touring torreon

well friends this has been a pretty hectic past few weeks. after the hospital i had a lot of make up work to do and i had to meet all my student's parents for conferences. so this past week i worked all day and had to go back to school every afternoon except for friday to do my tutoring and conferences. i started getting a little head cold because the air quality here is terrible, so by friday i had nearly lost my voice from all the talking. i am much better now though, i loaded up on tea with honey and fruits and veggies to keep me healthy.

last weekend was fun, a few of us went out to chili's (yes thats right - i'll have you know i was against it but the americans here like feeling at home, i prefer eating real mexican food haha, but i went along and had a nice time). after dinner we went to karaoke, it was a nice atmosphere but SUPER smoky. honestly i dont know how anyone can sing in that much smoke. that was when i started getting sick because of all the smoke and whatnot. we heard about this really great and cheap market to get produce so we went on saturday and got tons and i mean TONS of fruits and veggies for literally $5 dollars. i was really happy about that.

i know what youre thinking... is the fruit there safe??? the answer is yes, as long as you clean the outside very well, so we got a produce spray that is %100 natural and cleans all bacteria off foods. i learned that water does not wash off salmonella (duh...) so i feel confident with this spray. so saturday i went to this bar where they played live music and aside from it being really loud it was nice. the music was totally what you would expect of mexico, accordian and tons of guitarists - all wearing jeans and cowboy hats. and my friend genevieve introduced me to a new friend who is super fun.

jenna and i went food shopping and realized when we were going to pay for our groceries that she left her wallet in the taxi. clearly we had no way of contacting the taxi driver thusly no way of retreiving her wallet. i tried my best to keep her calm and advise on what she needed to do (cancel her cards, call the bank, etc...) just as she is freezing her bank accounts in the states our doorbell rings. who could it be you ask, none other than the taxi driver with her wallet. we were dumbfounded and SOOO grateful. she gave him 100 pesos and a million thanks and went back to the phone to UNfreeze her recently frozen accounts. it was an interesting day!

this weekend we had a 3 day weekend, so were are off today (monday). instead of traveling somewhere jenna and i decided to stay back and take in some of torreon. friday directly after school i went to a student's house and ate lunch with them at 3pm and met her grandparents who came in for the weekend. i stayed talking with the family and had dinner with them around 8ish and stayed until 9:30pm. i was TIRED!!!! from a long week of working all day and all night and then from having no free time to unwind on friday after school. it was really fun though, the mom is SOOO nice and so is the rest of the family.

so saturday we went to a student's birthday party at the movie theater. it was fun some of my students were there and jenna's students were there. the theatre closed off on entire 3D theatre for the party and we watched Bolt in 3D. we had hot dogs, popcorn, and cake. it was delicious!!! after the party we chilled a bit then went for a nice dinner and split a meal bc we were still so full from the movies. we met up with some friends at this fabulous club called LOVE and had soooo much fun. we left at 1am (which is REALLY early in mexico) because we had such a long day.

sunday was fun. torreon has the second largest cristo in the world so we went to the mountain top to see it and we went to mass at the church on the mountain, which was very interesting. i really liked the father's sermon. they had a cat that must live there who was wandering around the church during the mass, lounging on the kneel posts, walking across the altar. it made me smile. after the cristo we went to a few towers in torreon (bc torreon means tower the town is full of them). we got a taxi and had him stop and park and asked if he could take pictures of us. it made me laugh the pictures he took, because if we were standing in front of the tower he got us and literally 1/4 of the tower, which is the whole reason for the picture.

anyway he took us around and then we ended up shopping. i got a super cute dress and 3 pair of underwear for less than $25... i was happy about that :) we met up for dinner with lily a new mexican friend and had a nice authentic meal. we had a very full day. we were pooped...

today was much more calm, i tutored in the morning for a bit. i booked a trip with my best friend for the first week of july, we decided on going to mexico city for 4 days then to acapulco for 3. and i also booked my flight to come back to philly. dont get too excited though, im only staying for a few weeks to visit. we shopped at the market and i spent like $2 on all my fresh produce for the week and then we had delicious shrimp tacos for dinner. i have a bit of school work to catch up on and im chilling out the rest of the night to wind down from such a whirlwind of a weekend. but it was certainly worth being tired over.

finally, i made a decision for the second half of this year. i am going to volunteer in chile from july to november and then in peru for the month of december. so i will return for a bit in july 2009 and then i wont be back until 2010. who knows where i will end up after that, but im thinking somewhere in the southwest of the US. that is still up in the air. once i get more information about chile and peru i will let you all know.