I know, I know, I need to put up more about the Ruta Maya, and I will. But so I don't lose track of what's going on in the present, I'm going to keep up on the day-to-day stuff too. I made a list during lunch today, but evidence suggests I was a little tipsy at the time (see below), so excuse me if all this gets a little off track.
First of all, I seem to be suffering from the mother of all persistent coughs. I know, not really relevant, but it seems to be increasingly defining my life at the moment (haha), so I thought I should warn you. I'm taking cough syrup, drinking lots of water, all that jazz. I don't really feel that sick in any other way, just that little hitch in my throat, which suggests it's probably something to do with the change in temperature (or the change in humidity, here. I guess it makes people cough sometimes, who knew), or maybe just a reaction to living within spitting distance of a giant, exhaust-belching petrol refinery. Who knows?
Anyone, on to happier or less relevant news. Our house in in a state of complete uproar. They finally made the decision to extend Petrona's already gigantic closet (this is Mexico. The girls have clothes). But, since this house is built a little...differently, it meant boarding up a window and a door, knocking down a wall, and building a new one. This is made all the more joyfully exciting by the fact that this house is made of painted concrete enforced with metal poles. So construction suddenly involves constant hammering and a whole new level of headache medicine for the occupants. They figured while they were at it, they might as well fix the kitchen, too. They want to make a little box-shaped add-on to kitchen (which will spill into the front porch)to house the refrigerator, thereby opening up all the space the refrigerator was using, and offering them the opportunity at a later date to knock out some of the cabinets, add some more cabinets, and put in a breakfast bar. It's a whole big thing. I'm going to be leaving this family around the start of January, so I won't get to see any of this finished anyway.
My language skills are getting...weirder. I'm now quite good at swapping between English and Spanish, and although I feel like I've barely learned anything since I got here, everyone says I have, so I guess I must. I'm hitting the place in the exchange where lots of people stop really learning, since they know enough to live comfortably. I want to keep learning, but I'm definitely going to need some help. Hopefully, we will have Spanish language classes starting soon, so that should be a really good thing. I even heard a wisper that they are going to be for 2 hours after school, every day of the week. I'm excited (at least right now), although I'm fairly certain some of my more social fellow exchange students aren't feeling quite so festive. It doesn't matter anyway, since nothing will be starting until after winter break. Stay tuned!
I seem to have acclimatized a lot, too. Things (cosas) I seem to remember thinking (pensando) of as strange (raro) are very commonplace (I'm starting to wonder how odd the U.S. is going to seem when I get back. I'm already having very scary thoughts about re-learning how to drive (manejar) and ride my scooter. Although really looking forward to the Farmer's Market). I no longer even try to ride in the car(coche) without bracing my hand on the ceiling or holding on to the handle on the top of the door (the roads here are not good). I don't walk around the house without shoes on (although some of that may be that the house is covered in concrete dust -polvo). I haven't really started dreaming in Spanish (I shouldn't expect that for at least 2 more months), although from the dreams I can remember, the people in my head have started speaking fluent Spanglish. On the other hand, yesterday I'm fairly sure they were speaking (hablando) Swedish or something. And today they weren't speaking at all, so who knows. BTW, the Spanish may be horribly mis-spelled. I learned most of these words by word-of-mouth, so spelling is a toss-up.
Anyway, life goes on. There are good days and bad days. But, the bad days are fewer and further between. And the bad isn't really that bad.
Oh, I can't remember the story I was going to tell, so I'll just put this out as some friendly advice: if you ever come to Mexico, be sure to check exactly what's in whatever you're drinking. My drink with lunch, which I thought was juice with fruit cocktail turned out to be sangria. And proper sangria, with a bit of a kick too. I didn't really notice until I'd gone through a bit of it, but I guess it was stronger than usual, because half my family was tipsy, too.
I have lots to say about discoveries and the future and all that, but I don't really feel in an elaborating mood, so I'll save it for later when I think I can wax a little more poetical. One thing I do want to touch on that kind of hooks into the whole becoming accustomed thing is homesickness. Here's where my head's at now: I still miss all the family and friends same as before, but I think it's a little more manageable. I can read up on Facebook or get news from home, I don't feel completely cut off. The things I am most looking forward to back home are pretty much all food or freedom related. By food, I mean I have a list of all the places I want to go and all the things I want to eat there when I get back. Don't believe me? Magic's in Chicago, Eggs' Benedict. The Courier Cafe, banker's burger with Swiss cheese and normal fries, followed by a chocolate and peanut butter shake. The Black Dog, pretty much anything on the menu (and possibly some of that fancy beer everyone's going on about). I want to eat apples and homegrown lettuce. I want to make tomato and mozzarella salad with homegrown basil and Brandywine tomatoes and organic mozzarella. By freedom, I mean I think living in another culture, and having to be a little more guarded with what I say and act more socially acceptable has finally impressed on me the things I liked back home that I always sort of took for granted. I want to register to vote, I am thinking about getting a tattoo (I know what I want it to be of, I'm just looking for a good design and deciding where I want it). I am also going to henna my hair that red color I like so much and put it back in dreadlocks (hopefully I can bribe Ed into helping me again, he did such a good job the first time -although I stand by my decision to take them out, they would so very much not have flown here, more's the pity). I also have some news which may seem a lot bigger to some of you than to others (some of you already know, I would thank you to keep your very loud mouths shut, *Cameron*). I can't tell you what it is right now, since some of my Mexican friends have been reading this (I love you guys!). I will tell you, don't worry, I'd just like to be back in my friendly, supportive family atmosphere before I have to handle this. And without confusing you further, have a great week, happy holidays! Is anyone else eagerly awaiting the return of Supernatural? I was so doubtful, but now it's getting good again! If you will excuse me, I'm going to finish reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods. How did I manage to miss this one? I think I must have read Good Omens instead and gotten them confused. That reminds me! I would like to publicly thank my pure bossome parents for once again kind of creepily reminding me that they know me just as well as I do. I love it, you guys. Thank you so much! In a future post, I will undoubtedly be bringing up another interesting change this gift has brought about...
Stay tuned, and once again, happy holidays!

For those of you following Chris's year in India (commented on in the last post), updates occurred! It was very interesting to find out that his experiences with the first week of college were glaringly similar to my time at my school. I try not to pay as much attention to the teachers as I did when I started out, simply because I don't understand what they're saying, but unlike the first week, I now know enough not to be completely flummoxed all the time. I can generally understand the general direction their teaching is going, but not enough to actually learn. For a knowledge-aholic like me, it's kind of like waking up at 6am every day to go spend 8 hours standing outside a really good chocolate store and never going in. It's a bit of a relief to know that if all the classes were in English, I would probably find a majority very boring. I look forward with baited breath to the unknowable time in the future when I can, once again, be bored with high school level Sociology.
In other news, I've come up with more evidence to confuse my previously mentioned worries about the whole 'End of the Honeymoon' thing (dear god but that sounds like a horrible movie, doesn't it?). The unhelpful papers mention that one of the things that defines the Honeymoon period is that everything seems new and exotic and different. While I am still in awe of my new second home, and I can still be easily surprised (mostly by things I see fleetingly in passing from the car, and by food, but there you are), normal things are no longer a novelty. Trying to take showers in carefully-measured bursts so as to save up enough water-pressure to get the shampoo out of my hair is no longer an adventure, it's just a mildly annoying necessity. Saying 'no' to offers of more food at the dinner table is no longer a worrying, possible rude thing, it's the only way to finish dinner in under 2 hours (and make sure whoever is doing the offering will finally sit down and eat themselves. I usually take whatever I am given to eat and wait until everyone is sitting and eating themselves before grabbing my glass and sprinting to the kitchen to get water, so no-one has a chance to follow me and help). Washing your clothes in the back yard in the specially made stone basins (built into the house for this very purpose), is...okay, it's still kind of fun, but I do tend to bring my Ipod down so I can break up the quiet monotony. When I sneeze and my nose runs, I now know it's not that I'm sick, it's just an unfortunate side effect of needing bad air conditioners to cool down the house to manageable heat levels at night. It's kind of annoying, but hey? Watcha gonna do? This is all part of life here. Some things are just different, that's how it is. But this hasn't lead me to negative comparisons like the paperwork says I should. I still want to be here. Does that make me abnormal? Or just better at adapting? Or weird? Who can say.
In the vein of differences, I would like to talk about shoes. Namely, the fact that no one, no one every takes them off. I was warned about this ahead of time by a lovely gentleman at the student conference in Grand Rapids a couple months back, whose job it was to 'culturally prepare' all us outbounds, god help him. Mostly, it was warnings about greetings (everyone hugs and kisses to say hello, whether they know you or not. One well connected, polite person entering a meeting can take a whole 10 minutes to finish helloing and sit down. I've seen this first hand); warnings about alcohol (just cause it's there and you'll probably drink it doesn't mean you should get plastered and pass out into your hosts swimming pool. Apparently that's happened before, too. This is kind of a non-issue for me, because I am both mentally, morally, and physically opposed to alcohol. Even mildly fermented things like Kombucha make me feel sick). And, warnings about shoes. He said the whole shoe thing was because of an odd Mexican belief that if you walk on the stone floors (no one has carpet here) in bare feet, the cold will come up through your feet and into your bones, and make you sick (or something like that). I haven't heard anything like that here, but I think it may be some sort of culturally reasoning to deal with a much more basic problem (that's not such a foreign idea, American's have lots of them too. Mostly pertaining to food, for some reason). The reason being, the floors aren't really as safe as they look. Leaving alone the whole 'dirt is everywhere if your house is relatively open all the time' and the 'nothing's really clean in a sterile sense if the only water you have to clean it is full of bad bacteria' issues, I have found a couple of other reasons to hold on to. 1) When you don't have shoes on, it is much MUCH easier for someone with slippery feet to, well, slip on the slippery tile (snigger) and break their heads open on the edge of the couch (or at least get some really painful bruising. Ahem.). 2) Since no-one really has vacuum cleaners, it is much easier to end up needing a tetanus shot without shoes if, say, someone were to drop a glass of the splintery sort on the way out of the kitchen (ahem, herm hm). And 3) without shoes it is much easier to accidentally step on something, like, for example, something that may or may not have been really freaking big cockroach on the way to the bathroom at 12am, and not be able to go to sleep until 2am because even though bugs don't really scare you, you're wide awake wondering where on Earth that cockroach could possibly have been living, and if there is a lizard big enough to eat it and if there isn't, where you could buy one, and if you did, what would you name him (ahem herm *cough cough cough* hm hrm). I could say more, but do I really need to?