Hola from Mexico!
I had all but given up on my blogging down here in Mexico because of the intense construction going on in the historic district (which is where I live). The city has made a movement to put every single telephone, internet, and electric cable underground. Up until now they have been on poles above (and connected to buildings). But because of this construction, our internet at our house has become, well, non-existant most times, and quite flakey the rest of the time. Only stable enough for me to make short Facebook posts...and it took NUMEROUS tries to even upload pictures!! And school's computer labs are closed because its summer!! BUT last week, my family came to visit and my dad, the wonderful tech-y brain that he is, fixed our internet!! So now, I'm back to blogging!! =)
And I greatly apologize for letting my readers down. But I will do a quick re-cap of what has been going on in the QRO.
The first month (from around June 15 til July 15) was spent getting acquainted with this beautiful city. As I mentioned earlier, we live in the historic district in an amazing house that has three different levels of open terraces that are considered our roof. Our house is an old, hacienda-style home, meaning that we have an open-area courtyard right in the middle of our house! We even have a little pet bird that comes inside our house and sleeps on a pipe near our front door. Since we are right in the middle of the historic distric, we are literally walking distance from every plaza area in this city! Its SO nice to not have to ride the bus everywhere!
School is also great! The teachers are very laid-back, as is common with this culture. They are also very helpful and are willing to go out of their way if we needed help with the city (or school) at all. Our classes are: International Management of Sales, International Economics, International Management, and Strategic Management. We also have a Spanish course that is once a week. Learning the language has been much easier than I ever would have thought. With only Spanish-speaking people surrounding me, I've been pretty much forced (in a good way) to learn. This is how I buy things, how I go to the market, how I tell the taxi driver where to take us, etc., etc., etc.
We have also made several small side trips to the surrounding cities within a 2-hour driving range from Queretaro. The first trip we made was to San Miguel de Allende. This city has a lot of English-speaking people who come here from the States to retire. San Miguel is also known for its international film festival that happens at the end of July. Over 400 films can be screened during this week-long festival. We stayed at a hotel/residence called Casa de la Sol (a friend of Hector's owns it) and toured the city. San Miguel is also famous for its natural hot springs, or oasis. We also visited one of these. I'm somewhat of a germ-freak, so naturally I worried about if the water was sanitary because, well, its "natural," and there were tons of people.
(Look for "Updates from Mexico!! Part II)
