Well, it seems there are several people with the same questions: Why are you in Mexico? My mother's probably having a fit laughing right now because she says that I often begin speaking with the assumption that everyone else has been in my head and knows what I've been thinking or doing. So let me fill in the gaps. I am in Mexico for one month living with friends of my family and doing an immersion Spanish language program. Basically, it's speak, think, hear, be in spanish ... sink or swim ... fabulous and exhausting! The town that I am in, Cuernavaca, is about an hour and a half south of Mexico City. It's beautiful! There's a 16th century cathedral about two blocks from my house that I walk by several times a day and loads of buganvillias (flowers that are these brilliant hues of pink and purple and orange). I love it. After this month in Mexico my mom and I are going to travel around Spain for about three weeks and then visit family in Europe.
Happily I have avoided any more encounters with the birds in Cuernavaca, though every Mexican that I have told the story has laughed and said, "Si, es muy commun" ... "Yes, it's very common." Has no one thought to buy some bee-bee guns and take care of this little problem?
I had my second major lesson from Mexico today on the way to and from school: Do not trust the rutas (little buses that travel around the city). Every day, my school begins at 9AM with coffee and discussion for about ten minutes and then classes. The school itself is located in a different section of the city west of the center where I live so I need to take some kind of transportation to and from the school. I have two options: 1) take a taxi which costs about twenty pesos (approximately 2 US dollars) or 2) take a ruta which costs 3.50 in pesos (approximately 35 US cents). While taxis are certainly not expensive ... the more money I save on transportation, the more I have to spend on gifts so it is clearly to all our benefit for me to take the ruta. This all would be well and good if the rutas made any sense whatsoever! But they don't.
This morning, I had the adventure of trying to work out exactly where I was supposed to find the ruta going in the direction of my school. I asked several people, and either they did not know or my Spanish is not very good, because it took me a LONG time to find a ruta. When I did finally see a Ruta 6 (the number that I need) I flagged it down and got on. About thirty minutes later I was fairly convinced that we were going in the absolute OPPOSITE direction from my school so I got off the ruta. At this point I was already about twenty minutes late for school and had absolutely no clue where I was. I flagged down a taxi and it took us another thirty minutes or so to get to my school. On the up side, I had a lovely conversation with the taxi driver in Spanish.
Well, after many laughs over just how far away from the school I had gotten, I went through my various classes and then began my journey home. Now, "Surely," you say, "Katrina would never make the same mistake twice!" Oh, but I would ... two more times. I got on the ruta and twenty minutes later began to have the same strange lurking feeling that "we're not in Kansas anymore, Todo". So I asked the woman in front of me and she kindly told me that I needed to be going in the opposite direction. Good! I got off, had more adventures finding a stop in the opposite direction, waited for twenty minutes for a bus, and got on (this time after having checked that the sign in the window read "Al Centro"). Finally I was on the right ruta ... only this time I missed the centro stop because it was a part of the center of town that I did not recognize. Needless to say, I took a taxi home. As it turns out, the ruta 6 goes in four different directions. Why they don't just give thes e rutas different numbers, I have no idea. I blame my trouble both on the bad markings of the rutas and a head injury I incurred in the morning when I walked full speed ahead into a glass door I thought was open.
Well, other than the unfortunate adventures with rutas, I really am enjoying myself. I've done my fair bit of sightseeing and this weekend will do more. My spanish classes are really helpful and I'm learning an enormous amount. It's very tiring, but exciting as well when I'm able to have a conversation in spanish with a random person on the street. I feel utterly spoilt to have this opportunity. It's great fun!
I do enjoy getting emails from you all and I will do my best to keep responding. Please forgive me if they are generally short or tardy. If you would, please keep my grandmother and the rest of my family in your prayers. Two days ago she fell and cut her forearms and yesterday morning about 11AM was unresponsive when someone came to check in on her. She's doing much better now, but it gave us all a bit of a fright. We're not sure if it was a minor stroke or something else. I am thankful to God that she knows the Lord because she has so much peace with the time of life that she is in and the eventuality of death. For her it is a going home to be with her Lord. What a wonderful thought!
Okay, that's all for now. I do love you all and pray that your summers are fruitful and restful.
PS: One brief story on the importance of NOT assuming that you can turn all english words into spanish ones with a different pronunciation. I recently learned that preservatives in spanish are not "preservativos". One of the students in my school asked his Mexican mother if there were preservativos in his food only to discover that preservativos are condoms. Mexican cooking is different, but not that different. He also learned that if he said he was embarazada (which he thought might mean embarrased), he was telling people that he was pregnant. Ooops.
