One of the hardest things for me to adjust to here was Mexican time. I’m definitely not the most punctual person in the world, and I’ve been known to show up at work after the belltower has stopped chiming or be the girl who stumbles into class clutching a cup of coffee seconds before the lecture begins. I was even looking forward to things being a little more lax on the time front. But for the first week it absolutely drove me mad! At my first house they told me they would eat around 8:00 am, 3:00 pm, and 8:00 pm. Which is a typical Mexican schedule, and fits into the way the program designers made our schedules. Only they actually ate at about 8:45, 3:30, 8:40, give or take 20 minutes depending on god only knows. Now time at home is much more manageable but things still tend to start 5-15 minutes later than they would at home. I’m slowly adjusting, and I’m sure that by the time I come home I will be totally unfit to function on prompt U.S. time, but I definitely felt like this weird uptight person for a while there.

So, anyway. This new house business pretty much rocks. It is super classy and big, I live in the same general area as other people in my group, Marina and I can walk to school together now, and the family is nice to me even though I am always leaving to study with internet. But there are definitely some idiosyncrasies. First there are the angels. They are everywhere!!! Above the doors, on every shelf and table top. Tamara, my housemate from Chicago, has about 15 in her room. Because my room used to be the daughter’s, and she just moved out 2 weeks before I moved in, it’s a little barren. I only had 5 angels to begin with—4 on the walls and one on the vanity. Only one day last week the one on the vanity disappeared. Tamara had mentioned that when Omar (the son) moved back in, the mom moved a painting of two angels from her room into Omar’s, and then Tamara got a one angel painting, and we had been joking about how angels were how affection was measured. So my initial reaction was definitely “oh my god I’ve been demoted.” But then they made me a cake and sang happy birthday, so I’m pretty sure she was just… redecorating?

Idiosyncrasy number two is the complete inability to cook a meal without meat. Because I moved in really rushed they really didn’t get the vegetarian memo, so I thought I would just eat chicken to make it easier. Well I’ve basically had meat everyday for over a week now, and have totally eaten ham and beef and all the things I said I would never eat again. I was kind of upset about it at first, but it’s just something to adapt to. Cooking is such a huge part of female identity here; I figure I can handle 3 months of meat. At least we’ve established a no ham rule now.

So the first Friday here we went on a totally awesome/life-threatening excursion. To CUEVAS (caves, for the nonhispanohablantes). Basically our archeology prof and his French buddy excavated some Lithic period sites, and we went out to see them. Really, really cool right? Because not only were we seeing these neat places where people used to live (mind bending for sure) but the guys who know all about their discovery were showing us around.

However, there was a bit of a downside. Basically these cuevas were halfway up various cliff-like hillsides. We are talking steep zig-zagging trails broken up by an occasional steep bit with footholds carved into the rocks. Cheers, right? Of course the French bloke is scrambling up the mountain like it’s nothing, a cigarette dangling from his lips like he’s just strolling through the zocalo, and our prof is lending an arm to professor Ramsay and trotting along blithely. And Olivia, Abby, and I all stand roughly at 5’2” and are trying to figure out how to get our feet into the next foot hole when it is nearly level with our waists. There were some pretty scary moments! And just when we thought we were home free, taking a much more leisurely route back to the van, we hit a stretch of not very steep but incredibly slippery hill. I fell twice, and I was most definitely not alone. But I was lucky enough to avoid a cactus run in, unlike some members of the group

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On our next excursion we went to some ex-convento that now houses the national whatsit of archeology and history. Lots and lots of potter shards, and also the location where Presidente Guerrerro was killed. BUT we totally also saw a MASTRODON jaw. My love of megafauna lives to embarrass me another day. (p.s., megafauna in Spanish is ‘megafauna’)

After I made my last post I went home for comida with the now familiar apprehension of another adventure in meat eating land. BUT it was totally awesome. My family was all hugging me all of a sudden and then they gave me a PASTEL (cake) with number candles and everything. They sang this ridiculous Spanish song that ends with something like “bim bam bom” and chanting the person’s name over and over. Soooo cute.

It really is bizarre to be 21. The other day I was talking to Lauren about Pajama Jam and I said something like “Yeah, well I went in normal clothes freshman year, and then Nate Epling sat on me because of it. I think that sums up our entire relationship actually.” Which besides from being a little funny, is something sooo weird to think about. I know that college has changed me so much, and that I am a much more capable person than when I left home, that I have learned so much about life and book-y stuff. But sometimes I feel like the same girl I was skulking around the Delta house at Pajama Jam (or insert any other memory from freshman year here). We always pass a bunch of high school aged kids walking from school to our houses, and it really trips me out to think that I am 4 or 5 years older than some of them. I’ve been in college for almost 3 years now. Seriously? When did that happen?

I was really afraid that I would be super bummed out on my birthday. Since my first semester at Linfield I had kind of pictured spending my 21^st at the Blue Moon, finally getting to go out with my older friends and such. Being able to act on my love of sketch places and not be the only young one stuck on campus were definitely much more important than being legal to drink. And besides for Marina, none of our group are people I would ever plan on spending a birthday with. But it was really a good time. I did have my “I wish Laura and Jessica and Tess and Matt and Marianne and… were here” moment, but was really really pleasantly surprised by how much fun we had.