So far it has been a great experience being in Mexico. I can´t really imagine being placed anywhere else. We landed last Thursday in Acapulco and stayed there for a couple of days relaxing before school started. Staying in the youth hostel there was a great idea because it gave us the opportunity to meet a lot of people near our age from various parts of the world. We made some Australian friends and met others from Austria, England, and one from Oregon. It was a very nice break between student teaching experiences! :)
On Sunday night we landed in Guadalajara expecting to find our contact person waiting for us. Somehow there was some lost communication and she did not know that was when we were coming into town so we ended up taking a taxi to our host home. That made our first night a little eventful and interesting, but in the end everything worked out just fine. Our host mom is an older Mexican lady who has an adult daughter that lives with her. She is very hospitable and very funny! She laughs at Sara and me often.
I can understand much of what she says when I am concentrating. I have found that it is exhausting to listen to Spanish all the time. I have to process it and attempt to translate it in my head. It´s also easy to tune out because it takes so much energy! I try to respond as best as I can, but my Spanish is not very strong. I hope it gets better!
We got to eat Special K cereal and toast with this really great jelly here! It is different from the States...much better! So far our house mother is very considerate of what we like and fixes us things that are very good to eat! We live in a nice house. Sara and I share a room and have our own bathroom. We´ve gotten to meet some of her family as well, which has been nice. We are learning our way around our part of town, taking little outings to Wal Mart (yes, they have that here) and the shopping center, just to walk around and see the city. There is also an Internet cafe down the street from our house where we go to check email, Facebook (haha), etc. We are thinking next week we will get a little more adventurous with our outings and head to see some sights we´ve read about in books.
School started today! It was a bit overwhelming (It feels as if Spring Break has lasted forever because we have been doing so much!) to be back in school again and be in a completely new setting. However, the school is beautiful and has so much to offer. I am in a ¨pre-first¨ class which is similar to American first grade. My teacher is very nice and helpful and has made me feel comfortable here already. I am going to start doing more little by little...we are just going to play the next few days by ear and see how they go.
My kids are very cute and welcoming. Some of them speak better English than others, but they all try very hard. I am exicted to get more involved. After student teaching in the States, it is a little difficult to just observe now...I got so used to being in charge! I already see some ideas that my teacher uses in her classroom that I like. I am going to take notes on these and take pictures of them so that I can keep them in mind for my own future classroom.
So far, Mexico has been great! I am slightly exhausted, but it is totally worth it to think about the experience that we are gaining!! More to come...