My First Week!

Well, I've officially survived my first week in Mérida! I can't believe our first week here is over. The days here seem so long (it doesn't help that my classes start at 7:30 am) and I feel like I did so much, but this week flew by.

We started our week off with the host moms showing us how to get to school on Monday (it was really cute- a bunch of little old ladies walking their college students to school) for our placement test for our Spanish classes. I thought I did well on it, but not as well as I actually did- I got placed in the advance class with two other students.

We were split up into three levels: basic, intermediate I and intermediate II. For now the only people in any of our classes are DePaul students, and it will stay that way for the basic and intermediate I groups. They only have to go to class Monday through Thursday 9-11. For my class, intermediate II, which is only Beatriz, Joel and I, we have about three weeks of grammar, vocabulary and comprehension classes which are Monday through Friday and go from 7:30 am -9. After the 26th of January the three of us will start taking regular classes at the university, which I'm pretty scared for. Plus they start at 7:00 am, which I am not too happy about. In Chicago I'm not even out of bed by then. I really like our teacher though, even if she does get really frustrated and laugh at me a lot- my conversation skills are a little lacking. Its been fun getting to know the other two kids in my class a little better too.

After our test on Monday, I headed to el centro with Luke and his host mom Elsje so she could show us how to get there on the bus from our neighborhood. We explored the plaza grande a little bit and checked out a free art museum before trying to find our way back to la calle de las piñatas or the street with the piñatas and our bus stop. Then later that night Luke and I explored our neighborhood a bit and walked around for a while.

On Tuesday we started our second class, which is a history class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:30-1:00 with Prof. Morra-Torres, a professor who is here with us from DePaul, about Mexico and the Yucatán. It seems pretty interesting and we get to go on some cool trips to check out Mayan ruins all over the peninsula. Our first trip is in two weeks to Uxmal, a site pretty close to Mérida. Then at the end of the month we're off to the Mayan Rivera (the Caribbean side of the peninsula) for the weekend to visit some sites there.

On a sad note though, my mom called me in between classes on Tuesday to let me know that my grandma had taken a turn for the worst, and it would be only a matter of time until she passed. For those of you who didn't know, my grandma had been sick for a while with intestinal problems and refused to follow her doctor's advice and visit a specialist. She became so sick and frail that my uncle finally made her go to the hospital in the beginning of December when they found out she had colon cancer. She underwent surgery to remove the tumor not too long after, and made it through the procedure. Unfortunately though she never recovered her ability to breathe on her own, and after almost two weeks of being intibated and having a machine breathe for her they removed the tubes and she passed away later that afternoon.
Everyone here has been really great about it and very supportive. Its been really hard being here away from my family and everyone, especially yesterday which was her funeral, but I know she wouldn't have wanted me to come home and miss out on anything here. She was an amazing person who lived an incredible life and I'm going to miss her so much, but now she's in a better place.

Needless to say I didn't feel like doing much on Tuesday, but I didn't want to sit in my room alone and wanted to get out for a bit so I went back downtown for a while with everyone to check out the celebration for el Día de los Reyes, or Three Kings Day. Its usually celebrated on January 6th with rosca, a sweetened bread sometimes with dried fruit and cheese. It kind of reminds me of coffee cake. The fun part though, is that in every rosca there are three little plastic dolls, symbolizing the three kings, and if you get a piece with a doll in it you have to throw a party on February 12th. On the night before Three Kinds Day, a bunch of the big hotels throw a street festival with a TON of rosca, and for $25 pesos, which go to some charity, you get a cup of coke and a piece of the bread. The rosca was laid out on tables for at least two blocks, and there was music and vendors and all sorts of people there.

Wednesday we had class as usual and the weather was the nicest its been all week so I went for a run in the neighborhood park. That night we visited the site where we will be doing our service, a community center called Emiliano Zapata Sur, which is in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. There we'll be split into four groups, and doing different activities like helping start the organic garden, coaching kids soccer teams and teaching computer classes. I'll probably volunteer to do the computer classes cause its looking like no one else wants to do them, and I do have some mad Excel and Access skillz (props to E-Claire Rosenberg for teaching me everything I know). Starting this week we have another class on Wednesday nights at another university for our service learning/anthropology course.

On Thursday we had an orientation at UADY downtown, which has a pretty cool campus in el centro, and afterwards lunch with my host mom and her family. One of the professors at the orientation was actually my host mom's daughter-in-law, so we were both really surprised to see each other when she came over. Violetta, my host mom, had two of her sons and her daughter, their spouses and five grandkids over. It was definitely overwhelming and after about an hour and a half of it I had to go into my room. A few of them spoke English and would try and talk to me a bit, especially the professor and her daughter, who spoke very good English, but after a while everyone just started talking in Spanish all at once and I couldn't understand anything that was going on. I'm pretty sure that I got dissed by her eleven year old granddaughter too when her son-in-law asked me if I understood a lot of what they were talking about, Jimena (the granddaughter) looked at him, made a face and answered "un poquito" which means a very little.

After that exhausting few hours and a little nap (I've been taking a nap almost everyday- trying to speak Spanish all day is pretty tiring) we all went out to the Disco or club that night. I'd never even been to a club in the U.S. but the Disco was pretty interesting. It was a lot of fun though and the people there loved us. I got asked out to dinner by two guys, which obviously I said no to (but Kevin wouldn't mind too much right?) and I haven't married a "Spaniard" yet- no worries fam. (P.S. my shot count is up to two!)

Friday we went to Progresso which is a small port town about half and hour north of the city. The beach looks like its going to be a lot of fun once the weather gets nicer- there was no sun and the water was freeeeeezing. But there are a lot of beach-front restaurants with tables on the beach that you can sit at and be served drinks and food all day, so I promise I will be hitting that up quite a bit.

We went back to the city in the late afternoon and went to a bar called the Mayan Pub, which is a lot like the bars in the U.S. Most of the places here are clubs and have a cover- there aren't a lot of places where you can just walk in and have a few drinks, but Mayan Pub is one of them. It has a big outdoor space in the back with huge trees. Its kind of like drinking in the jungle. I had a drink called michilada, which was tomato juice, hot sauce, lime and beer in a glass rimed with salt and it was delicious. I've officially found my Mexican drink of choice.

And finally yesterday I slept in and pretty much stayed around the house during the day waiting to hear the details of my grandmas funeral. It was a pretty rough day, but I got out with some of the other people and we went for pizza (yay comfort food!), plus I got to talk to my fam and Kevin quite a bit, so that helped. Then they headed out to the Discos whileI stayed in for the night and drank chocolate and ate rosca (I've had so much of it this week I understand why they only eat it once a year) with Violetta and some of her friends from yoga which was pretty funny.

Today looks like its going to be pretty low key- just homework, running and then back downtown for Mérida en domingo which is where they close off a bunch of the streets around the plaza for vendors and everything turns into a huge market.

I hope everyone is doing well and that all of my Chi Omega chicas had a good initiation weekend! I'm so sad I'm missing it, but I'm sure you're all doing a fabulous job- and congrats to the new initiates!