Hello everyone! Today was a pretty basic day with a few decent highlights. The day started off pretty nice, with an out-and-about with a few people to the "market" in Veracruz. It's in the middle of a the city and it consists of about a full city block in one big building with little stalls inside selling a little bit of everything. You can get your fruits and vegetables there, herbs and religious candles, fresh tortillas and flowers, meat and fish (though you'd have to pay me a lot of money to buy my stuff there, because just walking by I almost threw up... it's not exactly air conditioned or well ventilated in there), you can get your shoes fixed or buy a sequined purse. A little bit for everyone.
Classes were a little bit better today and I feel like I'm making a bit more progress. I'm giving myself about an hour of additional homework at night so that I can cover all the things I'm not getting in class. Hopefully it will pay off.
I got an unexpected phone call today from my co-workers. They passed me around on the phone and told me that they miss me, to have a good time, and to not trust strangers who spit on you. All in all, good advice. It made me miss them even more (and the fact that they were having onion rings from the velvet freeze... i would totally kill for an onion ring right now...). When I talked to Lori on the phone she reminded me that Tuesday is yoga day at home, so I decided to go back to my house after class and do some yoga.
Now... I don't remember if I told you all about the security set up of the houses around here, but it's a little bit, um, extensive. On my house, there is a door of iron bars that separates the patio from the street. That door is locked with a key-lock. Then, once you enter the patio, the door to the house is there, and it is the kind that you lock with a key from inside, or when you pull it shut from the outside, it locks itself. So, all in all, there are a lot of keys and a lot of locks. But for the most part, you can leave the interior door ajar if you just want to sit on the porch. Alright....
I put my headphones on and went out to the porch to sit for a minute before I started my yoga... and the wind blew so hard that it sucked the door closed! So- I was trapped between the two locked doors with nothing but my cd player and bare feet! I would say it's roughly the size of a prison cell there. I thought about freaking out, but instead I listened to my yoga cd and decided to do my yoga practice out on the porch. After about a half an hour in the heat (and strangely, a lack of a breeze at that point) I decided that enough was enough and I wanted to be back inside. Thankfully the neighbor kids were out and my spanish was good enough to ask Jesus and Juan to go over to the school and tell them that I was locked out. The boys were my heros, and Elia came from the school to laugh at me and let me in :-).
Later in the night I went out to dinner with Jessica in the Zocalo (the old downtown of the city). The food was good, the conversation was great and there were plenty of people trying to sell us stuff at out table (watches, songs played live on a marimba, nuts, oh... and one lady came by with, well, muumuus, and made sure that we knew that she had "grande... grande grande" size. I cracked up laughing and Jessica told her in spanish... "yes- we know we're fat". Gotta love this place). Jessica and I indulged in some long overdue cursing in english... because nobody around here seems to curse. It was a good feeling :-). And that, my wonderful friends, was my day! Talk to you again soon. Hugs (abrazos), Tracey
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