WAU that took 10 minutes! Hahah well that's where I spend a good part of my life, in the kitchen cooking, eating at the table and laughing with Jenny. My back is against our front door so this is what you see when you walk in. To my left is our little love seat and a Monet painting. We love the arches in our little kitchen. So cute. So as soon as I figure out a faster way to do this you'll see more.

Had a great day with the kids today, then Jenny and I made Rodney and Stuart dinner and now I'm beat. Hasta mañana....

¿fotos?

So the last entry was my first feeble attempt to load pictures on my blog. Thing is, I can only load 5 pics per entry and my internet connection is painfully slow. Sorry that picture is sideways, I couldn't find a way to turn it because the memory in this computer is too small to save the foto. De todas maneras, that is a picture of our famous Reloj or clock tower which is the center of old downtown and built by the same company that built Big Ben. It's under construction right now and the scaffolding turned out to be an opportunity for capitalism and people actually pay to climb the rickety walkways. It's real pretty at night and I actually took that picture the very first night I was in Pachuca.
I just waited for 20 minutes to load 5 fotos and they showed no sign of coming up so I've gotta find a better way to do this. I'm trying! Someday you'll this great place where I live, I promise....

Back in Town

We got back to Pachuca this afternoon and Jenny and I went food shopping and now we're working on lesson plans. We had a great weekend. I really loved Guanajuato. We found out, ironically, that it is the sister city of Sevilla, Spain! I knew there was a reason I really liked that city. Anyway, lots of memories and lots of pictures and a long bus ride later and we're back home. A couple memorable experiences....the callejonadas, or street singers, dressed up like jokers that serenaded us at night; the rat that we found in the kitchenette area of our hostel; the nice French couple we befriended in our hostel; the broken bus toilet; the creepy mummy museum; getting ripped off by the minimart lady in Mexico City's bus terminal; the amazing view of Guanajuato from El Pipila; bonding like none other after sharing a bathroom for 3 days; touring Diego Rivera's home; and doing karaoke in Spanish Saturday night. Good times. Now we're broke and can't wait for payday on Friday, haha.
Hope all is good in the States....hasta luego!

Thank You Hurricane Dean

Happy Hurricane!

Wednesday we woke up to torrential rain and it lasted all day. By lunch we found out that the school was letting the kids out early and that there would be no school the next day. I guess some parts of the city were under water, other parts of our state were really flooded and they said we got more rain than the coast. Thursday morning we found out that that the state had cancelled school Friday too and we quick made plans and jumped on a bus to Mexico City. Stuart, Rodney, Jenny, and I then took a 5 hr bus to Guanajuato, a picturesque college town in the center of Mexico. Were having a great time and loving the fact that were getting paid right now. Guanajuato is soo pretty. Its real colonial and all the streets are narrow and cobblestone. It reminds me so much of Spain! We saw a crazy Museum of Mummies today, a historical museum, took an incline up to see an awesome view of the city and checked out their ornately gilded basilica. The main plaza is so cute, with a gazebo and cafes and lots of low trees whose branches have been cut into a square shape. Were going to an old hacienda tomorrow and to see a show at their famous Teatro Juares tomorrow night. Sunday well head home to Pachukerville.
So about my first days with the kiddos. They are sooooo cute. It is going to be a lot of fun and they always give me a reason to smile. Well, my first day was pretty interesting cuz there was one boy, Alejandro, who had never been to school before. His grandmother works at the school and she brought him but he didnt want to leave her. She tried a couple times and he went crazy, broke the Spanish teachers necklace, we had to pick him up to keep him from running out the door and he pulled out a handful of my blonde hair. Hahah. Eventually he calmed down, kinda took all morning for him to finally join the others, but he got the hang of it. The next day he was all smiles and loves school. I love him, hes really a sweet kid and really bright. Then theres Nailea whos the daughter of one of the celebrated soccer players, she is so smart and funny, shes always telling stories. And then theres Renata, who was the other one thats never been to school and at any given time, even in the middle of my teaching, shell run up and give me a bear hug and a kiss. Shes real sweet. So anyway, the first couple days went well, we had a good time and I already love my kids. :)
Bueno, hasta luego amigitos!

Ready or Not

School starts tomorrow and I am so nervous. Regardless of the fact that I will only be teaching them for about an hour (because of specials) I am so nervous. My roommate heard a strange voice in English while she was in the shower only to find out that it was her weird roomie practicing her puppet voice, haha. I relearning Old MacDonald and Itsy Bitsy Spider and spend my time cutting and pasting things. I think that makes me a pretty official pre-school teacher. Tomorrow we´ll find out. I just hope I dont make the kids cry!! I´m so nervous. Okay, back to school again today.
Bec -de buena onda is definitely Mexican, it means like a good vibe, como decir q una persona es de muy buena onda es decir es buena gente. estoy apriendo muchisimo del español mexicano por hablar con todas nuestras taxistas, jaja. Disfruta de tus chicos, seras la mejor mamacita. te echo de menos guapita!!

De buena onda

I´m still in Mexico! And loving it more each day! I didn`t realize that the last time I wrote was last Wednesday until my mom told me today. Thanks for still checking! So life has been busy...
On Thursday we took a windy trip up the mountains to a remote hacienda that is a resort for Mexican families. The hacienda was of old Spanish colonial architecture and had a beautiful gardens and I took a lot of pictures and we ate an awesome brunch buffet. Also, we stopped through a little touristy town of Huasca and I bought some cacti for our apartment. I love cacti! But I found out I´m not a big fan of cacti salad, tastes tookmuch like eating aloe vera, haha. Friday we had a fiesta with the other foreign teachers, five of them have apartments in the same building and share a roof, we call it Melrose Place. Near Melrose Place is a dance studio where I am going to start taking dance lessons. Watch out Apolo. And Saturday night we went to the Pachuca vs. Morelia soccer game with our favorite taxista Marcos. Pachuca won 3-1. Sunday I went to a church that is about 10 minutes from our apartment. It was more jumping than a club on a Saturday night! Everyone was clapping and moving and some were jumping and there were lots of kids and families. I liked it a lot though and I´ll go again this Sunday. This week we began orientation with the Mexican teachers at the school, theres at least twice as many Mexicans as foreigners. Very nice people, and today I met my cooperating teacher, Ruth, with whom I´ll share a room and our group of 14 students. I´m kinda nervous to start! We keep putting off everything til tomorrow and I still dont know what I´ll be teaching on Monday! Tomorrow I`ll meet my assistant. Fortunately, this is not uncommon and I just keep telling myself that I really only spend 2 hours max a day teaching. Because I only have one class, (for the 3 Kindergarten classes theres one other English teacher, Jason, who has 2 of them and I only have one, which I only teach a half day) I imagine I´ll be assisting a lot in other classes. Which is fine with me, I´d love to observe other teachers with their kids. Ive got a lot to learn, but I definitely think that after a year of this I will feel real confident and comfortable and maybe even love teaching little kids. Who knows.
By the way, I´m feeling much better than before, still not 100%, but I´m starting to wonder if I ever will and I just have to be okay with that, haha. Jenny and I took a run to the park today, boy was that an exciting event for everyone we passed. If my blondeness didnt set us apart already, running in shorts definitely did, haha. So tomorrow we´re going to the movies, its half off night, a ticket for 2.50 in a nice theater. I dont think we even care what we see! No big plans for this weekend yet, probably just getting ready for Monday....and sometime soon I promise to put up some fotos! I´ve tried believe it or not, on Flickr, Webshots, and Snapfish and finally decided that my connection here is just too slow. So I think that I¨m going to end up just posting a couple on this website for you to see, next time.
So how are the States?
Miss yall

Hola amigitos

Wau, so I´ve been writing just about everyday. I´m sure my parents like that. When school starts it will be harder to write but this week we have a lot of free time. This morning at school we spent a lot of time talking about paperwork, procedures, housing, yada yada and got a tour of the campus. It´s really nice and we cant wait to see all the kids in their cute uniforms. I definitely will be teaching pre-school, with a Mexican bilingual assistant and we are the Kinder Rojo class. I got to see my classroom and read the class list they have posted inside the school entrance. Looks like I will have 14 kids, 2 Diegos. It was so neat to read their names. I´m very excited about teaching them. Apparently in the pre-school program there are 3 levels, I think, preKinder 3 yr olds, Kinder 4 yr olds, and Primer Kinder (or something like that) 5 yr olds. Should be fun, Sydney and I get each other excited talking about it. She´s a little older than me and taught preschool in Korea. Hahah, I have next to zero experience but I´m just as excited. We shall see.
So today was an interesting adventure in Pachuca, buying cell phones. It took us a couple hours to get everything straight, first their card machine didnt work and then I didn´t like the phone I bought (it was super thin, but the screen was so 80´s, it was a good laugh) and traded it for another (actually its the exact same one I had in Spain!). Its a good deal (tengo saldo de nuevo, guapas sevillanas!), pay by the minute, and no incoming calls are charged. On our way out, we were calling a cab, and I flagged one down. He saw me and started pulling over but didn´t notice this motorcyclist on his right and ran right into him! We felt so bad, they yelled at each other and then the moto guy drove off okay but we kept walking, we werent taking that taxista. Jenny and I hung out with some other teachers at a cafe later and now were back at our favorite internet place.
Oh, the circus! It was soo much fun, took lots of fotos, it was a classic circus with some real funny acts and some acts we probably wouldnt see in the States. Had a sweet act with 6 real tigers that were so pretty and a dangerous motorcyclists-in-a-hamster-ball act. We had a blast and even got a foto with some of the circus men afterwards. Good times.
I´m feeling a little better, the altitude still has its hold on me, but were taking it slow and relaxing a lot. Thanks Aunt Sara for your tips ;-)
And I promise I will have fotos up by the end of the week... I am in the land of mañana....:-)

Soy una maestra

Well today was our first day at the school! We got to meet all the other new foreign teachers and they had a nice catered breakfast set up for us in one of the classrooms and then we went on a trolley tour around Pachuca. I promise pictures soon, hopefully tomorrow, cuz ive got quite a few now and the trolley took to a great lookout point to see the city from up high. It was a great day and the other teachers are really great, everybody comes with a cool story. We actually found out that a couple my parents age live behind our apt in the green houses that are part of our complex and this whole time we never ran into them. Theyre from Portland and theyre really nice. At breakfast we met a girl Jaime who started working for ASP in April, she actually used to live in our apt, and shes knows alot about getting around and places to go. She took a bunch of us to a cafe after the trolley for a cheap, $3.50 4-course meal! Food and taxis are real cheap around here. Clothes and electronics not so much. So it was nice and we all got along real well and tonight were going to a circus in town. Oh, and apparently Ill be working with the pre-schoolers, I´m not sure yet if that means I{ll be an assistant to Sydney, another girl from Boston, or if I{ll be a teacher too. Either way, I{m excited about it. By the way, its weird that i introduce myself as from Boston, am i really? Kinda weird to hear myself say that. Theres another teacher here whos an hour south of Boston, Jamie{s from Las Vegas, Charles from Haiti, Joel and Chantel from Toronto, and Stuart from Austrailia, and theres others i dont know yet. Good mix.
By the way, I have to say, if you somehow got misdirected and typed in southOFtheborder instead of southOtheborder, my apologies cuz that site is definitelyl not mine nor worth looking at. It was created before mine so thats why I had to put an irish twist on it. Glad you found the right site. :-)
To the circus!

y aqui estamos

Hah, well well well, day 3 and already Moctezuma has gotten his revenge on us. Don´t worry, I´ll spare you details but I´ve just been feeling nauseus (sp.?) pretty much all afternoon and we´re really tired too. We just ventured out of our apt to see what the farmacias have for this disease and hopefully we picked up some strong stuff that will knock it out. We decided we´ve really got a lot of things against us right now, lack of sleep, new food and water, and high altitude. So welcome Moctezuma. Jenny calls it Bicicleta. We´ve bonded fast. :-) In other news....we might have a regular taxista, Marcos, to take us to school each day which would be awesome. (We´ve taken taxis everyday, theyre real cheap, the most expensive trip costs 2 dollars) We start orientation tomorrow at 9 and I´m real excited to see how it´s going to be. We found out that the American School is the premeir in Pachuca and is located in a wealthy neighborhood where all the big soccer players live. Oh, and we might be going to a game this Saturday, hopefully we fell better by then, we´re getting excited about it. Pachuca has the best team in Mexico and a really nice stadium. Bueno, I think that´s about it. :-) Hasta ahora!

Estoy en México!!

I made it! Today is such a beautiful day in Pachuca!!! Jenny and I left our ¨suite¨, which is so nice, I can´t wait to put up pictures, at about noon and we´ve been walking all around town. We walked into a market and bought fresh fruit, walked into 2 churches, came downtown, ate some really gooood tacos, and found a cheap internet place. Next we´re going to get some ice cream to add to our all carb diet, haha. We get stares like none other, we haven´t seen any other Americans or even foreigners yet for that matter. We are really living the la vida mexicana. Last night we were walking around town at like 830 looking for a place to eat and it was kinda weird that some places were closing. There was a mariachi band and tons of families in the main plaza and a rock climbing wall was set up. We found a little place, (I miss tapas so much!!) that was like a shrine to Pachuca´s soccer team and I ate something like a beef quesadilla and Jenny had a hamburger. Then we waiting in the main plaza for a ride home and 2 guys from the rock climbing wall tried to talk to us, but they ended up being creepy and we left. Jenny said that didn´t happen to her yet in Pachuca, so I may have to change my hair color again soon. Just kidding, I´m not a good brunette, but I sure stick out more here than in Spain.

So yesterday was a long day. Gotta admit, I was nervous that my luggage wouldn´t make it through, or weigh too much, but I got to Mexico City in one piece with all my bags! I went through customs and came out to a big crowd of people but no one was holding a sign for me....so I followed their directions and stood by the door where they said they´d be if we got mixed up. Sure enough, 45 minutes later, the preschool and middle school principal came by with my name on a sign and were so happy to have found me, they had thought I would come out somewhere else. So Lupita, the middleschool principal helped me with my bags and paid for our bus trip back to Pachuca. So Mexico City is not so glamorous and we hit rush hour traffic, but the bus ride was nice. Lupita is really sweet and we watched the movie Sahara, ate peanuts and drank the bottled water they gave us. We spoke in Spanish because I told her I preferred it, but she speaks English really well. At the bus station a man from the school picked us up in a minivan, with a Texas license plate, haha, and took us to the school to get Lupita´s car. The school looks really nice! There´s a yellow and blue gate all around the campus that has a nice field inside too. We start our orientation there this Tuesday.

Then we went to our new apartment, in the neighborhood of Colonias Doctores, right near a big baseball field but not too close to downtown. From the street it just looks like a big metal wall with a garage door but when the portero, doorman, let us in, it opened into a really nice plaza with homes and suites and founations. We definitely consider ourselves lucky. So couple things about our apartment, we each have our own room, I´d say it´s the size of a college apartment, and we have a cute little kitchen with a gas stove, a table and a couch. We have a little patio that opens into Jenny´s room to wash and hang clothes. Our beds are really hard, probably a shade better than sleeping on the floor, and my pillow is a fluffy marshmallow that my head sinks in. Haha, didn´t matter, I still fell asleep last night, I was beat. We´re gunna go to the store, that we think is owned by Walmart, to find some more stuff to make our suite a home. We love it. Our shower is just great and we have Star Wars mats in the bathroom for some reason. Just a side note, nobody drinks the water down here, not even the Mexicans, and it took us a while to realize that a metal contraption in our living room is to hold a big bottle of water. Also, I didn´t know until Jenny told me but because the Mexican plumbing isn´t so great, they don´t flush their toilet paper, they throw it away! I´m definitely going to have to get used to that.
Well, I´m still trying to unpack everything. I already moved my room around a little. I keep comparing Pachuca to Spain and although there are some similarities, they are very different!! I think I´ll really like Pachuca, I like that it´s not turisty, I feel like it´s true Mexico.
Most of all I´m sooo happy that Jenny is my roommate! We are going to have a great time, she´s great, and she speaks Spanish really well. She didnt´study abroad, but has been to Mexico on vacation a ton, and spent 3 months in Tijuana 2 summers ago working at a children´s camp. Okay that´s all for now, I´ll take more pictures and download them sometime this week!

Ry, I´m so sorry I didn´t call you last night, we were out when I remembered and I didn´t have your number on me. :-( I´ll call you when I can.
Jenn, thanks so much for my little notes in my suitcase, you`re cute!!
Jared, thanks for my sweet note! You´re great :-)

P.S. I love all your comments!!! Miss yall

Hasta Manana

I leave tomorrow! I really can't believe it.
I'll fly into Mexico City in the afternoon and hopefully find my name on a sign in the crowd with the other arriving teachers. Then it's an hour and a half to Pachuca and my new apartmento. Then I'll meet Jenny for the first time and get settled and find a way to call home! Then Jenny and I will probably have to take a taxi to WalMart to pick up all the things I couldn't fit in my bags. The weather looks like scattered thunderstorms for the next couple of days, I hope my flight isn't delayed. I probably failed to mention that Jenny told me we have a gate-man in front of our apartment complex! I like it already, haha. :-) If I didn't tell you before, Pachuca is a really high city, 2,000 ft. higher than Denver. But, because it's so low in the hemisphere, it's weather is really moderate and never gets snow. It is known as the Windy City and is one of the coolest spots in the country. Can't wait to see it and eat some real tacos. Tomorrow I'll be in Mexico!!

Only 2 more days!

I can't believe I didn't start a countdown earlier, but I guess time has just flown by too fast. I started packing today, finally, and I'm starting to worry about enough space for all my stuff! I should be a pro at packing by now but how do you pack for a year abroad?? All I've got is 2 big bags and a carry-on. And its not just regular clothes I have to bring, I've got to pack teacher clothes too! The task is daunting. But I think I'll make it. :-)
I just talked to my new roommate, Jenny (go figure!), who is already in Mexico and moved into our new apartment. It was really cool to see the pictures she took of it and to imagine our own place in Pachuca. It's really nice, more than I expected, and I'm sure I'll put up fotos as soon as I can.
So, the next two days I will be trying to get in everything I can, hopefully call as many of you as I can, finish packing, and then I'm off! We're waking up super early Saturday morning to drive to Boston and catch my flight.
I'll write again before I leave...and just to make sure this thing is working, if you were able to read it, let me know and reply to this post... thanks! :-)
chao for now