Days 5 and 6: The ruins

I didn't blog last night because it was late and I was frustrated after the 2 hours of being lost and walking through the city with my amigos.

But today! Awesome.  It was our first excursion as a group.  We went to Dzibilchaltún to see some Mayan ruins.  Pretty cool!  After that, we went to the beach to have lunch with our group and with our host families in one of their beach houses.  We swam, played ultimate frisbee in the ocean, and walked the boardwalk to talk to the vendors.  I've learned some more bartering tricks!

I've been kind of bummed lately that we didn't have any little kids living with us to speak Spanish with and hang out with because all of the other people in our group always talk about their host siblings.  Well today, our mom's granddaughter—our host niece I guess—came over and asked to swim with us.  I had so much fun and have learned so much from her already.  I made her promise that she would come back and sounds like she's been bugging Pilar about hanging out with us.  She's super sassy too which is awesome.

Day 4: The beach cures all.

So we overslept this morning and had to grab our breakfast and go.  I feel bad because our host mom and aunt got up early—as in 5:15 am early—to make it for us.  The least we can do is share the meal with them.  I'm going to try to wake up earlier.

I had another class today with a different professor and I'm a little worried about it.  It's Culture of Latin America. There are only 5 of us in the class and I'm the only one who didn't serve a Spanish-speaking mission.  The professor is harder to understand than my other one and he uses a lot of vocabulary that I don't know.  I like him though.  He's very opinionated and how I imagine the classic college professor to be.  He asks thought provoking questions that we can't really answer and likes to question what the textbooks say.  Anyway, the class really did go well enough and I knew what was going on (basically), but I'm already bad at history and now I'm having to understand it through a foreign language.  It seems like there are going to be a lot more assignments than the students in the other classes are going to have, so I'm already seeing my study abroad fun slip away.  However, I think I'm just worrying now and that with time I'll get used to it and that this class will help a lot with my Spanish conversation skills.  ¡Todo está bien!

To counteract my complaining, the good news is that we went to the beach today with some people from our group!  It was wonderful.  The weather was nice and the water was warm!  We came home and swam in our pool afterwards.  That was just as wonderful.  

I missed that ball . . . obviously.

Day 3: The buses don't like me.

Today was the first official day of classes.  I rode home with two guys from my group, but missed the bus stop where I was supposed to get off to catch another bus.  Luckily, the guys got off with me at the next stop to walk with me back to the next bus station I needed to get to.  How nice!  After that I had to wait for 30 minutes for another bus.

Reasons that I like the buses:

•  I feel legit when riding a city bus.
•  It's better than walking.

Ways that the buses are teaching me patience:

• There aren't schedules for the buses.  They just come whenever, so you never know how long it will take you to get somewhere.  Although, that's also cool because the emphasis on time isn't felt here like it is in America.  That part is awesome!
• Sometimes the buses don't want to stop for you at the bus stop so you have to wave them down.
• They're confusing and I'm already bad at directions.  I've gotten off the buses one stop too late 3 times just today.  Yikes.  That really only means more walking, but my goal is to get this bus thing down the end of the week.

We also went to Walmart.  I only mention this because they had fake Crocs there and I think my grandmother should know such things.



Oh and she should also know that the other fake Crocs I ended up buying in the states are indeed working out quite nicely:)






Wake up call: 5 am.




   

Day 2: Las Hamacas

I'm LOVING México! I mostly love the opportunity to speak so much Spanish.  I've already improved in the last day.  Actually, I think I've just returned to the level I was at last summer after living in the Spanish House since I've lost a lot of that progress throughout the past year of not speaking the language very much.  I'm really excited to continue speaking!

I love my roommates!  Lyndy is a roommate from BYU and we've been living together for the past 2 years.  Kaitlin is someone we just met, but she's awesome!  We all have the same goals with this program as well.  We're all taking a minor in Spanish and are here to gain fluency.  For that reason, we're basically always speaking Spanish even when some of the other students aren't.  

Speaking Spanish so much has proved to be quite useful in bartering, too.  We went to El Centro (the center of town) tonight and walked around and bought some things.  A coin purse for my pesos and HAMMOCKS!!  That's the one thing everyone said you had to buy here.  People had apprehensions about buying them so early in the trip because we could be ripped off especially as foreigners who don't know what is good quality or a fair price.  Well, there were some men selling hammocks on the street and I talked to them for about 20 minutes in Spanish trying to lower the price and find out if the hammocks were of good quality.  I think the men really needed the money, but I did get the price down from 500 pesos to 300 pesos (about 30 dollars in American currency) and since we had seen our host mom's hammock earlier today, we thought they were comparable and bought some!  We brought the hammocks home and our host mom said they were good hammocks and that we got them super cheap!  We're awesome.  This bartering in Spanish skill will be quite useful I think.  I feel so much more confident in my Spanish already because I think it took this day just to get back into the swing of speaking it so much.  The pronunciation is coming more easily and the vocabulary is coming back into my brain.  Our plan is to go back to El Centro a lot just to talk with the locals to practice.  Hopefully this won't result in spending a lot of money . . . 

The men actually swinging Lyndy to show how strong they are . . . they being
the hammocks, not the men.

y nuestras hamacas!!  Many of the locals sleep in these to help with the heat I think.  We're super excited to sleep in our new hammocks tonight!

Day 1: Lost in México

Well, I'm sitting in bed (with Hannah Montana sheets) in my new home in the Yucatán!  Finally here!  After 2 flights, immigration, customs, and a bus ride, I'm glad to be in Mérida, especially when over the past few months, there were a few times when I really didn't think I'd be able to go on this study abroad.  I'm so grateful for everyone who helped me to get here!

I flew from Salt Lake to DFW to Cancún.  I got pretty nervous landing in Cancún . . . I'm not sure why, but once I got through customs, I was fine.  I met up with other students in Cancún knowing that my plane got in last; however, Laura, whose plane got in an hour before mine, hadn't been seen.  Laura lost somewhere in México!  However, she was flown to a different terminal than ours apparently and we found her at the bus stop to take the long bus ride to Mérida.

I like my host family a lot!  Pilar, the mother of the house, picked me up from the bus station tonight and was very interested in what kinds of foods I liked as we talked over a late night meal.  She also said I could stop eating whenever I wanted to and if I didn't like something, she'd make me something else.  I told her that in our prep class we had learned that is was rude to stop eating anything given to us, but she and her sister insisted that if we kept eating after we were full we'd just throw up . . . which seems more rude anyway.  She asked for my school schedule so she would know when to wake up to start making breakfast.  Looks like on some days we're going to be eating at 5:30 in the morning to make it to school on time . . . the university is an hour away by bus . . . which reminds me that I should go to bed!