Morelia Empiezando! (Begins)(I think...)

Well now,

I´ve been in Morelia for 5 days now and aside from the rather annoying rearrangment of the keyboards in Mexico (to allow for a few extra letters and symbols), everything is going extremely well. The Aviles family is very friendly, hospitable, and helpful (as much as they can be since only Margarita´s neice, who lives down the street, speaks English). Their home is very comfortable, about 15 minutes walk from the school, and the food has been pretty good. (Mom, you would be shocked to find out what your pickiest eater has been consuming lately.) Margarita is the mom, Daniella is the daughter, and Maria Louisa is the grandmother. They have a rather large extended family, but nobody else is living with them in the house. The neices and nephews do stop by regularly, however, so it keeps things interesting.

The Baden-Powell Language Insitute is great: very welcoming and accustomed to American students, very picturesque and quaint, with great teachers (I have four hours of one-on-one tutoring with 4 different teachers) and a conversation club in the afternoons that has been very beneficial for meeting Mexican students. They also took some of us on a walking tour of Morelia, which I´ll discuss next.

Morelia is a very old Spanish city of 1,000,000 with (strangely) Italian influences. It has nine buildings or churches on the protection list as historical sites with the United Nations. One former church, which now houses a museum with the most incredible crafts I´ve ever seen, was built in 1531. The native Indians in this region are famous for their pottery, paintings, sculptures, wood carving, guitars, feather pictures, etc. I have to say, despite not being a big fan of off-beat artsy stuff, that their handiwork is incredible, especially considering that most of the work is done with very basic tools. Very impressive. Also impressive, but ridiculous, was the main cathedral in town, which is very large, luxurious, old, opulent, and disgraceful. I´ve rarely if ever seen such incredible wealth concentrated in one place, and it pains me to think of the poorer people in Mexico on whose backs it was built. Then again, I´m disappointed in my attitude of selfishness whenever I pass the occasional street beggar with my wallet full of pesos.

Keep praying for me!

Ok, that´s enough.