I have so much to tell you but also so little time because I have to sleep soon sadly... I am getting up a little early tomorrow to get some minutes put on "my phone" and to go out with my one of the girls who has become a close friend named Mallory. It is her 21st birthday tomorrow and she wanted to do something special. (This happened 1/22/2013, I am a little late in getting this email out!)
Anyways here are the minutes from this week.
Sometimes the week goes by fast, sometimes slow but mostly fast. It is so weird to think that I have almost been here a month. Really weird, but I am used to it now.
Something that is kind of downer is that things with all the girls in our group are not as great as I had hoped but I try to stay out of things and keep my opinions to myself. I don't know what else to do but I just hope that I am making the right decisions. I had a little bit of a hard week with Ashley because I found out some things she thought of me. She didn't know that I knew what she said but I tried to not let it affect me. It was hard at first but I just smiled and tried to learn from what I found out. We were able to connect a little better later in the week while in Puebla but I will save that for later!
Something AWESOME this past week is that I was able to work out everyday of the week for about 30-45 min. It made me feel great and I just like working out. Plus one of the days I got on a little bit of an I'm so happy high because I just felt amazing!
Something funny this week was my shower situation. So I have been trying to take hot showers but... it has been taking me forever to get ready! So something I FINALLY figured out this week is:
cold water= tons of water= shorter shower=more time to get ready
hot water= hardly any water (literally not more than like a dribble)= "longer shower"= less time to get ready.
About time I figured that out huh?
Mostly this week just consisted of teaching. Something out of the ordinary is that this week we had less students on Friday because of the "cold" weather here in Puebla ( which it is cold, 50-40 degrees, just not as cold as say Massachusetts or Utah). Many of the parents are so worried that their children will catch a cold that they do not like sending them to English school. Also on Friday I tried octopus, which was not bad but I don't think I would like to eat it all the time. We also cleaned like crazy and organized the school closets which was very needed and it made us all less stressed. That night all of the ILP teachers were able to go out with Robbie and Salo for dinner and then hot chocolate later. It was lots of fun and it was nice to just walk around Tehuacan. We had a car in the beginning and it was fun to stuff all of us in the car but then Salo had to take it home so hence the walking. Also it was either sometime Friday night or sometime during the week but I got to see The Matrix for the first time that because my host family wanted to watch it and it was fun as well as an interesting movie.
Now PUEBLA.
This week we got a weekend trip to Puebla approved which we were so excited for and it was a very needed trip. Something this trip has taught me is that I could never be a teacher full time and it has given me a lot of respect for my teachers. Hence the stress and whatnot is why we needed the trip.
We left early Friday morning from the bus station in Puebla. The ride was about an 1 1/2 hours- 2 hours. We arrived about 9:30 and we had to wait for a local named Robbie ( though he used to live in the US) to arrive. He had caught the bus after us because he hadn't been able to get a ticket for our bus. While we were waiting we were able to get some food and I had an AMAZING crepe with Nutella on it. I was in heaven eating it because sometimes when there are familiar tastes that remind me of home it makes it easier being away. Once Robbie arrived we caught a taxi that took us to La Socalo. We were hoping to catch a tour bus that would take us on a four hour tour. When we first arrived we were worried we had missed our bus but we found out that it hadn't left and we joked it was on Mexican Standard Time (Mexico is laid back, so sometimes things don't always start on time!). Then we got on the bus and started to enjoy being on the top of the tour bus laughing and having fun. We took lots of pictures and enjoyed waving back to people when they waved to say Hi because we stuck out so much on the tour bus. I also got to spend more time with Ashley as well as talk to her a little bit which I always enjoy. The tours were awesome and Robbie translated some of what the tour guide said so we could somewhat understand. After that we checked in the Hostel Casa Puebla. It was actually very nice. The people running it also spoke English so that was a plus. We all shared a room with bunk beds except for Robbie. He was in another room with a British guy named Paul who we later went out to lunch with. We also had an Asian lady we shared the room with but we hardly ever saw her. In fact the only time we did see her was when she came in at 7 am to go to sleep. Otherwise she was not there or she was sleeping. After checking in we went out again and walked around seeing what we could of Puebla. We also went searching for a mall so that we could go to the bathroom. The first mall that we went to we went to the bathroom and we had to pay one peso for toilet paper no more or less. We all ended up splitting toilet paper because we did not all have one peso. It ended up working well until Heidi had some toilet issues.... Ha it ended being funny but a little odd. The basic gist of that is (and mostly I am writing this down to remember it) Heidi's toilet had issues and she didn't know it until it began to overflow. She hurried and ran out and started laughing her head off. We tried to figure out how to tell someone but we did not know who to contact so we just kind of left... But that and a few other events happening along with that made it absolutely hilarious though it was one of those things you had to be there for. We then got some krispy kreme doughnuts (we were so excited because they are delicious! *imagine in a sing songy voice*). After that we tried to walk to another mall that was "close". It ended up taking about a half an hour to walk there and it was dark. In America that might not be awful but in Mexico it can be a little scary. After we spent a little time in the mall we caught a bus that came close to La Socalo so that we did not have to repeat the long walk/ scary experience of walking around late at night. By scary I mean guys were following us around or there were some situations that were not ideal. Part of it is because we are American girls so sometimes guys follow us around and we have to avoid really dark places, sneakily avoid them, walk super fast, cross the street, go inside a store etc. to be safe. Anyways, we got back to the hotel and we started to wind down for the night. Ashley, Heidi, Kelsey, and Baylee talked to Paul (UK Guy), a guy from New York and Jose (?) at the front desk. Mallory and I stayed in the room and talked. I stayed in the room because I had a cold that kept getting worse and worse as the night wore on. Mallory was keeping me company and we had some nice bonding time. Although we might be different in many ways Mallory and I are similar in many other ways which is sometimes nice. A little while later we got ready for bed and I fell asleep almost instantly. It had been a very long day.
Puebla Day 2:
All of the teachers woke up around 9:30 so that we could get ready and check out before noon as well as be able to get the breakfast provided by the hostel. We took our time and we were able to get out for breakfast by about 10:00. We were not sure what to expect and we were so happy when we got a very "American" breakfast of frosted flakes cereal, toast w/ jam, and orange juice. It was delicious and something nice and familiar. Ashley and I sat next to each other and chatted which was fun and I was so happy about. Afterwards we finished packing up and we were able to check out before noon. The guy at the front desk helped us be able to find things to do until about 3 when we were going to try and catch a bus back to Tehuacan. For the rest of the day we walked around Puebla. We were not able to find a church to go to that day so we just walked around and enjoyed the warm weather. Baylee and Kelsey were going to take us to this amazing ice cream place but sadly it was closed. On the positive side we were able to go to a market, enjoy a pretty decent lunch at a nice restaurant, take pictures with "disney princesses" as well as "spiderman" in La Socalo and catch a bus to the bus station for very little money. Being able to find the bus station with only a map was an adventure in and of itself but we did find it eventually. The only bad thing about the bus that we took was that it still worked but it was very creaky and the doors were kind of broken. It also make horrible groaning and creaking noises but we were grateful for the cheap transportation. Shortly thereafter we bought our bus tickets and we were on our way home to Techucan. We were all exhausted so all of us slept on the bus. When we arrived my host dad was at the station so we left almost immediately after I got off the bus. Then we went home an d I spent the rest of the night with my host family.
Anyways, this email ended up being very long and I ended up having to take more time with it so I hope that you enjoyed it! I will add some pictures to the email though they are just repeats from the ones on Facebook so sorry if you have already seen them.
Also just another side note but this week I applied to the University of Utah. So college wise that means I have heard back from BYU-I (I got accepted, yay!), BYU-Provo I am still waiting on, and I am waiting to hear back from the University of Utah/ I just sent in my GED transcripts to the UofU. I originally was not planning on applying to the University of Utah but one of the mornings that I was saying a prayer about life and about my future I got the impression that I should apply to the University of Utah. I had been getting emails all week saying I still had time to apply so I did.
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