Bailar

This morning, before school, Oyinna returned from her weekend away with her husband. She is a much happier Oyinna. :-) Class was normal. Thankfully we didn't talk about politics again in conversation. My teacher did give me a speech about not talking during class. I just have classmates who are native speakers and dominant. And we were talking about credit or something! It was so boring. Plus, like I said, I had classmates who were dominant so it's difficult for me to engage in conversations when other people are aggressive talkers. Plus they were native so it was easier to jump in with responses. It's so interesting, one girl in my class looks like she's Korean, but she's half Cuban and half Mexican. I wonder where the Korean is because she does not look Latin AT ALL. This afternoon, for my cultural class, I had cooking where we made guacamole and tortilla chips. OMG!!!! That was the best guacamole I've ever had. So GOOD! All the vegetables were fresh and it tasted so good. You could taste the freshness. Never again, store bought guacamole, jaja. Nathan had a dance lesson after school and needed a dance partner, so I agreed. He is so much better than he was last week. Johnathan would show him how to dance macho then Nathan would make fun of him then Johnathan would be like, "Exacto! Exacto!" Nathan really struggled but he got it. He's pretty good now. We'll practice tonight at Los Arcos. Lila had lunch for me when I got back, which was really nice. Then I took a nap. I have to get ready for Los Arcos soon. Haha, Nathan was joking with Johnathan that he can like, give him signals at Los Arcos. It is raining with thunder and lightening, but we'll see. :-) I enjoy dancing with Nathan because he's getting quite a bit better. Below is my video of Taxco. It is a very picturesque pueblo. It's kinda big but really pretty, and I wish I would have had more time in that pueblo. Maybe another time. I still prefer Tepotzlan but maybe if I had more time at Taxco, I would have enjoyed it more. All the taxis, like in Acapulco, were VW bugs, haha. They were pretty awesome.

Counting Down the Days...

Well, I'm in my last class, on my last 2 weeks here. I can't believe it's almost over. I have just one more class, two weeks left. Gracias a Dios que esta semana I have Mexican Culture & History or whatever the heck it's called. We're using a textbook the Government published for the Mexicans for the Bicentennial so they know their history. Personally, I don't think that's a bad idea for our government to do except I don't believe that our people would read it, so I think a movie would be better for our culture. Even though a book about our history would be better. Anyways, so these next two weeks will be a breeze compared to the last four. Conversation was easy too, we just talked. Except everyone in my class, except for me, is from Texas, so I'm the only one in that class apparently who likes Obama. Douglas was saying how people around the world think Obama's a joke and foreigners don't like him. When he won, though, I got an e-mail from Rocio saying how good it is that he won and how happy Spain was that we finally have a good president. I personally think that he is what our country needed. Doug also was like, "where are the changes he promised?" Well, Obama can't fulfill all of them, but the health bill and wall street reform are certainly two huge changes. Well, anyways, I get my roommate back tomorrow. (yay!) She'll be a much happier Oyinna :-) Today, I did nothing. I wanted to go to the ATM but I took a 3 hour nap instead. I don't know why I'm so tired, and it's really bugging me. I hope I'm not that tired tomorrow. I guess it doesn't matter, I'm going to El Centro with Onna after class...I think...I've been reading Harry Potter 2 in Spanish, and it's actually really easy. Really easy. I've been reading Mafalda too, and I freaking love her. I find Mafalda to be a bit more challenging to read than Harry Potter. Towards the beginning of my AP Spanish class in high school, I remember Senora giving us one Mafalda comic strip to read and I remember being overwhelmed and not having any idea what on earth was going on except something about trees. Now, I have a better understanding. She wants to be a translator at the UN, and her friend wants to be a housewife. This whole reading in Spanish I am getting DOWN. Talking, I think I'm getting better. Not much better, but better. Lila's daughter told me today that I speak Spanish well. I speak it ok, my grammar when I speak sucks, haha. I had taller for my cultural class, and I didn't make pulseras, what a shocker. We did something else but I didn't have a chance to finish and I was really irritated. Tomorrow, I have cooking where I will learn to make guacamole. (yes!) Some of my friends had that class today and were telling me how to make guacamole and it sounds SO EASY! I can't wait! Never again will I eat store bought salsa, guacamole, or tortilla chips. Mm...I love homemade salsa...Well, here's the video from Xochicalco. Enjoy!

Busy Weekend @ the Pueblos

Whoo! What a busy weekend. Yesterday, I went to Tlayacapan with Doug and Jenny as well as Tepotzlan once again. I didn't enjoy Tlayacapan as well as I know I could have if it wasn't raining. The ex-convent was really pretty though. Then Tepotzlan, I appreciated the village more because I sorta had more time to just walk around. We went to a cafe where I had Chai milk tea, which was SO GOOD. I hadn't realized how much I missed it. We then had sopes at a restaurant that Jenny's Mexican dad recommended. We just walked around and stuff. Then we went to the ice cream shop Tepotznieve where I got Tequila ice cream and ice cream of rose petals and both were SO ricos. So delicious. We found a group of people selling roses which were so pretty and the red ones smelled so good and so strong. It was $15 pesos for a dozen. QUINCE PESOS FOR A DOZEN! Roses are so BARATO here. I knew they were cheap here. Didn't know they were that cheap. They were so beautiful too. Today we went to Xochicalco which was so COOL. I love the ruins. These were really different from Teotihuacan. Certainly less tourists. There were more and it was just more interesting because like, to think of all that went on there and to think that they had meaning and use and all that was just so amazing. There were a lot too and I guess they were still excavating. A lot had been restored. It was really cool. We then went to Taxco which is where the silver mines are. I don't like it as much as Tepotzlan because it's smaller than Cuernavaca but it's bigger than Tepotzlan. It was really pretty because it's just mountains and all these houses were build on these mountains which was really beautiful. So, first thing we did was went to the big silver store where they told us about the silver. And gave us drinks. The first one though only had six drops of tequila. It was good. I couldn't remember what else was in it. I think lemonade or something. He told us how to tell real silver from fake silver which I'm already pretty good at. (I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to silver) So, afterwards, we went downstairs and there was tons of beautiful silver. Some of it more expensive some of it less expensive. I bought myself a ring. (surprise, surprise, lol) Then we went up to the cathedral which was so amazing. There were so many golf flakes and statues all over the place. I was disappointed we couldn't go in for mass. Well, we had lunch in this restaurant that was on top of a hotel, so we had an AMAZING view. I didn't really want to eat but every bit and every cent I paid was worth it. Afterwards, we walked around some more. There was a Tepotznieve so I had more ice cream. Then Heather, Lisa, and I ate soft serve ice cream from another place that was really good. Heather put granola and chocolate on hers and it looked so good I did the same. That was pretty much the end of Taxco. I wish I could have spent more time walking around to explore more of the city, but I saw the Zocalo and the Cathedral so those are what every city has that you have to see. I had a lot of fun this weekend. I honestly think I could spend at least another week or so exploring these pueblos. I would love to get to know Tepotzlan better. Maybe I'll go back after school sometime next week. Either way, I'll post videos up this week. Today I just have a pic of me not smiling and with my sunglasses on while standing in front of a pyramid at Xochicalco.

Palacio De Cortes

Yesterday, we didn't have any cultural class, which really, REALLY irritated me because I didn't get cooking this week and that's my second favorite after salsa. For conversation, we talked about the states of Mexico, which was interesting. I turned in my essay in literatura and Norma liked it. I don't think she wouldn't like it, lol, but I'm glad I put in all the work I did. We didn't really do a whole lot after that. We talked about Cuernavaca. Then for the last block, Norma brought in one of her conversation packets and we talked about felicidad, AGAIN. I mean, we haven't talked about it in that class before but she and I talked about it in our conversation class together. I wonder what class I'll have next week. I really hope it's something more engaging than literatura. So, after school, we went to Palacio De Cortes for our excursion. It actually was really cool. The view from the top was really awesome and the museum was interesting. They had information about pre-colonial Mexico, colonial Mexico, the Mexican revolution, and post-revolutionary Mexico.

Afterwards, me and high school girl from Oakland, Elaina, went to the market next to the palace to do a little shopping. After a while, we met up with her mom, who's really nice. We walked to the Catedral but we didn't go inside because there was a wedding going on. So we hung out at the church there for a little while before going across the street to the cafe to meet with Jenny, the other girl from CalState Long Beach (I don't remember her name), and not too long after Douglas. Yes! I met another girl from CSULB. It was nice to talk to someone who knew which credits I was transferring over. She's a senior so she definitely wasn't transferring 300 classes. We all wanted churros y chocolate. We talked about them in class today and the weather definitely permitted it, but they didn't have any churros so we all just had chocolate. Except Douglas had a frappuccino, which looked really good. The chocolate was really good. Not the same as Spanish chocolate because this was more like the beverage than melted chocolate. it was still really good especially since they added cinnamon. Mm, never again will I have hot chocolate without cinnamon, lol. Douglas wanted to show us a bookstore, but there are tons all over the place, and I got HP 2 & 3 and a Mafalda book. I love Mafalda! She's hilarious! After shopping we went to La India Bonita, which supposedly has the best mole in Cuernavaca. I split a dish with Elaina's mom. The mole was really bitter, so I didn't like it so well. I guess the other CSULB girl's mole was sweet but they had a different dish than we did. It was good to try but I didn't like it so well. Maybe in small doses, but not a whole dish of them. Afterwards, Jenny, the other CSULB girl, and I went to Los Arcos. We didn't stay too long but the CSULB girl and I danced for a bit. Then Chris and I danced for a little while too. We danced in the rain and got soaked, lol. It was fun, though. Today was a pretty good day.

TORTURE!

Haha, if you're either me or my brothers, you would get the inside joke that is the title of this blog entry. Well, either way, this evening felt like torture. I saw the doctor and she prescribed an antihistamine, which i'll pick up tomorrow. Then we made pulseras AGAIN. Conversation was good. I told my chistes and my tongue-twister. Then! we did an exercise where our teacher gave us 3 photographs each, and we had to write a story based on the pictures. Nathan hated that assignment and said he would rather take a chem final but honestly, that's the kind of thing I've been dying to do since I got here. Unfortunately, we didn't have sufficient time to write the kind of story I wanted. The three pictures I received are one of the Roman Colosseum, one of some random village in a mountain in what looked like America, and the SWAT team. So I wrote a story about a guy who kills the Italian president and flees to a village in Vermont. Then the SWAT team finds him. It's really more interesting than that, but that's the outline. The funny thing is, Nathan wrote a story about a couple who fall in love, get married, and have a kid, lol. He wrote the love story, and I wrote the action story. It was fun. :-) Now, literatura is a COMPLETELY different story. After an hour or so and asking a few questions, I finally understood the story. At least, I think I did. Today, I realized that I would be having this much trouble in this class and with this story if it were in English, and that's really frustrating to think about. I also realized that I probably wouldn't do any better on the AP exam if I took it again now. I know my Spanish has improved, but those skills just haven't developed. I'm getting better at speaking in the past tense, which is good. The end of class, we played Hangman. We were able to guess everyone's EXCEPT, no one but the teacher knew what mine was. ;-) I used gorrion, and they got all the letters except for the "g". :-) I was so proud of myself. I used a word that they couldn't get. As we read this story, I feel frustrated in that class because Douglas understands a lot of the vocabulary and the stories and like, he'll have conversations about the story with Norma which doesn't do the rest of us any good because we have no idea what they're talking about, which is what I think is one of the problems. He knew what a gorrion was, but he didn't think of it when he and Nathan were guessing. (haha!) I was so proud that I stumped the class. :-) so, this afternoon was pretty slow. I was irritated because we had to pay for a taxi home from school. I usually wouldn't mind cuz it was only $35 pesos, but our host family is supposed to pay for a taxi if they can't pick us up. It doesn't really matter, I guess. Then, Oyinna and I took naps. Mine was kinda short, but then I started working on my paper. And I continuously distracted myself from my essay, lol. I finally finished, and this is the best paper I've written since I got here. It took me all night because I kept avoiding it. I eventually ran out of distractions and had no choice but to do it, lol. But that was the torture part: writing my ensayo. But at least I got it done, and it turned out well. I can't wait to next week, and I will definitely talk to Carmen if I get ANOTHER literatura class because I'm SICK of it. The stories are great and interesting, but it's just so hard, and I don't like writing the essays. People are like, "shouldn't you like writing essays because you're a writer?" but essays are COMPLETELY different than screenplays. I would rather write a 90 page screenplay than a 2 page essay. Well, I'm DONE with literatura, pretty much. I have a nice weekend ahead of me, and two weeks to go. Let's see how it all goes.

Un Dia Malo :-(

Today wasn't the best day. Last night was a lot of fun. I danced with my friends, drank 2 Pinadas, and just hung out. It was a lot of fun. I was worried about the rain, but it wasn't bad enough to stop the dancing. I really had a good time. There are always a lot of people at Los Arcos on Tuesdays, and they have a live band. Today was not a very good day. Yesterday, my eye was pink, and this morning when I woke up it was still pink and the skin around my eyes was a little swollen. So, when I got to school I asked Haifa about talking to the doctor, and she's only at school on Mondays and Thursdays, but I didn't want to wait for it to get worse, so she called the doctor and told her all that was wrong with my eye, and she prescribed a specific type of golpas, different than the kind I got yesterday. Haifa then called the pharmacy and asked how much it would cost, so I gave her the money, and I picked it up from her in the afternoon. By the end of the day when I put my eye drops in again when my eye was a little irritated, it was looking better. The other good part of the day was that I had a cold all day. Yay! I was so miserable all day, but I can't miss class, so I went straight home after school. When I got home, I realized I left my laundry at school, so I don't really have any clean clothes. Today was just not good. I felt better after a 3 hour nap, but still. I should be better tomorrow.

One thing I've been wanting to mention about the homes here, is that they don't really look like homes from the outside because they all have a wall around them. All the houses I've seen. It's interesting. Very seclusive, though.

Today, class wasn't to bad. We did chistes again and learned some idioms in conversation class. We did the pulseras AGAIN in art class, which was kinda annoying. This way, though, I was able to make one for my mom. Still, it would be nice to get some variety. In literatura, we finished the Jorge Luis Borges story by the end of the second block, so we had an interesting and intense conversation about Cuba and Mexicans traveling to the US during the final block. It was interesting.

I don't know, I didn't have a very good day. Tomorrow will be better. I paid for my Taxco and Xochicalco trip, so I'm excited about that. The only one of my friends that I know is going is my friend Lisa. I still can't believe I only have 2 1/2 weeks left, this trip has gone by so fast. I am very blessed to be here.

Sorry, Guys

Sorry about my entry yesterday, guys. It was just one of those days. Anyways, moving on. So, I've been worried about my classes because I felt my work hasn't been up to par. I checked my grades yesterday, and I'm doing well. I did realize that I don't need to go to cultural class, even though I do. We did Salsa today which was fun, as always. I learned a new Cuban dance that's really fun for like parties or something. Plus it's really easy. Conversation was kinda boring. We did like, vocab stuff. The interesting part was when we did trabalenguas, chistes y adivinanzas. We need to recite a trabalengua that she gave us by memory on I think Thursday, and I want to do "De tin marin, de do pingue, cucara macara titere fue, yo no fui, fue tete, pegale, pegale que ella merita fue." This is missing a bunch of accents and the double dots but you get the idea. It's a rhyme that's like "Eenie, Meenie, Minee, Moe" that children use. I think it's cute.

So, at the thought that I only have two weekends left, I realize I should make plans to finish everything I want to do. Here's my "Near Cuernavaca, Mexico" To do List. (What's left of it, anyway)

• Taxco
• Palacio de Cortes
• Teopanzolco
• Xochicalco
• El Centro
• Tlayacapan

This weekend, the school is going to Taxco and Xochicalco on Saturday. Some people from my conversation class are planning a trip on Sunday to I think Tlayacapan, but I'm not sure. We're planning a trip to two pueblos, so I'll do that. I was going to spend the day in El Centro but I think I'll do that on Friday after the excursion which I hope is to the Palacio de Cortes. I also want to go back to that market there to pick up a few things.

So I did something crazy today. I went to Wal*Mart to get a few necessities, and when I left, it was sprinkling. I asked myself if I should get a cab, but I voted against it, so I started walking. Not too long after there was thunder, lightening, and it started raining pretty hard. I still did not catch a cab. By the time it was at it's worst, I was halfway home. I could have stopped at the ice cream shop to get coffee and wait it out like an intelligent person, but I decided to just keep going. So, by the time I got back to the house, Lila had gone to class, and I was soaking wet, jaja. On the way back I was thinking I could put on my pajama pants and my sweatshirt and warm up. When I got back, I realized I dropped off my pants at the lavenderia today. So, not only did I have no pants but I didn't have any more shirts either, so I put on my shorts and my sweatshirt to dry off. Haha, oh, well. It was an experience.

Tonight I'm going to Los Arcos. It's raining, so I don't think I'll be dancing, but I'll still have fun. Everyone goes to Los Arcos, so I'll have tons of people to hang out with, etc. Hopefully they still have live music.