I suspect, for many of you, when you first went home and said to your family, “I’m going to Mexico…. to study Spanish… and stay with a family!” there was a long silence and a less-than-enthusiastic reaction. Your mom may have called and asked “What in the world are you thinking?!”
I recently read an article in MexConnect, by Alan Cogan, who’d experienced just this reaction when he told friends he was going to move to Mexico. But after several years, living in Mexico, he writes, “While I’m perfectly aware that this country has more than its share of bad people, I have to say after four years here that some of the nicest people I’ve ever met are Mexicans.”
He describes his first experience at his bank. “During our first week in Guadalajara we went to an automatic teller machine with some feeling of trepidation. We weren’t sure how to operate it and whether or not we would understand the Spanish instructions. We weren’t even sure it would accept our Canadian VISA card. Anyway, we did manage to make it work and it did peel off ten one hundred peso bills for us. At least we thought it did. When we stepped away and counted the money there were only nine bills. Oh, oh…here we go, we thought. You can’t even trust the machines. What should we do? Should we accept the loss or go in the bank and complain, even though we couldn’t speak Spanish at the time?
Then the girl who was in line behind us at the ATM turned to us with a hundred peso bill in her hand. I honestly can’t remember what she said, or whether she even spoke English. I only know that she was holding up a 100 peso bill and giving us a questioning look, plainly asking if it was ours. We had obviously missed collecting it from the tray where the bills came tumbling out."
We had a similar experience several years ago in Querétaro. Instead of arriving in the afternoon, two of our students arrived late in the evening, about 9:00 pm. They got a taxi from the airport to their home stay and settled in about 10:00 pm. It was then that they realized they’d left a computer in the taxi. When they called the taxi company, they were told that the taxi driver was a substitute and lived outside the city in a village, some distance away. The taxi office would call him the next day to see if he found the computer, but it was quite a distance for him to drive to return it, so our students should be patient. I was not optimistic.
The next day, our students heard from the taxi office. The young man was already driving back to town with the computer. Someone would deliver it to the home stay address that day.
lan Cogan ends with “ Despite the negative things you hear about Mexico, they aren’t all true. Yes, there’s crime, corruption, poverty and a lot of other nasty things. But generosity, honesty, trust, pride… they’re here, too. We’ve had people give us money at public telephones because we didn’t have change. At times we’ve been lost and we’ve had people drive out of their way and say, “Follow me,” and guide us to our destination because that was the easiest way to get us back on the right track again."
For us, we have made lifelong friends in both Querétaro and Puebla. Our friends at Olé care about us and would do anything to help. Our home stay families become like our own. They cook for us. They help us with our Spanish. They're attentive to our needs and to when we don't feel well. And they become great friends.
I recently read an article in MexConnect, by Alan Cogan, who’d experienced just this reaction when he told friends he was going to move to Mexico. But after several years, living in Mexico, he writes, “While I’m perfectly aware that this country has more than its share of bad people, I have to say after four years here that some of the nicest people I’ve ever met are Mexicans.”
He describes his first experience at his bank. “During our first week in Guadalajara we went to an automatic teller machine with some feeling of trepidation. We weren’t sure how to operate it and whether or not we would understand the Spanish instructions. We weren’t even sure it would accept our Canadian VISA card. Anyway, we did manage to make it work and it did peel off ten one hundred peso bills for us. At least we thought it did. When we stepped away and counted the money there were only nine bills. Oh, oh…here we go, we thought. You can’t even trust the machines. What should we do? Should we accept the loss or go in the bank and complain, even though we couldn’t speak Spanish at the time?
Then the girl who was in line behind us at the ATM turned to us with a hundred peso bill in her hand. I honestly can’t remember what she said, or whether she even spoke English. I only know that she was holding up a 100 peso bill and giving us a questioning look, plainly asking if it was ours. We had obviously missed collecting it from the tray where the bills came tumbling out."
We had a similar experience several years ago in Querétaro. Instead of arriving in the afternoon, two of our students arrived late in the evening, about 9:00 pm. They got a taxi from the airport to their home stay and settled in about 10:00 pm. It was then that they realized they’d left a computer in the taxi. When they called the taxi company, they were told that the taxi driver was a substitute and lived outside the city in a village, some distance away. The taxi office would call him the next day to see if he found the computer, but it was quite a distance for him to drive to return it, so our students should be patient. I was not optimistic.
The next day, our students heard from the taxi office. The young man was already driving back to town with the computer. Someone would deliver it to the home stay address that day.
lan Cogan ends with “ Despite the negative things you hear about Mexico, they aren’t all true. Yes, there’s crime, corruption, poverty and a lot of other nasty things. But generosity, honesty, trust, pride… they’re here, too. We’ve had people give us money at public telephones because we didn’t have change. At times we’ve been lost and we’ve had people drive out of their way and say, “Follow me,” and guide us to our destination because that was the easiest way to get us back on the right track again."
For us, we have made lifelong friends in both Querétaro and Puebla. Our friends at Olé care about us and would do anything to help. Our home stay families become like our own. They cook for us. They help us with our Spanish. They're attentive to our needs and to when we don't feel well. And they become great friends.
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As they say in Español, "Si la amistad es un tesoro, gracias por ser parte de mi fortuna!" As they say in Spanish, If friendship is a treasure, thank you for being part of my fortune!
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