Sunday, May 1st, 2016
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Inside one of the beautiful chapels
here in Celaya! |
I am officially in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico and somehow managed to survive all three hours of church almost entirely in Spanish without irreparably embarrassing myself. We just got to Celaya last night (Saturday around midnight, so I guess Sunday at midnight?) The ward is really nice and sweet. One of my roommates is looking forward to becoming friends with some of the older ladies in the area so they can teach us how to make some authentic Mexican dishes. And we've already talked to the Bishop who of course told us to call him if we ever need anything, and we've also already been briefed on when institute is and where. I'm looking forward to practicing my Spanish this semester!
Although I'm excited and love the ward, I can already feel culture shock settling in. When we got to the bus stop in Celaya, I finally realized what was wrong with what I was seeing: everyone was Hispanic! No one speaks English (unless you get lucky and they realize you don't speak Spanish). So far we've gotten lucky. Only one of us speaks well enough to say something. She served in Brazil so she knows Portuguese.
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| Outside one of the beautiful chapels here in Celaya |
I'll just end on this note: Ricardo (the guy in charge here) is going to set up language classes for us. I'm pretty excited.
It's a love/hate relationship I have with Celaya right now. But it will only get better!
Sincerely,
Claire
Sunday, May 8th, 2016
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| Just had to get a picture of those Organ pipes! |
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| Same as chapel above. |
I really love it here. But let me tell you about my first week here: Monday I started feeling really sick and so I didn't go anywhere really on Monday and Tuesday, but by Wednesday I felt much better and I was able to jump in and start teaching English. My kids are so adorable, I love them already. Most of the kids we teach are members of the church, and the people we work with at the school are as well. We only teach about an hour a day, because we don't have many kids yet, but we're hoping to get more through the semester. I just hope I get the hang of this teaching thing before that happens. I'm still struggling with Spanish, but I have started writing down words I don't understand that I can study, and I've been keeping up with Duolingo. We will also be starting Spanish language classes soon so that will be good.
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I found the architecture on the
outside of this one so interesting! |
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| Eating a Torta |
Yesterday we didn't teach, so we walked around our neighborhood and went in a few chapels/temples near us, and we actually ate out for the first time since getting here. We tried finding this place a couple of the teachers recommended, but we couldn't find it, so we just chose a random restaurant. It was called "Tortas Perras" and we all laughed when we realized what that meant. But it was really good and we hope to go back again sometime. The chapels/temples near us are so pretty, I took a few pictures. They're absolutely gorgeous inside. We couldn't believe that this random small city in the middle of nowhere was home to so many big chapels/temples. Celaya is so beautiful, which I didn't really see until a couple days ago, and again yesterday. The food is a little different, but good.
Today we're planning a day trip to Guanajuato City for next Saturday, so we're really excited about that. We're looking up things to do there.
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| Home Sweet Home for Four Months! |
Overall, I'm really glad I chose to come and that I get this experience of teaching in another country and spending so much time around children, and just being in this country that I've loved all these years.
Oh! Funny thing: One of the parents pays for his kid to learn English by giving us fresh fruit and he has a fresh fruit stand across the street from our school so a lot of days we'll just go to him and get a fairly big cup of fruit each, and he puts weird things like salt, lime juice, chili powder and other stuff like that on it. I've only tried the watermelon with salt and lime (possibly lemon?) juice and it definitely has an interesting taste.
Sincerely,
Claire
Hey y'all!
I just realized I'd only really written emails to people, so I copied them here. I will write more next week for sure! And I'll post more pictures too of course. I haven't taken as many pictures as I would have liked but definitely this week!
I hope you are all doing amazing and I can't wait to share more fun adventures with all of you!
Love,
Claire
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