vivo en mexicoooo

WE MADE IT!

August 2, 2010, may or may not have been one of the longest days of my life.

BUT we made it safe and sound to Puebla, Mexico,

all in one piece with ALL of our luggage and no MAJOR problems.

What a blessing!

Now that you know we made it safely, I can tell you a few of the mishaps and encouragements along the way. First things first, Continental Airlines WOULD be on an embargo period when we’re flying to Mexico to live for a year. An embargo period means that they will not accept any luggage over the 50-pound weight limit. Unfortunately, I don’t find this out until after I say bye to my dad and sister – who then leave the airport to go back home. Nope, I find it out when I meet Brittan and Yuyo (those of you who don’t know, Brittan is my roommate here in Mexico and Yuyo is her Mexican boyfriend. They’re presh). SO, this means we all have to take out things from our luggage. However, ‘things from our luggage’ may be an understatement. We’re talking 18, 19, 20 pounds of STUFF has to be taken out of our luggage. We ended up having Brittan’s brother, the hero, bring us another piece of luggage and we stuffed all of this extra STUFF into that bag and had to pay for another bag.

Keep in mind, that Brittan and I were already on edge. We just said bye to our daddies!! Pretty much anything could have happened and we would have broken down in tears. Let alone, a woman tell us that we cannot bring everything we had packed with us. NOW that we’re here safe, we can laugh about it. We were THOSE girls. Those girls in the airport BALLING their eyes out – looking super high maintenance because our bags are too heavy – kind of girls.

Anyway. So that happened. At this point we’re just ready to be on the plane. And leave. At this point I’m also reminding myself that GOD IS GOOD and this was His plan and not mine and that I could not do this alone and that I needed every piece of me to NEED Him. Basically, crying out for strength and courage and peace.

We then go through customs. You know, the high speed kind of intense few moments of taking off your shoes, taking your laptop out of your book bag and making sure everything is flat. All of this you’re doing QUICKLY because the guy behind you is staring at you like you’re taking a lifetime. Funny story though, this older woman straight up started walking off with my laptop. Like, she thought it was hers. I had to stop her and tell her it was mine & she was sort of adament about it being hers before she realized hers was in her bag. She said “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. Bet you can’t tell it’s my first time flying, can you?” She was sort of precious. But, she had my MacBook in her hands.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. Just a plane to Houston where we had a layover and ate some DELICIOUS Scholotzky’s (spelling?). And then another plane to Puebla. Both planes were smaller planes. You know, the kind where you can feel every single gust of wind that hits the plane a weird way. Brittan and I talked the whole way, I’m sure people around us were praying for us to just stop for a few minutes.

When we arrived in Puebla, our coordinator from the school was waiting for us along with the other 7 or 8 girls that were also traveling to begin teaching. We met a few on the plane and then met the rest on the car ride to the hotel. We are from ALL over the place; Vancouver, Chicago, Atlanta, Indiana, New York, Portland and other neat places. Our coordinator is AMAZING. She’s the sweetest lady in the world and I can already tell that she will be soooo helpful.

We stayed at a hotel and bonded some. Andslept some. I ran at the hotel gym this morning. Since I didn’t know weight in kilograms or speed in kilometers, I just went by the TIME I was running because that’s universal. There was a cute little Mexican girl hanging with her dad who was on the elliptical machine. She tried it out for a few minutes and couldn’t reach the handles. She was so cute.

Here's the view outside our hotel room when I woke up. Yeah, Mexico is beautiful.

Yesterday’s events consisted of some paperwork, lots of laughing, and our FAVORITE sushi in Mexico, Sushitto. We did some paperwork and some visa preparations. We did get to see our apartment though! So that was exciting. It’s seriously like 5 minutes from our school. WE CAN WALK TO WORK! That’s my favorite thing. It’s also cute and perfect for Brittan and I. Oh yeah, one awesome thing that happened was on our walk back to our apartment we saw some of the CUTEST puppies of all time.

This made Brittan the happiest girl in the world.

Last night, we went to La Suprema Salsa and had tacos. They were absolutely amazing. I will have to post a picture of food in another blog. We alsowent to Wal-mart to get some stuff like a pillow and baking soda, (our fridge was rather smelly!) We anticipated buying a mattress cover but they are just FORTY-FIVE dollars. That’s all. Needless to say, we didn’t get them. We came back home and did some more organizing things and getting our apartment ready. I’ll post pictures of our apartment in another blog (when it gets all ready and cute).

Today's events consist of more visa stuff and more hanging with new awesome teacher friends. Pray for good relationships to begin forming & for our bodies to stay healthy! OH YEAH and you can join in with me and start praying for the children that will be in my class. They will need all the prayer they can get since they’ll have the evil MISS KILLEN as their teacher ;) but really, pray for their little minds.

I’ll be updating again soon. As for now, I'm going to try to go back to sleep :) adios mis amigos. Te quiero muchiiiiisimo.