Cholula

As I complete one week living in El Arca, I can´t believe how much I have learned so far. First of all, my spanish is getting better every day. Well at least I seem to understand more each day even if I probably don`t say more then 100 words a day. Currently, besided living with people who only speak Spanish, I am using Harry Potter to learn spanish. Yes that´s right. The reading level is perfect for me in Spanish and I know the books well enough that i can usually figure out what the words means. Granted I am learning a distinct set of vocabulary: broom, mirror, wand, witch, unicorn, calderon... But surprisingly, quite a few of my Harry Potter words have come in handy. For example, I thought Sabrina the Teenage Witch was on TV and I was able to ask the girl watching if it was a show about a witch. Wihtout Harry Potter I never would have known.

Besides my magically improving spanish, I am starting to feel more like a local around here. Most notably, I had the very common experience of having a bus brake down and leave me somewhere in the city. Luckily I was quickly hearded onto another. I have also joined a pool which is conviently next door. And yes this is with the intention of exercising. I even bought a cap and googles (neither of which I knew the words for but luckily they were in such a place that I could just point and say "Esto y esto.") However, before I was allowed to swim, I had to have a quick medical exam of which trying to say the year I was born in was definintly the hardest thing. i was also checked for lice and some other things i`m not really sure about (i came out clean, in ase you were worried). I´m not sure if I feel better about the pool because they do this or worse because they need to do this. Anyways I finally got in the pool and well I am definitely out of shape. But it felt good and the best part is afterwards I got to take a shower in their very nice facilities (relatively to the one stream of water in a concrete shower with a window looking out on the street that serves as the shower at the home for girls). And the cherry on top: they have a hair dryer.

After my difficult swim (ok not really), I was starving at dinner and decided it was time to bring out the hot suace I brought with me. I have never seen such disgust with Cholula sauce (which is relativly mild, I´m saving the Tobasco for later). Two of the girls were adventerous enough to try it... they were willing to put a whole drop on their plate. Their faces were a mixture of horror and awe as I liberally shook it over my chicken. I loved it!

Anyways I am getting a hang of the pace of life here and am definitely bonding with some of the girls. There is an 11 year old who has particulaly taken to me and has the same name as my sister! She seems to like showing off her room when it´s clean and usualy sits by me at the diner table. I also accompanied her to school one day and apparently neither of us knew where to get off the bus so we ended up running through the town together so she wouldn´t be late. Besides accompaning the girls to school and appointments, I`m still not really sure what I´m supposed to do but I think tomorrow some people are coming to paint alot of the rooms so I might help with that. I believe my room will be painted the color of corn, otherwise I have no idea why the director asked me if I like corn. Better then eggplant I guess.