My goodness! My last entry...long long long ago... left you feeling that I was in a coconut filled paradise, sitting on a beachtowel as someone brings me pineapples filled with rum and massages my feet. This week has been quite the opposite- a lot of hard work! So much hard work that sometimes I felt that I was back in college, what with the pressure of reading, lectures, essay writing, and living with people you just met.

All I had to do to remember that I was in a relaxing vacation spot for many mexicans was to notice a few things. For example, one night I walked home in a storm...that involved no rain, only a lot of wind. It may have also involved a warm salty breeze, palm leaves falling, gritty sand blowing into my teeth, and an evening finished by drinking a rum and coke that I bought in a can, already prepared, just like in Cuba. Another night I finished off a hard day by walking down the boardwalk and eating fried plantains and cafe con leche, looking over the port, served by waiters dressed all in white. Only these things snap me into the reality of where I am. Because, for the most part, my mind and body has been almost entirely in classes, or at least in learning mode. We have workshops, articles to read, essays, group work.....on topics like learning, listening, speaking, teaching, pronunciation, we have even taken japanese lessons to understand what its like to be a second language speaker. Its pretty exhausting, but Im really pretty into it, even when we have to do rediculously cheesy teachery activities. Its making me really excited to be a teacher, and I am thinking that by the end of this course I will just be more and more excited. Our trainers here are an inspiration, and its pretty great. I got to teach my first class last week, and I think it went really well. My students are fun and really they are a dream come true. Tonight I am teaching again, about careers, and I spent over an hour making the perfect lesson plan- i never realized how exhausting teaching can potentially be. Nor did I realize the creative energy it makes and drains out of you.

In other news, Mckinley and Oscar came to visit me, and we had a really good time eating an enormous fish covered in tomatoes. I told mckin I, too, would like to be covered in tomatoes when I die, and she said she would see to it, so please, hold her to this! She brought me precious candy corn, american chocolates, and pumpkin butter, all gobbled up happily by myself and my roomates. The crunch bars were first to go of the halloween candy- good work nestles!!

We spent a day walking along the coast in the sun, but the next day we rained, giving us the opportunity to explore the most gigantic mall of america, that happens to not be in so called america, but in Plaza de las Americas, here in Mexico. It was a fantastic christmasy 3 story shopping extravaganza.

Im sorry that I have not written more blogs. This course is much more work that Id imagined and I have not had a free minute to even read a novel. Ill hopefully get back to write a good insightful and entertaining one this weekend...

thanks for reading....