I Can't Believe It's Only Been 2 Days

The days here have been so completely packed with activities; it already feels like we've been here way longer than we have.  Last night we all went out to dinner together in what is sort of like the town square, El Zócalo.  I guess you could call it the center of town cause it's where a lot of the nightlife and main attractions are located except it's not at all in the center and actually one of the farthest points from my house. Dinner was great. I hate wayy too much (surprise) and by the time we finished it was pouring outside so we all decided to hang around at the restaurant a little longer, order some drinks, and wait for the rain to pass. I'm actually really glad it worked out that way because it gave us more time to get to know each other.

Anyways after pigging out last night, a few of us decided to meet up to go running this morning before we all had to meet at 9. I think this is by far one of my favorite things I've done so far. We ended up meeting at the bottom of these stairs a few blocks from my house.  We had no idea where they led, only that they were a semi popular place among both the locals and tourists to go running.  Turns out at the top of the stairs is an AMAZING view of the entire city

and since it was early enough we got to see the sun rise between the mountains.  It was absolutely gorgeous.

After our run, we all went back to our houses, showered, breakfast-ed, and met back up at the language school.  Most of the morning consisted of a lecture on what they called "Cultural Competency." It actually wasn't what I expected and had a lot more to do with how to work well in/get along with the group and how to resolve problems if/when they arise. It wasn't the most interesting thing to sit through but probably worth our while.  Then Dr. Tenorio, the doctor in charge of our clinical rotations, briefed us on safety in Oaxaca and what to do should we get sick from the food (which apparently we all most likely will at some point).  One of the things he said that I found really interesting was that the most common accident/death here are traffic accidents with pedestrians. Apparently all you have to do to get your license is pay a certain amount of pesos, they snap a photo of you, and that's it. Needless to say, traffic signs/signals are often ignored which Maria, Leslie, and I experienced first hand on our way back home when a man decided to go straight through a red light and nearly hit us. Fun times.

Our first language classes also started today.  They're going to be 3 hours long, twice a week. Three hours was reallyy hard to sit through today so I don't even know how I'm going to manage that when our real classes and clinic rotations actually start next week. I like the professor though and there are only four of us in the class which is kind of nice. It's definitely way different than the 500 person lectures I'm used to at Davis and I can tell it's going to be really helpful.

Tonight there was a really special celebration going on in town, called a calenda, to welcome some physics students that apparently just arrived to complete a masters program. It started as a parade in front of one of the main churches in town and traveled down to El Zócalo.  There were women dancing in the street wearing colorful skirts and holding baskets full of flowers on their heads.  There were a few men dressed in these sort of scarecrow-like costumes.

We were immediately met by people in front of the church who handed us these colorful candle torches to walk with and they put mini pottery necklaces around our necks (which they later came around and filled with free tequila).  They also set off a bunch of fireworks while we walked and when we finally ended in El Zócalo they had somewhat of a grand finale where they lit this huge 2 story tall sign on fire. It was a little crazy how close the fireworks were to the crowd and at one point some of the guys starting running towards the crowd with fireworks on their heads.  It reminded me a lot of the running of the bulls in Spain. Apparently the guys with the fireworks can't see where they're going and the whole crowd just sort of disperses real fast trying to avoid getting burned.  I was told that tonight was actually one of the tamer/safer demonstrations since there were so many tourists around. Kinda crazy.

Well, it's plenty late here. I'm really doing a horrible job of catching up on sleep. Gonna have to work on that. Buenas noches todos!