Homestays are officially in full
swing and we are in our third week. So far they have been going great and
everyone is enjoying their families. It is sad that we have one week left with
our families, because we have all become very close to our families in this
short amount of time. They have taught us so much about the family life in
Mexico and the culture of Mexico. Our Spanish is also improving as we
continually speak it with our host families.
I am sad to let everyone know
that as we continue our homestays in Mexico one of us won’t be able to finish
her time here. We received some very sad news last week that Judith Aleman Banegas,
the mother of Alom, one of the students here, passed away. We send our sympathy
to Alom in this hard time, and we know that she and her family will be strong
and will get through this very rough time! We were all sad to see Alom leave us
and it will be very hard to finish the program without her. Please pray for her
and her family at this time. Prayers are much appreciated.
Through
our sadness of seeing Alom go, some of us did yoga with a local Yoga instructor
in Casa CEMAL. We learned that yoga is a Physical, Mental and Spiritual Union.
Our instructor told us that many people get lost and depressed but with yoga
people can get to know themselves and can do a lot with that. Although there
are many types of yoga, we did the type of yoga that is based from the religion
Anandamarga. In the Anandamarga religion the official greeting is known as
Namaskar which means, “I study the divinity within you with the purity of my
mind and the love of my heart. “ We started the session with learning about the
religion itself, and then we had our own yoga session and meditation.
As we finish our homestays we
will be looking forward to seeing our families and friends in the states and sharing
all of our experiences!
By Lisa Burg
I truly appreciate everyone’s love and support at this time. It has been really hard to bare the loss of my mother. Even though I wish I would have been with my mother to see her for a last time, during these troubled times I’ve also thought about the great time I was having with everyone in Mexico. I feel my study abroad experience wasn’t over. I was just starting my home stay and I was really excited to have a host mom and two little brothers. To my surprise I still keep in contact with close friends I met in Mexico and I also truly appreciate their sincere love and support. I will definitely miss all the staff and I feel upset I couldn’t say good bye to everyone like would have liked to.
ReplyDelete-Alom