The First Week

So, here is my first blog post. And it only took me a week to make a blog! Woot.

And before you ask about the title, vegetarians are not at all common here. Mexicans like their meat. Hence the title. 

Anyway, so far I've been having a really good time in Mexico. The food is amazing and I really like the people I'm with (both the volunteers and the SIIJUVE staff - SIIJUVE is the Mexican national committee of ICYE, the program I'm volunteering with).

Well, here's a brief summary of what's happened so far:

I arrived on Wednesday at about 11:00 am and waited with someone from SIIJUVE at the airport for a while. Then I went to a temporary host family (an awesome person, her dog and her cat) 

and fairly late at night, a bunch of other volunteers came with a few people from SIIJUVE. There were 3 Germans, 1 Brit (who's actually Italian) and 2 new SIIJUVE people. We hung out for a while and watched a movie.

The next day (Thursday), me, Mona, Felix, Matthias (Germans) and Runa (the Brit who's Italian) went to Zócalo in the center of Mexico City and explored for a bit.

When we got back, another volunteer was at our temporary host family (his name is Kalle and he's from Finland). We all hung out (including Lucy, our temporary host mom, and Ramón from SIIJUVE) and danced and talked.

The next day, we left for our on-arrival training. First, those of us who were at Lucy's (I'm not sure how she spells her name) went to the bus station. There we met Rubi/Ruby who was already with her host family in D.F. (Distrito Federal, i.e. Mexico City). Then we all took a bus to Puebla where we waited for some other volunteers for a while (in which I managed to get sunburned. Whoopsie). Then we crammed onto a tiny bus and drove to Metepec in Puebla.

We spent the rest of the day on Friday to early Tuesday afternoon eating delicious food, meeting new people, learning about Mexico and SIIJUVE, doing fun activities and just generally having loads of fun.

One of our more memorable activities was an awesome hike to a river to go swimming. But it turned out the river was really cold and not so good for swimming so only a few of us ended up going in.

Overall, the training was loads of fun and I met lots of new people who I either plan on visiting or traveling with.

The next exciting thing that happened was today we moved into our apartment. It's pretty nice. Although at the moment it's a bit crowded and unorganized because we have all the stuff for our apartment and for another volunteer apartment that isn't ready yet.

I also got a cell phone today. If you really want the number, let me know and I'll give it to you.

That's it for now. I don't know how good I'll be good at updating this, but I'm hoping for the best.