Semana Primera

3 a 15 de enero

La semana primera en Puebla estaba muy divertido, y me encanta la ciudad y mi familia.

The first week in Puebla was very fun and I love the city and my family.

My family is very loving and kind towards me, mi mamá is an amazing cook. (left: chicken with onions, spinach and nutmeg. right: chilaquiles)

        

Our host sister has two little ones: a five year old boy and an 18 month old girl. Both are very sweet. I keep making faces at the little girl hoping for a smile and a laugh, (finally on Wednesday I achieved the former). The little boy always wants to play, but he's really only here right in the middle of prime nap and homework time.

One of the first days we were here, he wanted to hang out with us in our room, but Syd and I said we needed to rest and change. Knowing he'd be persistent, we closed and locked the door. This is where it gets good: he kept trying to turn the handle, we kept responding "¡no puebes entrar!" (you can't come in!). There was a moment of quiet, and we thought he finally understood. Nope. The little monster punched the door open. While I was in the middle of changing.

Well, now he knows that if the door is closed, he can't come in. Lesson learned the hard way I guess.

Our house is super cute too. There's no central heating, which was really only a problem the last few days when it felt like Seattle had followed us south. It was cold, rainy and windy, and I deeply regretted only packing one sweater. Our shower is a pipe that sprouts out of the wall, and we try to collect the water in a bucket to reuse it to water plants and stuff. It's actually a pretty nice use of recycling, even if it did take a little getting used too.

This is our room on our first day. It's pretty much the same, except syd's clothes are actually here now and the table has turned into a depository/makeup table. Out the window is a view of a super cute backyard where geckos like to climb on the walls (I definitely have tried to catch some a couple of times). Over the back wall is a river, and sometimes if the wind is just right you can catch a lovely wiff of I don't know what. The walk to school crosses it, and if you look down there's a bunch of white foam and it's recommended that you try to avoid breathing because it smells pretty terrible. There's lot's of pretty trees around it though, so at least it looks pretty.

We went out to some bars last Friday, and the first one had the most amazing piña coladas and a live band that performed classic rock. It was amazing. We bar hopped around a bit after that, but the night sort of fell after that. 

Saturday we went to a discotec and danced the night away. I lost track of time and before I knew it, it was 3am and Syd was like "okay, it's time to go home." It just felt so good to dance, and I felt so present in my body it was amazing. I got a few guys' numbers, and have been talking with one pretty consistently since then. We keep explaining different colloquial phrases and laughing at each other's confusion. He speaks almost solely Spanish, which is really amazing for my practice, but he can communicate well enough in English that if I say "wait, I really have no idea what you're saying"  he can help me out.

Two pretty negative things happened in the last week though.

On Friday, on their way to meet us at the Zocalo, two of my classmates were on a bus and got robbed at gunpoint. One of them lost everything they had, and the other somehow managed to only give up his money. Beyond being scared and freaked out, no one on the bus was hurt. I want to emphasize that point, no. one. was. hurt.

It's served as a good lesson to us though: don't bus at night, remember to only carry the absolute essentials, and make sure you have people knowing where you are, where you're going, and who you are helping to keep track of you. Also, if we're in public we need to speak only spanish, because our american english sticks out like a sore thumb. 

I still feel very safe here, I'm just even more alert than I was before.

The other negative thing was a loss in my family. As some of you know (because I excitedly texted you in all caps) my family had a Yorkie puppy named Pinchi. He was the most energetic, playful ball of a pup ever. 

Wednesday night, he slipped out the front door and ran into the street where he was hit by a car. Unfortunately, he didn't make it, and it was really hard to understand the rapid-fire spanish about what happened, but I did catch that his death was almost instant, so at least he didn't suffer. It threw the whole family off for the last few days, as it should. It's been hard trying to walk the thin line between wanting to support them, and not trying to over-help.

I've been mourning him too. Yorkies have always been one of my favorite dogs, and I love animals in general, so I was pretty attached to him from the get go. 

On the bright side, the family's laughter and smiles are starting to come back, my spanish is improving constantly (even if there's still the moments of "wait, how the HECK DO YOU SAY THIS" followed by frantically searching the divine website wordreference.com) and I'm starting to feel myself settling in.

There's still a part of me that feels like I'm on vacation, and so there's another part of me that's waiting in nervous anticipating for the other shoe too drop.

Photo of a side street near the Zocalo, el centro del Puebla

P.S. I have now been lost 3 times in Puebla.

1. Syd and I took the bus home without knowing that they dropped us off on another street and ended up outside of Puebla. We were on the bus for about an hour and a half, and just sort of rode around until we saw something familiar.
2. First time walking to la Ibero (our university), we made a slightly wrong term cause google maps mislead us and we ended up walking for over an hour instead of the promised 40 minutes. Now that we know what we're doing, though, the walk is actually nice and I'm going to try to take it as many mornings as possible.
3. Today, me and 8 other of my classmates (just under half the class) took the wrong bus to school. Before we got on, we asked if it went to la ibero, and the driver said yes. After about 20 minutes he told us that we were at our stop, we hopped off, only to find we were over 30 minutes walking distance from the Ibero. Then we tried to take a shortcut and that backfired. We all lived, but it was an adventure.