Al principio...mis adventuras

Hola from Mexico!! I am here, safe, and quite happy. This adventure began when my host parents (Fernando and Carmen) picked me up from the airport and pointed out that my bottle of laundry detergent broke and poured itself aaaaaall over my suitcase. Cleaning everything out made for quite the ice breaker! My host mom kept saying, ¨Qué triste,¨ (How sad), but I had to find it kind of funny. Fortunately, the few items of clothes I had in this smaller suitcase soaked up most of the soap, and only a few books and papers, most of which were wrapped in saran wrap, got soap around their edges. At least my shoes are nice and clean now..haha!
At my house, I live with my parents, and host siblings Aldo, Abraham, and Nadxelli. All are older than me. In Mexico, it is traditional to live with your parents until you marry, so my siblings range in age from 25 to 30. They are all very kind, and very patient with my imperfect Spanish. They are good about correcting my mistakes, which is incredibly helpful!
Over the weekend, I went to a birthday party with my host parents for one of their uncles. They sure know how to have fun! There was a lot of food, karaoke, and dancing. The tiny bit of salsa I know from SNC classes helped a lot. I still think I looked a bit foolish, but ah well. It was fun. Some of their songs here are American ones that have been translated into Spanish! On Sunday I went to the independent market, where my host mom has a cheese shop. Think farmers market but SUPER SIZE! There was tons of shops and markets packed together with fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, toys, restaurants, clothing, shoes, etc....anything you´d ever think of buying. The most memorable was the meat shops where raw meat covered the entire counter, lay out in the open, and dripped blood down onto the cement pavement below. One man was cutting meat to sell, and I swear I saw it flying out toward the customers passing by. Yikes! I walked quickly!! Sunday night, I went to my first Spanish mass. It was so strange to see people walking in and out of the church throughout the entire mass, and only one third of the church receiving communion. My host father explained to me that here, it is more important just to go to the church, and it doesn´t matter when you arrive or leave. Also, many abide by the rule of going to confession before receiving communion.
At the school, Varmond School, I began teaching math today. I will tell more about all of this later, since I need to wrap this blog up. Until Friday...