"Zapatacion"

I feel like I need to add pictures of my school and my home.

My school, El Instituto Cultural Oaxaca... We like to sit under those palm trees right there and do homework in the afternoons! Its usually really warm and sunny, but the weather here likes to change alot this time of year... Like my host mom says, "Febrero es loco, y marzo otro poco." (February is crazy, and March a little less) There's alot of wind and sometimes it gets cloudy and down to 70 degrees during the day, and we have to wear jackets... We are extremely spoiled here!

This is my home from the front... it's surrounded by white concrete walls, and I have to open a gate every time I come home. It's small but very comfortable... oh and Nala, their dog, greets me whenever I walk up to the door. :)

This is the market that's on the way to the Zocalo that I LOVE... I have to refrain from entering it sometimes because if I do, I WILL buy something!

This is Mayra, my intercambio! She's 17 and super adorable, last week she brought me a chocolate-covered apple, and this week she brought me dried bananas with sugar on them from her parents! She goes to prepatory school right now and is thinking she might want to be a stewardess when she goes to University because she wants to travel. We take our intercambios to get ice cream every thursday... or whenever we want ice cream! One time we were talking with them about how, when we're learning spanish and we dont know a word, we just add an "0" to the end of the verb, like, "bago" or "signo". Olivias intercambio, Norma, told us that when learning english, they add "cion" to the end. If they don't know the word for shoe, they just say, "Zapatacion," which definitely made us laugh!

My dad Remigio... He's freaking hilarious. This was at the family dinner mine and Olivias families had this past Sunday. I asked how often he drank alcohol, and Liveys sister said, "De los siete dias de la semana, toma ocho." (Of the seven days of the week, he drinks eight) He loves to practice his english with us, like saying, "Wats up man." Whenever he sees Olivia, he says, "Oleeve oyl! Yess papi?"... Olive Oil and Popeye. Also he forgets my name alot, because unlike in the United States, where the name Ashley is so popular that I don't even look around if someone says it in a crowd, here it's extremely rare, only foreigners have the name. So I said he could call me Elena, as my middle name is Elaine, and it's much easier for him to remember that one.