First Week of School, Futbol, and Pan

---

First Week of School, Fútbol, and Pan

I wake this morning around 9am, pack my bag and walk to my school. The doors are open but the compound is quiet and still with only a few of the staff members, noticed by their black collared EEE polo shirts, pacing the walkways. Today is Friday and the first day of my extended weekend, something I will enjoy every week here at La Escuela para Estudiantes Extranjeros.

One full week of school has finished and I’ve become comfortable with the idea of resuming studies here in Xalapa. I attend two classes a day, each an hour and a half in length, the first being my grammar/language class at 10:30am and the second alternates each day between Spanish writing at 6pm and Latin American Cultural Studies at 12:30pm. It’s an easy schedule but lots of work and studying required of the students inside and outside the classroom. All the classes are taught entirely in Spanish, much to my surprise, but I’m managing to pick up the general ideas and most important points. Class sizes are relatively small with about 15 students to a class allowing for a very intensive learning environment. I am most looking forward to my cultural studies course. It sounds very interesting, introducing the students with a broad history of Latin America with an obvious interest in the México from the time of indigenous cultures through colonialism and up to modern day aspects of life. It’s history and information I’ve never been introduced to before.

All incoming students at EEE are partnered up with “Cultural Buddies”. These guys and girls are University of Veracruz students who you get together with three times a week to act as your Spanish tutor, a city tour guide or at least an immediate friend here in this new overwhelming environment. I was matched with a fourth year UV Agricultural Studies student named Ilias. We liked each other right from the start… On Sept.1st we met our new friends at orientation where we all watched a video about the EEE and had our first formal introduction to the school. After orientation we all got on a bus that took us on a brief tour of downtown Xalapa. Ilias and I had been chatting about the city and each of our paths in school when about 10 minutes in he tapped me on the shoulder. “This is a pretty bad tour and I can take you on a better one later. I have a fútbol game in a half hour, how about coming with me to watch that instead and we’ll get you back here in time to take your oral placement exam?” Haha, my kind of guy. This week I’ve seen two of their games and another one is at 1pm today. They play at a big sports complex central to the numerous UV colleges and his agriculture college plays a different college for each game. It’s great soccer and what I wanted to see most on my arrival here in México! He broke his arm in a game of “Fútbol Rapido,” similar to American indoor walled soccer on a smaller turf field, a couple weeks ago so we just enjoy the very loud crowd and attempt dialogue, though it’s still quite hard for me with anyone but my host family. We have to fill out a paper for each week of what we did together so the school knows they are spending time with the students, and we joked yesterday that we need to find some things to write down other than, “Watched soccer, learned some of curse and slang words, and walked to and from the stadium.” Haha.

Veracruz is the primary coffee-producing regions in México, as I stated before, and numerous times a day I enjoy it with pan (bread). My host family routinely stops at small local bread stores and buys a wide array of bread with sugared and caramel glazes. Many of the small stores are not even visible from the road. My favorite one appears to be just an open room full of chopped wood from the street, but then you walk down a long tunnel into the heart of the building and you become acquainted with the best smells you can imagine. In the same room where men are rolling the bread and sliding them into an enormous clay oven, you can walk along the perimeter of the room and pick from the hundreds of trays of incredible breads. It’s spectacular and my new favorite snack, much better and cheaper than real sweets.

The weekend has arrived and I will be going to check out some more sites in the city including the enormous library for the Universidad Veracruzana which with my EEE ID card I have full free access too. Pictures coming soon of the house, etc.

Love to all at home and abroad.
Barry

---

Comments

[Andrea]

First week - a success!
Wonderful descriptions of everything Bar! I'm getting such a feeling for where you are and how you're doing - and oh my, I wish I was there in that bread store! Thank you so much for your wonderful blog! xxxxx00000