After Twelve Days in Mexico, I know this...

I'm 'all' situated now. I have an apartment, roommates, furniture, food, and water, but most importantly, wireless internet. I know my way around my Colonia (in México City, the neighborhoods are called Colonies) which is called "La Condesa" -even though I still carry around a map just in case. The other cool Colonias in Mexico City, called DF just like we call our capital DC, are Polanco and Coyocán. What's perfect is that I have fellow Fulbright friends living in both of the other colonias, so we can all hang out in different parts of the city -- it would be very easy to get "stuck" in our colonia.

I know now how it is to feel perfectly normal eating lunch, called "comida" here, at 3pm. I know now that I like having a dish washer and a dryer for laundry...neither of which I have here. I am the dish washer and my room has clothes hanging up all over to dry, which takes days...not 50 minutes. It's now normal not to drink tap water and brush your teeth with bottled water - I'm slowing trying to rinse my tooth brush with tap water, so as to introduce the germs into my system. It's also normal to be a little sick.

DF is about 7300ft above sea level -- we beat the mile high city --so the temperature is always between 60-80 degrees. As a result, we don't have air conditioning or heat, and the amazing part is that I haven't really needed/wished for either. Another result of the altitude is shortness of breath after climbing to the third floor in our apartment. We keep saying to ourselves, "we can't be this out of shape." Speaking of, I'm going to join a yoga studio that's down the road!

After twelve days in México, I'm so glad to have great fellow Fublrighter friends....cheers to the second biggest Fulbright program in the world! But I'm also looking forward to meeting more Mexicans. Condesa is ripe with young, educated, well-traveled Mexicans....and with restaurants and bars where we hope to meet them and make friends. I love how this Mexico is completely different from the stereotype that most people in the states hold about Mexico and the people. This area could be in any big european city. There is a beautiful park lined with fancy coffee shops, posters of a concert in Sept by a Canadian classical pianiast playing Bach, and an open air market yesterday and today that's selling art, furniture, clothing and colored-glass martini glasses made by local designers that's far above my price range.

Tomorrow is my first day of work at Volaris and my first day in the "real world"...getting picked up at 7:30am when I'm used to class at 11! Actually, I went into the office on Friday and met my boss and my boss's boss (CFO). I am working in the Finance department, but looking forward to collaborating with the technical/operations department and the planning department. The company only started flying in March 2006 and have 12 A319s. However, they are expanding rapidly: more planes, more routes -- with flights to the US in the future. So everything is new and exciting. P.S. Their Chief Pilot is a female...first in México! Next week my boss gets to go to London for an airline conference and rides home on the delivery flight of their brand new A319 from Germany.....sweet. But what's even cooler is that the CEO, Pedro Aspe was a Fulbrighter himself! I can't wait to meet him.

Friday night I went out to a Cuban salsa club called Mama Rumba's. They served excellent mojitos for cheap! The band, which was huge and comprised of about 15 members, kept everyone on their feet -- they all danced like professionals! I wish there was more dancing in the States. Most of the night I was a spectator, but then, out of nowhere, a guy comes and takes me onto the dance floor. I say out of no where because it was so funny watching guys stand sort of near our table and keep looking at us. I don't know if they were looking at us because we look foreign or because they wanted to dance but were just too shy to ask. I kept saying to my friends that I wanted to dance, but none of the "stalkers" were doing anything about it. But this guy, as I said before, came out of nowhere and was an incredible dancer. It was so much like a movie because a lot of people started cirling around us to watch -- ?again, because I look foreign or because he was leading well and I was following fairly well. I can't wait to go back! Watch out DF! haha :)