Ohh, Mexico

¿Por qué no?

Yay! I'm finally starting to meet people down here! This weekend was a lot of fun because I met up with Anne Sophie and her 2 friends from France, Frederique and Chantal. And through Anne Sophie and her boyfriend Hugo, the 2 Frenchies and I met a couple Mexicans around my age, René and Emmanuel. At first I was kind of nervous at the idea of spending time with 3 Mexicans and 3 French people, being the minority twice removed, but it ended up being a good time. Friday night was when I met everyone, and we spent the night hanging out at Anne Sophie's apartment in the centro of town, drinking a little tequila, and talking.. basically, everyone was just getting to know each other. And it's true that when you get together a group of people who all speak different languages, it's amazing how much time you spend talking about the fact that you speak different languages. French, Spanish, English... all in one room. But it was great because everyone was speaking in Spanish for the most part, and hearing the mistakes that Fred and Chantal were making in Spanish made me feel like I have made a lot of progress in how much I'm able to communicate in a foreign language.

Early Saturday morning, I had a teaching English workshop to go to in Querétaro that was arranged through Carlos, even though he ended up not going. Instead, a got a ride from a friend of Carlos who I just met last week. Her name is Shannon and she's American and has been living in San Juan for 5 years now. She's from Florida and her husband is Colombian, and they met while in school in the states. Now they have a 2 year old daughter, and I was absolutely fascinated as Shannon told all about her life and what brought her here to Mexico. She's really nice and seems really willing to help me out with anything I need down here, and through her a met another woman at the conference who is just starting a bilingual pre-school and is looking for a native speaker to work for her. I ended up talking to this woman, Sylvia, about my situation here and how I'm looking for another job since I have so much free time in the mornings, so I think we're going to meet this week, maybe tomorrow (I haven't heard from her just yet). Anyway, this conference turned out to be totally boring and I was a little disappointed because it was more about trying to sell this new line of textbooks and I was hoping to learn some teaching tips. BUT, it did prove to be a great networking experience for me and I'm glad I went.

Since I knew I was going to be in Querétaro, I mentioned this to my new found friends Friday night and they decided to drive up to the city to meet me when I got out of the workshop. The 5 of us, Emmanuel, René, Chantal and Fred and I spent the day in the city, which was a total blast. We spent the day walking around the city, checking out the outdoor market, went to a history museum, eating tacos and fresh fruit, and in general, just seeing everything there is to see in Querétaro. It was funny because at times, Chantal and Fred would have to ask me to translate things for them so they could speak with Emmanuel and René, so we basically had things going from French to English to Spanish, but the conversation was there.

It was really good for me to see how Chantal and Fred are adjusting to being here since they flew in on Wednesday. Although they're only going to be here for 2 months altogether, I could see that Chantal is having a little bit of a difficult time, so I found myself talking to her a lot about how important this experience is for her, that some days will be great while others will be really difficult, that her Spanish will improve so much, etc. etc. when I realized that this is exactly the kind of advice that I've been needing to listen to.. in this case, my own! Fred and Chantal both want to do a lot of traveling while they're here, which is exactly what I've been wanting to do more of, and Emmanuel and René seem really happy to show us extranjeros (foreigners) around. So it was not only great meeting people closer to my age--everyone in the group is about 21-22--and having people to hang out with on the weekends, but also knowing that I'm not so alone here. I almost decided not to go out Friday night because I was feeling tired, but I'm so glad I did.

Today I've been thinking about how much I want to move onto my next step here, finding an apartment, and how this week I just have to do something to make this happen. Shannon seems really willing to help me out, and has even offered for me to stay with her for a while, though I think she understands that that's not what I'm looking for. I'm going to do everything I can to hunt down Miguel to see if his friend that he mentioned is still interesting in having me as a roommate, but if this doesn't work out, I'll move on to looking for something else. Wish me luck!

posted by Rachel @ 1:04 PM