Mexico- Estoy Aqui!

It has been a while! This semester at school was very successful, and now that that's all over, it was time for my trip to Mexico! For those of you that don't know, part of my acceptance to Juanita College was a scholarship called the Eagles Abroad Scholarship. It granted me an immersive studying experience the summer after my freshman year in Orizaba, Mexico, and a few other study-abroad related perks. Anywho... I am in Mexico now! I flew into Mexico City and we drove about four hours Southeast to get to Orizaba, Mexico. I didn't get any great pictures of the city today, but when I say it is like a little wonderland city, I mean it. The city is riddled with parks with statues and fountains. There are art and history museums all over, and the architecture is like no other. The buildings are brightly painted, and on every street corner people are selling fruit and other delicious things.

I am on this trip with about 12 other students, and when we first arrived to the city we stopped in at the University where we will be studying to meet our host families. It is called IDEA de Oriente, and it has majors such as Reading, Tourism, International Relations, and Law. I learned that in this city of Orizaba, there are around 15 universities, and they all have only a few specialties. Also, the students don't live at the universities, and all commute from home. The reason that we are able to study in a University in the summer in Mexico is because they don't get summer breaks. Most universities here have four terms, each with three months, and they only get short breaks. It might sound like any American student's living hell, but the bright side is that many Mexican student graduate college in about three years sometimes.

I met my host sister first, Carmen, and she introduced me to her family, and immediately my confusion began. I know my Spanish is good , I am at a conversing level and can speak fairly easy and ask questions, but my listening skills need to improve greatly. At first I was having the hardest time understanding what Carmen, her mother and both of her brothers were asking... and I still am, but through the night it has improved a bit. They are all some of the most caring people I have ever met, asking me so many questions about my life and how I like Mexico and showing me around the city, and I wish I could speak to them with more skill and grace, but that time will come soon I hope. When speaking Spanish, at least at my level, it is important that I know how to shift my sentences in order to be able to say things. I don't know how to say a lot of things, but I do know how to say a lot of other things, so I have to shift the sentence puzzle around and rearrange it. It is challenging, and my head physically hurts now at the end of the day, but it is the only way to learn. Also people speak very fast here, and that does not help, but they are always happy to repeat their sentences, even if it's more than once. My host family took me out to eat and we had horchatas, a cinnamon milk drink, and tacos with many kinds of meats, vegetables and cheese in them. They were very delicious, along with these sandwiches called Tortas, that reminded me of the Banh Mi from Vietnam. I was completely stuffed after the meal and we drove around the city for a little while, and my family showed me this lake/pool that people use in the summer. It was beautiful, with rocks and weeds growing from the bottom, but it also had concrete walls and diving boards. It was very confusing but looks like it would be so fun to swim in. I hope one day I get to go into it. Also one my host brothers has a girlfriend, and she grew up in California, so she speaks really good English and was able to translate a few things when she was around. She is very kind and understanding and fun to talk to, and she will definitely be my savior these next few weeks when I need to speak a bit of English. I actually find writing this right now very challenging because I keep wanting to write in Spanish, because I've been speaking it all day and feel like I forget English now. Imagine that... my mom would be really mad if I came back home and had forgotten English.

Before coming here, I was very nervous about speaking and not understanding, and I practiced a lot on the bus ride here. But this experience is like the SAT's, you take them with the knowledge you possess and you learn from it to do better on the next one (Can you tell I never studied or prepared for my SAT's?). Each day I will improve, and only with the help of the mistakes I make along the way. I am very excited to go to my first day of classes tommorrow and see my friends and meet my teachers. Also, tomorrow I might go to the animal reservation that they have here in Orizaba. I'll keep my fingers crossed! Buenas noches a todos!

-ECM