Bienvenidos a Merida!

Goodbye USA, Hola Mexico!
I landed last night in Merida around 10:00 and checked into the Merida Mision Panamericana Hotel in the downtown. The area is having a bit of a cold spell and it was only 65 degrees last night, and only hit 73 today, which is apparently terrible weather. After -1 in Chicago I'm obviously not complaining.

For anyone curious on what the heck I'm doing in Mexico in the middle of winter (besides taking an eleven week vacation), I'm taking classes through a DePaul program at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in the city of Merida till the end of March. Merida is the biggest city on the Yucatán , and is about 3 to 4 hours west of Cancun. The city is an old Spanish settlement and has a ton of really pretty colonial-style buildings with narrow streets. All of the streets are on a grid system, so its pretty easy to navigate, and are centered around a huge plaza in the middle of the city. I didn't take my camera out today, but I'll be sure to get some pictures to post soon!

While I'm here I'll be taking two Spanish classes, a Mexican history class focusing on the Yucatán peninsula, and a anthropology/service learning class through another university, Universidad Marista de Merida. For the Spanish classes we'll have tutors, and the history class involves a couple of weekend and day trips to different cities and Mayan ruins around the Yucatán peninsula, which seem really cool. I'm still not too sure what the service learning class will be like, other than we work at a center in one of the poorer communities in the city, but we'll find out when we visit it on Wednesday. I only have classes Monday through Thursday, so we'll have plenty of time to travel around the peninsula while were here.

The group that I'm studying with is pretty small- there are only eleven of us, which is actually kind of fun. So far everyone seems like they're getting along, and we've been talking about traveling together on our free weekends. Each of us is staying with a different host family or "mamá" throughout the different neighborhoods in the city, none of whom speak English. I moved in with my host mom, Violeta, tonight and she seems really nice. She's a bit older, I think in her late sixties, and has five kids and nine grandkids. None of them live with her, so its just us in the house, but she babysits two of her grandsons a couple of times a week so I'll get to meet them soon. She's a vegetarian (which I guess is rare for Mexico, given the amount of meat people eat here), which is perfect since I don't eat a lot of meat any way, and even better because most of the food here consists of lots of meat, tortillas, beans, and maybe a few vegetables. Hopefully all the fruits and veggies here will balance the food out for me. So far we've been able to communicate pretty well, and I can understand almost everything she says- it’s the responding and holding a conversation that’s the hard part.

The house is small but really cute and has an amazing garden out back. I have my own room and bathroom, plus there are two other rooms, a living/dining room and little kitchen. The houses here are all really close to the street in the front, but have high walls and fences around the property. The backyard and garden is almost as large as the area the house sits on, and has a pool (which she doesn't use, darn) a pack porch, patio, garden and fountain/pond. She's also a yoga instructor and has her own studio in a building behind the house, so hopefully I'll be able to take some classes!

Today was a busy day, with orientation this morning, a bus tour of the city (on an open air bus called a Wawa- pretty cool), a three course lunch at an authentic Mayan restaurant (lunch is the main meal of the day here), a walk through the central plaza and downtown area, and moving in with my host mom. Needless to say, I'm exhausted! Tomorrow our host moms are showing us how to take the bus to the university, then we're taking our aptitude test for our Spanish, and after is a little welcome fiesta with the mamás. Hopefully I'll be able to explore my colonia (neighborhood) a little bit too with one of the guys who is living only a few blocks from me.

I'll post some pictures, more about the city and the cool festivals going on when I'm here in a few days. Hope everyone is having a good year so far, and good luck to everyone at DePaul starting their classes tomorrow!