Tuesday

I'll write and post more about today later on after the day is almost over. Anyway, I'm a day behind on my postings since today is tuesday and I just barely posted monday's. Today is going better - no crying outbursts. Drew took my computer into the comp. lab to get my network changed, so I can get on the computer now. So we're on our break right now. I'm going to go through my mail and if I have time, I'll write more. I didn't bring my camera today, so I'll try to upload some pictures tomorrow. I don't have very many. :/

Tuesday

I'm hoping to spit this all out while I actually have an internet connection rather than getting it out tomorrow. So here is how the day went:
I woke up, not feeling tiptop, again. I just couldn't eat this morning. I was offered eggs, and the thought of eating them was revolting. I just couldn't do it. I ate some fruit. They eat mango like bananas here - it's pretty cool. I'm sure i'm getting way too much sugar. Oh well. We went to school, I got homework this morning. I have to conjugate some verbs, like 12 of them. Not a big deal, just busy work. If I could do it on my computer, it would be a lot faster. Oh well. Drew took my laptop into the computer lab to get the network fixed, and it's working beautifully now. I'm going to try it at the house tonight - although the threat of mosquitoes makes me a little bit wary.

I had to start at 8am today since Kate is in my class, and since it's 2 people instead of 1, I have to be in there 3 hours instead of 2. So anyway, then we had our conversation class- that was boring. Kate just sat there, I felt bad, but at the same time, I was able to try some crap out - I hope she'll talk in time....that or maybe we will be in different classes next week. ?

Then we had a break, we ate bananas and an orange - the orange was grown in the garden at our families house. It tasted like the oranges at the grocery store - maybe even a little bit bitter since it wasn't fully ripe. They have banana trees, but I don't think our bananas were from there.

After break we had a different class where we reviewed the ser verb. Freak that is hard. I don't think I understood it very well since we had to come up with sentences for each verb form. It hurt my brain.

We came back home, went right upstairs and ate dinner-lunch. We had fried fish - which surprisingly, didn't take like fish at all- a VERY good thing. And some random mexcian squash with oil, herbs, and Parmesan cheese on it- it was actually kind of tasty. Oh, and potato soup, which was good (potatoes with seasoning, onions in some broth).

So then right after that, we came back to the school for our art class. We traced random pictures onto cloth and then painted them with acrylics. I happened to get some purple pain splotches on my shorts and shirt - I'm a little pissed. I don't think it'll come out? I was also told of some horror stories of the laundry place that we have to go to - its like a dry cleaners for laundry, but no dry cleaning, and they end up "losing" people's clothes. I'm going to write my name in EVERYTHING. ugh. So, uhm, yeah, now i'm here, typing away.

The day has been OK, but I'm still not very comfortable, and counting down the hours, to count down another day that I can mark off my calendar to come home. For those reading for Drew's benefit. He's fine. He's having a good time. He can adjust to new and different things MUCH more easily than I can.

I was trying to upload pictures, but it was taking too long, so I think I'll do it tomorrow at lunch/break time. I love you all!

p.s. As you can see, I didn’t get to post this when I wanted to. I was all ready to go, BUT for some reason, blogspot was having a “scheduled maintenance” deal at 4:00PDT, so of course, they probably had a server down, so I couldn’t post. Hopefully you’ll see this in the morning or early afternoon.

So since I didn’t get to post, you can hear more ramblings of a pathetic person. First thing is, today, I had my 2^nd cold shower in a row. I don’t know if they’re allotted so many gallons per day/week/month/year, etc, and I’ve totally used mine up, but it hasn’t worked in two days, and I don’t want to complain to the Fragoso’s, but if it continues, I’ll make Drew…..he doesn’t know this yet…. .^_^ J Also, at dinner, Horacio told us that on dia de San Juan (June 24^th) it always rains. It hasn’t rained yet. It has 3 more hours. I don’t hear any wind bringing anything in. Speaking of wind and rain; last night, it was thundering SO loud that it woke us up. Not just woke us up and you go right back to sleep, but blaring rumbling. Did I talk about this already from this morning? Well, since this is my blog, I’m going to write about it again if I have, and if I haven’t, it’s bueno. So anyway, Last night, 12:02am, we hear this big ole crash/boom/bang, what have you. We both wake up and are still laying there. So I orient myself, check the time, see if Drew’s awake- he was. So then a big ole lightning bolt, bright enough to light up our room with our drapes closed, and being downstairs with a bit of an overhang, it still lit up the room, bright as day. Then not 3 seconds later, a air crackle so loud I seriously thought we were going to get hit. This didn’t stop for a good 10 minutes- I was totally freaked out. The power went out (I didn’t realize this til morning, but I know it totally went out during the storm.) Surprisingly, once the thunder had run its course and the rain started, Drew and I both fell back asleep rather quickly, even though we were both a bit shocked at how loud it got. It never got that loud in Utah, and since Oregon never has thunder, it couldn’t even come close. Seriously, it was BAD!!!

I was going to go check my interwebs to see if they’d work down by the wall, and take some pictures down there, but it got too dark, too fast. I almost feel like it gets darker, faster here than it does in Oregon right now. For example**, I feel like it gets dark around 9:00- like you can still see things, but it’s getting dark, here, it’s decently dark by 8:00, and by 9:00 it’s nighttime.

I did the ** so I’d remember the other thing that made me laugh today. I had a lot of conversation today where they’d give me examples, and every time they’d say(for example) por exemplo (a-hemp-low (a says it’s name)) and it reminds me of a deaf person that is trying to talk, but can’t hear where to hit the strong consonants like x, so it comes out all retarded- oh the things that keep my mind occupied…..

No me gusta ducharse en aqua frio. Esta muy malo. L L L

Monday

Sorry it's a bit long.

Today was very hard for me. I’m PMSing, and overall, just in a bad mood. Last night, I was able to keep my hip from hurting (I sound like an old hag), but something was going on and these dogs were barking like mad. Not to mention the bird that chirps every ~4 seconds all night long – it’s like I’m in the jungle. I bet the amazon is blaring with noises, who could ever sleep with that? Ok, so I woke up tired, like I said before, I’m just not adjusting to the time difference very well, and having nothing to do all weekend long really messed up my sleeping habits. So we went off to school today, it’s supposed to go from 8:00am-2:20pm, Monday through Friday. We get there and they don’t have Drew or me scheduled for a class until 9:00am. This little difference threw me off and I about lost it. It’s not a big deal, but I just sat there not knowing what to do since they had told me 8:00, and really, I don’t have a class til 9:00. Turns out (after whining and freaking out for half an hour), Drew went and asked why, and it’s because we are in classes by ourselves, and since we are by ourselves, we are able to learn faster than those in a group. Those in a group are more proficient and can work off of one another rather than us retards that don’t know crap.

So we sat outside in the cafeteria type place to get on the internet for an hour while we waited. My internet was sucking big time. I could not connect for more than about 2 minutes at a time, I was PISSED! To say the least! I had a minor panic attack in the bathroom, tried to calm down and come back to my cpu to no avail. It just wouldn’t work. I was able to check my email accounts and upload my 2 blogs to blogspot, and nothing else. So, I’m sorry for all of the unanswered posts on facebook and blogs, etc. I’m hoping to get to them. If not, Michele, I miss you too, very much! And Rachael, I’m not dead yet, but give me a few days. J I think those were the two main things I really wanted to get to today, but I couldn’t. argh!

So after my breakdown over my computer, and finding out what the hell was going on, we went and did whatever, and for some reason, I had yet again, another breakdown, had to excuse myself to the bathroom and calm down. Those bathrooms and I are going to become best friends, I can already tell. We are such best friends that I could totally tell that whoever was in there before me was smoking a doobie. Hahaha how the crap can you learn Spanish if you’re high!?! I’d like to know…maybe it’d help? LOL

I went to my class, totally freaked out, red eyed, not wanting to. I just don’t understand how to speak this shizz and can only understand conversations if it’s in context (and only parts here and there). I went to my little room and Vanessa was there to greet me. She’s younger – in her 20’s and she was asking me questions – of which, I do not know. I kept telling her no entiendo (don’t understand), and finally, she whispered to me, don’t tell my boss I can speak English, he feels that if we speak English to you, you won’t understand, but really, some people just don’t get Spanish, and they aren’t going to if you can’t explain a few things first. That made me feel SOOOOOOO GOOOOOODDDDD, you have no idea! So I was able to ask her how to say specific words in English, and most of the time, she was able to act them out well enough for me to understand. Now am I able to reproduce the words I learned? Nope….but I figured I’d work on what I “learned” today after I finish with this. We took a break after 50 minutes and came back and did verbs. I was one on one for the first hour, but a girl named Kate showed up for the second hour and we’re going to be in the same class together this week. She doesn’t know any Spanish either….in fact, less than I do, just because she doesn’t understand it. Maybe being here for 4 days with deer in headlights eyes has helped for something? I was able to translate some stuff for her to help her out. It made me feel good.

After that 2 hour (total) block of grammatica (grammar), we had a descanso (break) and you can buy food, sit around, do whatever. Drew and I were both hungry, so we bought a quesadilla to split. It was 20 pesos = $2.00. That was for 40 minutes, and then we had our conversacion espanol, where we sit with an instructor and have a conversation. Kate was with me again, and I don’t remember the name of the maestro (teacher) – (see, I’m learning some junk. Hahaha). He was pretty cool. He talked slowly and simply enough that I was able to catch most of it. What I didn’t catch, he’d tell us in English. That was from 11:30-12:50, so an hour and 20 minutes? After that, we had conferencia o espanol situacional (situational Spanish conversations) from 1:00pm-2:20pm. Today, we learned about El Cine (the movies). We had to come up with sentences pretending to go to the movies, or things we’d do there, things we’d watch, etc. That was entertaining enough. Then we spent a good half an hour going over movies we liked or didn’t like. Kate was in my group, as well as some other girl named Briyanna (Brianna) – she was lame. Before the group started, I had asked her how long she’d been here, she said a week, but this week is much better. I said, so you had a hard first week then? Cause I’m having a hard time. She said, yeah, but I’ve traveled all over, so it really isn’t a big deal. So I sat there thinking, well, is it a big deal, or isn’t it? Freak. Then she said that her classes were too easy last week, and this week she’s where she was when she left off for summer at school. Then we go into this situational Spanish class and her pronunciation SUCKS, like VAIRDAY for verde type shizz, it was ridiculous. Yeah, I might not know how to say a whole lotta stuff, but at least the instructor isn’t laughing at my pronunciation. Hahahaha

After our classes, we finally had our orientation, which was basically the same thing as what I’d read online, and what I’d figured out already. The ladies name was Carmen, she was old, like 60’s? maybe? And she wasn’t wearing a bra, and had on a white shirt. If I had been able to take a candid picture, I totally would have. IN FACT!!! She totally reminded me of a Latina, thin Liza Minelli. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I think that’s perfect!

After orientation, we went back to our home and had lunch (it has another name but I forget). Lydia had two guys from her office over to eat with us. Having all these random people over for dinner is really weird. I had asked where Horacio was and she told me he was over at Rita’s house. (Rita is Horacio’s daughter). We ate around 3:45, and didn’t leave the table until 5:50. I can’t believe how much these people sit around and chat. Maybe if I was more proficient with my Spanish, it wouldn’t be a problem, but since I can’t reply to anything, I just sit there and observe and it gets boring VERY fast.

So now I’m here on my brick bead, typing away. Drew had homework from his maestra to conjugate some verbos en espanol. I don’t. They know I’m retarded and to ask me to make sentences where the verbs are conjugated would just be shooting myself in the foot.

So here are some things I have observed. I’m sure I’ve left some out, but this will do.

1. at eating times, people will reach across the table rather than ask to pass it. They will say permiso (like excuse me) and just grab things.

2. during meal times, they stuff everything into a tortilla. If it isn’t soup- in which you dunk it into your soup- it goes into a tortilla. If I don’t take a tortilla and eat it ALL, I get some nasty looks. I get a lot of nasty looks since I don’t always take one…it’s just too much food.

3. during meals, people double fist things. They will hold their tortilla goodness in one hand and shovel in other stuff that’s on their plate with the other hand, and then eat their tortilla again. It seems very slovenly.

4. They’ll eat whatever. There was sour cream on the table yesterday, Lucy, one of Horacio’s daughters tipped the lid, so the sour cream got on the tablecloth, so she swiped it up with her finger and ate it. Not that this is a big deal, but to see someone else do it was very strange.

5. They share a lot – for example, if they have coffee or wine, they’ll drink out of each others cups, even if there are mouth marks, they just don’t seem to care.

6. You have to say con permiso to leave a group of people. It is a sign of respect, and I forget often. Hahaha

7. They make this junk out of milk, sugar and vanilla, and I can’t remember the name…chucas, chupas, etc? I don’t know. Anyway, it has the consistency of mozzarella cheese, but not salty, instead, drenched in sugar. It looks like chicken cooked in soy sauce, but I have decided I like it very much. I need to figure out what it is and what it’s called when I can get back online.

8. I’m still not used to the toilet paper in the trash can. I messed up twice today. I hope I don’t ruin anything. It’s just gross. Esp. next week. HAHAHAHAHA grooossss!!!

9. The mannerisms here are just different. I’m thinking of the roles of the male and female. The guy is supposed to be all macho and everything, but when it comes to house things, they do NOTHING, NADA, ZERO, ZILCH! The guy is waited on hand and foot at this place – at least horacio is. These 2 guys today weren’t as bad, but freak, yesterday was quite an eye opener. He would have whoever was sitting by him dump sour cream on his tortilla, or go get him another drink, the guy wouldn’t move. Someone spilled peanuts by him, and instead of helping them clean them up, he just sat there. I was honestly a little appalled at his behavior toward women. Call me a feminist cause I just don’t think that’s right.

10. The other weird thing that I haven’t quite figured out is family situations. Yesterday for dinner, Horacio’s 3 daughters, Rita, Barbara and Lucy came over for dinner. Barbara and Lucy (I think) are both married, and both have kids. Rita doesn’t have either, so it’s understandable for her. Anyway, the kids don’t come, the spouses don’t come, it’s like they only invite who they want to, and the rest have to fend for themselves, or something? It’s just really weird. It’s like if my mom invited me over for dinner, but not Drew. I would just think that was extremely rude and inconsiderate, as I would think many other people would think the same?!

11. The last thing I can think of is that my mind is extremely scattered. I end up not remembering the English word for some things, and then sometimes the sentences in my head are broken English, it’s horrible, and I’m not sure why that’s happening. It’s not like I’m able to substitute Spanish words for the English words, it’s just that maybe being around all this broken English is making things worse for me than anything else.

Oh, and excursions this week that we’re going to do:

Tuesday, there is an artisan class that we can make things around 430? It’s free!

Wednesday, they are playing a movie at the school. I’m not sure what time.

Thursday is another artisan workshop

Friday, nada

Saturday – some pyramids and a cathedral in Mexico City. We leave at 8am, and were told we wouldn’t be back til 8pm. This is also Drew’s birthday, so I think Lydia is going to want to invite people over and bake a cake for Drew on Sunday- THAT is going to be stressful. But I am 5 days down, 54 to go. 1 day down of classes, 39 to go. How pathetic.

I think I’m going to go look over the stuff I wrote down today. It was a lot, and I’ll see if I can figure out how to conjugate verbs in English so that I can translate it into Spanish. Hah!

Sunday

Hey Shel, Joe Satriani is playing at the Teatro Metroplitan on 12 Agosto! I could totally go and tape it for you! hahaha I didn’t even know he was still alive.

So in other news, I am an emotional bag of wuss. It’s probably from not doing anything for 3 days, and having extremely horrible sleeping abilities. I woke up in the middle of the night to thunderstorms – which were cool since I haven’t heard thunder more than maybe once since we moved from Utah. There was also the discoteque going on that kept me up. Somewhere around the middle of the night, my right hip started hurting. I tried rearranging things to keep it from the piercing pain down to my knee to no avail. I eventually fell in and out of sleep until about 7:00am when I started to get desperate. Thankfully, I had brought down another pillow since I have pillow issues that I wasn’t using. (these beds are so hard that I can’t sleep on my tempurpedic pillow cause my body lays too close to the bed and it hurts, so I’ve actually done better sleeping in the pillows they provided for us.) Anyway, I grabbed my pillow and rested it in between my legs. That seemed to help immensely. We’re contemplating trying to figure out 1. where Costco is 2. if it gets bad enough, we might just go buy a tempurpedic topper. I think this would totally insult our host family, and I don’t know how we’d get it home, but it might come down to that. I hope not just because I don’t want to have to worry about getting it scrunched back up and either into a suitcase or mailed home. :/

I was in an extremely bad mood this morning- on the verge of tears before we went to eat. I had to have a little crying session to get it out of my system about how I hate it here, I don’t want to be here, I feel trapped, etc. etc. I’m sure hoping this gets easier when we actually get classes going on.

So last night, we went upstairs to let Lydia know neither of us was hungry. I feel like were being grilled if we don’t eat everything on (at least my) our plates. My stomach is feeling better, but it’s not like I eat massive amounts of food, either. Freak, I have a bridesmaid dress to get into – if I gain wait here, I’m doomed! So since she wanted to talk, we went into the front room to chat. It consisted of Drew’s broken Spanish and Lydia’s broken English. I sat there light a deer in headlights. I could understand both of them, but I just can’t generate the words on my own….I feel like a total retard when we have to go socialize – it’s like the worst part of my day. I loath having to go eat and talk…I sure hope it gets easier.

Then this morning, we went up and ate our fruit and cereal. We had zucaritos. – little sugars aka frosted flakes. Hahaha with tigre toni! I try my absolute hardest to not look at the expiration date on the milk. There’s no way I’d drink that shizz at home….let’s just put it that way (exp date 7/08/08 ugh!)- I’m not sick though, surprisingly!

We went to church today- that was very scary to get up an go, I was very apprehensive. Who we both think was the bishop came and said hello, and one old lady, no one else did. It was a ward of about ~70-80people there. There were some missionaries, but none of them said hi (there were 3)- I was ok with that. So anyway, it was nice to go and knowing the routine is always extremely helpful. What was funny though is everyone was out in the hallway chatting away and one of the bishopric started sacrament meeting. Everyone came in while he was talking – it’s like they won’t stop until he starts. And everyone did this clap/shake hangs thing, where the louder the clap before the shake, the better the hello. Very odd. I’m glad we went though.

So here we are, back in our cell until 3pm when we eat lunch. Then we come back here until dinner – if we choose to eat it. I sure hope tomorrow is better.

Things I hate:

1. These damn beds – cement is more forgiving

2. Mexican sidewalks – they’re crap- take pride in your smooth surfaces Gringos!

3. Mexican stores – for some reason, it just feels like they’re trying to rip me off, even for a container of gel antibacterial

4. Ciel mineralizada – sick shizz, just plain disgusting, who drinks that crap1? (mineral water)

5. Not knowing Spanish – and not caring a ton to try my hardest

6. People that don’t know English – we should just make it a universal language – it’d make things easier

7. Not knowing how to do bulleted lists in word. Stupid Microsoft being all stupid.

8. Jet lag – yes, call me a freaking wuss, but seriously, I do NOT like going to bed at 8pm pacific time because it says 10pm on my clock. I also do NOT like getting up at 4:30am because my clock says 6:30am. That’s trash. But maybe, just maybe if I get in the habit of it, I could get up and exercise before work when I get back? ….meh….probably not.

Things I like:

1. Mango

2. This boiled down milk and sugar crap.

3. Drew

4. The Interwebs

For some reason, Drew is able to connect the internet from the wall in the backyard, but I can’t. I’ll be happy when I can use my computer tomorrow at the school. I think we’re going to try to go on as many excursions as possible, just to keep us busy, even if it runs us into the ground monetarily – but it’s just money, right?

Saturday

I’m a little pissed off at the school for requesting us to arrive on a Thursday when classes don’t start until Monday. They claimed that orientation was on Friday, but really, all we did was pay for our way back up to the airport when we leave, and got a tour of the school. I think I wrote about that yesterday. Anyway, it’s not like we couldn’t have come in half an hour early on Monday to do that, or even during class time on Monday, big flippin deal. So instead, we are out 2 more days of working, and an extremely stressful and long “weekend”. It is 2:06pm and we have nothing to do for another day and a half. We could have left for Mexico tomorrow instead and would have been just fine. Oh well. At least we’re able to mess up our sleeping schedule and feel like complete retards in the process.

Last night, I didn’t end up going with Drew up to eat dinner. He said he was fine with it, so I took advantage of him saying OK, and just stayed here and played Sims. I think I played for a good 4 hours yesterday. We then got ready for bed….poor Drew couldn’t get the hot water to come on, so he took a cold shower. Surprisingly, he said it was quite refreshing. Hahaha so I was all reluctant to go try. After about half an hour or so, I decided I would test my luck. I had to go to the bathroom anyway, so I just turned on the hot water (it takes a while to actually come on, and the cold and hot water are completely separate from one another, so if the hot water isn’t working, nothing comes out of the shower.) Anyway, going to the bathroom while the hot water handle was on. I figured that if it didn’t come on while I was in there, I wouldn’t worry about it, and to my surprise, it turned on! Since I wasn’t expecting it to, it made a nice little stream inside the bathroom since I couldn’t get the shower door shut fast enough….goes to show how much faith I had in that! Hahaha We ended up listening to more of the Amber Spyglass and went to bed. But, as we were going to sleep, the Discoteque? Was going, and they were playing LOTS of songs, very loud. Yesterday afternoon, Rita, Horacio’s daughter had mentioned that it’s so loud, if you want to dance, you can dance and you don’t even have to pay for it! It wasn’t that loud, but you could definitely understand the words when they were English songs.

This morning, we got up, went and ate breakfast – which I have decided is an extremely stressful time of my day cause the smell of food is just making me want to vomit. I can eat the fruit cause it doesn’t smell much, but bringing out the pieces of ham and tortillas just ruin my appetite and I feel bad. So we had gringas again for breakfast. I only ate half of mine. It was gross – tortilla, ham, mozzarella cheese, tortilla, then you fold it like a taco and eat it. I’m sure it isn’t always gross, but freak, I just can’t stomach anything. We told Senora Lydia that we were going to walk over to find out where the church was, and just walk around. She said that after her classes (she was doing some Labor Law classes I guess), that she would drive us. We declined cause otherwise, we’d have nothing to do.

So after breakfast, we took off. It was 9:30am, and we got to the church about 9:50am. It wasn’t bad, but it sure was hot. It is so flipping humid down here, I can’t even believe it. You walk outside and are immediately covered in a nice glistening sweat. Since we were so close to the “downtown” area, we decided to huff it up there, too. It was lame. I’m sure if you know what to look for it would have been better, but with the heat and not knowing where we were or anything, it was gross, dirty and kind of scary. Drew and I had a discussion about how if you lived in a wheelchair, there’s no way you could get around. These sidewalks allow one person to walk on the street comfortably, so Drew and I would take turns leading...mainly Drew though cause I had no idea where we were going. Then on top of how tiny they were, they weren’t even. You’d have a down slope so someone could get their car in and out of a driveway, and then this huge step for the doorway…this was the same on the business streets too. All sorts of step ups and step downs. We decided we were done with the downtown area. On our way back, we picked up some notepads, some drinks, and some hand sanitizer. Note to self, if the water says mineralizado or something like that, don’t drink it, just get soda pop, cause that shizz is sick. I don’t know how anyone can drink carbonated water!!!

We came back to our room around 11ish and have been here pretty much since. We layed down and listened to the Amber Spyglass some more. That book is so boring.

Oh, another thing, our beds suck. Like are the most horrible thing on the planet. I think the floor would be more forgiving. These things are worse than sleeping on bricks, they are so hard. So after yesterday, and last night, my back is just stiff. If you lay on your side too long, it starts to hurt. AND my arms fell asleep! How the crap do both arms fall asleep simultaneously!? The bed is OK if you sleep on your back, but seriously, who does that, and doesn’t move?

We have lunch time in an hour. I don’t want to eat. I think it’s the conversation. I just don’t know what to say, so I end up looking down at my food, or around the room and staying as quiet as I can. Drew seems to be OK with this since he understands much more than I do, but I’m sure it’s stressful on him too. We don’t talk about it much. Hopefully I won’t cry today. I feel a bit more in control of my emotions. I can’t believe we’re here for 59 days. Ugh.