I prefer Sunshine

Today I have completely moved in to my new home for the semester, Residencias 3, as pictured here. I´m living on the 2nd floor and I have 16 suites with 4 girls per suite. The hall is beautiful both inside and out, but the the fact that the 16 suites are spilt in half by a courtyard and a lounge may make a difference. I´ve only met one resident so far, Pile, and she´s very pleasing :) I´ve also met our incredible housekeeper, Josearia, who comes in and cleans our room everyday! WOW! And all with a smile too--increíble!

Yesterday was great, but the day before that was horrible. It was rainy, cold, and my Spanish skills kept failing me when I most needed them. We had our Prefecto orientation (only 28 total!) and they started off by introducing the newbies (6 of us in all, myself and another guy from UT are the only intercambios though). I felt very welcomed by everybody! I was surprised, but very glad that they remembered me from the RA Rendevoux in October.

That was the good part about that evening of Orientation, the bad part was my lack of good Espanol skills, but more so my pride. The entire Orientation which lasted about 5 hours was completely in Spanish, of course. I caught around 70% mas o menos of what they said. I felt horrible that I hadn´t studied more right before I came. A couple of times I asked some of my neighboring prefectos what the speaker was saying if i didn´t understand, but after a couple times I felt like I was bothering them (even though in reality I wasn´t, I just didn´t want to ask).

Everyone here speaks in English and at anytime I can ask them to switch, but it´s my pride and I that want to keep it all in Spanish so I can learn more. Even at the beginning of the orientation, Reynold welcomed me warmly and said that probably a lot of what they were going to say would go over my head, but not to worry cuz they would all help me out. Nevertheless, we began to schedual events and projects and and skits and I started signing up for things because they were the only things I knew the words for LOL. Fortunately, they were things I wanted to do too. That night, after grabing some good comida with the other prefectos at one of the many tastey local taco tiendas, I moved from Res. 1 to Res. 3 and I felt so bad about my Spanish skills that I just started laughing because I had no idea how I was going to get through the semester! I asked God for lots of help and then I headed to bed.

I didn´t bring a computer, a phone, or a radio player so my room is devoid of technology. All I have for now is a Discman that I turn up really loud and pretend it´s a radio player. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed it. The next morning (yesterday) I woke up and I was reminded by the Nicole Nordaman song His mercies are new every morning. And boy are they!

Yesterday was so great! The sun came out and shone 70 degrees warmly all day. I had a small break from speaking Spanish for the International Student orientation sessions that were in English. I was able to see the two other people that are here from VT studying abroad, Brittany and Jeff. I met a really nice girl from Minesota, Jill, one from Canada, Kristie, a guy from Chappel Thrill, Trae, and TONS of French people! :) I think there are more French international students here than any one else. And they´re all really nice.

I was able to get my class schedual fixed. By the grace of God, there was one opening left for Intercultural Comm in English, and I´m also registered for a 6 credit Spanish Grammar class, a Relacionces Internacionales class en Español, and a Cine mexícano class en Español.

In addition to organizing my classes, I was able to organize my hall cochos (doortags). Gaby, Tatiana, Paula, Paula´s amiga, Pinto, and I all took the bus to downtown Monterrey (only 5 minutes away and reminds me very much like downtown DC full of people and tiendas) and went to a Papeleria to by the supplies. Instead of having an Imaginarium like VT, they have a 360 peso refund limit (like 36 USD) for each Prefecto to go buy the materials for their cochos. We arrive, Mexican time 6pm, back to La Choza where we were all set up for registering residents. My duty was Bienvenidas! I got to welcome everyone and lead them to the registraion line of contracts and keys.

Since there weren´t many people coming we prefectos had an awesome time hanging out together, getting to know eachother, and laughing A LOT :) My Spanish wasn´t and isn´t perfect, but I could already feel a difference that I was understanding more of what they were saying. Thank God for subconcious processing! That made me happy :)

We practiced our skits we´re going to present to the residents on Saturday at Rancho Tec. They are sooo funny! That should be a whole nother entry!

By 10pm registration and skit practicing was over, but we all stayed behind and hung out together. This was my favorite time, I really got to know Malena, a new but very mature prefecta who´s also in Res. 3. Malena has been a joy to get to know. And, even better, she told me that whenever I don´t understand what she says she would love to teach me or translate for me. Many of the others, in fact, have told me the same. They have assured me that it doesn´t bother them at all; especially Malena, she loves it! ¡Que padre! :)

Anywho, we decided to spend the night together in La Choza making our cochos together. Unlike VT and other universities, the boy prefectos do not have to make cohcos, but the girls do. I asked them why not and they said girls are more decorative and boys don´t care. Makes sense, but is very funny :) Nevertheless, a lot of the guys offered and helped us out a ton. Props to the Male prefectos!!

After a long night last night (til 4am for some), we have our beautiful cochos hanging up inside the female Residencias and we are ready to meet some more of our ladies :)