Que habidoooooo?

09/03/08
Some more days have passed and I'm feeling very great and confident. I have made many friends through Monica and Alejandro over the past three days. I went to church with Monica and afterwards went to a birthday party where I met several more people who I communicated fairly well with. Thursday night I went to Temo's futbol game which was awesome. He did a bicycle kick! They won 3-1. I've been going back to the park, exploring more, loving more. This weekend Suzie and Phillip came in from Alamo, so I got to go out with them last night. We went to Macro Plaza, then took the Metro back home, which is exciting because it's like 35 cents one way or something silly and cheap. It's probably a mile walk from our house to the Metro station and it goes everywhere, so I intend to use it frequently to explore as I'm still uncomfortable driving in this city. I had a lot of fun with Suzie and Phillip. Last night we caught up with Monica and her friends at this awesome diner/coffee house place and played Uno and they played Scrabble which I passed as it was Spanish words only. Then we saw 10,000 BC which was a movie.
This morning Phil and I got up at 8 to climb the Sierra de Cilla with Artemio, Temo, Emilio, and Maryanna. We made it up 1,800 meters and the kids wanted to go back. It was quite a treck and I took sooo too many pictures. I want to go back on my own and go to the top. I think we made it a little less than half way and I hear there is a statue of Jesus somewhere on it. Then today Alejandro picked me up and we went out with a lot of his friends to Preza de Boca. Which is a big lake where all young people sit around, drink, listen to music, and speak Spanish with each other. It was pretty fun. Then we got the best hamburger ever. I'm so happy here and feeling a little better with my Spanish and much better with having more friends.
Some interesting things: When Mexicans get bored they invent new forms of speed bumps to keep people from driving like real Mexicans. Some of my favorites are the double-decker and the inverted speed bump. They also have one that's made up of a bunch of small steel bumps about the size of a baseball. I've quit asking if I should put salsa on anything, as the answer is always, "si, que claro." The other night I got in a heated debate with Artemio over how many continents there are in the world. I knew there was 7, but I had a hard time naming more than 3. For those of you counting 1) North America 2) South America 3) Africa 4) Asia 5) Antarctica 6) Australia and 7) Europe. In Mexico, they say there are 5, because they don't count Antarctica and they include the Americas as one. Plus, They don't believe in Daylight Savings, which I think is great.