The halfway mark!

Ok so it's been 2 months since I arrived to Queretaro. At first the days seemed to crawl, but once February hit the weeks rolled by. I have had a few adventures, mostly on the bus since I spend most of my time commuting, and I have met many new and interesting people.

A couple weekends ago a few of us got together to celebrate Alma's friend's birthday. Her name is Marina and she is in Queretaro for a couple months after spending time in Namibia being a teacher. She is also teaching here. Once she returns to Germany she will start her professional life and enter a teacher's rotation program. If I remember correctly her specialties are English and History. 

 

Alma and I in the club Margarita Blue for Marina's birthday celebration in the up and coming/ritzy neighborhood called Juriquilla where they buy/sell the houses in US Dollars...crazy...

This past weekend the International Programs office coordinated a trip to the state of Puebla. We left early Friday morning and traveled to a small city in the hills of Cuetzalan. There we went hiking to see waterfalls, repelling (which I didn't do), and caving. Saturday We went to Cholula to walk around the largest pyramid base in the world and to shop the local market. Afterwards we went to the city center of Puebla , which is similar to Queretaro, but much bigger and more European. Not to mention the lunch we had in Puebla was the best food we had all weekend! It was truly beautiful to see everyone out with their families, the balloon vendors, and Girl Scouts selling chocolates on a very nice day. We rested our heads at a lodge that was really nice and would have been a little better if it weren't raining and if we could spend more time there. But we rose early Sunday morning to go see another waterfall and do outdoor activities (rope bridges and zip line). On Sunday we were supposed to go horseback riding or biking in the valley near the waterfall, but because of the rain from the day before it was too damp and dangerous. So we had lunch early and headed back to school.

Left: Me next to some tree sculpture in the center square in Puebla. 

Right: The girlies walking the streets of Puebla. It almost looks like a movie set!

 

The girlies by the waterfall early Sunday morning

Back to my adventures and meeting interesting people. Today I met  a young American girl from Miami, FL whose parents are Argentinian (dad) and Cuban (mom). She is recently engaged to a Mexican whose parents are friends with her parents. The young lady sat in on one of my English classes, because she may become a teacher soon as something to do on the side. She's really nice and only 22/23 as well. She's a physiology/physical therapist/massage therapist person and looking to open up shop here, but manual labor stuff doesn't pay well in Mexico so she doesn't know how its going to pan out and might have to work in a hospital, but many don't have rehab centers here. Her fiance teaches english at a school and he's a pastor! I might try to visit their church this Sunday because it's a Christian church. They dont have many members since Catholicism is the dominant religion here. In the United States there is a wide variety of religions and there is a variety here too, but nowhere near as religiously diverse as back home.