eating lotion & aunt eggs and other interesting gems within

So this is the 3rd week that I have been in site, still no pictures unfortunately. My mom sent me my Dads I-pod cord instead of my camera cord. So I will do my best to write with lots of visual detail. I am currently living a pretty posh peace corps experience. I am living with a counterpart who has a really nice house- I would call it mansion like definitely. I have my own king size bed a giant flat screen TV, my own bathroom with one of those modern  raised bowl white marble sinks and a shower with HOT water! There is a maid/cook that comes to the house 5 days a week. I came home to have my shoes organized in the bottom of my closet :) Its a gated neighborhood with a guard 24-7. Quite a bit different from my previous peace corps experience. Although I am most likely only going to be living here until the 10th, for the required 1st month with a host family.

But there are those moments too of "Im not in Kansas anymore", like when you go to a restaurant and they wont serve you water for free. Or when you go to the bathroom and have to pay to use it and there are no toilet seats, and you have to bring your own toilet paper. There seems to be a major cultural expectation here of tipping. You have to tip the person who bags your groceries, you tip the guy in the parking lot who yelled at you when you backed out that the cost was clear "el viene viene". You tip the guy who pumps your gas. You tip the lady who takes your shopping cart back for you. You are at a stoplight and there are people want to be tipped for juggling, or want a donation because they are poor and have a baby strapped on their back.

So this week with my students in conversations classes I played the game 2 truths and a lie. And one of the statements that I used was I ate hand lotion for breakfast. Which is true! I have told this story over 20 times already, but I thought it might amuse you so... Here's what happened... So I come to breakfast and there is a plate of papaya sitting in my usual spot with a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice (which is the norm here by the way which is amazing! yeah for fresh squeezed juices) And my host mother/ counterpart says to me I got you a present "una crema hecho de tunas" a cream made from prickly pears (called tunas here not to be confused with the fish) and puts it next to my breakfast plate. So I squirt some on my fruit and try some, which is disgusting and tastes like scented soap. My host mom/ counterpart starts cracking up, and telling me its hand cream.  In English we use the word lotion- In Spanish they use cream to mean the thing your wear and the kind you eat. Whoops- its a good story at least.

Other interesting things, on a Friday night around 9pm, I went with my host family to try to find a vet because one of their 5 chihuahua  was in labor for over 10 hours and were worried about her. So we drove around until we found a vet that answered his cell phone and he had to give the dog a C-section. She lost one puppy but gave birth to two other healthy puppies. It was quite an interesting experience.

I still have a very low tolerance to chile-spicy food much to my families dismay. I did try Escamote- aka Mexican caviar- aka aunt eggs. I guess they are only harvested on Easter week and they are a major delicacy here. They weren't bad. They had a reserve of them in their freezer, and fried some up for me in olive oil- crunchy salty..

Next post I will be sure to talk about my work that Im doing here :) and the folkloric dance class that I am in.

PS A shout out to Emily Douglas and all of my fabulous friends who sent her letters to put in the best going away present ever!

1st post from Mexico

I have started this post several times but because of shady internet, here I go again.

I am about to complete my first week in site! Its hard to believe that I have been in Mexico almost 3 weeks already. I arrived to the Queretaro airport in Mexico late Monday night (Aug 30th). My flight was delayed from Chicago to Dallas and my flight to Mexico was boarding the minute we touched the ground in Dallas. I made the connecting flight to Mexico but my luggage didn't :( So I was in Mexico for 2 days with out my bags, but they eventually showed up and got dropped off at my host families house.

Training was for 10 days as compared to normal service which is 3 months. Peace Corps headquarters here in Mexico is in Queretaro, Querretarto which is where our training was held. It is an absolutely lovely city. It has an old world charm in the city center, with tons of tree lined plazas filled with families, parks, amazing cathedrals. Within the city is every modern convenience one could imagine- including a COSTCO. It was really nice to walk through the winding cobblestone streets and smell fresh baked pastries from bakery windows as I went to training in the morning. Or when I would walk with my host mother in the evening watching the the fountains dance in front of cathedrals, clowns make jokes about politics, and when she would take me to whole in the wall restaurants to get the best tamales or a cup of atole. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera cable so I can't upload any of the pictures I took yet, but my lovely mom is saving the day and mailing it to me, so hopefully soon.

My host family was great during training. My room & bathroom were nice, big, clean. I only had a few ants to battle with. They were very willing to teach me so many things about Mexico. We cooked together and talked for hours on end each day. My host parents were around their 60s, grandparents with 3 grown children. Their granddaughter spent a lot of time at the house too. We became very close so it was difficult to say goodbye.

Training was from about 8am to 6pm everyday, so it was pretty intense. There were 3 of us in total training to be PC response volunteers in TEFL. My other two fellow volunteers are retired professionals with impressive resumes who had previously served in Peace Corps in Peru, Africa, and India. The are both really nice knowledgeable guys.

The swearing in ceremony was held at the peace corps office. The American ambassador is too high profile here to come to the ceremony but the office staff made it quite lovely.

My counterparts packed up my suitcases after the ceremony and we headed out to site: San Juan del Rio, Queretaro.

More to come later about my first week in site......