Getting My Bearings

Vale. (That's spanish for "okay" and you say the 'v' with a 'buh' noise. Pretty much it's the go-to word for whenever your mouth gets tired of saying "si si si si si"when you want to say something but don't really fully understand what's going on).

If I've learned anything from my first full week in another country, it's that every day is an adventura. I'm trying to learn my way around, but none of the streets are parallel here- they pretty much run at all angles and diagonals and all the names are in Spanish (who saw that coming?!). So getting to school took me close to an hour yesterday when it really only is a 25 minute walk. But that's okay, I enjoy looking even more foreign here, by pulling out a map in the middle of the road, squinting at it, and resolving that I am more lost than before. If there were more distinct landmarks, I'd be alright-but on every street there are countless heladerias, fruterias, cafeterias, and other words I don't know (yet) that end is -ia. Muy confusando. So by the grace of God, and a hunch to follow a girl who I presumed was also American and was going to my school, I finally got to CEGRI (school). Lucky thing the girl led me in the right direction but she actually doesn't go here. Whoops. Or as they say here, weeee.

Yesterday morning, we had our first experience with churros con chocolate. Oh. Dear. Lord. Where we these when I was secretly stealing Marypat's Luna bars in the hostal? Basically their fried dough that you dip in very very thick, rich chocolate. They eat it here for breakfast. Why nobody here is morbidly obese, I do not know. Then we wandered around and enjoyed the afternoon in the sunshine. It got up to about 68 degrees yesterday in the sun, and it felt soo soo nice. Good thing I brought all that SPF 70 with me- this little chica blanca is going to burnn like a baby come April when we go to las playas.

Then, last night after dinner-which was a chicken broth-based soup, salad and ham, (It's going to be awhile before I eat ham when I get back home), most of the people from our group went to a free salsa lesson at a little bar called La Habana. Try cramming 60 pretty uncoordinated americanos in a small tapas bar and trying to teach them to be suave. Ha. All the bars here are pretty small. But the difference is, there are more of them. The barcrawls you could partake in....

So today, I woke up late (this is starting to be a recurring theme, but in my defense, I was pretty tired from the night's activities), and had to scramble to get readyf or my nine a.m. class. In Champaign, I've been able to get myself together in 6 or 7 minutes before class if I have to, with the ultimate luxury of living on the Quad. Here, there's really very little I can do to shorten that 25 minute walk to class, so when I woke up at 8:21, I was in a tizzy. With no shower, and no hair products here yet, I just decided to borrow some of my senoras hairspray. No problema!

It wasn't until later, when I went to a supermercado to buy my own hairspray that I realized what I had sprayed on my hair was not actually hairspray....it was in fact, deodorant. Fantastic. At least my head won't be sweaty.

Until next time-- stay thirsty, my friends.