Adapting to Mexico

Hello everyone,

Since my last blogpost, I have had two weeks to adapt to my role in this new community.

The first weekend I was sick due to the environment change and difference in altitude. It was just a simple cold and I feel much healthier now. My host family has been super-accommodating. They have helped me plan out my route to work and back home and provide me with my own room and food. I have two little brothers named Saul and Diego, a baby sister of nine months named Tayna, a mother called Antonia and a father that goes by Miguel. We are able to talk about American music. We all enjoy the same genre of rock music.

Work is fantastic too. We are a nonprofit law company, Prodesc, and we do community work for workers with few rights, feminists and small shared communities. There are about 20 employees here. I feel like I have made a lot of friends here despite my lack of Spanish communication skills. I love the importance on community at work here. Everyone has to eat at the same time, this forces you to have a friend to eat with. I am surprised that the majority of people at my worksite has the ability to speak English well. We speak Spanish anyway because we are in Mexico. I like to be forced to speak Spanish because I could use the practice. So far I have been translating articles from Spanish to English, recording information from outside media sources that recognize the company and taking initiative in running reports from things like Facebook and Twitter.

It has been a lot of fun so far. I figured out how to type in Spanish and I feel like my language skills are getting better every day. I have had a hard time finding time to myself, which has been fantastic because I am an extravert. But not having time to myself has made it hard to articulate my emotions and analyzing what I have enjoyed and not enjoyed up to this point. Things are going very well. Thank you all for your prayers and support up to this point.