Hola a todas y bienvenidos a mi blog para el verano! I have now been in Mexico for nearly a week. In fact, exactly 7 days ago at this time I was driving into North Carolina through a massive lightning storm with my mom, Carolyn, and Ben. We made it into La Quinta Inn and Suites (no, the one on the right, not the hotel with the exact same name on the left) a little after 1 am. By the time I fell asleep around 2, I had a solid 1 hour 45 minute nap before waking up at 3:45 am to head to the airport.
After a sleepy, stormy start to my 6 week journey to a new part of Central America, I arrived in Mexico DF (Mexico City) around noon on Saturday. First things first, I, the 3 girls I traveled with, and 2 of our friends from the Universidad Iberoamericana went directly to a roadside Bar-B-Que stand and enjoyed some delicious, traditional lamb BBQ.
The following 4 days were a wild adventure that consisted mainly of group bonding, eating, going out, playing über-tourist, and sitting in hours and hours of traffic. Research shows that even though the Mexico City metropolitan area has 21.5 million residents, that in the city itself (population 8.8 million) there are only 3.5 million cars on the road. Could have fooled me. I personally counted 4.6 million other cars, the majority of which were in touching distance of us. Others riding with me can attest I declared on multiple occasions that, if my mother had been in any of the cars with us, she would have had a heart attack. Regardless, we all still managed to enjoy ourselves immensely. I was there with 6 other UNC students and assorted university students from Mexico City.
Wednesday and Thursday were big change days for us. On Wednesday I rode a bus for 6 hours north to Irapuato—the headquarters of the Fundación Comunitaria del Bajío (Bajío Community Foundation) that I am working for. The way Irapuato was described to me before the trip, it seemed like a small town/city where we might hope to find a grocery store or two. Irapuato is home to 600,000 people. Hailing from Luray and Rappahannock, I think I will always be impressed with the number of people around the world. If moving from 20+ million people to 600,000 in 6 hours sounds like a dramatic change, the trip Thursday morning to Tamaula was even more so. Tamaula is where I’ll be spending the next 6 weeks teaching, interviewing, and researching. The bustling metropolis boasts 218 residents—my kind of town. As soon as we broke off of the main highway onto the pot-hole filled road leading up the mountain I knew I was home, where I was supposed to be.
This is my first experience living in a homestay with a family. To be honest, I was a little nervous at first. However, the past few meals and conversations have made me much more comfortable. I even think I’m going to enjoy taking baths out of a bucket! Unfortunately I can’t share any pictures of Tamaula, where I’m living, and who I’m working with yet. I’m going to hold off for a few weeks before playing super-Gringo and go around snapping photos of everything.
Just to show you what super-Gringo looks like…
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