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
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.
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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
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