Thursday 16 October 2008

football is freedom...

so this week has been really good. on friday i went to one of the american houses and we hung out - which was fun. saturday i was super sick (which may or may not have been related to my friday evening activities...) but i kind of chilled all day nursing myself back to health. at night we went out to dinner and then we saw mamma mia... SO MUCH FUN!!! i love musicals and meryl streep - so you couldn't go wrong!

sunday was nice and very relaxing. i went to the supermarket solita and got tons of fresh fruit!!! yum. so the meals in mexico are as follows breakfast, snack around 11, lunch around 3, snack/dinner around 9... at school we only get like 20-30 minutes to eat and it was so rushed the first month and a half i decided to just take a small snack like the mexicans do it. i was eating a big meal after school anyway, so i figured that could take place of my lunch/dinner. so i have adapted my eating habits to the way of the land - i eat a small breakfast and a snack of fruit at 11, then i have a big meal at 3pm after school and usually later in the evening i have a small snack. i hope it does my body good!!!! i even found soymilk and some organic things in the supermarket - which was better than finding pure gold haha!!! i was happy about that.

anywho - after food shopping on sunday erin and i caught a taxi and cabbed it to this park called el bosque. it was so nice, there were tons of vendors and food stands. we got our favorite drink, horchata - its sooo tasty and delicious. we treated ourselves and just sat and talked in the park for a few hours. the time really flew by.

monday was hectic as usual with school tutoring and then private tutoring but i like to be busy so i didn't mind. juan, the driver was like 20 minutes late to pick me up and i had just gotten off the phone with my mom, so i was a bit sad trying to hold back the tears. thinking of how everyone is seeing each other this weekend and how jason and kim were at my parents and how i haven't talked to them in a while and blah blah blah. well anyway in an attempt to conceal my sadness i overcompensated and i guess seemed really angry. so he asked me point blank "estas enojada conmigo" are you mad (for the lateness factor) and i was like 'no' and i tried ot leave it at that, but he kept asking me... so i had to let him in on the fact that i was saddish and missed the family and i almost started crying right then and there - but he realized it and let up. it was kind of nice though, to not be let off the hook. normally in the states people just ask, how are you and you say fine regardless of how you really are feeling. i liked that he was not overbearing but sincerely interested. i felt better after i told him how i really felt.

tuesday i came home and watched a movie called Bella. it is an independent film that i really enjoyed. i reccommend it to anyone interested in movies that are off the beaten path so to speak. and it was set in nyc and nj so it made me happy to see some east coast!

after the movie i went to the gym to do killer aerobics with erin and a few others. it was intense, but fun. it was nice to be out of the house on a weekday... imagine that!!!

so i had started last week helping one of the administrators with her english conversation and she paid me. i got to thinking and i asked her if instead of paying me she could do an hour of spanish for an hour of english, so i went to her house on wendnesday after i relaxed for a bit and we spoke in english and then spanish. it made me so happy, i felt like it was the first time i actually had a conversation in spanish here. i am trying so hard to plant the seeds of friendships and just relationships in general with mexicans, but it takes time.... so i was really happy.

juan, the driver for the family i tutor for picked me up from the admin's house (isabel). he speaks only spanish so that is another nice way to practice. i had a good lesson with mauricio and man is he smart - it is so refreshing!!!! i like it a lot. and well the parents are never home, but their maid is so nice and the boys are really polite and sweet. also i speak spanish with juan which is cool - i may have invited myself over to his house haha. i told him i wanted to meet his wife and kids and he said definitely, and i tried to explain how i didn't want to force him into hanging out with me but i think that message may have gotten a bit muddled. he understood all the same.

so there is a soccer tournament at school this week, la copa libertad, the cup of freedom - because clearly football = freedom... no but it was really fun. my students are in a few games so i took my classes to see them play and it is actually really exciting. when i went to my spanish class tonight i walked by the game with a bunch of my students playing just as they were winning the game. at the end the families of the winning team do a bridge with their hands and cheer "ole, ole, ole, ole, ingles, ingles' (that's the name of our school/team) so the parents saw me and asked me to some on the field to make the bridge for my students. they were shocked to see me there!!! i hope they were pleasantly surprised haha, i thought it was really cool.

lastly, i have made friends (at work anyway) with the 1st grade spanish teacher and she doesn't speak any english. we're going to try to get together to have a lil' intercambio of english/spanish and she is in her 20s so she said she would invite me out with her and her friends when they hang so i can meet more mexicans and see torreon. i also talked with the computer teacher today, it was funny - i was commenting on how hansome the soccer coaches are and it brought us to the boyfriend question. i didn't think she had a boyfriend for some reason, come to find out she is married - she just doesn't wear her ring to school because the girls NEVER stopped bothering her about it when she first started. so that was surprising, but she too invited me to hang out with her and friends. i was really hapy about that.

all in all it was a pretty busy week. tutoring, the gym, and spanish class kept me busy and i hope this weekend brings more activities :)

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