My first days en Mexico
It's so difficult to believe that it has only been about two days since I got up at 3:45 in the morning and went to Metro City Airport to say goodbye to my parents for four whole months. And of course it was different this time because I am not simply in Valpo by a really expensive route. I'm in Cholula, Mexico. Going to the University of the Americas. I am a student at an absolutely beautiful campus with the best weather I could have ever imagined.
I won't say that I wasn't apprehensive coming here. Near the end it was one of the hardest things to accept. It was even harder because I had all these amazing people in my life telling me that I would be fine and that I should be excited and of course they were right. But it's so much different than I thought it would be. I'll have pictures up soon on my flickr site. I promise!
The plane ride to Chicago was short and just about long enough for me to have a bad cup of airline coffee and try to figure out a proper strategy for getting my luggage to the international terminal and rechecking it alone. The best part was that my flight was early, so it gave me even more time to get from Terminal 1 to Terminal 5. My suitcases fell over a lot to say the least, but I got them to check in and I got to my gate with time to spare. It was so great to walk into my gate and see all the people that I loved and all the people that I will come to love and be able to discuss the exciting and scary aspects of the huge of the step that we were all taking together. The plane ride to Mexico City was long. They showed an old movie that had the Rock in it and I tried to sleep but couldn't. As we started our descent into Mexico City we all kept repeating, "We're in Mexico! We're in freaking Mexico!" over and over again.
It really was terrifying to think about getting off the plane and stepping into Mexico and getting our luggage and going through customs and we all weren't sure which forms to fill out and we were all pretty rusty with our Spanish, which wasn't helpful. What was really cool is that almost immediately as soon as we made a friend! There was a guy named Jerome on our flight who was also going to UDLA. He is originally from France and was studying abroad at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, of all places! Now he is studying abroad through GVSU here at UDLA. He was super nice and continues to be a great guy whenever we see him around on campus. The poor guy lost one of his bags but got it back today! Also, a couple of us made our first bathroom run and because we are females we had to stand in line (also there were only two stalls) so we started talking about meeting Sally (the director of our program and our link to Valpo) and the girl in front of us turned around and asked if we were from Valpo. After we said yes, she launched into this story of how she was an alumnae who had done the Puebla program and she had come back the same day we had to go back to work at this orphanage and it was so cool! We had been there all of 20 minutes and had two new friends!
We all got through customs ok which was an adventure in filling out forms, but it was good. We got through the gates to the airport (after giving up the sweet FREE luggage carts, please take notes DTW) and met up with Sally and Enrique who gave us our 1000 pesos = 100 dollars. We grabbed some food from the 7-11 (yes the first food i ate in Mexico was cold pizza from 7-11) and were on our way to the realllllly nice bus after these incredible porters put more luggage than was humanly possible on two carts. We're talking about half the luggage of 13 people. It was ridiculous, but so nice. It was about two hours from Mexico City to Puebla/Cholula. The two towns are so close that they are almost like one. At first we were all mesmerized at fact that everything we were looking at was Mexican, but eventually we crashed. I attempted to, but not before taking pictures of Popocateptl, the active volcano that's near campus. We went to the Cholula house first, to pick up the shady bedding provided for us. It's actually quite nice that we didn't have to pack any bedding, but it's still not like home. We got a set of sheets, two full size towels, a hand towel, a wash cloth, 10 hangers, 2 blankets, and a pillow. The name of the dorm that I live in is Cain-Murray. I have no other word for campus other than Gorgeous. I have a few pictures of campus right now and I'm working on taking more of it and my dorm. I think so far the best part of campus is the landscaping, it's gorgeous, other than the grass.
That night we got here we all went out to dinner at this nice little place right by campus called "La Suprema Salsa". They had great food, I got one taco (because i wanted to be cautious of my stomach) and it was just the meat of the house (which was cooked Arabic style, i'll explain mroe later) and pinapple in a tortilla, but it was delicious. The way they cook the meet is they put a HUGE chunk of it on it's side and cook it by rotating it and then shave off the meat as it's cooked. It was amazing. Then we all just crashed after our first bonding experience as a group in our half unpacked rooms on our SUPER HARD beds where it was really cold. Yay for layers! I think that's all for now guys. I've got plenty more to share though! I love you all and miss you!
<3s pantalones
I won't say that I wasn't apprehensive coming here. Near the end it was one of the hardest things to accept. It was even harder because I had all these amazing people in my life telling me that I would be fine and that I should be excited and of course they were right. But it's so much different than I thought it would be. I'll have pictures up soon on my flickr site. I promise!
The plane ride to Chicago was short and just about long enough for me to have a bad cup of airline coffee and try to figure out a proper strategy for getting my luggage to the international terminal and rechecking it alone. The best part was that my flight was early, so it gave me even more time to get from Terminal 1 to Terminal 5. My suitcases fell over a lot to say the least, but I got them to check in and I got to my gate with time to spare. It was so great to walk into my gate and see all the people that I loved and all the people that I will come to love and be able to discuss the exciting and scary aspects of the huge of the step that we were all taking together. The plane ride to Mexico City was long. They showed an old movie that had the Rock in it and I tried to sleep but couldn't. As we started our descent into Mexico City we all kept repeating, "We're in Mexico! We're in freaking Mexico!" over and over again.
It really was terrifying to think about getting off the plane and stepping into Mexico and getting our luggage and going through customs and we all weren't sure which forms to fill out and we were all pretty rusty with our Spanish, which wasn't helpful. What was really cool is that almost immediately as soon as we made a friend! There was a guy named Jerome on our flight who was also going to UDLA. He is originally from France and was studying abroad at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, of all places! Now he is studying abroad through GVSU here at UDLA. He was super nice and continues to be a great guy whenever we see him around on campus. The poor guy lost one of his bags but got it back today! Also, a couple of us made our first bathroom run and because we are females we had to stand in line (also there were only two stalls) so we started talking about meeting Sally (the director of our program and our link to Valpo) and the girl in front of us turned around and asked if we were from Valpo. After we said yes, she launched into this story of how she was an alumnae who had done the Puebla program and she had come back the same day we had to go back to work at this orphanage and it was so cool! We had been there all of 20 minutes and had two new friends!
We all got through customs ok which was an adventure in filling out forms, but it was good. We got through the gates to the airport (after giving up the sweet FREE luggage carts, please take notes DTW) and met up with Sally and Enrique who gave us our 1000 pesos = 100 dollars. We grabbed some food from the 7-11 (yes the first food i ate in Mexico was cold pizza from 7-11) and were on our way to the realllllly nice bus after these incredible porters put more luggage than was humanly possible on two carts. We're talking about half the luggage of 13 people. It was ridiculous, but so nice. It was about two hours from Mexico City to Puebla/Cholula. The two towns are so close that they are almost like one. At first we were all mesmerized at fact that everything we were looking at was Mexican, but eventually we crashed. I attempted to, but not before taking pictures of Popocateptl, the active volcano that's near campus. We went to the Cholula house first, to pick up the shady bedding provided for us. It's actually quite nice that we didn't have to pack any bedding, but it's still not like home. We got a set of sheets, two full size towels, a hand towel, a wash cloth, 10 hangers, 2 blankets, and a pillow. The name of the dorm that I live in is Cain-Murray. I have no other word for campus other than Gorgeous. I have a few pictures of campus right now and I'm working on taking more of it and my dorm. I think so far the best part of campus is the landscaping, it's gorgeous, other than the grass.
That night we got here we all went out to dinner at this nice little place right by campus called "La Suprema Salsa". They had great food, I got one taco (because i wanted to be cautious of my stomach) and it was just the meat of the house (which was cooked Arabic style, i'll explain mroe later) and pinapple in a tortilla, but it was delicious. The way they cook the meet is they put a HUGE chunk of it on it's side and cook it by rotating it and then shave off the meat as it's cooked. It was amazing. Then we all just crashed after our first bonding experience as a group in our half unpacked rooms on our SUPER HARD beds where it was really cold. Yay for layers! I think that's all for now guys. I've got plenty more to share though! I love you all and miss you!
<3s pantalones