Our First Week in Querétaro

We haven't had too much time to communicate during our first week here in Mexico.  Our first week's training schedule was jam packed between meeting our new host families, Spanish classes, meeting all the new people here at the Peace Corps office and training center, getting vaccines and trying to learn our way around the city.  I will try to give you at least a brief overview of at some of the highlights.

Querétaro itself is a modern, large city.  We are staying with a family who lives about 10-15 minutes from the center here (walking) which makes it relatively easy for us to get here everyday.  Most of our group of seven trainees live fairly close, although one of our group members has to take a bus everyday since he lives quite a distance from the center.  Our family consists of a couple who is retired and also the mother of our host mom, who lives with them.  They are building her a small little "in-law cottage" right behind the house.  The house, like many others in the city, has a locked front gate and walls around it with an open patio area.

The first weekend after arriving, we went with our host family to visit one of the local Costco stores and Walmart.  So at that level, shopping life here is not that different from the US.  However, since we aren't allowed to drive, we will only be going out to the large "big box" stores when we take a cab.  Luckily there is a pretty modern shopping center not too far from where we are living which is about a 15 minute walk. It has a fairly large supermarket with pretty much everything we need in the way of everyday things.

 The first weekend our host mother drove us around to help us get oriented to the city.  She took us to a really interesting local market called the mercado de la cruz.  Here is a photo of one of the many fruit stands inside the market:

The market itself is basically in a large cement building with a mixture of things going on-people selling fruit, small restaurants, people selling DVDs, clothing and jewelry.

I also took a few photos of the Peace Corps center here where we attend class every day.  We start at 8:30 most days and finish at 6PM, so the days are pretty long and packed with classes of all sorts.  Last week, for example, we had 2 medical sessions (and also got 4 shots!), some safety sessions, some cultural trainings sessions, language classes of course, and we took a field trip out to visit one of the centers where some of the current PC volunteers work.  The PC center here is in a property that used to be a large house.  It has been renovated to accommodate both offices and training class rooms.  

The teachers have put labels on many of the items around the center to give us an opportunity to absorb some more Spanish as we take our breaks in the garden area:

The center is made up a few clusters of buildings around a central garden area

We have a volunteer lounge where we can relax and take a break in the few minutes we have.  And the death stairs (as I call them), lead up to the area where many of our classes are held.

Otherwise, I have not gotten out much to really see the city yet.  Querétaro is famous for its aqueducts, which are nearby to where we live, so we have seen those:

 

They are really impressive and run about 3 miles through the city and end at a convent in the center of town.

So that has been more of less the first week here. I have been having a pretty strong reaction to the flu shot I was given and have not been feeling my best-very tired, sleeping a lot and feeling like I have the flu.  But hopefully I am getting over that.  We are having a transportation rally tomorrow where we are supposed to take buses throughout the city to discover some of the historic sites. That should give me a chance to see more of the city.

Last but least for the news of the week, we discovered last Friday our new permanent sites!  This is the place where we will be living and working for 2 years once we are through training and are sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers in mid-April (April 18th I think in our case).  

We found out that we will not be staying in Querétaro.  We will be moving to a city called Guanajuato.  It is a much smaller town than Querétaro, with around 70,000 people.  It is also a UNESCO world heritage site and is a city that is famous for both its Cervantes festival and its mummy museum!  It is also unusual in that it is a city with many tunnels and little tiny alleys and curving streets, so hopefully I will be able to find my way around.  We will be working with a one of the Mexican government research centers there called CIMAT.  We are pretty excited about the work assignment since it is an institute that focuses on mathematical research and actually grants degrees (Masters and PhDs) in various mathematical specialties.  It is a brand new partner for Peace Corps and they seem to be interested in figuring out more ways to liaison with industry.  We will be going there with one other woman from our training group who will be focused on testing I believe.  We are happy that it is more of an educationally oriented site than an engineering one.  Here are some pictures of the city itself:

It is supposed to be a very fun city that lots of people here in Peace Corps like to visit.  So we are hoping to be able to find a place where we have at least 1 guest room.

This is a picture of the CIMAT campus where we will be working.  Apparently it is situated up above the city.  Hopefully we will be able to get a bus to take us there easily!

 

So that is it for now.  I will try to post something over the weekends, although maybe not as packed full of news as this posting :)

So Many Places, So Little Time!

Monday February 6th, 2012 Washington D.C.
Staging day for our departure to Mexico in 2 days on Wednesday February 8th!

As I so often read on the other applicant's blogs, our last few weeks getting ready to arrive here at staging have been unbelievably hectic! So any visions we might have harbored about being the "cool, calm, prepared volunteers were wiped away in either a: mental sweat of trying to get the new electronics set up and working together (new laptop and tablet/reader) or b: a physical sweat of hauling around way too much luggage.  Luckily, we were able to take some of the clothing we took with us to Europe last spring to our storage, now that we know we will be going to a relatively warm climate versus one of the "cold" countries.

We also are a bit jet lagged from all the place rides.  So where have we been?

We stopped in Paris for a few days to say goodbye to friends and family and buy some little presents for our new friends and host family in Mexico.  I hope they like French stuff :)














Starting on the 12th of January, we flew from Paris to Florida where we spent a week, just enjoying some of the pleasures of being back in the US and taking advantage of the beautiful beaches in Miami and Sarasota.  It was a bit chilly to swim, but made for some great short walks and just hanging out for a week.  We had the added bonus of knowing that since we decided to stop in Forida, we didn't end up in Seattle during the only week this winter so far that they were hit hard by snow.  So we didn't have to worry about power outages and slippery roads.  Thank goodness!

Next was Seattle.  We mostly spent the week there visiting friends, and attending meetings at the company I advise for, Ivy Corp.  We even flew in our new French consultant and got to attend the belated holiday party, so that was really special!  Again, it was hard here to say goodbye to family and friends.  Luckily, we are confident we will be able to coax many of them down to visit us in Mexico once our initial settling in period has passed.

After rainy Seattle, we got to spend a few days drying out in Los Angeles.  The highlight there besides seeing friends and going to eat at many of our favorite foodie haunts, was being able to check in and see our house.  It gave us a chance to check in and make sure everything is okay there and reassured us there was nothing more to do on the home front before we flew back to the East coast.

So, last but not least, we landed in Washington D.C. last night!  We came out a day early so that we could feel a bit more rested and catch our breath.  We met a woman on the plane from LAX to Dallas who is part of the PCM-12 Mexico group!  So that was really fun to be able to compare notes.  And at least we now know we aren't the ONLY ones going! It will be fun to meet the other volunteers tomorrow.  We found out that there is also another peace corps group staying here at our same hotel that is going to Zambia. So eventful days for both groups!

I will write another post when I can either before we take off for Mexico once we have met the other folks in our group, or after we get there.  We will just see how the time and internet connection goes.