Posts (page 2)

21 January 2008

            Today we got new teachers for culture class, and ironically enough I’m back with the original teacher I had two weeks ago – Lulu. She’s quite good natured, although you can tell that she’s used to teaching upper level Spanish classes by the way she ran the class. We talked about what we like to do to relax and what our family is like, and she told us some pretty funny things about double entendres in the Spanish language. I like her as a teacher; this last week of Spanish class should be a good way to end the course. In regular class we got to talk about our families – we all brought pictures to class and everyone asked eachother questions about who was who in the pictures. Interestingly enough, when I showed my powerpoint slide from the barn, Valentina asked me who Alex was and where the photo was taken. So I explained about how he’s deployed in Iraq at the moment and the look on her face said more than her words did. She almost looked disgusted with the fact that I knew someone overseas. All she said to me was “I… I really don’t want to talk about that” and let the moment get sufficiently uncomfortable for a few seconds until someone asked me about what my parents did or something to that effect. The topic of politics has never come up in my presence, save with Emily, and so I guess I just never got the opportunity to see how the Mexican population feels about our war on terrorism. It was eye-opening to say the least. I really would like to have a conversation (en inglais preferablemente) with her about our war, and how even though I may not agree with the cause I certainly support the troops. But I digress, this is to be a blog about biology, not politics and international relations.

Hasta luego-

Dana

            Today we visited the historical site of Dzibilchaltun, circa 300 BC. The site is full of the remnants of what was once a huge Mayan city, there are ruins of pyramids all over the place and in the center of the main plaza there were ruins of a cathedral built by the Spanish conquistadors. But let me backtrack a bit for you. Mayan cities all revolved around a central plaza, which was a square, where all important rituals and events took place. There we saw and climbed a pyramid and were able to view the remains of the other four buildings that had once stood along the perimeter as well. Further away stood an observatory of sorts, a pyramid with entrances facing each cardinal direction and two windows flanking the east and west sides. It is said that at sunrise and sunset the building frames the sun perfectly; I’ve seen pictures that emulate this phenomenon and it is absolutely stunning. This building was of particular interest to me, partially because it was the only one still fully intact and partially because of my minor obsession with the sky. The building had a central “room” with a vaulted ceiling and one window facing south, I believe, with entrances to the east and west. There appeared to be a poured floor intact as well, which I thought was quite advanced for such an ancient civilization (but perhaps that was poured after the fact, in which case I retract my awe). There were no glyphs or carvings, but the building itself had a sort of human expression to it. One could find human forms in it at various angles; a skull appeared above an archway, or a profile from the stairs. I’m not sure if the Mayans intended to achieve that effect, but in my opinion it further expressed the genius of the civilization.

After we visited the ruins, we walked a bit further and found our relief from the morning sun: a cenote full of lily pads and framed by the remains of another great pyramid. The water was again bright turquoise and more than half of the surface was covered in lily pads sprouting white flowers. Unlike the previous cenotes we’ve visited, this one was more of a lake than a cave and had lots of fish swimming around. We stayed at the cenote for around an hour or so, enjoying the water and trying to catch a fish. It was a fun, educational Saturday (yes, I did just use fun and educational in the same description).

A toût a l’heure!

Dana “I miss speaking French a lot more than I enjoy struggling with Spanish” Puglisi

            Hoy visitamos el Museo de Anthropologia en el Paseo de Montejo. Estuve muy interesante, hay muchos artifacticos de la cultura de los Mayas – esculturas, cuadros, herramientas, y duplicados pequeñitos de los dios de Maya. Mi dio favorito es Chaac, el dio de lluvia (rain). Enough Spanish, that’s about all my brain can handle on the fluent side ;) We saw a lot of interesting things at the museum, but I think the thing that struck me the most was the head deformation that took place. It was displayed by a board that read “evolution social” with an illustration of all the stages of deformation from birth to adulthood. One was of a baby strapped to a contraption that looked like a hair straightener; the baby layed strapped down along one half of it with its head toward the hinge while the other half flattened its forehead. I found it to be absolutely grotesque, but I’m sure other cultures will look back on mine and wonder why people would have their noses made out of plastic, or holes put in their tongues. Apparantly, it was a way of distinguishing between classes; I don’t really remember which extremes distinguished which classes because the images actually disturbed me, but I would assume that the higher status one had, the flatter their skull became in the front. This deformation continued throughout adolescence with other contraptions that looked a big like books strapped to their heads. The ideal look was one of a silver back gorilla: flat above the brow bone, obtuse angle upwards to the top of the skull, and a kind of rounded point for the top of the head.

            It wasn’t all flattened heads and deformation however, we learned about the Mayan calendar and numerical system as well as their burial ritual. The Mayans used a calendar which had 18 20-day months, making a 360 day year. They believed in a vestianlgaelkjsomething system, which means that everything increases in exponents of 20. Therefore, 1 day ^ 20 = 1 month, or 20 days, and so on. Their calendar was extremely efficient; there was never a need for a leap year or a month with only 28 days. They also seem to have calculated the end of time to be in 2012, but that wasn’t written on the wall with the rest of the numbers and months. They employed a numerical system somewhat similar to Roman Numerals. 1 was symbolized by a dot, 5 by a line, 0 by a sideways egg, and big numbers were stacked on top of eachother in a kind of math equation. I’ll try to demonstrate below:

            X 8000

            X 400              -----

            X 20                   o

            X 1                  -----

            That, in Mayan, equals 2005. The bottom row is 5 x 1 = 5. The middle row is 0 x 20 = 0. The top row is 5 x 400 = 2000. Ergo, if you add them all together you get 2005. Now that’s just a simple example. We had to write our ages, 2008 and our birth year (1988) in Mayan for class today, and let me tell you, figuring out how to divide 1900 by 400 without employing decimals (the Mayans only used whole numbers) is a bit of a challenge. The Mayans were obviously very gifted at math, which leads me to conclusions that Italians were not, otherwise I would have been brilliant today.

Wishing I was more adept at numerical challenges –

Dana

            Wednesday night we went out to the Mambo Café up in Pensiones. It’s a salsa club in the city that’s pretty popular, and a lot of us were feeling adventurous and willing to try out our newly learned salsa skills. I’m really glad I went. I feel that sometimes you can define a culture by the simplest things; hand gestures, laughter, dancing… I actually watched a movie that said something like “you can define a country by its relationship with cheese” (10 pesos if you name the movie) and it’s really true. Going out last night gave me an opportunity to truly compare and contrast Mexico with the United States. There’s a lot of perspective to be gained by going out to a local setting; you really get to see how people interact.

There’s a lot of cat-calling in the streets here; anywhere you walk no matter what you look like or your age you will receive a whistle or greeting of some sort from every man that passes you. At first inspection this seems uncalled for, but upon investigation you’re told that it is truly an expression of respect from the men. You’re given the explanation that men here just want “to boost yourself esteem a bit and let you know that you’re beautiful”. Well to be honest, I didn’t buy it when Jose-Luis told us that, but then, I took a walk through el mercado and looked in all the shop windows and noticed something interesting. Mannequins here are actual human sized. They aren’t size 0 model bodies; they have arms and hips and curve the way the typical woman curves. The clothes are modeled in the windows the way they would fall on your body in real life. There aren’t any half naked perfect complexioned A&F teenagers advertising the sales. Mexican people are blissfully ignorant of the “need” to be thin and fabulous. They appreciate all the women in their country: the old, the young, the thin, the heavy, the short and the tall. Down here they truly think that women are to be respected and admired, not pressured and starved to fit an image. It’s refreshing. This was even obvious at the club we went to; men asked for your hand when they wanted to dance and were patient when you didn’t know how to salsa as well as they do. They taught you how to do complicated steps, and when the dance was over, they kissed your hand or your cheek and thanked you in your language. American dancing is not at all that way; we all just launch onto the dance floor and get grabbed by whatever guy wants to dance with you. There’s no talking, no personal space and no interaction except pelvic friction. Mexican men have got a bad reputation with the world, and I don’t really think they deserve it anymore. I kept hearing all year that studying abroad changes your life and opens your eyes to things you never would have seen at home, and now I understand what everyone meant. Things as small as a night at a club or a walk down the street can really tell you a lot about a culture, and I hope my description has helped you understand a bit as well.

Nos vemos

Dana

9 January 2008

            So last night was amazing.

We went to el Centro (downtown), and met up with everyone by the Christmas tree de Who-ville. They took it down today, but you had to see it, it was absolutely adorable. Maybe once I have enough connection to vox to actually post, I’ll upload them, sound like a plan? Excelente J So anyway, we walked (a camisamos) to the main plaza/city square place and saw the Cathedral, which was beautiful too. Then we asked a few locals and found a restaurant to go to for Aakash’s 20^th birthday. It was called el Parrada and it was the perfect ethnic experience for us: there were 3D murals on the walls, like in Applebees, only certain features of them were paper-machéd and stuck out, like arms and toes and noses and things. So we ordered our drinks and meals and the waiter obviously knew somos gringos, so he brought us HUGE sombreros to wear (pics to follow). All in all it was a good time, and I’m pretty sure it’ll become our regular haunt. It was just a really nice time. Bueno, muy bueno.

            When we got home however, our water pressure was non-existant but when we opened the bathroom door, guess what we saw??? A SCORPION. That’s right folks at home, un scorpione. Claws, curly tail, the whole package. It was TERRIFYING. We jumped on the bed and yelled a bit, and then Cindy got more courage and I handed her a shoe and we squashed it. Dead. Right on the floor outside of our bedroom. Sickening, it was, muy horrifico. So this morning when we woke up and looked in the hallway, it was covered with teeny tiny hormigos (ants).

            Anyway, we went to escuela and aprendamos las pelabras de el corpo y las ropas.

ATENTIONE! THERE IS A GECKO IN MY BEDROOM AT THIS VERY MOMENT. INCREDIBLE! Hahahah So we just ran downstairs with a picture of the gecko to show Delia and I guess she thought we were afraid of it, so she started talking about how they sit in the trees and eat the bugs and fruits and then run away muy rapido and if we wanted to get rid of it, all we have to do is throw a shoe at it and everything will be ok haha I love my host grandma <3

Back to my original story, we learned about ropas y el corpo hoy. Pero, a quarto y media tenemos un tour de Merida con los Dawleys y nosotros cupleanos de clases. It was such a nice tour. You would not believe all the wealth this city has/had… the mansions are gorgeous and are still private homes. I thought they would have all been turned into museos or oficias by now, but no es verdad. PS I’m so proud of mi espanol, only three days and I am starting to communicate con personas local. Es muy exciting.

I got on AIM today at school on one of the breaks and I was able to talk with Ann, Dereck and Natalie. I’m not sure that was the best move. I mean, I know I’m away and I’m having a really great time, I’m not even close to homesick yet. But I really wanted to hear their voices when I was talking to them and the reality that I can’t do that is a little harsh. I guess all I can do is give them my number and wait for them to call whenever they can. Me and Phil talked about it and when he uses his home cell phone to call MaryKate after hours its 99 cents a minute for Verizon, so I guess that works when calling from the states to here as well… I don’t know but it’s a possibility other than buying a phone card. Anyway:

To call me dial : 011-52-1-(999) 260-2380.  The 011 is to get out of the country, the 52 is the province in Mexico and the 1 is necessary to connect. The rest is just a normal cell phone number, but that’s it. A good time to call is around 5 or 6 EST, since I’ll be out of school and most likely at my homestay after lunch by then. Remember, I’m on central time, so that means I’m one (1) hour behind all of you back east. And Alex, I have NO idea how many hours ahead you are, but subtract yet another from when you usually want to call me ;)

            So tonight is a chill night, Cindy y yo estudiamos el taxonomio de los maliformes (gracias por la pelabra Roger) con Megan y Danielle y Emily y Caitlin tardes.

Adios amigos!
Dana

10 January 2008

            Hoy. Que diga te de hoy….? Yo sabe: hoy, aprendo las palabras de mi vida. Por ejamplo, yo sabe como se dice “my name is, I live in, my phone number is, I have a brother, I have lots of pets, my favorite color/number/day of the week is, I was born on” en espanol! Y aprendo de Skype y cartes de telefono haha Okay, I don’t think I can express anything else in Spanish. Today was pretty low-key. We went to school, I aced a mammal quiz, learned about trovadores (pronounced tro-BAH-door-aze) in culture class… oh, okay, there’s something to talk about J

            Trovador is a style of music down here in Meso-America. It started in Europe in the middle ages when people (I think they were called minstrels in those times…) used to travel around singing stories about history, war, and great romances. Well, it seems that these people made it over to Meso-America and the Caribbean Islands and started singing in espanol. So there were all these terrible dictators in Cuba and South/Central America and the trovadores started singing protest songs, expressing the distress and frustration of the people. In good ol’ Yucatan however, there were no dictators, life here is much too relaxed y lente for there to be un dictadore haha Anyway, the Yucatan trovadore es solemente romantica. Muy, muy romantica actualmente. And tonight, in el Parque de Santa Lucia there is a free live outdoor concert type thing with cutesy tables and a bunch of us are headed down there to see the music. It should be a good time. We’re leaving from my house in about an hour, so I don’t really have much time to finish this up. But really, there wasn’t much to today. Or last night; we just stayed in to study mammals, we were sooo freakin tired from our tour. Oh check that, I didn’t talk about yesterday either, I’m terrible.

            Allir (yesterday, spelled wrong I’m sure) we took a historical tour of Merida after CIS  which was really cool. I have to upload pictures onto this thing sometime.. I just wish the connection at school was more reliable. Anyway, after school we all went to lunch at a famous restaurant nearby for some local cuisine and then we all boarded a tour bus for a few hours. Merida is so full of surprises, let me tell you. There are mansions tucked away EVERYWHERE and all sorts of crazy old iglesias y cathedrals y monumentos. I can’t describe it, but I was in awe for basically the whole thing. And me and Amanda took some pretty hilarious photos in el Parque del Sud Americana, I’ll get those up too sometime in the nearish future.

Nos vemos

Dana “I suck at blogging today” Puglisi-Wildes (as the Mexicanos do)*

*. You get your name then your fathers hyphenated to your mothers. When you get married you drop your mom’s and become, for example, Dana Puglisi de Suberzkisnano. And please, don’t ask me what kind of last name that is, I just kind of hit the keyboard a bit lol

            Mucho amor <3

12 January 2008

            I am so overwhelmed with what to type first I can’t even begin to start this entry. Yesterday we learned salsa at escuela and in the evening there was a welcome party and then after we all went out together. Today we visited our first cenotes. So interesting sidenote, I was typing this entry and passed out cold for 2 and half hours. These cenotes seriously wore me out. Anyway, they were beautiful; all turquoise water and stalactites hanging from the ceiling… The first one we visited actually had bats flying out of it when we first got there. The water was crystal clear, perfect temperature and really really deep. So deep in fact, that Aakash (who can’t swim) had to wear a life jacket to feel safe haha. Anyway, I got to try out my new underwater case for my camera, and it worked perfectly. I got some amazing shots of people underwater, jumping off the dock and just of the atmosphere in general. It was really cute too, the Dawleys jumped off together and tried to hug underwater for a picture. Adorable, en serio. The second cenote was much more cavelike, with huge tree roots hanging down from above and little grottos hidden around the place. People had chalked their names onto one of the side walls from past visits which reminded me of graffiti rock up by the city. It’s really a shame that they painted over that, I feel like it was a tiny bit of history on the side of the road… anyway, I digress. Cenotes. They’re incredible. If you are ever in the Yucatan, I highly suggest you get yourself to one. Or two or three or four or five haha. We go to a few more next weekend, so I’m really excited for that. I’ve made a photobucket, but there’s nothing in it yet.

            At night after all the cenote fun and passing out for hours we all headed into el Centro for some nightlife, and we definitely found it. After a little walk we stumbled onto Paseo Montejo, where all of the restaurants had moved into the streets and live music was playing. So we spent the night dancing in the streets, literally. It was a lot of fun, a few local men asked me to dance, but I was a little too weirded out and feeling a bit American so I denied them. Maybe next time I’ll be more open-minded? I think I will be. Anyway, Shoji taught me how to meringue and we danced a bit. Me and Phil danced too, and apparently we had a couple of old ladies watching, so he spun me, which merited applause haha. It was a fun night, I hope we get to do it again next weekend J

Hasta luego--
Dana “my new favorite Spanish word is ‘en serio’ even though it’s really two words” Puglisi

14 January 2008

            Attention: malaria pills will make you feel heavy-headed and blurry-eyed. This is nothing to fear, just put on some music and take a nap. Seriously, that was the hardest thing to express in Spanish yet lol

            The other girl in our homestay showed up Sunday morning at around 5 am and we finally met her today. We all went to the beach Sunday, its called Progresso and it was really beautiful. The sand was muy fine and the water was light blue. Not clear, cos the sand is so fine and gets stirred up quite easily, but it was warm and very enjoyable, despite the lack of waves. We all found a spot in the shade of a palm tree (!!) and spent the day there. I think we caught the 10:00 bus, so we probably ended up there around 10:30 or 10:45, and stayed until around 4 pm. We tried to teach Kash how to swim again, and I think he was able to doggie paddle for about 10 or 15 feet, and then that was it for the day haha A bunch of us went banana boating, which was really cheap and A LOT of fun. The men pulled 7 of us along on a huge blow up banana all around the gulf until Ashley, Jon, Amanda and Caity fell off a few miles offshore. SO much fun, I can’t even begin to explain. I know Aakash was on the beach filming on Katie’s camera, so a movie should be floating around someone’s blog or facebook as soon as we find a fast enough connection. Anyway, when we got home we went upstairs, showered and I passed out mid-studying for the bird taxonomy quiz around 9:00 haha.

            Today was pretty uneventful. We met the other girl, Danini, from Belize who’s a medical student at Mayab University. She’s pretty awesome so far, apparently Belize used to be a British colony so they learn English first and take all of their classes in English. Spanish is a secondary language that they learn because there is a lot of immigration from other countries like Guatamala and Mexico into Belize. So it’s pretty nice, cos she can help me and Cindy with our Spanish. Although, Delia has taken an interest in English lately; she keeps asking us how to say things in English like “soap opera” and “do you want more” and “lock the door later” it’s really cute of her. It’s like we’re all learning together. Oh, and today she told us over lunch that Felix thinks we’re “guapissimo” and then totally called me and Cindy out on our clothing styles. She’s such an adorable lady… I’m going to be sad to leave her. (I just re-read that sentence and realized just how random my thoughts really come and go through my head, I apologize)

            Anyway, after school me and Cindy went to drop off our laundry at the laundromat and then Megan came over and we all studied for birds together. In fact, I think I’ll head back inside to study a bit  more after I’m done with this… birds are so confusing. Ha, my Spanish teacher asked to see my quiz that I got back today and when she saw all the words that I had to know she seemed a bit offended that none of us can remember Spanish words, but we can remember latin and greek family order subclass and species names. I tried to explain how different it is for us to learn those words than it is to learn Spanish, but I don’t think she understood. I felt a little bad about it but all I can say is that I’m trying here; Spanish isn’t easy after 11 years of français.

            Okay, more birds now.

I’ll have pictures soon enough guys,

Dana “they have bennys and guidos in mexico too” Puglisi

15 January 2008

            Hoy fuemos a la jardin botanicale de Merida. Es muy bonito, con muchos arboles y flores tropicales. Hay mucho palmeras y gumbo-limbo arboles alli, todo nosotros conoscomos (spelling?) para la examen de biologia. En clase de espanol, nosotros repuesto el vocabulario y los verbos para la examen manana. All in all, a pretty normal martes. En la manana nosotros tomar un quiz de taxonomia aves, y yo did muy excellente. Lo siento, no sabe como conjugate en el pasado… L Pero, yo dija de la jardin botanicale: The garden wasn’t exactly what I pictured a botanical garden to be, but rather more of a research station to look like. And that’s pretty much what it was, a huge research garden full of tropical plants. There were ephiphytes and bromeliads and palms and gumbo-limbo trees and ceiba (sp?) trees and acacia trees and a few people claimed to have seen a motmot, which I unfortunately did not witness. We went there instead of culture class today con los Dawleys.

            So at dinner today me and Cindy helped Delia prepare the food. It was quite an experience; she made a banana smoothie for us, and we had no idea that she was putting bananas in it so we asked for mangos. So she made us slice and spoon out the mango, which was a TOTAL mess. But in our defense, we thought we were putting it in a blender. Anyway, we demolished the poor mango and then had to eat our destruction. Serious humour in that kitchen, let me tell you. And our meal was a total hodgepodge of food: cochinita (essentially, pulled pork) sandwhiches on sub rolls, banana smoothie, sliced and mangled mango, pound cake and ‘queso de hollanda’ which I don’t know the American name for.

            I love living here.

Adios!
Dana

6 January 2008

            First night in the homestay.

            My host mom is a nice little lady named Delia, she’s either 60 or 70 years old, I forgot which word she’d said at the time, but she’s a grandma and she’s adorable. She speaks a tiny bit of English, and between myself and Cindy we’ve got a tiny bit of Spanish to go along with. Her and her daughter picked us up at CIS, which is cute too, but I’ll talk more about that in a bit. Anyway, Delia has a bad knee and a bad shoulder so she doesn’t drive (or climb stairs) She also found me and Cindy to be amusing it seemed. We laughed a lot over our lack of language and it seems we’ve got a system going. She speaks to us together and then to me, since I seem to understand more easily. Then I translate over to Cindy and together, we find an appropriate response to give back to Delia. It’s pretty entertaining to tell you the truth… Our house is a split level with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and a kitchen, living/dining room, bedroom on the first floor. It’s beautiful here. Everything has metal grates and the front door is an old Spanish wooden number straight out of the conquistador images I’d dreamt up on my flight here. Our room is about the size of a BPS dorm, and get this – we have our own little balcony! It’s got four chairs on it for entertaining and it connects to the roof of the neighboring building. It’s really quite nice. I took some pictures, but they really don’t do it justice… I guess this place isn’t beautiful in the American sense of the word, but it is absolutely stunning to me. I’ve only been in this country for 7 hours and I’m already in love with it.

            We have a tourguide for this trip as well, his name is Hugo (pronounced OO-go) and he’s a pretty funny guy. He lives in Merida, and he speaks Mayan as well as all the European languages and wants us to be “amigos” J He’s really sweet as well. We went to a place in Cancun for lunch; it was buffet style and full of deliciousness. Phil and I kept talking about how we love Mexican food and Caitlin was afraid to eat the grapes. It’s funny really, to what extreme everyone takes the “don’t eat this don’t drink that” advice. Speaking of that advice, Cindy just brushed her teeth with the tap water. Wonderful.

            And… her hard drive just crashed.

            So this is me signing off for the evening. I hope you all are enjoying your comfortable life in the States, and I wish you all a very warm January. Oh wait, that’s my January. My bad ;)

            Adios!

            Dana

8 January 2008

            I realized I didn’t blog about yesterday. So here goes:

            We have a housekeeper, se llama Raquel. Ella es muy nice and helpful. She made us breakfast, which was papaya, pineapple, guava (!!!) and banana with coffee and pan (bread). It was muy bueno. Then she took us to school with Danielle and Caitlin, who live nearby and who’s host mom is best friends with ours. Pretty sweet isn’t it? The ride to school wasn’t long at all, and the main road that we take looks a lot like France. In fact, it was influence by the French and was modeled after Le Champs Elysees J That made me pretty happy.

School was very laid back. It’s in this cute little language institute called CIS; it’s a bunch of scattered buildings that have classrooms set up inside a beautiful courtyard. The pictures I have just don’t do it justice, but believe me, it’s more than “two forty foot trailers” as someone back home described it to me. Perfectamente, seriously. My first teacher was named Adrian, but he was the intermediate teacher and we all know, je parle francias, pas espanol haha So I moved down a level and now my teacher is Valentina (pronounced: “Balentina”, no one believes in the letter “v” on this continent). She’s really very patient, which is a good thing because most of us are pretty hopeless with the Spanish language.. at least I know I keep switching back to French, especially with the accent and when stalling for time to think… .all well. There are two girls from Holland in my class, one of which looks like Liz, which is strange to me. Anyway, I love listening to them speak; Dutch is such an interesting language! They’re names are Linsey and Patty and they’re both really friendly. Apparantly they live with Aakash and Shoji.

            Speaking of Aakash and Shoji, they live about 3 blocks away from me and Cindy, AND Danielle and Caitlin (who are in a mansion of a house with an English speaking grandson and a POOL) are three blocks in the opposite direction. Then Phil and Jon live 15 minutes one way and in between us and them there’s Emily and Megan. So basically, it’s pretty sweet that we all live really close together. In fact we all met up to go buy our cell phones last night, but low and behold the store only had 3 and there were 7 of us. So Cindy and myself don’t have phones, but that’s fine because we’re going today once we finish our blog entries for the day.

Oh! We had a breakthrough last night at dinner! I was able to hold a conversation with Delia (host mom) and we bonded over Gilmore Girls and Men In Trees. I  cannot tell you how great it felt to finally be able to communicate with her. So after dinner me and Cindy looked up how to say “We’re going out for coffee with friends, what time should we be home?” in spanish and did just that. She looked SO happy to understand us finally J It was mucho cute-o. Moving on… we went out with Danielle and her host brother to a coffee bar called “Segas”. It was actually pretty American for a Mexican place, but it was still a really good time. We sad around and drank our drinks and talked about cultural things and stuff we like and it was just a really nice time. Like we actually had a friend in the city, you know? Someone who knows the area and what’s good to do and where to go and what to eat and isn’t afraid to speak English to tell you all of it. He’s 21 and in law school down here and has been to more cities in America than I have. Crazy. We stayed out until about 10:30 at Segas and then he drove us around showing us the sites on the main boulevard. All in all, an amazing time.

Today was una dia tres interesante. Primo, nosotros (Cindy y Yo) vamos a escuela con Danielle y Caity. Vosotros estayez (?) tarde y almost missed it. Then we went the wrong direction to school for a block and realized we were being tres stupido. So, we walked to school fine and took our examen de reptiles y amphibians. I’m pretty sure I aced it, Cindy and I studied really well all afternoon yesterday. Anyway, escuela estoy bueno. Nosotros aprendamos vocabulario de comida y salas de la casa! That’s about the only things I can say en espanol, but I’m getting there slowly.

So we got off at the wrong bus stop and ended up walking for 10 blocks back to our quarter with Danielle and Caitlin. Why Aakash and Shoji didn’t tell us that we were wrong I’ll never know. But it was such a fun time getting to see the rest of our area. It’s really nice here; not at all what I expected to find in Mexico. This city is so beautiful, but in a very strange way. I can’t find the right words to say about it, but even though it’s a very primitive city, and seems very poor, it’s just absolutely stunning when you walk around it. Colors are everywhere and people are friendly and the water is clean and the sidewalks are terrible; but past all of that is a sense of perfection and tranquility that you just don’t find in American cities. Like, walking around New York you feel excited and alive but at the same time you’re really watching your back and wondering if this is a good neighborhood and who’s going to scam you and harass you and I mean, I LOVE New York, but Merida just has such a great feel to it. I really can’t explain. I guess it’s one of those “you have to be here” kind of things….

            Anyway, when we got home finally, Raquel had lunch all ready for us. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day here and we had rice, salad and a kind of Mexican manicotti which she called comodades, or something like that. Esta muy delicioso. So me and Cindy ate and now we’re here. Today is Aakash’s birthday actually, and we had cake for him at CIS during one of our breaks. It was so cute. And tonight we’re all going out to the festival in Centro (downtown area, muy historico) which is a kind of outdoor fair thing. All the restaurants move the tables into the streets and you can eat there and there’s music playing and it sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll be sure to update afterwards on how tonight goes.

Nos vamos!
Dana (pronounced DAH-nah en Merida, they can’t make the long A sound easily)

So. 5 days until I go to Bio Bootcamp, and 9 days until I get myself deported to Mexico.

Oh Lord, help me pack. I seriously look at the pile of Mexico field clothes and bug repellent and malaria pills and snorkel gear every day, and every day I say to myself "Dana, you really need to drag the suitcase out of the attic and do this already" but I never do. But hey, at least I'm not the only one who's procrastinating. It seems everyone I talk to hasn't even begun to organize anything... but I'm babbling.

9 days. Nueve dias. (Did I get that right?) Let's practice some Spanish...

Soy una estudiante americana. No me duele por favor. Gracias.
Donde esta la banca/el banyo/mi casa?
And just for fun: No me corta mi garganta, por favor.

All of the above has been taught to me by non other than the lovely Amanda Schwartz. Gracias :)

Lately, the fact that I speak not a lick of Spanish is really starting to concern me. I feel like the first few weeks I'm going to struggle and somehow come out fluent in French again... which really has no benefit when I'm in a Spanish speaking country.

But hey, that's what a dictionary and Spanish class is for, right?