We Arrive In Mexico

We flew from D.C. to Mexico on August 8, 2009.  We left Shireen's home early in the morning (before 6am) and arrived in Mexico City by 2:30 pm.  Then we waited in line for about two hours to get through customs!  Karl's exhange partner is named Esteban Munoz.  His wife and daughter (Marcella and Brenda), and Marcella's mother all met us at the airport.  They had been waiting the whole two hours for us.  I guess it doesn't usually take that long to get through customs.  They helped us exchange money and rode the bus with us back to Puebla (about 2 1/2 hours) and then helped us get taxis and drove with us to the house where we were staying to drop off all our stuff, and then we all went to Dominoes Pizza.  It was a really long day. 

The picture above show the front of Jose Angel Ramirez's house, where we stayed for our first week.  His house is in the front, and then above his courtyard he has put in about eight rooms which he rents out to students.  (There are a lot of universities in Puebla). 

In this picture, you can see our family on the landing outside our rooms. The girls room was through the door next to Daniel, our room was the door near Karl, and the door to the boys room is just out of view on the right.

On clear days, you could see Popocatepetl (the active volcano) from the balcony.  Here it is with steam billowing out.

Here's the bedroom that Karl and I stayed in.

The boys' bedroom.

And the girls' bedroom.  Chiara made the transition to a bed quite well.  I think she loves sharing a bed with her big sister!  Elena doesn't mind sharing her bed, but she doesn't like it when we put Chiara down for a nap in their room and she goes through all of Elena's drawers dumping earrings and such before settling down to sleep.

Each room had a bathroom off of it, but only one had hot water and only one had a seat on the toilet.  The bathrooms here are tiny.  We would stick the toilet paper outside when we showered so that it wouldn't get wet.  Also, for some reason barely any water came out of the shower.  I finally started taking a cup in with me so that I could dump water from the sink over my head and get through my shower faster.  The water pressure on the sink was fine.

Here's a picture of Jose's bunny.  He was very friendly and would come hopping into our rooms looking for crumbs.  The kids loved him!

I wouldn't say the bunny especially liked to be held.  But he tolerated it (unless it was Chiara).


We were grateful to have a place to stay when we arrived in Mexico, but anxious to have our own kitchen and some space of our own.  Going out to eat and buying sweet bread for breakfast got a little old.  We stayed at Jose's house just over one week.