hey!

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Hello everyone!

Sorry that I haven´t been updating, but my life has been a whirlwind of activities lately. I will try and tell you about everything, but it might get a little long.

First of all, as you all know, I´m staying with a family. There´s a mama and papa, jaque and enrique (but they call him camilo sometimes) and there are two sons, enrique (quique) and alan. Our brothers don´t actually live in the house with us, they live in an apartment next door. The elder is either an architect or is planning on being one, but he has designed a house that his uncle is building in cholula, and after the house is built, they will rent it out to students at the univeristy. The other is studying german, and I´m not quite sure what else. They are the nicest, most hospitable people I think I´ve known. I live with another student from the university of kansas named viet, and she is a very sweet girl.

Our university is Universidad de las Pueblas, and it is a bit unusually for a Mexican university because it has a lot of students who aren´t from puebla or cholula. Usually, here, students will go to the university in their town and continue to live with their parents, which is what mine do, but there are a lot of students from various places here, as well as extranjeros (foreign exchange students) of which, I am one. The campus is absolutely beautiful, every building has a courtyard with a garden, and there are a lot of cacti and these weird black birds with long tails that make crazy sounds. There is even a small pond on campus. It is totally gated, though, which is a bit of a pain, but I guess that makes it safer. The university is in Cholula, and that´s where I live.

I walk to school with viet, and a couple of other guys from the universidad from new hampshire. It takes about 20 minutes, same as at KU. I do live very close, within walking distance (two blocks) of the pyramid, and there´s a church on top with mountains (volcanos, active or no) in the background. Viet and I walked close to it yesterday, and there is a gap between peaks, and the sunlight shone through, and there were a bunch of people lighting firecrackers for a religious festival. It was very pretty. One morning, we could see the entire volcano, and it was huge. Bigger than Rainier, in my opinion, but then again, it is much closer than ranier is, I think.

I´ve been to the center of cholula a couple of times also, to drink coffee and just hang out. (they do a lot of that here). I have been making friends with a lot of the other students from KU also, and generally it´s a good time. My spanish is getting better, but I can tell that when I speak english, it is a little different. So I can´t speak english well, but I can´t speak spanish much better, I´m kind of stuck in the middle.

Short story: Everything is great, and the city is beautiful, and I love it here and everyone should come to visit me! If you want to know anything more, just ask, as I don´t know when I´ll be updating again. ciao!

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Photos

living space
My room

Viet
She also lives with the family.

Límones
limes!

Iglesia
A church in Puebla, the city close to mine.

Enrique
the papa

familia
In the catedral.

Vista
The view from my window.

Convente
A exconvent in Tecali

friends
My brother and his friend.

iglesia de los remedios
the pyramid and church. Two blocks from my house.

one of the volcanos
from a bus.

Comments

[Mad]

Sounds lovely
You speak english very well on here. A very visual description! I wish I could see the firecrackers and hear the birds!

[Mel]

whoa
That sounds totally amazing. I know a girl named Viet who went to my high school and now goes to KU. I wonder if it's the same person? I'm way jealous of you -- it sounds beautiful where you are. I'll probably write you a letter at some point because I do those kinds of things. Have continuous fun!! Mel

[GEorge Marchin]

Hooray for blogs. They work.
Marjorie we're so happy you like Mexico ( I thought you would) It's really very diferent and I knew it would be that way. Love, DAD