Hey guys look at me my title is all Spanish and such. I kill myself with my mad skills.. I wonder how you say mad skills in spanish because I would type it over and over if I knew... So I was going to post another update yesterday before I left at 4:00 am to go to the airport, you know the update the world on my deep dark feelings before I leave the country for the crazy world of mexico, but I procrastinated. So I didn't. I was going to write on my bus ride into Xalapa but my battery was practically dead so I didn't. I was going to post last night when I arrived in Xalapa, but my host mother fixed me a huge meal that was sooo good and so not from a mexican restaurant that I danced inside. By then I forgotten that I that the word blog existed in some universes, and I blacked-out on my bed. So here I sit in my bed the next day and no i did not sleep all day..
So I'm sitting here Tuesday and I feel like talking about my travels yesterday is much like eating spaghetti that has been left out on the counter for a day or eating refrigerated french fries, so if you feel the same way please refrain from reading any further because there is nothing I hate more than to eat cold fries..
but I'll give you the fast facts of the day so you won't have to read further.
Last Breakfast in America - Plain Bagel with cream cheese
Last Food in America - Mini Pretzels and Orange Juice and many pieces of Orbiz sweet mint
First Food in Mexico - Nectar of a Peach Juice(yum!), Cookies, and some amazing peanuts (this was the bus food which was included in the fare) -- Airplane food needs to ride a bus in mexico to learn what snacks are supposed to taste like.
First Home-cooked Mexican Food-- Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Salsa Verde, and rice. Doesn't sound amazing but oh! it was.So i get to the Nashville airport where Emmy and my Aunt Toni graciously drove me at 4:30 a.m. we get to security and they say goodbye both with tears in their eyes almost like I was walking to my death. I didn't cry so I felt like I was a bad person, but I can't help if I'm heartless. No worries guys i've got my 1 oz bottle of Purell in my purse just incase I get mugged by a dirty person. I got this trip, No sweat. Other than that my flight from Nashville to Charlotte was uneventful. no bomb scares or nothing.sigh.
But now my flight from Charlotte to Mexico City was Crazy! I sat by this business man from Charlotte whose legs were about 3 times too long for his seat so tall that he couldn't place his lap table horizontal(it made for a good chuckle within) he had been to mexico many times and knew his way around and I you know what he told me? his word of advise for me (drum roll please!) "Don't drink the water!" Crazy, no.!?! O.k. so that wasn't really that impressive, but I'm trying to make it feel more like your eating room temp fries and not the cold ones.
but speaking of the whole water situation I haven't drank the water. my hydration liquid so far have been a little juice, pepsi, and 2 large cups of coffee. So the majority of my liquids are dehydrating me further. I don't sound like a very intelligent person. well shucks, now i'm worried that my IQ is decreasing rapidly. who cares that I'm dehydrated, that's much better than being just plan dumb no amount of water contaminated or otherwise can fix that. I wish the too tall man warned me about this decrease in intelligence.I regress, i arrived in mexico city at about 12:15. It wasn't so bad. Nothing too much like I had imagined it. There weren't that many people there, and there weren't creepy guys everywhere bumping into me, ripping my purse from me because i was the only deathly white person the airport. you know I think the reason I felt so comfortable was that there was a Starbucks in the airport and just seeing the green round sign gave me the strength of a lion or something that's crazy strong.
::side note - I'm long winded::
so after i stepped off the plane in Mexico City this is when the real adventure starts. First I got some pesos by speaking about three words of spanish to the money exchange people (so proud of myself). With pesos in hand, I went to find my bags. it turns out that one of my bags were lost. Ah it's not a big deal says the luggage man so very confident that it would be found and sent to my home in Xalapa in a day. so I readily believed him because frankly I would rather not carry around two heavy bags in a strange airport.
I got through customs quickly. and then i was off to find a taxi to take me to the mexican city bus station. easy right? ha! not so much because there are the good official taxis(yellow) and the other taxis (green Volkswagen beetles) that are sometimes not so good for incompetent whities to take (these taxis might rob you blind, leave you in some dark alleyway, and give you a tasteless taco for dinner just out of spite).
feel free to take a bathroom break
Most people get a plane from mexico city to xalapa instead of the bus, but it was cheaper not to. So guess what? this penny-pincher jumped at the opportunity to save money.
I walked around the airport and asked the security guard where to get a taxi so I could go to the bus station. There were a series of misunderstandings, and I ended up going to the bus station in the airport which had a bus going to Xalapa but not for another 4 hours. That wasn't going to happening. I figured I needed a taxi to the bus station right? so I was off to find a legit taxi driver. Some random person in a nice suit asked if I needed a taxi I said yes(dumb inge, so dumb)
he tried to take my luggage to roll it for me. that's when I went all psycho and was like "uh, no, you didn't!" but I followed him rolling my bag firmly in my hands for a minute or two. I thought he was going to show me where to buy a ticket for a taxi. Little did I know he was a taxi driver. As we got closer to the outside, i saw a green taxi on the road. Though it probably wasn't his, I re-birthed the whole psycho gringo personality and told him I didn't want to ride with him, but i said "gracious" so it fixed any rudeness.
So I was off to asking another person how to get a real taxi or a bus to xalapa. hmmm.. after much bad spanish which led to much confusion an english-speaking person said I could take a bus from the airport to Puebla and then take a bus from puebla to xalapa. sound good to me. so that's just what I did.
So I was off to Puebla (well first I tried to get on the wrong bus until the ticket-taker lady was like "dumbie your bus is after this one" and think she even mumbled stupid american..) ok, so I finally off to Puelba, and this is when my life turns into a movie. genre: cheesy/inspirational
The only thing it needed was a soundtrack. It was amazing to be able to travel the streets of Mexico by bus. I really got to see everything the pink and retro green stores, coca-cola and john deer trucks, people working in the fields, the laundry hanging out to dry, or the burro wagons and to realize I had actually made it to Mexico and I was going in the right direction. I thought to myself this was probably one of the first times in my life taking that cheap route actually gave me the better experience. So with that thought I, of course, fell asleep, content with my perfect little movie life.
Two hours later, I arrived at the Puebla bus station went inside tried to buy a ticket to get me to Xalapa they said that I needed to be at another bus station called CAPU. this is where my perfect movie pauses what's CAPU? scared that I got off at the wrong stop I rushed outside to make sure I was in fact in Puebla. The kind bus driver assured me that I was, and I only needed to take a short taxi ride to the CAPU station. Ok easy enough, I jumped into the taxi with a kind old driver we talked in basic spanish the entire way. my movie restarts
I arrive at CAPU get a ticket for a bus that was leaving in 2 minutes so I ran though terminal asked about five people "Donde esta?" held up my ticket and gave them the dumb stare. it worked.
I got on my bus plugged in the complementary ear buds and proceeded to watch Freak Friday in Spanish while the mexican countryside rolled by. sigh I feel tears about to well up. --Scratch that-- I just had to sneeze.
three or four hours later about 8:45 I arrived in Xalapa.
fast fact: Two bus rides, a taxi, and a phone call = less than 40 dollars
I called my host mother to let her know that I had arrived at the station she picked me up with her son and daughter in-law and we're off to the my home for next four months. On the way we almost died. We were inches away from hitting a car, and I dramatically clutched the seat in front of me cues dramatic music then I realized no one else was concerned that we would hit the car two inches away. I slowly loosened my death grip, the music faded, and leaned back in my seat trying not to act so foreign.
So we arrive at the house, and it is a really neat little house with a stairs leading up to the house and flowers surround the house almost like a terrace. I get to my room its very simple but I have a huge window, white walls (a great place for all my terrible paintings I will do in art class and my awesome audrey Hepburn calendar-thanks amanda) then I have a bed with a disney princess on it. Which princess I'm not too sure the one whose a gypsy and has a goat? I feel like I'm regaining a piece of my lost childhood.
After I regained my childhood my host mother asked me if I had already eaten dinner. I said I had eaten peanuts, cookies and lots of gum. Then I give her the "I'm emaciated" look and she fixed me dinner. See I told you I had mad skills. I ate lots, talk about an hour with her in spanish it's the rule no english, and then I slept for a really long time....
Ok movie over, classed dismissed, wake up!, I'll post a study guide tomorrow hitting highlights of this unnecessarily long post for those of you that fell asleep so you can act like you care about my sundry travels. --- Ok see you in a couple of days. Remember yesterday was the last day to drop this class so your stuck with this class the entire semester -- attendance mandatory... p.s. I'll post my awesomely generic bus pictures in a day or two..