Well, it's official. I love Mexico. I love Mexican people, Mexican food, Mexican weather, Mexican manners and maybe by this time next week I'll love Mexican school, too. We'll see.
Our orientation was today. We took the bus and that was a definite culturally enriching experience. There are no bus stops. Just corners. We walked over to the corner that runs closest to our house and waited and were some of the first people on the bus and could sit down. A few feet later, the bus stopped again. 100 feet later, the bus stopped again. And again. And again. Its a good thing I don't mind close physical contact. I kept thinking we were maxed out in capacity but.. we never were. It was a magic bus. It fit everyone. And the only way to get the bus driver to stop is to get up, squeeze your way over to the back door and yell at the bus driver to stop. And he does. Everyone was smiling at us. My roommate is black. And I am very white. So we stood out a little. I was just grateful they didn't pack us in the bus like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjJ3g_wv8H0&safe=active
We were at orientation for 8 hours today. I fell asleep during part of it and couldn't feel my legs during the other part. But the food was amazing. They fed us a gordita (Taco bell does it all wrong), a taco, a sandwich that was amazing and a little corn tostada with refried beans, cheese and lettuce. They also gave us three drinks. One was horchata (the real deal), some limón agua (super yummy and is supposed to be soothing for your stomach) and some red juice that was really mild and supposed to be from some kind of flower. It was all sooo delicious.
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| YUM! |
I also had the chance to meet some of the other students here in the international program. It is way cool. There are people here from South Korea, Spain, the UK, GERMANY (no joke, like half the kids in the program are German) Brazil, the Netherlands and a ton of other places. The German kids speak English really well. They were going over things in the presentation about alcohol and drug use (which they mentioned is totally illegal and pleaded with everyone not to get involved in any kind of drug use while they were here). They kept telling us that if we choose to do drugs, that we are becoming part of the corruption in Mexico and that we should never, ever again complain about Mexico and its corruption. Instead, we should choose to obey the laws of the land and help Mexico become better. It was really insightful. It made me realize that places like Mexico get blown up in the media for having this reputation of being the land of drug cartels and violence and eternal imprisonment and lazy people.. but that is simply just not true. There is bad in every city and country on earth. But there is also so. much. good. In every city and country of the world. It also made me realize that I really am not at BYU-Idaho anymore and it made me grateful for the experiences that I had there. It also means I have a lot of missionary work to do. :)
I met up with my group from BYU-Idaho and they gave us a tour of the campus. I love our little group. There's just four of us but we all get a long really well. We signed housing contracts with our host family today, too and then went to Walmart (which is way cooler in Mexico, by the way. I loved seeing everything in Spanish and the food just looks so much more appealing.) I also needed bottled water and chocolate (maybe I'm the one with the drug problem.?) This was especially cool. Coca Cola does it all. (all of my pictures are of food today. This food really is the best.)
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| Love all of the Spanish names |
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| Family and friends in Spanish. :) |
It was a really cool day. I'm learning so much already and my roommate and I just keep saying how grateful and blessed we are to be here. So grateful!! Hasta maña!
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