Final days....

So, my bad for not posting in 2 weeks.

Thanksgiving was great. We all got together as a program, including professors, and ate some delicious Thanksgiving food under umbrellas next to the pool. Yes, it felt a little odd, but was mostly fun. We had turkey, homemade bread, pumpkin and apple pies, elotes (corn on the cob with cheese and chile), stuffing, mashed potatoes, chicken (a recipe Sidy made us from Senegal...mmm so good), cranberry sauce (Dad brought from EEUU). It was all delicious. The apple pies I made actually turned out really well. I made them with puff pastry dough in square pans, so they were slightly unconventional, but delicious too. I also got to talk to Lindsey, Mom, Dad, Gretta, GramElaine, and Aunt Ra, which was wonderful! So good to hear everyone's voices on Thanksgiving.

The Friday after Thanksgiving we all participated in a parade/party for the neighborhood where Casa Sol is; it was the anniversary of Zapata signing the Plan de Ayala (which is the name of the neighborhood). We danced with the Chinelos (people dressed up in outfits originally used to make fun of the Spanish) for about 45 minutes, in a huge crowd of people, many of them drunk men. After, Hilary and I took Jonathan out for pizza. He's a really nice guy that goes to UNILA who is studying culinary arts. And the best part is, he's coming to Earlham next August to be a Spanish TA for a year! I really can't wait to get to know him better and help welcome him to Earlham. He's going to have such a good time, I hope. And I think it will really help his English.

UNILA ended well; although only 5 of 11 students came to the final exam. Ay, what frustration. I still don't completely understand the apathy of some of my students. They are probably going to fail the class, and they just don't seem to care. I don't understand. But they want to have a going away party for me, so Thursday I'm going to go back to UNILA for a little bit to hang out with them some more. As lazy as they are, they are really nice people who I have enjoyed getting to know. My rough draft is done, 20 pages, and I just need to make some minor changes before handing it in Thursday. This week is so crazy...we're done with classes and everything and just have presentations and oral exams. I present Wednesday...I hope I don't get tooo nervous. The oral exam is to see what level we are at on a national hierarchy of language fluency...it should be interesting. I know I've learned a lot and gotten a lot better, but I still make minor grammar errors allll the time, so who knows...

Thursday afternoon is the final party with the families, and then we are done! I am staying until Tuesday, just to hang out with my family a little bit more. I might try to go to Cuernavaca one more time....my students really want to go with me, so we'll see how that shapes up.

This weekend was super fun. It was sort of the last hurrah of everything. Friday we celebrated Ilana's birthday at a garden bar we hadn't checked out yet. Almost the whole group came, so that was fun to be together. Then Saturday night I went to a karaoke bar with Rita, Camila, Miriam, and Pepo (M's boyfriend) which was a blast. We had such a good time just hanging out. I sang some, and we all danced a lot. We got home at 4 AM, which was pretty scandalous. Rita didn't believe me the next day when I told her that's when we gt home. Haha. Sunday morning we had a final group breakfast, which was really nice. Afterwards, Hilary, Justin and I went to Tlayacapan, a small town about half an hour away by combi. It has tons of cute little shops, so I got the end of my shopping done, which really needed to happen. We wandered around, eating nieve, and saw the beautiful church there built between 1530-1550. The best part was when we stumbled upon a panaderia where you could actually see them making the bread. Hilary and I are obsessed with the pan here, and we think we should have a food network show about breads of the world, so we were fascinated by the huge ovens, molds used to make concha (my favorite kind of bread), and huge mixers and wooden tables used to put everything together. The workers were excited by how excited we were, and answered lots of our questions. It was like a bread museum!!! Justin wasn't quite as enamored as us, but he put up with it for a little while.

Tonight I'm going to see Madagascar 2 with Ruben, Miriam, and my mom. It should be really fun. Last night Rita was apologizing to me for their financial situation, and how she would have liked to go out more and do more fun things while I was here, but they just don't have the money right now. It breaks my heart, but there's not a whole lot I can actually do.

I'm getting really excited about coming home though! I am excited to see family and friends. As much as I have loved being here, it will be nice to return to my own culture and traditions for Christmas. I can't wait to make cookies, decorate the tree, play board games, etc. I also can't wait to bundle up. Warm weather is nice, but I also love the snow. It's weird to see Christmas lights tied around palm trees.....