Thursday, January 27, 2011

By Way of Mexico

Flying into mexico City
On Thursday, January 2oth we arrived in Mexico. We will be spending four months here before moving to Honduras in the hopes of learning some spanish. Vance will be attending formal classes while Susan and the children add spanish to there homeschooling.

Our apartment building
We are living in Cuernavaca which is about 2 hours south of Mexico City. Our apartment is on the third floor. We should be in pretty good shape after four months of climbing all those steps and walking most places we want to go. We don't have a car here in Mexico so we must either walk or catch a taxi.
We have had several adventures in our first week in Cuernavaca:

Our first taxi ride
On Friday we took our first taxi ride. All six of us piled into a very small car and headed to...

WAL-MART!!!!!!!
We could not believe it when we found out there was a Wal-mart here. It isn't close enough to the apartment to walk so we had to catch a taxi. We weren't too sure about trying to tell a driver where we wanted to go in our extremely limited spanish, but we decided it was worth a try. We made it there, did our shopping, then all six of us plus our goods piled into another tiny cab and headed home.
Great Value brand, a familiar sight!


On Saturday we decided to be a little braver and head to the public market. We were able to walk there. It was about a 35-40 minute walk. The only problem we had was actually trying to figure out how to get inside. We walked straight there and could see it, but it took some time trying to locate the way inside.
On the way to the market


Once inside we found treasures like this.....



We chose not to purchase this, but we did come away with some yummy fresh fruits and veggies. It was very crowded and very big. Once again our limited spanish caused some difficulties, but we survived. It was definitely an interesting adventure.
Sunday we visited a church, Iglesia Bautista Monte Abrahim. It is the church that one of the owners of the school attends. We understood very little but were able to recognize the songs by the tunes. Hopefully as the weeks go by we will be able to know more of what is being said.
Then on Monday, Vance started his classes. He is in class from 9 to 3 Monday through Friday. Since he is the only student in his class, he can't get away with letting someone else answer the questions.
Leaving for his first day of class



Our first week has gone amazingly well. From not getting charged for an oversized bag to getting a 180 day visa with out any trouble, God has been so very gracious. We believe we are right where we are supposed to be at this point and look forward to what God is going to do over the next 16 weeks!
Please pray for:
-Language learning
-Senora Rosa-she and her husband, along with Paco and Maru, own the language school. Senora Rosa's husband passed away unexpectedly Monday evening. He was at the school Monday and died that evening.