Sights to be Seen

So this weekend, my dearest mother found a lovely place for some friends and I to go called Tequisquiapan. Yeah good luck pronouncing that. They call it Tequis for short. So we booked a hotel for 4 or 5 with some natural hot springs and a pool and decided to take the 45 minute bus ride for 5 dollars to the town. We got there on Saturday and we were super excited! It was definetly one of my favorite places so far. We were in paradise! Although the website said 1,000 of natural hot springs, we quickly learned that what that really meant was that the two pools and hot tubs were filled with natural purified water from hotsprings that exsisted elswhere in the city. However we were more than ok with that because this meant we could lay next to, or in, the pool and enjoy the very hot mexican sun. A few hours later we wandered into the small town of Tequis and ate some food and did a little sight seeing. Little did we know that the next day we were the ones who were the sights to be seen. Today (sunday) all of the workers and bartenders thought it would be a good idea to secretly take pictures of us with their phones....can you say AWKWARD...gotta love being from the US I guess... Finally the one worker who spoke English to us yesterday came up to us and was like, ummm i need a picture with you... and we were like really? In our bathing suits? But at least he asked. We shoulda asked for a free drink from the situation...didn't think on our toes. SO that was probably one of the most awkward things ever. We decided shortly after that that we needed to swim and sit at the OTHER side of the pool, and that shortly after that, it was time to check out.
Overall we REALLY enjoyed our weekend getaway to Tequisquiapan, I might easily say it is my favorite place I have been so far. Very quaint, very pretty, and very relaxing. YAY! Thanks mommy.

Practicum!

So my practicum started on Monday. I'm in a third grade classroom at what is thought to be a bilingual school (more or less). The students have English class all morning from 745 to 1045 and then the rest of the day they have their classes in Spanish. The way the school works is there is a coteacher situation where in the morning, my mentor teacher teaches English to third graders and then at 1045 she switches to fourth grade and the teacher who was in the fourth grade classroom switches to third grade. This aspect of it makes this a bilingual school. However I was informed that its not considered fully bilingual unless the English instruction is in all subjects. As far as I can tell, its not; we only do literature and grammar stuff in the English part. Soooo is our school bilingual? I don't know. However either way I love the kids and my mentor teacher is completely awesome as well. I have a class with only 10 students (yay private school!) and they're great kids. Love em all. I'm sad I only get to be around them for 3 weeks, and one of those weeks is pretty much over! The good news is, with this practicum schedule, that I am done everyday at 11. Therefore, to kill time since we really don't have that much homework for our practicum, I walk 2 miles home everyday. Good fun. The other good news is we never have practicum on Friday! Hello 3 day weekend...oh wait...we don't know what to do here and end up bored a lot of the time (although I think this weekend may include a trip to the hot springs!).
I have now had the wonderful experience of riding the "chicken busses" from the market to my school because it is quite far from my house. Thats fun. The first day I was super scared because I didn't know where I was going or how to get there but I had to figure it out on my own, and that I did! I'm getting to know this city better and as I am doing so it seems to be shrinking, which is pretty cool.
I think thats all I have for now...OH! The first unit we're starting in on in the classroom is climbing...tooooo bad I didn't bring my gear because that would be SWEET realia. However either way I'm excited to throw a little first hand experience in there!
Hasta Luego!

Correction

I was informed that that was not a drug exchange. For all you worried people. I was told that the reason for the "shhhh" finger was because of the fight, not because he was doing illegal things (even though im sure that wasn't exactly legal).
This week was crunch time for the first half of my time here. We had lessons to teach today and tomorrow as well and I had a paper for my cultural studies class due today as well. Fortunately, as of now, I'm pretty much done so that is pretty much awesome. On monday I start my practicum and I'm going to be in a third grade classroom. I'm very excited but don't know what to expect because we won't get to talk to our teachers until Monday I think, which is stressful because everyone else got to meet theirs this week except for like four of us. So we'll see what happens. I'm excited either way. And I'm more than half way there!!! wooo!

OH man!

So its been about a week. But that is because nothing exciting happened this week. Until Friday night. And then today. So friday we hung out with some of our sisters friends. We went out to the NICEST area of Queretaro (if we were even still in Queretaro) and we walk into this guys house and its a cave. Literally. A cave. Like when you open the door and look to the right there is a teeny tiny kitchen. Then like straight ahead is a CAVE...like rock walls and roots. Then you go to the end and turn the corner and there is like a seating area. but no one sits there cuz its wet. cuz its a CAVE! then to the left when you walk in the door is a teeny tiny spiral staircase which led to the giant bedroom and the giant bathroom and what not. I definetly fell down them. Twice. I have about 6 bruises to prove it.

Today was very eventful as well. Mostly the bus ride home. We went to el campo today. Which is pretty much a town that is very very small with like maybe 5 families total in it, but alllll of their extended family. The place we went to was the in-laws of one of my professors. My professor is pretty much the only white person to ever be in that town, so lets just say we made quite a sceene when we came through. Today was a celebration of something. I'm not sure what, but we got to experience that. There were girls doing a dance with machettes and it was really cool and we ate really yummy food including frozen strawberries with cream. YUM! On our bus ride back from Irapuato to Queretaro was when all the fun began...
Before we even left Irapuato, I heard our bus driver yelling at the bus next to him and they had quite a long exchange (of course I assumed it was a friendly one). Next thing I know, about 5 minutes later our bus is stopped and our bus driver gets off. I was fortunate enough to be sitting in the front front front of the bus so i slide open the thing and out comes the other bus driver talkin smack. Two busses stop next to ours and those bus drivers get out to stop traffic and we pretty much have a street fight between the two bus drivers in the middle of the road. SOOOO weird, but apparently thats the norm. My mind was blown trying to compare that to what would happen if that took place in the states, and I couldn't even rap my mind around the idea of that happening because that just WOULDN"T happen. Ever. So finally the two bus drivers that were just observing decide to stop it...and our bus driver gets back on and we continue on our journey. Then about 15 minutes later, once we pass the toll station, the bus stops again and some man gets on..the bus driver goes to the back of the bus to the bathroom and brings him a package...or money...either way it was for sursies a drug exchanges cuz he gave us the "shhhh don't tell anyone finger." Again. My mind was blown. We made it safe and sound so no worries, it was just QUITE the experience to say the least. I still cant believe that happened.
This is our last week of school (at least for the first part of the trip) and we teach our lessons on thursday and friday and then we're home freeee! until the next quarter. Thats all for now!

Something Cultural...

I don't have a whole lot for you today...except that yesterday I learned something about the culture of Queretaro. On sundays, they shut down the main street that runs through downtown for about 7 blocks. The purpose is for a day called caminando (which means walking). On this day, which happens to be every sunday, you are supposed to dedicate the whole day to family. So they shut down the road so families can walk on it, our sister told us that often times they will have street soccer going on or giant games of volleyball. That wasn't happening yesterday but in the square there was people all dressed up in traditional clothes playing music and it was pretty cool. I thought this was interesting how strongly they portray family in their lives and although we consider our culture to be fairly family oriented, its interesting to see another cultures perspective because in comparison, our culture is VERY individualistic and we care about the self above everything else, but that is not the case at all in this culture as well as many other around the world. Quite facinating.
Also, I chose to walk around town yesterday in my converse...and i now have blisters the size of quarters on both of my heels...BOO!
That is all

estoy cansado!

Yesterday I finally got a bolsa, which was very very exciting. A bunch of us TESOL people walked around el centro (downtown) for a while and then it started to POUR...the clouds opened up and it rained and rained and rained. We found covering for a while and in doing so met some people from Brazil because they were speaking English, and when you hear english, you gotta find out where people are from because its very rare and exciting. We chatted with them until the rain lightened and we made a break for the creperia. When we got there we found some more TESOL people and got there just in time because it started to POUR again. There was literally a river running down the walkway. They had to close the garage door so water wouldn't pour into the shop. When the rain lightened, we walked home very briskly because it was still raining fairly hard. We were very wet when we got home to say the least.

Today was a busy day as well. We went to Guanajuato and saw so many amazing things. Our first stop was this really cool church that was made of a lot of the gold and silver that they got from the mines of Guanajuato. Then we got to go down into an actual mine. It was pretty sweet because we heard the story of many of the miners and all of the terrible treatment they had which led to the Mexican Revolution. Next we went to the museum of mummies. This was quite disturbing, not gunna lie. But its also very facinating. The story goes like this: back in the day, there was such few places to burry people that you only had your plot of land for rent. So if your anscestors didn't pay your rent, you would get uncovered and removed. Well when this happend, the people who uncovered them discovered that the minerals in the ground had naturally mumified the people. So naturally, they uncovered many of them and put them in a museum. It was very very gross and very very cool. They still had their skin, many of them had clothes, as well as toenails, teeth, and hair (including their pubes...thats right). So of course, i thought i would share my illegally taken picture with you for you to see. its gross...so beware.

After this museum it was time for lunch. Note to self: don't eat hamburger in Mexico...

Then we went to the museum of Diego Rivera. Well actually not just a museum but his house. So we got to see where he lived and much of his art as well. Very cool. We also went to see the college and a museum of something that I cant remember but the murals on the walls were AMAZING and huge and awesome. We ended the day in a downpour of rain. again. We ducked into a store very quickly and stayed there for half an hour till everyone came back soaking wet. Then we took our long bus ride home...through the middle of a lightning and thunder storm while watching king kong. Not gunna lie, it was a little creepy, and I may have felt like I was going to die...fortunately I was able to tell myself that since we had rubber between us and the ground we were ok (which I'm not sure if thats true or not, but it made me feel better...).

So these are the reasons I'm thuroghly exhausted. And the neighbors across the street are having a birthday party and being very loud and I am pretty sure I won't be able to sleep, but its worth a try. I have a heck of a week and weekend coming my way so we'll just have to see how that goes.

Thats all for now!

So here is the main part of my house; the dining room and living room. Then stemming out of this room are all of the bedrooms. I took this pretty much from the door of my room so that gives you an idea. There are 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a kitchen!

This is my bed, where I take my daily ciestas and my nightly sleep time. Its pretty fabulous.

This is the city of Queretaro behind me. You can see the aquaducts that are all lit up and super cool at night which I discovered last night for the first time, but for the most part the town is pretty big, made up of 60,000 I think the tour guide said. This is only half.

This is the courtyard of OLE! I see this place everyday. But it is a safe and comfortable place for me (lots of english is spoken here, as well as lots of spanish)

School is going well. Its hard to stay engaged in class for four hours but I make it through. I'm starting to get my berings pretty well. We missed our turn the other night coming home and I was able to locate us and navigate our way home so that is good news. Queretaro is becoming more familiar and so is Spanish. I've learned lots of new words thanks to our American/Mexican friends, however most of them would be unlikely to be heard in a classroom. However two of my favorites I feel I can share with you. One is "vamos a mori" which means we're gunna die. We decided we should know that because the drivers here are CRAZY and everytime we go to cross the street, we almost get run over by a car, taxi, or cambio. Its insane. So now we just say that all the time. The second is "eso es lo que dijo ella" which of course is "thats what she said" which we just learned last night because we felt it was very necessary.

Hasta Luego!!

School has begun...

Lets see..sometime early sunday morning (about 2 am) my stomach decided it hated me, and I've been sick pretty much ever since. Haven't really eaten much for the past two days, but tried to still make the most of it. Food seems to be the only thing that upsets me, which leads me slightly towards annorexia, which is NOT why I came here at all, but for the moment, its whats getting me by.
Classes started yesterday. We have class from 8-12 and then molly and I have a 4 ish our break from 12-430 when our cultural studies class starts. Our four hour class drags on really long most of the time, especially when youre sick. Fortunately just about everybody either IS sick or has been sick. Yesterday at lunch we finally got to have a conversation with our host dad, who we pretty much never see, so that was really exciting and hes pretty funny so we were glad we got to experience that. Our afternoon class is very interesting because we're learning so much about the culture and there is a total of 6 of us in the class. Its pretty great and we're having a fabulous time minus the eating troubles. Sunday we found an italian restaraunt and it was super cool to just eat some pasta! Then for lunch yesterday our host mom made us pasta salad and chicken. I think she knows that something is upsetting our stomachs so shes trying to ease up on us. How sweet, I just hope she doesn't think its her fault we're all sick because its definetly not.
Today we will do laundry and lots and lots of homework. It all just started to pile on yesterday and we're a little stressed out. Tonight we're going to try and go to a "Nacho Libre" type wresting match, which I've never seen the movie, but I've heard its very routy, kinda bizzare, and very theatrical. I'm excited to goooo!!!
Hasta Luego