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Published: August 24th 2013
Stairs!
The staircase that leads to my roomWahoo!!! Well it was a crazy day! But I made it! According to my quick notes list that I took on my Kindle on the way down:
On the flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta - there was a super annoying black woman complaining about how apparently everyone in the world is out to get her, apparently I freaked out for nothing over the overweight bags fee, as my bag was 51 lbs and I guess when you're going to Mexico they don't charge for that extra pound. My mom's bathroom scale was off by about 4 lbs, otherwise I would have been accurate I suppose.
On the flight from Atlanta to Mexico - I sat next to a very pleasant north African couple and we had a very pleasant conversation in French before everyone on the plane went to sleep. Even the babies on the plane! Maybe they all woke up at 3 like I did. There was also an older lady behind me that continued to read everything in the sky catalogue out loud,and I wanted her to just shut up and go to sleep like the rest of the world...
When I got to Mexico City,
I could not find the driver of the car that was to take me down to Cuernavaca. The instructions I was given specifically said meet in front of Banamex, which is a bank in Mexico. I was unaware, however, that things changed and the driver was going to meet me at Hertz. So, besides there being a teacher's strike outside the airport and no one was able to enter or exit, the driver couldn't find me because I was in a completely different area of the airport. Thankfully, a very VERY nice family offered to stay with me and even tried calling the university for me a few times. We finally found the driver, and all was good. It took about 2 hours because of traffic to get to Cuernavaca, and once I arrived at my host family's house I was so dead tired. I ate a little and then went straight to bed. I had had a long day...
Just a little info on the place I'm now living, for your own interest 😊 Cuernavaca is often called the "City of Eternal Spring" It has a mild climate year round and tends to have a lot of tourists...as
Trapdoor!
This is the door that closes over my spiral staircase at night. It locks on either side to be safe. It makes me feel like I'm in a tree fort XD I have noticed... Formerly an Aztec city where emperors stayed, the Nahuatl (Aztec) name for the city is Cuauhnahuac...named around the mid 1300's. Of course the Spanish found it and renamed it to be more pronounceable in Spanish. Like the rest of Mexico, the city struggled under Spanish rule for several hundred years until independence.
Cuernavaca is the capital of the state of Morelos. Yes, Mexico has states, just like the United States. That's why the official name of Mexico in Spanish is Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (The United States of Mexico). There are 31 (I think) states in Mexico, and the ones most 'feared' by those in the USA are in the North, such as Sinaloa, Sonora and Baja California. The ones near the border with the US.
It rains almost every day here. Only at night, however. Usually it rains a LOT during the summer, I was told. I have my own room, and I live with two other international students from the Bahamas! They are very nice girls 😊. The stairs to my room are very French, and very scary. They are spiral, and metal, but once I'm in my room, it feels like a
Bathroom
It's very tiny. And pink. You are not allowed to throw paper in the toilets in mexico (toilet paper) because there is such low water pressure, so you throw the used paper in the trash can.... tree fort or something, because I am slightly isolated from the rest of the house. All the rooms that the international students are staying in are somewhat like this, because I am told the rooms were added on after the original house, for the sole reason of having students stay there.
I start classes Monday, and the campus is beautiful. We went today to take a placement test and spoken interview (in Spanish). I will know what classes I am in on Monday.
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