Today we started off like any other day this week. We got up and went to our two hour Spanish class with our tutor, Elli. During this session we watched a little more of the Spanish movie we had started in a previous class as well as going over some more worksheets practicing different verb tenses. Following this session we left for a different destination than usual. Today we (Andrew and I) were going to help teach English in Huehuetoca with Casey and Terri.
To get to Casey’s house we took a taxi with one of their family friends, Manny. Manny is by far the best taxi driver I’ve had here in Mexico thus far, and was probably one of the nicest. He drove safely and we were able to ask him about different things pretty easily. Eventually we arrived at Casey’s house and from there we set off for Huehuetoca to get ready for the English class that begins around 2pm. Once we arrived at the mission house in the Urbi village, Casey asked me to help move some storage items from one room in the house to another.
This wasn’t too hard of work, but it took a while to get everything (books, instruments, electronics, etc.) moved over to the other room. After we were finished I went down to help out with the English class that Terri had begun teaching. The room downstairs was fairly packed with niños that were ready to learn English so I sat in the rear to observe how Terri taught. It was quite interesting to see how she taught the kids compared to the way that we taught our first lesson in Las Aguilas just two days before. The lesson was very well done for the day and I think the students learned a lot while having fun. Soon we’ll be teaching them so I’m nervous and excited for that.
After the English class ended it was time to pack up the car with Casey and Andrew and haul some chairs and tables over to a woman in the neighborhood that was planning on having a baby shower within the next few days. We packed up the car and Casey says to me “You can drive”. I had the car keys in my hand so I said, “Sure!”. We were just going across the neighborhood and not through the crazy city streets of Mexico so what’s the worst that could happen?
So I start the car up and start driving down the connecting road which led to the main road. After about 100 ft of driving I came up on a Mexican driver that had stopped in the middle of the street. I slowed to a stop in their Honda SUV about 10 ft behind him. “What is he doing?” we all kind of said to each other. I began to reach for the gear shifter to reverse and go around him when all of the sudden the driver starts backing up. Without looking behind to see if anyone was behind him, in a few seconds he had smashed into the front of the car I was driving.
Now I have had a wreck before by myself (I hit a curb in the US after trying to show my car off), but I’ve never had a wreck with another driver before today. I thought that I would eventually have a wreck, but never in Mexico! Anyway back to the story…After he hit the car the other driver got out of his truck and looked to be out of breath. He was saying something in Spanish about how his back or some other part of his body was hurt. He was mostly bent over and eventually started to grasp for his knee as well. Casey, Andrew, and I got out of the car and started looking at what seemed to be little to no damage to our car. (Turns out his truck only poked a small hole in the front plastic bumper of the Honda, which was a breath of fresh air for me.) But even though there wasn’t much damage to our car, the other driver continued to put on his best impression of being injured so as to get out of paying something for our damages.
Casey remained calm and asked him if he was ok. The other driver said he was a little hurt and Casey said there was no problem with our car because of the wreck. They both shook hands and eventually the other driver got back in his car. I was quite surprised that I had only gone about 100 ft in Mexico and then got in a wreck. I consider myself a pretty good driver so that’s kind of a blow to my confidence. But alas, this is Mexico after all and there’s no telling what can happen even on the safest of roads.
Once we resolved the issue with the other driver we continued on our quest to drop off the party supplies and then drove back without any more wrecks (whew! Haha). Then we all got in the car and Casey drove us to a restaurant called Taco Safari. This was a cool place with lots of different options of food which ranged from tacos all the way to top sirloin steak. We also had live entertainment while we were there, which was cool. *Important note: it rained for the first time while we’ve been here today while we ate at Taco Safari*. So officially the much delayed rainy season began here today.
After we ate at Taco Safari we went to Wal-mart with Steve and Kay. I took some pictures of the Mexican version of Wal-mart and some different items they sell there. I had to take a picture of the eggs, since I eat them so much. This is my first time seeing eggs being sold but not refrigerated beforehand. I also saw some octopus for sale. After that we went back to Steve and Kay’s place and we learned how to play Eukre. If you’ve never played it before, learn it! It was lots of fun and we wound up staying up till midnight to play it. Anyway, this has definitely been my wildest day here in Mexico thus far, but it was still fun. Good night!
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