Primero semana en Mexico

I´ve survived my first week in Mexico. There are 14 more to go! It is beautiful here in Cuernavaca. My host family is absolutely wonderful and the house is beautiful. My host mother is a very good cook and I´ve enjoyed most everything I´ve eaten. Only one time I have been served something that I absolutely couldn´t eat.

Universal, the school I´m attending is wonderful. We have two classes every day in four 50 minute segments. We change grammer teachers every week and the teacher this week made grammer fun. Imagine that. My confidence is building and I am speaking more and more which of course means I´m corrected more and more. But that´s a good thing. The other class we are taking is a civilization class. It´s very interesting and we´ve already gone on two field trips. It´s nice to be studying history where it happened. One problem is that the class is taught in Spanish, not too much of a problem, but we are also learning Aztec, Olmeca, Mayan, Nauan, etc. words too. That confuses things occasionally, but somehow it´s working.

Cuernavaca is not the city I imagined. I imagined a pueblo, very small, only a few hundred people. I was completely wrong. It is a huge city of about 500,000 people. Not as big as Mexico City, but it´s huge! The streets are busy most of the day. The people drive like maniacs. Mostly we don´t talk to people on the streets. It´s not done unless you know the people. I see some people every day and so I´m beginning to greet them. Yes there is a certain amount of sexual harassment on the streets but it´s only verbal and ignoring it seems to work. On the bus and in crowded places there is always a possibility of inappropriate touching but I know what to say to let the person know it´s not OK. It hasn´t happened yet, but there is always a possibilty.

There is an amount of political activity here. There is no danger for foreigners. The anger is between the political parties. We´ve seen demonstrations and they´ve been pretty mild.

The stores and markets are fun. There are several places were masks can be purchased for children like in Lucha libre (Free Fight), as made popular in America by the movie Nacho Libre. It´s fun to see the masks.

The flora here is amazing. I´m taking pictures and will post them at some time.

I guess that is enough for now. If you would like further updates, please let me know and I´ll put you on a mailing list. I may start a blog space somewhere and send the adress so that you can read things at your convenience.

I love you all very much!