello again everyone! Our taxi arrived at 4:45am here at CASAS last Thursday to take us to the bus station. We just had one problem...we were locked inside CASAS! So we had to wake up our professor, and the guard who helped us get it unlocked. After traveling on a bus all day, we were in Honduras but the battle wasn´t over yet. We didn´t change our money at the border so we needed to find an ATM, we hadn´t eaten anything, and all of the sudden the bus driver called ¨everyone off for Tela, Honduras!¨ but we were at this random gas station in the middle of nowhere! The bus people told us to get into the 2 taxis they had waiting, but we didn´t know how we were going to pay for them, or where we were going! Thankfully, the lady from the bus company told us that the taxis were paid for and they were taking us to our hotel. Phew!! What a relief!

When we got to our hotel, we were able to find an ATM and a grocery store nearby. In addition, our hotel was so nice! We had 2 rooms with plenty of beds, 3 tv´s, a fridge, stove and kitchen area, couch and a computer in another area with somewhat functioning internet. We spent most of the week at the beach, which was 2 blocks from our hotel and not terribly busy. The rest of the time we spent relaxing in the hotel watching tv and playing cards. Breakfast was included, and the rest of our meals we either cooked ourselves, or went to the local pizza place. We also threw one of the group, Heather, a surprise birthday party and celebrated with cake and pizza because her birthday is today. The last night, we went out to a nice restaurant and enjoyed fish and shrimp!

We also went kayaking in the mangroves, or swampy areas, and since there were 7 of us, I ended up kayaking with a Canadian man. He was leading about 15 Canadian high school girls who were pretty obnoxious and annoying during our trip. In the beginning, I started talking to him in Spanish, but he didn´t really respond, so then I tried in English and I got a reply I could understand. He spoke English enough to know what to say and make small talk, but as soon as he finished saying something to me, he would speak to one of the girls in French, or something like that. It was interesting to say the least. After the kayaking, we ate lunch and relaxed on the beach in a Garifuna village. The Garifuna people are from Africa and there are several communities ranging from 200 people (the size of the one we visited) to 4,000. The culture there shows up often as the women working in the house and in the banana fields with the men relaxing, even thought that is not always the case. After lunch, we experienced some spur of the moment dancing, singing and drumming by the Garifuna people. That was quite an experience! The singing and drumming was fabulous and the dancing...well, it was a little bit vulgar, but also cool to see the traditional dance style. Our guide told us that when a woman dances, that means she´s ready to have a baby. It was really interesting to see a different culture than the ones we´ve been experiencing on this trip so far.

On the way home, we left the hotel at 5:30am and were planning on getting back to Guatemala City at around 7pm. We ended up arriving at 8:30 at the bus station and were planning on calling a cab from there. But we ironically ran into Rigoberto, a staff person from CASAS who works here and gives students rides after school. He was picking up someone else and taking them to CASAS so he just happened to be there!! We were shocked and he was joking about each of us paying $100 to get a ride. But then he explained that of course we could come with him for free, so we piled into his truck and away we went! He told us that we must have a lot of luck, and we told him either that, or God is with us. :)

Wow…I´ve already written way too much, but I just wanted to throw one more thing out there. We leave for Mexico tomorrow morning!! We are leaving here at 4:30am and plan on arriving in Puebla, Mexico around midday. We are meeting our host families right away, and spending the weekend with them. Nothing like jumping right into it! This time, it will be a little different because 2 students stay with a family together. I´m staying with Kelsey, who is pretty fun and has actually been my neighbor since Freshman year. She´s at a much higher Spanish level than me, so hopefully I will learn some things from her. It seems crazy that we are leaving Guatemala tomorrow. We had a meeting to talk about what to expect in Mexico, and there are a lot of exciting things to look forward to! Here we go again!

Hasta la vista Guatemala!

Well...my how time flies when you are having fun and studying like crazy! We are more than halfway done with our trip and are finishing up our time in Guatemala. Both of those things are very hard to wrap my head around. It seems like just yesterday we were meeting our host families and teachers for the first time.

Last week we visited the U.S. Embassy here in Guatemala. I had no idea that there were so many U.S. Embassies in the world and that they have so many different functions other than just maintaining good relations with other countries. Our speaker there talked about how they give out visas and who gets approved. It is somewhat difficult to get one, but about 2/3 of people get approved. She also talked about how they are working to show a positive U.S. presence in Guatemala and talk with people in the highland areas. She said that most times, it makes a huge difference just to show up and be present with the people there. Hmm...talking with people, that seems like such a hard thing to do but yet the U.S. does so little of it.  In addition, she talked about how she got her job at the embassy. It involved a giant extremely hard test, lots of interviews, group examinations and more. It sounds like a pretty cool job...traveling, talking to people, etc. but after she explained how she got the job, I changed my mind.

On the same day, last Thursday, my class and another class (4 students and 2 teachers), had another cooking day during class. The first time we made traditional Guatemalan foods (dobladas and banana bread) so this time we made a chocolate pudding cake. We talked only in Spanish and it´s amazing how much you learn just by baking a cake. While we were waiting for the cake to bake, we watched the Disney movie Tangled in Spanish. Last time we watched the Incredibles, and both were equally funny in Spanish. :)

Today, I completed all of my exams for my second section of Spanish classes. So I had an oral portion, written exam and I to read a page of information and write over 30 lines of response. I think overall they went ok. The oral portion was much better than last time and I felt comfortable talking this time. I am just so glad to be done!! My brain is fried and I need a break! Buuuuuut, this afternoon we have a lecture again, and tomorrow morning I have a presentation in Spanish. Also, I have reading and reflections to do for my history and culture class due tomorrow. In addition, tonight is our last night with our host families and I am not really ready to leave. I have a few gifts and pictures for them and will give those tonight. I just hope that I can come back and visit soon, and there is a possibility that 2 of my siblings might come to the U.S. so that is definitely a positive!! :)

Thursday morning, I´m leaving on a bus at 3:45am....yes, in the morning on a taxi and then a 13 hour, yes 13 hour bus ride....for Honduras and the beach!!!!! :) I´m going with 6 of my friends for our free travel. We may also be visiting some museums, snorkeling and kayaking but most of our time will be spent on the beach. If you can´t tell, I´m pretty excited!!