Mérida Primera Semana - Part One

So, my trip is more than half over and I am having an incredible time. There's a lot to share - and I'm far behind in conveying all my stories - so don't feel obligated to read my "chronicles". Consider them available for perusal should you feel the desire; I won't be offended if you don't have the time or interest. Please forgive any awkward sentence structure as I am in full-blown Spanish mode these days. (Also, I started this over a week ago so some of the timing may be off.)

Our plane left San Francisco on Tuesday night (24 June) / Wednesday morning at 12:40 and after 2 transfers, we arrived at the Cancún airport around Noon on Wednesday. We shuttled from the airport to the bus station and then took a 3 1/2 hour ride to Mérida. I will say this, México has some AMAZING buses. The service on the bus was better than some restaurants I've been to and we watched 2 movies in our reclining seats. It was a wonderful welcome and beginning to a great trip. Once we arrived in Mérida we took a cab to the house where we were staying. We went to a shopping center and browsed around, picked up some groceries, and I cooked up a lovely penne bolognese - a final farewell to the U.S. and its food. There are some interesting pictures of us opening a can of tomato sauce that evening with a bottle of sunscreen and a butter knife.

Thursday was our first day at the Spanish Institute of Mérida. When we arrived at the school, we were given written and oral exams to assess what level of Spanish knowledge we had already required. The regular courses had begun on Monday but we were given an orientation of our own and then got started with class. The approach is very interesting. My teacher, Pati, is fabulous and while we do some vocabulary and grammar work, my previous education has given me a much larger (but infinitely formal) base than most of the other students so we spend a lot of our class time chatting because I need a lot of help with my conversational skills.

There are 4 different instruction groups right now, 8 of us in total. In addition to the ladies I cam here with - Maia and Lauren - there are 2 other women who knew each other previously and then 3 individuals who are male. We get two ten-minute breaks every morning (around 10:30 and 12 Noon) and then classes are over at 1:00 and we all eat lunch together. There is a little restaurant across the street from the school that caters our lunch every day and it´s always tasty - sort of Mexican comfort food. Sometimes they try to throw in an American classic which is always a curious interpretation but appreciated none the less.

After lunch, we have about an hour to fool around and then at 2:30, we hit the town with our individual guides for a couple hours. We go to museums, play Spanish board games, run errands, anything we want. The guides are all fairly young (18-25) and most of them are students - a lot of them are involved with drama and acting too, which is interesting. That time is really fun because they don't speak any English so sometimes we just say words in each others´ language and laugh at the accent. The first day, I went to a nearby hotel, the Fiesta Americana, and wandered around the plaza shops below it. About 2 minutes after we left the plaza, the sky opened up and poured buckets on us. We ran into a bank to take cover from the rain, which is apparently a very common activity because there were many people in there who were not doing any banking. After waiting for almost 20 minutes, we decided to brave it and get back to the school. We arrived looking like wet cats but the rain lasted for hours so it was that or sleep over at the bank.

During our first day, we learned that the living situations that are set up through the school are quite a bit better than what we had arranged for ourselves so after school, we went to check out a place where one of our other classmates, Paul, was staying. The house was amazing and the family really friendly so ... we moved. Yep, first day here and we adios-ed our first place (after thoroughly unpacking our belongings and settling in the night before) and hauled our stuff across town to the Colonia Benito Juarez Norte. Apparently, I haven't been enough of a nomad the last few months and needed to uproot myself further even after traveling thousands of miles to the Yucatán. The director of our school, Christián, drove us around to help settle our living situation and took us to a little bakery for some delicious Méxican brownies and mini pecan pies. So tasty!

The lady of the house, Finu (short for Josefina), is hilarious. We refer to her as the Spanish Diva and have decided that she needs to have her own reality show. She conducts a real estate business from her home and speaks pretty good English. Her 22 year old daughter lives here as well and is also called Finu - she speaks great English. We call them Big Finu and Little Finu. Or Finu Vieja (Old Finu) and Finu Joven (Young Finu). Either way, doesn´t work out too kindly for the mom. Our first night here she made us a special treat - spaghetti bolognese. Yes, the world is quite strange.

After dinner, we went out with some of our classmates from the Spanish Institute as well as some of the staff. The two Floridians, Jennifer and Maureen, came along with the "directors" of the school, Christián and Eva - a mother/son team who run the school. We went to a club called Mambo Café where they have live bands perform and there is salsa dancing. There was a Cuban group called Dayron y El Boom perform that are hugely popular down here. You can check out a YouTube video of theirs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYnkuuk0Gyc to get an idea of the club scene here. The groups are all-out performers. My favorite song of theirs is called Mátame and it is great for driving around town or dancing.

The night was long and it was slightly difficult to get up the next morning for our first full day of school but we did it. Class went well and that afternoon I played some Spanish board games with my guía, Gina. We played "Cien Méxicanos Dijeron" which is basically Family Feud but it's a little tricky to answer correctly because of the cultural differences since it is "100 Mexicans Say..." but I really enjoy that one. We also played "Caras y Gestos", which is Spanish Guesstures, and "Papa Caliente" (Hot Potato) in a huge group. For Papa Caliente, the loser had to do a little dance in the middle of the group. Sometimes life is so simple it's fun.

For dinner, we had fajitas ("¡que rico!" as Big Finu always describes her cooking) and afterwards we studied a bit, quizzing each other on various vocab, etc. I'll definitely say that trying to speak Spanish all the time while living with 3 other American students is one of the hardest parts of this experience. The other students are living solo with their host families and I believe that really helps to keep you in the mind-set and committed to the process.