a journey to the well

Viva Mexico!

The past few days have been exhausting, but amazing. The fun began on Thursday (with only one class on Fridays, at 2 in the afternoon, we usually feel free to stay out late on Thursdays)... the whole group of ten exchange students, plus several of our friends (Mexican students and some other UDLA exchange students) went to a local salsa club called Portos. We had a blast... I'm definitely NOT a dancer, but I still got out there and tried a couple of times. It was actually a ton of fun, and I managed to not be self -conscious for a little while.

Friday, a group of us went to the zocalo of Puebla for Independence Day. The zocalo, as I've mentioned before, is the city square... each city has one, and it always includes a church and a government building. There are also usually restaurants, a fountain, etc. Anyway, at 11 pm on Sep. 15 (the night before Indep. Day), the local political leader (the governor of the state, in this case) comes out onto the balcony of the political building in the zocalo and gives a grito. Grito literally means "shout," and that's exactly what it is - the leader waves the Mexican flag and shouts "Viva ______" ("long live ________") several things - health, education, etc., and ends with several shouts of "Viva Puebla!" and "Viva Mexico!" After each, the crowd shouts back "Viva!" It was a pretty awesome experience - I'm not great at estimating, but there were definitely tens of thousands of people in the square. I put some pictures at the bottom. After the grito, we went back to Cholula and ended up hanging out at a place called Utopia. We had a blast there, too - karaoke, good conversation, and lots of laughing.

The most exciting news of the last several weeks is definitely that our friend, Elsa, accepted Christ at church, a week ago. Elsa grew up in Cancun, and had a very bad impression of gringos. A year ago this past week, Elsa came to her first En Vivo, and she has been coming ever since. She's going to be baptized this coming Saturday, and we are all SO excited. Elsa has quickly become a close friend to many of us, and her passion has been amazing to see in the past week.

This week should be a great, but challenging one. At our weekly exchange student meeting on Thursday, Angie (our coordinator) talked about how ministry consists of both "inreach" and "outreach." We've been doing a ton of "inreach" (cleaning, helping out, hanging out with student leaders, etc.), but not much "outreach." So this week, we're focusing on the outreach side of things. We're supposed to pretend that we don't have nine amazing friends on campus with us, and act accordingly. That can mean all sort of things - reading outside alone, approaching people we don't know and starting conversation, and finding other ways to make friends. I'm hoping to eat lunch with a few friends who attend El Pozo events periodically, so I can get to know them better. I also plan to get in contact with the Chemical Engineering department here, to see if I can help out there... All of the engineering textbooks here are in English, and understanding/translating everything can be tricky for students. I don't know a TON about ChemE, but I think I could help people understand the tricky words. Other than that, I hope to get better at conjugating in different tenses (past tenses and future tense are still a challenge for me). If you're reading this and would be willing, we could definitely use your prayers this week for all of us to find our niche and to be willing to act on opportunities for outreach.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

This is the building from which the governor gave the grito. It faced the zocalo, and the crowd stood below. There was also a full orchestra in front of the building.


After the grito, the whole crowd went crazy. People began to spray red, white, and green foam all over the place, people waved Mexican flags, and fireworks went off. We got pretty covered with foam - we think that people decided gringos make good targets. =)


This is our whole group at Utopia, back in Cholula. We got the hats from the staff, and they ended up taking a picture to put on the wall. We thought about buying the hats (only 20 pesos, or about 2 dollars), but decided they would be impossible to bring back to the States. Oh well.

posted by Audrey @ 3:34 PM