Tuesday, August 25th

Hi everyone! Sorry I am a little behind on my blogging. I have been super busy with orientation meetings and outings that its a little hard to get everything done! (I think I need to set a time everyday to blog...we'll see how that goes! :) ) The past few days we have been busy learning the very informal-no-time-schedule-weird-routed bus system of Merida. Val, my director, has been taking us around downtown to get us acclamated to how the streets work as well as where certain places are on city blocks. I am intrigued by how the streets are named here. All streets are named with numbers so odd numbers run east and west while even numbers run north and south. I still struggle with which direction I am going based on if the numbers are increasing or decreasing but I seriously think foreigners would be able to understand the roads in America more easily if we used the number system. Naming streets gets annoying, confusing, and when names run out, it totally shows! On Tuesday, when we were learning about downtown, the bus system, and the historic places downtown, we also got a tour of most of the town of Merida. It was very informative but also caught my attention that this city has a lot of history--all the way back before 1500s. The city also has different blocks that have different styles of architecture which is very different from other places I am used to. Through different countries influences, the city of Merida has evolved over time. Tuesday night we also had language evaluations and got to meet a couple of the professors we will be having here at the house. Both Ana Maria and Sylvia were very open and great at listening. I can see their passion for us and learning Merida and Mexico's language, culture, and people. Meeting them helped affirm me that this is where I am supposed to be. I cannot tell you what a relief that was!