me llamo cail.

ixtapaluca!! i made it, i'm here. currently sitting in the valtierra household using my host sister esli's computer. yesterday was quite probably the most overwhelming day of my lifee. i met the other interns: andrea, tiffany, jacklyn, stephanie, camron, micah. stephanie got here yesterday too, but the others have all been here for a month already. they're super close andd i already feel like i've known them for ages. i also met rod (the CAM missionary) and his wife, mayra, and their 3 kids. my host fam is the valtierras. samuel and aurora are my parents... they are wonderful and are very involved with the church, and my sisters are esli (who i share a room with) and melanie, and my brother is sammy.
beyond that there have been an endless stream of spanish names to learn and culture catching up to do... a couple of basic rules on mexican culture that i quickly picked up on:

rule number one. always kiss on the left cheek. kissing between girls and between guys/girls (but NOT guys/guys as poor micah learned the hard way) is almost always an appropriate greeting. i've kissed more people in 24 hours than i have in the rest of my entire life combined.

rule number two. in mexico, there's always room for one more. seriously. 20 people crammed into a van? no biggie. theres room for one more. 10 people crammed on one couch? hey, we got you covered. theres room for one more. regardless of how many people there already are or large the person is (small child or full grown adult?) there's always. always. room for more.

rule number three. the name kyle is utterly unpronouncable, and i'll probably remain nameless (you know, "hey you!") while i'm here. either that or i'll take on another name like claudia as david suggested. i told him my spanish teacher used to call me "quile" (kee-lay) but he scoffed and said it was ridiculoso. (david is a single mexican guy who lives attached to the church. he's hilarious and is kind of the 8th intern... always with us.) in english class today we tried to teach everyone to say kyle... andrea wrote "cail" on the board because its kind of a phonetic way of writing it with spanish vowels... so for now i'm cail. kind of.

for now i'm off to do devos, then bed... i think i'm waking up and running in the morning. at 7200 feet up that means a mile feels like a marathon, and i plan pretty much on not being able to breathe. que divertido, how fun. hasta luegooooooooooooooo.