Yesterday I forgot to mention that:
-this city is GIGANTIC.
-the older son, Alfredo, loves Michael Jordan and the younger son, Joakin, loves Guitar Hero.
-we had ham sandwiches on white bread for dinner, then this morning we had cereal... where is the authentic Mexican food??
-Blanca walked us to the mall nearby which has an Applebee's and a Starbucks. Everything has an hour or two when they close (around 2 or 3 pm) for lunch. Then we went in a grocery store which looked just like Harris Teeter.
-Blanca also loved her hostess gifts (Daisy got her a book of pretty pictures of NC... the woman looked at it for forever!) and I got her a few household things (including a towel "too pretty to use").
Onto today:
We had to be at school at 8 this morning and Blanca walked us over there. It's maybe a 20 minute walk to the building (so pretty much like being at UNC) and then took our placement exams. I scored halfway between Levels 3 and 4... but I'm a pansy and opted for Level 3. It was wayyy too easy though so I bumped up to 4, I'll see how that goes tomorrow. There are 4 IPSL students (the program I'm doing) this term, which is far from what I expected. Three from UNC and 1 from UGA.
We met the program director and learned about the possible different volunteer sites; we'll be visiting those tomorrow. All of them are versions of an orphanage, including one for Mexican street children who don't speak Spanish (I don't quite understand that one).
We took a tour and got our student IDs (which, pathetically, I was extremely excited about) and book for the Spanish class. The campus looks like any American college campus pretty much, and there are a lot of exchange students here for the summer.
Finally, our first MEXICAN meal! La comida, the meal around 2, is the huge meal for the family. We had spaghetti-sauce-like soup with noodles, tortillas, salad, fried chicken (but not like Kentucky, as Blanca says), beans and cheese (the cheese is NOT the same - it's way gooier and richer), pineapple juice, and for dessert, bananas in a sweet creamy sauce (soooo sugary!).
Side note: while we were in class, Blanca came in our room and made the beds, put my dirty clothes in the closer (whoops, sorry Blanca), cleaned up. She also continuously jumps up during meals to get people more food or to make another dish, it's like Christmas Story when the mom has never eaten a hot meal! A lot of times she doesn't even eat with us, just makes plates for everyone else. Mom, get used to maid service because I might be expecting it when I get home.
After a nap, we went to meet another professor (Spanish is with other exchange students at UAG, our other 2 classes are through IPSL and are only the 4 of us). He will be in Portland for a month teaching, so we will have class on Skype. He is a Mexican who lived in Idaho for years (and is the program director's husband) so we were really able to discuss differences between the US and Mexico. The big one? Americans like to follow rules and Mexicans are crazy drivers who don't pay attention to stoplights. In Chapel Hill, the pedestrians have right of way, but in Mexico it's like a driver's license to kill: they will run you over!!
After the meeting, Daisy and I hung out at the apartment, put just our feet in the pool for a while (hmm, las cucarachas, not ideal for swimming), and then played Guitar Hero and Call of Duty (wooo!) with Joakin for a while. It was so hard to talk in Spanish and play at the same time.
For dinner we had authentic quesadillas! And again, the cheese is so different.
I am already thinking in Spanglish, 2 days in, but still at the point where I can't speak quickly or get my point across. It really is exhausting, trying to comprehend everything and conjugate and switch between Spanish and English.
It's tough to recap every detail, it feels like we've been here a week or two by now, but so far things are going pretty well.
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