Yesterday was a field trip with the school. It was interesting. It was for our welcome party (Fiesta de Bienvenidos) and we went to this town about 45 minutes away, called Tepoztlan. It was very mountainous, the town, and has like two main streets where people are vending handcrafts. I bought a couple of things. I got this really cool t-shirt that says Tepoztlan on it for $5! It is really cute. Baby-t style and I know that the same type of shirt would be at least $13 in some other tourist place in the US. I also got this thing called a pesca-novio or a trap-a-novio, which is basically something that you get a guy to put his finger in and can catch a boyfriend with. It was funny, because his finger gets stuck and you have to let him out. It was like, $.50. I also got some little notebooks, cuadernitos, with spanish phrases on them.
The big deal about yesterday, however, was that we went mountain climbing. Now, how is it that I seem to miss out on these types of details? When I arrived at the school yesterday morning at 9:30 a.m. to get on the bus, I was wearing a pink short dress and sandals. Everyone was like, "You`re going climbing in that!" I was like, "who`s going climbing?" Apparantly, we were hiking up a mountain. Fortunately, our group leader let someone drive me home to change, and I put on some better clothes, plus tennis shoes. Still, in the back of my mind, we were going walking. Well, to make a long story short, when we got to the town, our leader shows us this little bitty, white dot of a pyramid on top of a rocky mountain, way, way, way in the air (over a mile, to be exact), and said, "That`s where we`re going." So, we headed up and this was the hardest thing that I have ever done, as far as exercise. Me and this Australian girl who I had befriended got way behind the rest of the group. She and I kept stopping to rest. At one point we ran into these Mexican guys from another college and talked to them for about 30 minutes, which put us further behind and they told us that we were about halfway and that it gets much steeper. So, they left and we kept going and it got worse. At many points, we were litteraly climbing rocks. Kristin (the Australian), was so funny because she didn`t want to do it in the first place and kept trying to convince me to turn back. I kept telling her we were almost there! She showed me what her tour guide said about the mountain. It said that it was extremely strenous and may be too much of a challege for many. We were like, "Nobody warned us about this!" but we were too far to go back. So, we finally get to the top and the rest of our group is coming back down. It was funny. Kristin was really mad because she didn`t feel like it was worth the work. I didn`t really either, but I was glad I made it because at least I can say I did it. Anyhow, I had to buy a t-shirt afterwards so that I can prove I was there and that I made it to the top of the mountain. I saw the pyramid, too, but didn`t go inside.
Kristin took photos with her digital camera, so I will put some up as soon as I can. After we made it back down, which was more dangerous that going up because the rocks were slippery and steep and there were some areas where there was nothing to hold onto, we went to our welcome party which was held at this restaurant. I had a good meal- some chicken with potatoes, and bread with this really good butter. It was the first meal that resembled anything from home. I was so glad to eat it.
Charles called yesterday and left a message on the answering machine, since no one was here. Argghh! It is so frustrating. But I had fun yesterday, though. When we finally finished, Kristin said, "No wonder they wouldn` t let us go on the trip without signing an insurance waiver!" I agree!
