Mucho Estudiar

It is funny what a good day in the shade can do for a girl.

Class started at 10am this morning. Initially I told myself that getting up to do some homework before class would be a wise decision, although because sleep is a hot commodity that I desire a great deal of I chose sleep. I think I chose wisely. I had a great sleep, it was the first night in the last four days that I slept under the covers for part of it. It has been so hot that I usually end up sleeping on top of my blanket all night long. Early this morning I was cold enough to climb under my sheets, it was a treat.

This morning, before departing for class the other daughter who had been in Vegas for the last 10 days arrived home. From the looks of it she did some serious shopping. I guess that is what they do, 'Western' brands seem to be a pretty big deal here.

Another treat before leaving for class was my homestay Mom's two adorable grandkids were over. The one year old is so adorable and smiley. He never fails to smile, wave, and say 'hola' when he sees me pass. As I was headed out the door (which is barred and metal [everyone's houses are walled off with large gates in front or barred doors, some even have barbed wire on top]) the two little boys ran up and started waving 'adios Teira!' So adorable, especially adorable because my name is nearly impossible to say in Spanish so it comes out a lot more like tay-ah-eer-ah.

Class was the same as usual I suppose. It goes a little something like this from our Prof:

"You need to take this seriously and get lots of work done;

There is a ballet tonight if anyone wants to attend;

I'm surprised you don't have more done on you paper;

How hard can this really be it is just a small test;

You need more hours in the field;

I don't know why you are all so worried."

I'm sure he means well, and I kind of feel like if you put the work in things will work out just fine and he is just pushing to make sure that we don't leave it all to the end, but I often feel very confused about my progress after class.

Straight from class (around 1pm) myself and two other girls split a cab headed downtown. My phone had stopped working and then I needed to do some observations, they were doing homework and observations as well.

I set off right away to get my phone fixed. It took me about three trips around the central area and two stops for directions to finally find the phone store. It was a long process of them speaking Spanish to me while I looked on dumbly. Eventually they figured out that my sim card was not working and I would have to get a new one. Fortunately for me it didn't cost too much.

Because that took so long I went to meet the girls for lunch, something that I was going to do after some observations. There is a hotel right downtown "Hotel Ceballos" (pronounced Sa-buy-ose for those of you non-Spanish speakers out there) that has a restaurant outside that looks onto the main square park and the main Cathedral I am doing most of my research in. We had a nice lunch, I had a club sandwich, which seems to be on every menu I see.

Because this is Mexico and everything closes at some point between 2 and 4:30 the Church was closed. To pass the time I walked around with the other girls while they did some of their observations. They left to go home around 4pm and I started to venture to another Church a little out of the main downtown area. Because Colima is not a tourist location there are no easy to use tourist maps, in fact I have no map at all outside of google maps. In addition to this most streets are not labeled so finding things can be tricky. I had done some googling and wrote out directions as best I could, 6 blocks this way, turn a little, one block that way, find this road, etc. As you can imagine this did now work out well. 4pm is the hottest time of the day and although it was much cooler today that it has been in a long time the humidity made a huge jump making walking around quite a sweaty task. Upon not finding what I was looking for and my general fear of being lost I walked back to the town square.

Luckily for me the Cathedral was now open. I spent half an hour doing my observations. Then spent some time in a local park. I need to attend Church services and I wanted to make it to the one this evening, which was at 7pm. I didn't really want to go all the way home just to turn back around. After sitting in the park for a while I decided to take a stroll down to another park where there are free wifi desks and maybe do some homework.

Upon arriving at the other park, about 4 blocks away, I spotted another Church to 'observe' at. This time it was much smaller and no one was inside. For this reason I sat on a bench outside and watched people's activities outside the Church. This was great for a number of reasons, I got to use the free wifi, sit by palm trees, get homework done, and not look like a creeper. Half an hour of that and it was time to go to the main Cathedral to watch a Church Service.

I should mention that in the main town square there is some sort of government funded information, cultural, festival, session thing going on. Life would make more sense down here if I spoke a little Spanish. Regardless there was a stage with dancers, as well as information booths, and military that looked like they were ready to go to war. I really wanted to take a picture of/with them and seriously considered asking them because they kept staring at me, but the answer to that question is usually no in a country whose military is so heavily armed in public.

I was in Chruch for an hour. When I came out there were still lots of dancing and people milling about. I stuck around for a little while to watch until returning home. As usual I took a cab home and when I showed him my address he knew where it was! This might not seem like a big deal because in Calgary there is gps, phone calls, and a lack of a language barrier (for the most part) but here trying to give directions is always a challenge.

Tomorrow we have a test. I hope it is as easy as my prof eluded it would be because I have neither the energy nor the motivation to study right now.

Today's High: 33℃ and overcast, 65% humidity

Today I learned:

• Traveling alone might be something I really enjoy
• Humidity + my hair = curly magic

I am grateful for:

• Blending in with the crowd at home
• Whole grain bread and Tropicana orange juice
• Clouds to make things overcast
• Water you can drink straight from the tap

Some of the greenery in the town square.

One of the parks in the downtown area, the little desks on the left are the wifi desks complete with power outlets.

Some of the dancing on stage.

Street Food. We are not allowed to eat this even though most street vendor food smells delicious. If you wanted a wagon full of cooked corn, here is where you'd find it. You can see the limes, large grain salt, and hot sauce. These are staple condiments of any Mexican meal. They were taking the lime, covering it in salt, and rubbing it on the corn.