Acapulco!

My third week of classes flew by. I started teaching ESL at the orphanage Monday, though I hardly had any time because the kids had a special swimming day and we had to wait for them to get changed. I also volunteered with the school’s intercambio program, where students in the Spanish and English departments meet for a conversation hour – half in each language. There were far more Latino students, but it was still a lot of fun.

On Wednesday, I met up with the daughter of a woman who takes care of a family friends’ neighbor in my hometown. Yeah, I know, it’s quite a stretched connection. But it was great to meet such welcoming people here. Even though I have plenty of fellow students to hang out with at the school, most of them are only here for a month or less and I’ve heard that fewer students come in the fall. So come September, I’ll be especially glad to have friends who live here permanently.

My housemates (the five high school students from Evanston) left on Thursday. I joined my host mom at a goodbye party for their program, Love Without Borders. The four Mexican “moms” who hosted students from this program all brought a dish to share. It was one of the best meals I’ve had so far. (Thanks for the invite, ladies! I hope you all made it home safely, and don’t forget to send me the picture of us from the party so I can post it here.)

Over the weekend, I hopped on a bus to Acapulco (the closest beach, about four hours away) with Meghan and two of her classmates, Dean and Matt. Three other students headed there as well, though they had made separate plans on their own. We stayed out dancing on Playa Condesa until 4 a.m. Friday night and even later Saturday at a swanky club called Palladium on the far side of the bay. Palladium had a gorgeous view of the entire city, plus about a dozen video screens, dancers, acrobats and a silver-painted “Aztec god” who led the crowd through a pulsating techno song. It was déjà vu, actually, because I’d seen the exact same gimmick to the exact same song at a local salsa club in Cuernavaca. I later found out from Itzayana (my “sister” here) that the original Azteca supposedly came from Palladium and was later copied at other clubs around the country.

And of course, during the day Saturday, we hit the beach and the pool. We got lucky – the weather forecast called for a high chance of scattered thunderstorms but it only rained at night for a few minutes at a time. However, the rain earlier that week meant that the beaches were dirtier than usual. It wasn’t so bad by the resort hotels, but you could see trash floating in the water in the beaches close to the center of “Acapulco Antigua.” Meghan and I also took a side trip to see the Fort San Diego, which was built in the late 1770s and offers a great view of the whole city, and the cliff divers of La Quebrada. That was truly crazy. I can’t imagine plunging headfirst into that narrow cove every day. It was a sight to see. The divers literally climbed out of the water and up the cliff to where they would dive off, higher up if they had more experience. Below, you can see the most experienced diver, who jumped off the very top of the cliff. For more pictures from Acapulco, click here. The newest photos should appear on the main page. Otherwise, click on “tags” and search for Acapulco.