Week 1: In which some chicken almost kills me, I start teaching, and I climb a pyramid!

They say that you go through three different phases when coming on an ILP trip: honeymoon, horror, and humor. They said it usually takes some time, but I'm pretty sure I went through all three phases in the first week. Hopefully that means I won't relapse into the horror phase, and that I can just stick with humor for the rest of the summer.

Our first week in Pachuca was an adventure, that's for sure. We arrived in the wee hours of Sunday morning on April 26th. It's funny looking back on it, because what seems completely like home now all seemed so foreign then. After making it to our apartment, we unloaded our suitcases and pretty much went straight to bed. Unfortunately, we slept through the beginning of our church meetings, so we weren't able to go to church that day, but we were able to relax and unpack and explore our neighborhood a little bit that day which was nice. Walking around Pachuca the first day we were here we loved all the colorful walls! Every bright, new color that we passed turned into a backdrop for another mini photo-shoot. We met two little twins on our street named Fernanda and Jimena. They were so cute, and I got to tell them I was a twin too (luckily I knew how to say that in Spanish). We found our way to our school--we'd only ever seen it and gotten directions to it in the middle of the night, so we got a little bit lost, but you know, not for more than a minute... okay, five. Tops.

Luckily, we didn't have to teach on Monday--that would've been SUPER overwhelming--but we did get to meet the director of our school, Guillermo, his wife, Leticia, and our school's ILP coordinator, Alberto. They are all SO nice! We attended an emergency preparedness presentation at the school (it was all in Spanish, so I don't think WE would actually be that prepared in the event of an emergency). Then Guillermo showed us around Pachuca a little bit more. We drove around 'el centro' for a little bit and he took us to get some fresh 'Tooty Fruity' juice at this little juice shop. It was a combination of carrot, 'betabel' (beet), apple, and who knows what other kinds of juices. It was super fresh and super delicious! Guillermo's little bit of English combined with our little bit of Spanish made for fun conversation. We learned more about our schedule and eating arrangements. We teach from 10:30 to 12:30 and then from 1:00 to 3:00, then we eat lunch around 3:15 at a restaurant just around the corner from the school. For breakfast and dinner, Guillermo and his wife get us groceries every week and we eat at our apartment. Our first time eating at the restaurant, I ordered chicken cooked in mole verde. Who knew that Mexicans liked to put peanuts in random chicken dishes? I had only taken two bites of the chicken before my throat started itching and my lip started swelling up and I realized that the smell I had been smelling must indeed be peanuts. I still wasn't convinced, but when I looked it up I found out that some variations of mole verde do have peanuts in them. It was a little bit scary, but luckily I noticed it before anything too bad happened; I didn't have to use my epi pen and my symptoms were quickly relieved by hurrying home and taking some Benadryl. Hurray for modern medicine. Hopefully it WAS peanuts. If not, then I'm just allergic to something else that I don't know about, which is kind of a scarier thought.

My innocent-looking piece of chicken.

We started teaching on Tuesday, April 29th. I had already done the training for ILP and Guillermo had told us a little bit about the kids (including the fact that they were having a problem with discipline), but I don't think anything could have prepared me for that first day. I didn't go into this expecting it to be easy, but I don't think I expected it to be quite so hard! It doesn't help that my contact with young children has been WAY too limited while I've been at college for the past two years; I had forgotten how crazy energetic kids can be! They are all so cute though! It was difficult getting used to the kids and the teaching method and the routine at first, and on more (WAY more) than one occasion I thought, "What have I gotten myself into?"

Our third day in Pachuca, we wanted to go to the bank to exchange our U.S. dollars for pesos. There was a bank pretty close to the school that Guillermo had shown us only the day before, so you'd think we would've remembered how to get there. Needless to say, we did not, and so we ended up getting a little bit better acquainted with our new city than we thought we were going to that day. We had a... fun two-hour walk around the city before we finally found a bank (not the one we were trying to find) and made our way home. I think it was around this point that the culture shock started to hit; everything was in Spanish and almost no one speaks English and we were definitely walking in circles there for a little bit (it's kind of pathetic, but it wasn't until we didn't have access to it that we realized just how reliant we are on our GPS and smartphones).

We had Thursday off from school to celbrate el Día del Niño (Day of the Child), so we went to a nearby archaeological site called Teotihuacan. Also known as the "birthplace of the gods," I wish I'd done some more research about it before going, because it's actually a much bigger deal than I originally thought! The Metropolitan Museum of Art website calls it "one of the world's most impressive archaeological sites." And here I thought we were just going to see some little-known, locally recognized pyramids. Silly me. Anyway, Teotihuacan is about an hour and a half bus ride from Pachuca, so it made a good day trip. We got to climb the Pyramid of the Sun first. Let me tell you, it was NOT an easy climb, but it was worth it. Whenever we thought about turning back, we'd look at the 80-year-old men practically jumping up the steps and decide that if they could do it, we could too. We took several stops for rest and finally made it to the top.

The Pyramid of the Sun--can you believe we climbed that?!

The view from the top!

Me and the Pyramid of the Moon.

We finished out the week with one more day of teaching, and then had a nice little rest on Saturday. Of course, with all the things to do and places to see, we didn't rest for long! More on that next time though!

Love,

Kendra 

Wait... you're in Mexico?!

I feel like that's the reaction most people reading this will have. Only a few people outside of my family knew that I was coming to Mexico for the summer. Of course, I didn't know myself until two weeks before I headed to the Salt Lake City airport and hopped on a plane, so if you didn't know, it's nothing personal! The past six months of my life have just shown that apparently, I like making huge decisions last minute and in the spur of the moment. What can I say? It's the procrastinator in me, I think.

I came to México with a teaching program called International Language Programs (ILP for short). They send native English-speakers to Thailand, China, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and México to teach English in schools. I chose to come to México because not only is México a great place in general, but I also wanted to improve my Spanish! I am currently teaching with two other ILP teachers in a school in Pachuca, and my students range anywhere from three to eight years of age. The kids are adorable and I already love them, but teaching can be really difficult at times! Props to every elementary school and preschool teacher out there!

The trip to México turned out to be quite an adventure. What was initially supposed to take 12 hours ended up taking almost 30! (Oh, and did I mention that I was packing/cleaning out my apartment literally up until the minute that I left Provo?) Our original flight itinerary had us leaving the Salt Lake City airport, flying to San Francisco for a three-hour(ish) layover, and then flying straight to México City. The flight to San Francisco went off without a hitch. Checking my luggage? No problem. Security? Check. Boarding the plane? Swell.

My younger sister, my mom, and I at the Salt Lake airport right before I left!

The two other ILP girls and I landed in a dark, cold and windy San Francisco about two hours after leaving Salt Lake City. After disembarking, we found the terminal and gate for our red-eye flight to México and settled in to wait. When our boarding call came (only in Spanish--I guess they figured that anyone going to México City should know Spanish), we were more than ready to get on our way. The universe had other ideas though.

First, one of the passengers hadn't shown up, so they had to get his luggage off the plane. Then, the luggage had been loaded off-balance and they had to rearrange it. Two hours after boarding, we were finally in the air! What seemed like two minutes later (oh wait--it was), we were landing... back in San Francisco. The flaps of the plane weren't functioning properly and they had to bring the flight back down. As all of the passengers filed off the plane and back into the airport, the airline announced that they were trying to find another plane and that they had rescheduled the flight to leave at 3:00 am (at least I'm pretty sure that's what they said; it was all in Spanish again). We were just getting ready to wait it out, getting cozy with our little airline blankets that we had stolen taken as souvenirs from the plane, when they announced (in Spanish AND English this time, thank goodness) that the flight was cancelled and that everyone needed to make their way to the service desks to get new flights. It was two more LONG hours in line, a few middle-of-the-night phone calls to family/ILP people, and another three hours waiting for our flight before we were FINALLY on our way! Only who knew that you have to fly clear across the country to Washington D.C. in order to get to México?

Settling in to wait in the San Francisco airport after our 'delayed' flight.

Of course, the new flight plan meant we had to re-check our luggage, and just FYI: the Salt Lake airport is evidently a smidge more lenient when checking luggage than San Francisco. Between my backpack and my carry on (and a bag hidden under my blanket; how sneaky am I?), I hauled around an extra six pounds through airports and airplanes all the way from San Francisco to México City. That's not that much extra weight, and yet I now have a great deal more sympathy for pack mules. The very small silver lining to our little game of musical flights was our two free meal vouchers. Just one more quick tidbit of information for you: $7 buys a whole lot more in the Washington D.C. airport than it does in San Francisco.

Flying out of San Francisco I had a window seat, so I had an excellent view of the Bay Bridge (and you can even see the Golden Gate in the corner!).  Just think: if we'd taken the alternate option and stayed in San Francisco until Sunday night, maybe we could've seen it up close.

Descending about 5-10 minutes from the Washington D.C. airport.

After a long night with no sleep, my friends Advil PM and earplugs helped make the flight from San Francisco to D.C. a very smooth ride. We only had an hour and a half layover in D.C. before our flight to México so I had just enough time to put my contacts back in, brush my teeth, and change my shirt (I guess having to take some clothes out of my checked bag was good for something). They were already boarding when I grabbed some Dunkin' Donuts, but hey, I couldn't waste the meal voucher! At this point, everyone was excited because we were finally leaving the country! From there, everything went great. We got to México, went through customs (I got my first stamp in my passport!!!!), and found the person meeting us at the airport. I did have to get all of my bags searched at the airport, but it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. After our first meal in Mexico (it was Subway, by the way; VERY foreign), we rolled into our apartment in Pachuca around 12:15 am.

Thinking about it now, it feels like it's been forever since our wild ride here, but it was only two weeks ago! Those two weeks have flown by in a flurry of different activities. Stay tuned for more details!