buenas noches!

ola! Our first several lessons have gone fabulously - i´m getting to know the people and it feelsl like we are friends even though most of us can´t verbally communicate! I have met a few people that speak english decently well. One of them is Jimena (pronounced imena) - she looks like any blond girl you might find anywhere in canada, but she is thoroughly mexican! It´s pretty funny seeing people come up to her, thinking she´s a tourist, and then she tries to convince them that yes, she is just as mexican as them! So she took me for the real mexico city experience today! we went in her little v.bug with no seatbelts in real latin american traffic...oh my, they don´t know the meaning of red lights or lanes! Being in a small car is is little scary sometimes, especially when there are buses crowding you in, and they are within touching distance from your window! But the day was fabulous - we went to the Zócalo, the square in the middle of the city. Around it is this massive cathedral, the palacio nacional, and even the excavation of the templo mayor - the major aztec temple. Right in the middle of the city! While doing excavations for the metro a while back, they discovered the remains of this whole city! All you can see is the top of the temple (you know, the ones with the stairs...). Speaking of which, I discovered how they did their sacrifices. They would take the most beautiful girls to the altars part way up the steps. Then they would lay them on the altar and cut open their chests. Then they ripped the heart out and pushed the body down the steps. I´m so glad that God doesn´t require human sacrifices (except for the ultimate sacrifice of course). It seems like such a waste of life! So after we wandered around for a few hours, we hopped back in the car and started the long drive back to the side of the city where the church is. Then we got a REAL mexican scare. Her mom called her on her cell and told her that she had just received a call that her brother had been taken captive and was being held for ransom. There are many occassions where this happens, and Jimena told me that they threaten you with their death, and if you don´t come through, they start ´selling´you body parts (ears, fingers...) and if you don´t come through in the end, they just kill their captive. She freaked out. I prayed. She prayed. We zipped over to the church (as fast as we could given the stand-still traffic) and the other english people (ruth and susan) weren´t there yet. So, with a few other mexicans, we prayed. That was an amazing experience. They don´t just sit and listen to each other pray. There is kind of a ´main pray-er´but everyone else is talking too! It was pretty powerful. By the end, Jimena had calmed down a bit and was able to go home to her mom. To make a long story short, we eventually found out that it had been a hoax, which is apparently quite common. But for people to be so afraid when this happens, it´s obviously not always a hoax. that makes me really sad. We never get that kind of extortion in canada. Anyway, I need to go to bed, and Ruth needs the internet!

Nos vemos manieras! (´see you tomorrow´...maybe :)