Family and Prefecta Integración

One of the largest things that has happened in this past month is that I became a mom....just kidding! Even better, I became an aunt! On Febuary 26 my niece Madelyn (the beutiful babe to the left) was born. Kudos to my sis, Laura for all your hard work! (And kudos to the Smith family too! I heard Brye James Smith was born not too many days after.)

Family is a HUGE thing here in Mexico. From the housekeepers, to my residents, to the prefectos, and all the people in the oficina... everybody immediately wanted me to show them pictures as soon as they found out I had a niece. Gladly I´ve shown them :) And they love showing off pics of their family too! I´ve found it´s one of the best ways I´ve gotten to know my residents. They light up when they talk about their family. Me too :)

So this entry is dedicated to you, Maddy...even though you can´t read this yet. :)

So where have I been for the past month? Well, here´s a quick recap. Since last month, we celebrated Día del Amor y Amistad (aka Valentine´s Day), went to Querétero (more on that in next entry), I got a stomache virus and had to get some shots, took a resident to the hospital for the first time, Mary Kay came and gave free facials for the residents, we went to a super Yoga class with 600 people, had a movie night in the theatre of Res. 3, helped out with the city-wide Day of the Ducks charity event in El Centro, I finished part of my thesis, and the best part...Prefecta Integration!

About 3 Saturdays ago we had an prefecto integration (similar to a staff devolpment day). It was a Saturday where the boy prefectos went somewhere for the day with their director to hang out and get to know each other and the girl prefectos went somewhere else for the day to do the same with our director, Magaly (the one sitting down with the hunter green shirt). The prefectas decided to go to Santiago, a small town right outside Monterrey, just because they said it was a place I should know before I leave the country :) Here we are to the right in Santiago. There was one guy with us (he took the pic) and he was our integration leader. He told us to close our eyes and think of the last time we felt loved and cared for...the smells, the tastes, the sounds of the moment. Then, after a few minutes, he told us to open our eyes. Then he had us share with everyone what that moment was. For some reason, this exercised really moved us. I even saw one of the girls, Male (the one to my right), crying softly beneath her sunglasses. Oddly enough, the point where the girls felt most loved and cared for wasn´t a memory about a guy or past boyfriend, but nearly each one was a moment when they were younger (or older) with their family. Mine was too :)

After a few more exercises, we all had to tape a piece of paper on our backs and go around and write on eachother one quality we admire about that person or one thing we learned about them today. Of course doing this in the middle of the town park where many other people were passing by we got a lot of strange looks. Nevertheless, we didn´t mind and just laughed it off.

After a few get-to-know you games that lasted about two hours in the beautiful sunshine, we went to lunch together right there in Santiago and Res Life paid for the bill. The prefectas here are so awesome! Not only did we go to Santiago just for me, but we also went to this resturaunt called ¨Palomitas¨ just so they could share the experience of REAL mexican food with me!

As you can see, it´s a pretty high class resturaunt. It´s one of the finest around. Decorated like a real traditional northern Mexican reaturaunt and with great flavors to match. They insited I have the Mexican platter (astéc beef, rice, refried beans, tortillas, and chile relleno). It was delicious, but certainly we were all extreeeeeemly full after eating there! After eating, and then as we walked out we accidently walked into someone´s wedding reception in the courtyard of the resturaunt...oops! The bride looked lovely though :)

Finally, the day ended and we carpooled together back to campus. But right before we hopped in the cars, we found this really large apple statue by the resturaunt that we just had to take a picture at. I tried biting it, but it was simply too large :)

It was such a great time to get to know the prefectas and get to know Mexico. As if we weren´t close enough already, by the end of the day we really began to feel like family.

Well, off for dinner with the fam :) ¡Sale!