Mira H. - Mexico City - Spring 2008

This is what I wrote the night of my arrival:
Its dark and I am here in my room at the host family´s house in a beautiful corner of the world´s most populated city. I am here sitting in my armchair listening to the street sounds below. Here is where I will live for the next five months of my life. Pretty crazy, right? Last night and today on the plane I (even I, the scorner of the homesick travelers, me, the bold, the bad, and the undefeatable) was succumbing to thoughts of fear for the unknown ahead. I found myself thinking “Oh no, what if I can´t do this.” However, as the plane was landing, I made friends with a few fellow travelers and when I got off of the plane, I said “Ah, I can do this, this Mars of a different country won´t be that strange or different.”
I paid for a taxi and as soon as we were leaving the airport, and coming out into the bright sunlight and I saw all of the beautifulness that is the differently colored houses and “Latin American-ness” that makes up Mexico City, I got all happy. It felt familiar and warm. Perhaps, this is because it reminded me of Colombia where I had had such a good time last spring. My taxi driver was awesome. I found out that he meditates and is a vegetarian too, like me! That was so nice because it helped me to feel at home in a new place.
We found the restaurant and house where I am to live and he helped me with the luggage. He was my first friend in this big city. Then I met my host family. They are Senora Mari Carmen (the mom) and Tere and Lulu (the daughters who are both around my age). Also part of the family is another exchange student, Stephanie from France. Also around are the inimitable Benjamin and Sergio, who work in the restaurant which the family owns below. Sergio is a little reserved but pretty nice. Benjamin is pretty silly and flirts with me and the other foreign exchange student, Stefanie all the time. But he is a good guy anyway. Then there are the boyfriends of Tere and Lulu who are around as well.
I really like it here because there is a lot of “conviviendo” going on. This, according to this guy I met in the Reggae bar, three doors down from where I live, is a word in Spanish which means to “hang out, enjoy other people´s company, etc” to which he said there is no one word English equivalent. He says that he has been searching for years and hasn´t been able to find one. Well, that is what I enjoy most about being here… “el convivir”. My favorite part of the day is at night when everyone comes home and we sit in the restaurant downstairs and eat and just hang out. People pass by, sometimes other people stop in to eat with us. Senora Mari Carmen is like the mother of everyone here. She has so many “sons” or young people who she kind of takes under her wing. She is always so busy but always so sweet to everyone. There is so much to write about but that is all for right now…I need to go home and “convivir”.
Hope all is well at EC!
Mira

Kristen S. - Oxford, England - Spring 2008

Hello all,
It has been a while since my last post. It is hard to believe that I have already started on my fourth week of tutorials. It is odd that there is so much free time, so much work, and at the same time no time for anything. It feels like a sort of pattern has emerged here. Go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner awful food at the cafeteria and then in between work. I found myself unprepared for the subjects I chose to take, they were outside my field, as is the whole institution for that matter and thus I have a lot more work to do to catch up. The tutors are kind, they are understanding of my lack of knowledge and are more than willing to help me catch up but it requires a lot of work. I have a tutorial in my tutor's dorm room, which is an odd thing for me.
I am not used to having classes alone, I miss the sounding board that other students become, but it is nice to be able to learn at my own pace. It is surprising how different the British are than I thought they would be. We speak the same language, but not really, their phrases are different, they use some words to mean different things. It takes me a couple more seconds to process what I have just heard. More often than not, I find I am asking someone to repeat what they just said, because I was too busy translating the sentence before. The other interesting concept here is that people tend to buy what they need for the day here, they don't shop for the week and thus everything comes in smaller packages. Coke tastes different here, which was a sad revelation. But on the whole things are different and the same, which is maybe what makes the stay here hardest of all. I feel like I fit in, I have established patterns of work and fun, and take time off to travel, but all in all CMRS is starting to feel like a place where I live not just where I am visiting.