70 Degrees Feels SO Cold!

Buenos Dias!

This has been quite a week here in Cuernavaca.

The weather has been "cold" -- only getting up to 73-75 degrees the past two days. I'm starting to really realize how used to the weather and spoiled I am when I whip out my sweatpants and sweatshirt when it's under 70 degrees outside!

I am really struggling with my classes right now at UNINTER. I did fine in my grammar class this week - I had a new teacher named Berenice, and she was really wonderful. I felt like I learned so much more under her than I did under my past grammar teacher Pamela. The way classes are set up here (at least for beginners) is that we have 3 hours of grammar in the morning and then 2 hours of conferencia and 1 hour of curso. The last 3 hours of the day are supposed to reinforce what we learned in the morning. Unfortunatly the things in my classes in the afternoon were so much more difficult and covering topics I hadn't learned yet like preterito and imperfecto and when to use each of them. I went and talked to my teacher after class and told her I didn't understand. She suggested that I stay back a level next week instead of moving forward. I was a little upset by that and spent most of the day yesterday trying to figure out why. My entire lifetime of being a student, I have always struggled with not understanding certain topics. I would feel stupid, be worried about grades, dissapointing parents and teachers, etc. Through talking with my Mexican friends, family and other leaders at UNINTER I have realized that I really have none of those things to worry about here. Learning a foreign language is hard and I've come a long way in 3 weeks so I'm not stupid! I'm not taking any of these classes for a grade, so I need not worry about "passing", just comprehension! And I don't think I'm dissapointing my parents or teachers by being down here and trying my best to learn a new language! :o)

ENOUGH OF THE SCHOOL TALK!

Mom and Ed are coming for a visit Februrary 18-22!! What a great birthday present! Judy Elliott (who is the reason why I'm here and with such a wonderful family in Cuernavaca) helped convicned them to come down! Judy and her husband Jim are coming down in a week or so. It will be so wonderful to have so many friends and family from home here! I'm sure we will have a great time and I look forward to sharing a little bit of my Mexican life with them!

Everything else is going well here. Still meeting a lot of new people each week and have made friends with a lot of Mexican students that go to my school. It's actually great because they usually won't speak English to us. My friend Omar and I are going to start going to coffee once a week for a little language exchange -- I will help with his English and he will help with my Spanish!

Today I am going to be studying as much as I can. I am determined to understand everything that I've been doing up to this point. I'm going to start a vocabulary diary (which apparently we were supposed to be doing the entire time but our old professor Pamela didn't tell us about it) which should help me retain vocab, and also try and figure out all of this learning how to speak in past-tense stuff.

Love to all of you! Happy Februrary. Only 5 more weeks to go!