¡Bienvenidos a Mérida!

Mérida turned out to be a LOT hotter than I originally thought. The humidity hit me hard and it felt like I was breathing in the precipitation in the air. I have to admit it's a lot better than being in the 20-30 degree weather that NYC is experiencing right now! :3 When I arrived at the hostel with a few other UBELONGers, it was definitely a culture shock. When I was in Ecuador volunteering, I stayed with a host family and the experience was entirely different. This hostel was pretty much like an outdoor hotel with mesh doors and huge fans and palm trees decorating the walls. The rooms where the other UBELONG teams stayed looked like an uber-dorm with bunk beds left and right. I got lucky since I was able to get a room by myself! Unfortunately, I'm not accustomed to not having AC in the nearly 80something degree weather and it was a challenge getting through the first night.

A picture of my (messy) room at Nomadas Hostel

On Monday, I spent most of the day exchanging currency, getting any other toiletries I needed, and exploring the streets! There's a Mexican Walmart here (I don't know why I was so excited about that haha). The UBELONGers and I followed Leo and Martina (our wonderfully amazing UBELONG Team Leaders!) to eat some rosca de reyes, a sweet pastry that's normally available during the holiday season.

The past two days were spent working at El Banco de Alimentos de Mérida, A.C. (pictures below). When you enter the office area, it appears as if it's really small, but once you head to the back.. there's a full-blown warehouse! They had everything from fruits and vegetables, breads, beverages, and probably much more that I haven't seen. I had the chance to ration bags of what looked like pork rinds, sort the good grapes from the bad, and start translating documents from Spanish to English. Let me tell you... no matter how good of a translation dictionary you have or how much access you have to Google Translate, translating is hard! There's no simple way to translate if you're not a native speaker since there are many frases (phrases! Learned a new word today haha) that only natives would be able to understand and use in conversation.

The BAMX Headquarters

The Produce section of the warehouse

The BAMX warehouse

Posing while sorting grapes :D

I'm looking forward to the weekend because there's a chance I'll get to do two of the three following activities: visit a chocolate factory, see the ruins, or dive into three cenotes (natural sinkholes)! Crossing my fingers that it won't rain this weekend since the humidity is pretty bad at the moment :X. The WiFi at the hostel is not so great so I can't update the blog as often as I'd like, but I'll try to keep y'all posted at least once or twice a week :)