"She said 9:30... in Mexico time."

So I've finally started getting into a routine here, which helps me alot because I feel like I'm starting to know how to LIVE in this culture. I wake up and open the blinds, knowing full well that it's sunny outside... it's so different from home, where I wake up and look outside to judge how the day's weather will go and what I should wear. Here, I could get dressed without even looking outside and know that it's going to be nice. We're starting to get into our classes now, with quizes coming up, and presentation and papers. I'm still excited for lunch every day, and I think this will remain the same no matter how long I'm in Mexico.

With our intercambios, we're starting to talk about other things than just surface topics... the language barrier we have to get over every day just makes it that much more interesting. Yesterday I was listening to a story Mayra was telling me, "Our teacher was hungry, so she gave us more homework." And I COULD NOT figure out what she meant by the teacher being hungry... and then it hit me! Her teacher was ANGRY, not hungry, and I laughed and had to explain to her why I was laughing... Also for a homework assignment, we had to ask our intercambios for a joke to tell to our class. I always feel ridiculous when someone here obviously says a joke, because they do the pause at the end waiting for you to laugh, and we just stare at them. Or when I say something and Mayra laughs, but I can tell she's hesitating, and I say, "Do you understand?" and she says, "Umm, no?" We also attempted to explain "thats what she said," jokes to Olivias intercambio, but that really didn't turn out right. The only thing we could say was, "Americans can be very sexual. Its a sex joke." But we couldn't really explain WHY or HOW to use the joke... so we had to let that one go. Yesterday Mayra says to me, "Owr teachar sayd that we have to stop watching the tele and read more, because that is wat Americans do." I laughed!! And she continued, "But I wanted to tell her, umm, no, that is not!"

Olivia and I went on a walk yesterday around our neighborhood. In mexico, there are concrete walls surrounding almost all the houses, so when you walk around, all you see are these different-colored walls and gates and sometimes the houses behind them. Its a very rustic, dirty kind of beauty, because although there are not gorgeous houses and flowering gardens, it is in a way still beautiful. I could make it sound greater than it is, with cobblestone streets and flowers of all colors hanging over the walls along the sidewalks. Though what I said is true, that description leaves out the graffitied walls and the dirty roads and the polluted water in the ditch. In mexico we live in an extreme contrast of beauty and poverty, that makes it very easy for us to appreciate the fact that we live in America, where you can drink the tap water, live in safe neighborhoods in houses that dont have to be behind concrete walls, and can swim in the rivers. We also realize how lucky we are to be spending a semester in Mexico: all the food is fresh from markets, the sun is warm every day, we do our homework under palm trees sitting on the grass, and we eat some of the best food in the world. It seriously is an experience of two extreme contrasts of life at one time.