The First Day!

Well. I wasn't going to post until Friday, but I thought my experience from getting off the plane in Queretaro until the writing of this post was too good to pass up! 

We arrived in Queretaro and another plane was ahead of us, so getting through customs took a good amount of time.  Since I was not able to send some of my belongings successfully ahead of my arrival, I had way too many suitcases with me.  I was sure that I was going to have to go through the line where they search through your items.  Three people ahead of me received the green light to go directly to the exit so I was sure that I was going to get the red light.... but as fate would have it when I pressed the button, it revealed green! Alleluia!  One of the Brothers from the community was there to pick me up.  He does not speak much English so our car ride home was very long.  In addition to the airport being a good distance from the community, there was an accident on the highway so we had to go through the "back" roads.  The roads  were not well lit and we made our way through the countryside with very few people on the road.  It was a scene out of a movie where I was sure bandits were going to commandeer our car and all my earthly possessions! What would have been about a 40 minute car ride turned into a 90 minute car ride.  Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time we arrived in the community.  The other members of the community who were home all greeted me warmly and showed me to my room.  I was so tired I just went to my room and tried to get ready for the next day.

We had prayer at 7am followed by a Liturgy of the Word Service.  I will probably preside at Morning Eucharist in a few days...I just want to get more acquainted with Spanish before I take on that task.  I ate breakfast quickly and another Brother went with me into the city to go to the Language School.  We were on the bus for about 40 minutes and I was already late for my 8:30am appointment.  We got off the bus in the vicinity where he thought the Language School was located..... well, it was no where near there!  It was a sight for him to be walking fast and me lagging behind him.  We must have walked about 2 miles and I thought well so much for my first impression on the first day of class- late, sweaty and embarrassed.  We eventually arrived at the Language School at 9:30am.  I was given a teacher and proceeded to speak in Spanish.  The first hour I was the only student in the class.  I think I did okay, but the first few minutes were difficult as I was so distracted for being late that even simple words that I knew would just not come to me.  After a deep breath, things got better.   I did have two other members in my conversation class.  A young man from Ireland and a young woman from Japan.  They each have been at the school for a number of weeks.  It was good to have others speak so that I wasn't in the "hot seat" for the whole hour!  At the end of the classes I took a taxi back to the community because I was so turned around from the exploits of getting to the school that I really had no idea where I was.  The taxi cost more than I had anticipated but I was able to pay with the money I had changed previously. 

So, tomorrow things may be different.... I do not have to be at the school until 12:30 and I will have classes until 3:30pm.  My homework for today is to figure out a better way of getting to and from school without the expense of the taxi.  Pray for me!

I will try and post on Friday and try to keep to that schedule.  Lesson learned.... be flexible!