The Last Two Weeks

Basically I have been hanging out while my sister has been working. I will start teaching English to kids on Monday Dec. 5th at a church which is exciting, eventhough I can´t really communicate in Spanish yet.

The first days I was by myself I walked around town, I was excited but again shy and timid to interact with anybody because of the language barrier. So I pretty much kept to myself and got to know the city a little bit. There are a lot of American things here but at the same time it is very different, the smell, mountains (a huge Volcanoe!), cars and busses, roads, people, buildings, houses, churches, markets, pretty much everything.

The first Saturday we expected to see some college football on TV but there was none to find. Then, I remembered seing a ¨Sports Bar¨ while we were out one day. So we went there and it turned out to be a place where you go to bet on games! They had Direct TV and had about 25 TV´s and they would put on any game you wanted. It was cool, Karin bet on MSU (-9.5 to Penn State) and I told her she was stupid but they ended up covering and she won!

The first time we really went out was last Tuesday, a mix between getting used to the city and Karin getting used to the long hours keeps us in. We meet up with one of Karin´s co-workers that was here on business. We went out in Mexico City (about an hour drive plus traffic which is the most rediculus thing I have ever seen), it was myself, Karin, her friend Maria and her brother and his roomate who lived in the city. We got really drunk splitting two bottles of tequilla at a restraunt while Mariachies played for us. The next day I was more hungover that I have been in a while, maybee the tequilla, maybee the altitude but it was something.

Thanksgiving was interesting, we had pizza from Domino´s and saw the new Harry Potter movie (our family tradition is to have dinner then go see a family movie). They do not put butter on their popcorn, it isn´t even availiable!

So, last Friday we were scoping out places to go out in downtown toluca and while we were driving through town we noticed that there were several people starting to gather in the streets, it got to the point where we had to pull off the main road and park. We went to the main street and there were tons ad tons of people around, people selling Christmas hats that lit up (Karin bought one), and little food stands littered the streets. Karin finally got the guts to ask what was going on and a local told us that it was the carravan of Coca-cola. Thats right, a parade of nothing but Coke floats with Santa, elves, and people dancing. It could have been one of the stranges things I have ever seen.

The next day we went down town Toluca and saw the Cathedral (like no other church you have ever seen) that was built in the 1700´s, the governors Mansion (Toluca is the capital of the State Of Mexico), musiums, and markets. Then we went out to the ¨club.¨ We went to a place called L´agua. It was a genuine C-L-U-B, with roped off lines, coat check, trees inside, aquarium behing the bar, waterfalls, bright flaching lights. Karin was drinking Cosmos and I was dringing Indio´s (beer), there was people dancing (techno in spanish) and every now and then there would be a dancer on a platform with a waterfall behind them twirling fire, or dressed like a Mayan Indian, or in a suit of little mirrors to entertain the croud. It was suprisingly inexpensive (50 pesos to get in and out bill was under 350 pesos for drinks, we had a couple few).

I just set this up so I will update it when necessary, hopefully I will get some pictures to put up. later