Well a ton has happened in the past few days. I had my first cheese experience on the third day and it was just as awful as I had feared. I only made it through 3 bites of the quesadilla (which picture haunts this post). I had hoped covering it in delicious salsa would help me through it... not true. And of course we've had cheese every day since then, and it's honestly worse here. There's a lot of grease and it's always on the meat that kind of freaks me out anyways. But the food really is incredible outside of the freaky meat on occasion and the gooey cheese. But I do have to say, Mexicans really do have tortillas, beans, and cheese every day. The rice isn't as common in the house I'm at, but every meal, including breakfast, has tortillas and beans. I'm not sick of it yet so we'll have to see how long that lasts.
My group and I have also had a ton of bus ride experiences. The buses are just insane. They never really come to a complete stop, you jump on, and when you push the button to stop they slow down and pretty much expect you to jump from the moving car. As the director of the international program here would say, the bus drivers think they're Nascar drivers. It's so true, my poor roomie was falling over at every stop. One of our bus drivers was literally swerving back and forth like a 4 year old. I was so glad I had a chair for that trip. They also don't stop at the bus stops, you just wave them down and hope they'll stop. They didn't stop for us the other day on the way to school, making us like 10 minutes late.
I hate the buses, but I honestly prefer them over the cars at times. One of our friends here gave us a ride home yesterday in his vintage VW Beetle and his accelerator broke. We were literally going 2 miles an hour. He pulled over and fixed something so we went a little faster, but the engine sounded like it was going to explode! I thought i was going to die, mind you we already had way too many people in the car. We had 6 people shoved into that Beetle, not comfortable in the least. But I got home and didn't have to walk the streets of Mexico at 10:30 at night, so not that awful really.
We also went into Zapopan to buy discounted bus tickets and it's the coolest town ever! There were tons of little shops, a massive cathedral, everything. It was so cute. I'll probably just go back on my own to check out everything at a slower pace. I'm just sure Ill get lost, I do not understand the transportation system here at all.
The storms here are also incredible. The streets flood and there are literal currents pulling garbage and small children into the gutter. Well, I never saw any small children get pulled in, but I'm sure it's happened. In places the water is well above my knees and the water flows pretty fast. Our teacher told us to just take cover if we're ever walking in a storm because it's so dangerous. There are also torrential rainstorms almost every night. I wake up all the time to rain pelting the window and roof while lightning strikes the poles near our condo. It's so freaking loud. I was taking a shower yesterday during a storm, smart I know, and lightning struck the pole near our house and it was honestly the loudest thing I've ever heard. Let's just say I got out pretty quick.
Oh, here's a great story. So there are 3 of us BYU students in this house. 2 of us share one room with our own bathroom, and there's 1 downstairs with her own bathroom. Well the shower in my bathroom would not get any hot water so i was taking cold showers for the first few days here. It wasn't that awful because it's so hot and the water is only running for a minute because you turn of the water when you lather. Anyways, I started using the shower downstairs because it got hot water. Well, my host mother saw me taking a shower downstairs and asked why I didn't use the one upstairs. I told her the water was super cold and she looked confused. She thought about it a minute and told me the handles were reversed... Super awesome. But I got my shower back so I'm happy, we just laughed about it for awhile.
My roomies and I also had another silly experience yesterday. We were eating lunch with our host sister and we were talking about her dog. She said su nombre es circe (her name is Circe). But we all heard hombre (man) instead of nombre (name). So we just assumed it was a guy, then one of my roommates looked at the dog and it was NOT a man, she definitely had had puppies at one point. So she told our host sister that it wasn't un hombre, and my host sister responded by saying yeah, it's a girl, and her nombre is Circe. But we heard hombre again. This confusion went on for probably 3 more minutes until we realized what she was actually saying, and we laughed for a good 5 minutes nonstop. It really isn't that funny now that I write it out, but we felt so stupid. Good thing we're sticking with minor mistakes right now.
We've also had a ton of people come in and talk to us about getting sick. There's been one person from our group to get sick every day. My roommate was first, and lets just say she was violently ill for a good 30 hours. Not excited for my turn of that. Anyways, one of the people who came and talked to us had to tell us grimy details about getting sick. We were fine talking about until she said "poo-poo". I know, immature, but we all started laughing, like we couldn't control ourself laughing. It was so darn hilarious. I just thought it was great to see a full grown woman with super thick accent say poo-poo and expect us to just sit there stone faced. Absolutely not. Anyways, this is enough for now. Hasta luego.
Well the last few days have been rather busy. School ended with a bang. We had 2 papers, a test, and a presentation. That's like the entire semesters worth of work shoved into one week. I'm pretty glad that's over, I really needed a vacation. Then right after school ended we went to Nuevo Vallarta for 5 days which was composed of unlimited beach, drinks, and food. It was probably the best vacation of my life. 
