Primera Dia en Puebla y Viaje a Atlixco

Bueno- Soy Carrie Kelman y esta es mi primera entrada en esta diario de mi viaje al Puebla, Mexico. I am so excited to be here- so muchas apologies for the broken spanish-english tango that I've got goin' on here. Esto es como yo hablo tambien y entonces es muy perfecto para una diario. Anyway, I can't believe that I'm actually here- I've been saying to practically everyone that I know "ooh! I'm going to Puebla, neato!" pero ere mas diferentes cuando yo llegue aqui. Antes de yo salgue los EEUU, tenia miedo. Pensaba que voy a faltar a mi novio, mis amigo Adrian, Paul, Katie, y todos mas, working out at the gym. Pero, ahora? No se. Los falto un poco pero estoy ocupada con cosas aqui! Conociendo mi familia, la cuidad, etc. Pues, vamos a empezar al principio.

On Friday, I went to a Social Distortion concert with Lizzy. It was pretty much THE best way to spend my last night in the US (EEUU a los Mexicanos). I woke up 2 hours after I got home from San Francisco and left for the airport. I slept on the flight from SFO to LAX- and I lost one of the books I was going to read by Octavio Paz- and met up with mi companera de cuarto (roommate) Linda with a couple of other LASP students in LA. We all had different seats completely strewn about the plane- Linda y los otras se sentieron en el frente del avion and I sat towards the back.

It really worked out that it happened that way because I got seated next to two of the BEST people to talk to on the entire plane. One was another exchange student. Her name is Megan Simpkins and she's from a small town outside of Oregon City. She's staying in Queretaro (it's pronounced 'ker-EH-tro' but I'm pretty much writing that for myself so that I don't forget when I call her) with a single woman and her 97-year-old father. She totally reminded me of Alana Bellwood- same manorisms, from the same general area, and no estaba avergonzada a presentarse a mi. Es mas, she was SUPER nice and wanted me to visit her in Quedetaro which is sweet because I'm SO down to travel around here.

The other women who sat next to me was named Gabriela Aguirre- era una maestra de musica a dos escuelas en Cuernavacas donde esta vivienda. Ella Tiene 3 hijos- todos vivan en la Ciudad de Mexico. She was probably the MOST patient person on the flight because she sat there and answered every question that I had for her for 3 and a half hours! I asked her about everything I could think of; la historia de los indigenos, politica, la comida, seguridad en la pais. She was SO ridiculously nice; I think she'd make a great study-abroad mom for sure. For the first Mexican that I talked to, she definitely set the standard. She was SO helpful and really just wanted to help me with verb conjugaciones and ajectivos a explicar lo que queria decir. She really wanted me to call her and visit her in Cuernavacas- I'm definitely down! Katie (my roommate) stayed there when she came to Mexico for a few weeks and I wanna call her and ask her where all the chill places to go are.

I guess the only bad part of the flight was the part when Alaska Airlines lost my gym bag with my makeup, toiletries, and protein powder. Crap. Oh well. Pero, espero que ellos vaya a encontrar mi mochila pronto...

After getting on a two hour bus and going to Cuatro Ponientes (Four Points), we met a cab in the station to bring us to our home in Puebla. El Manejado (the taxi driver) era MUY simpatica y amable pero no hablo nada de ingles. Era un poco dificil a aprender a el, pero despues de nos perdiamos el norte (we got lost), finalmente nosotros buscamos la casa.

Y QUE CASA es! Dios mio, the house is SO beautiful- this is definitely NOT slumming it, folks. The house is gorgeous- it has a beautiful gate in front, a gorgeous staircase leading up the the second floor, four or five bedrooms, una cucina preciosa (a pretty little kitchen), y mas. In the family, hay 4 personas; una mama (Rosa), un papa (Luis), una hija mayor (Ana Sofia), y una hija menor (Maria Jose aka Majo). Tambien, hay 4 otras mujeres que estan viviendo aqui. Ellas van a una escuela cerca de la casa, a beauty school. The family is REALLY REALLY amazing- its amazing how much the family here mirrors mine. The mom is a teacher (so she speaks really slow and makes it much easier to understand) and has a TON of patience, the two girls are really, really nice and know English pretty well so it's easy to ask them for a word or a conjugation. You can tell they're really good girls (not that that really is like my family). The dad is SUPER funny and he loves American football just like my dad. Que chistoso- no importa donde vas, siempre buscaras cosas similares.

Today, I woke up super early (6am Seattle time- es 2 horas detras de Puebla) and couldn't go back to sleep. Cuando Linda estaba durmiendo, me levante y trate a buscar deodorant y toothpaste. Despues, yo comi con mi madre y ella me dejo sobre los universidades aqui en Puebla. After breakfast and a little dinking around, friends of Rosa (mi madre) came to the house. Luis (mi padre) wanted to buy two potted flowers for the house so we went to this area right outside of Puebla city called Atlixco (Aht-Lees-co). They're super famous for their flowers apparently. Linda and I walked around the center and the market and found SO much cool shit to take pictures of. We went into this one municipal town hall and found these beautiful paintings there illustrating the indigenos, la historia, y la revolucion de la gente en Atlixco y Puebla. I'm putting the pictures up from Linda's camera.

After that, we all met up again and went to a friend of Rosa's home near Atlixco. His name was Manuelo (and he swore like a SAILOR) and it was his birthday (yesterday, I think), el mismo dia que la fiesta de los Reis Mags (the feast of the Three Wise Men). The day commemorates the bringing of gifts to the infant Christ y por eso, children in Mexico put notes in their shoes for the wise men to leave presents in them during the night. Tambien, se celebran la fiesta con un pan especial- a special bread is made with sugar, chocolate, butter, and raisins (or some other stuff). The bread is shaped in a big ring and inside the bread is a teeny, tiny baby Jesus Christ. Everyone cuts their own piece of bread in hopes of NOT getting the baby Jesus because the person who gets the piece with the baby inside has to throw a party el 2 de Febrero. Well, we all sat down to sing Happy Birthday to Manuelo (and simultaneously, Jesus I guess) and everyone starts to cut their own piece of bread. It comes to my turn and I try to find the piece least likely to have the baby in it...well, that didn't work out because I nearly cut of the head of Baby Jesus Christ while cutting my piece of bread. Entonces, yo les invite a todos a mi casa en California un 2 de Febrero pronto- but this next one we're having a party here at the house in Puebla. Haha!

Pues, that was my day- it was pretty frigging bomb. I'm SO tired from walking about (and listening to Spanish all day, holy shit is that exhausting). I guess when I wake up in the morning, I wake up in English so it takes a little while to work into the language. During the afternoon, I'm pretty comfortable with it, but come late afternoon and evening? Holy shit- I'm like "que?!" I dont understand anything. Haha. Pues, es como lo pasa.

Pues, hasta manana! <3 C

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