It’s a Lark to Take Your Kid to Study in Mexico

Until last summer I thought study-abroad programs were for college students, foreign travel was for the rich and vacations, exotic or otherwise, were for people who didn’t have kids.

Having spent a month in Mexico with my 4-year-old, Isaac, I know better now. Anyone can enroll in a study-abroad program; the cost can be minimal; and if you’re a single parent as I am, every day will seem like vacation.

A flyer tacked to a bulletin board at UCLA set me in motion. “Travel/Study Program,” it read, “Puebla, Mexico. Four-week sessions. Families welcome. International Universities.”

I copied the San Pedro address and sent off for more information.

Living With a Family

When the bulletin came, I read every word. “Participants live in middle-class homes with Mexican families.” So far, so good. I wasn’t up for austerity. And I wouldn’t want to spend my entire vacation one-on-one with Isaac. In a family I’d have company, and so would he.

I read on. “Language classes . . . tours of the city . . . children’s program . . . weekend excursions. . . .”

It sounded like fun.

The cost was $460 per two-week session or $815 a month, tuition, housing, meals and short trips included. Children enrolled in the activities program paid $155 a session, others $75.

It sounded feasible.

I phoned Aeromexico. $365 for two round trip Los Angeles to Mexico City, $220 if we flew out of Tijuana.

I tapped my calculator: $815, $150, $229. Call it $1,200. For $1,200 Isaac and I could fly to Mexico, stay a month and fly back again. That would cost $40 a day, $20 apiece, about what it would cost us to stay home. If I sublet my house for the month, I’d be money ahead.

Vacation or not, it was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse.

But a few months later, as our Estrella Roja bus spun down the highway linking Mexico City with Puebla 70 miles south, I had qualms. What if we didn’t get along with our family? What if Isaac wouldn’t eat the food? Beans and hot peppers weren’t exactly his line.

Homesickness Fears

Suppose he got sick? And what about the language? I’d learned a little Spanish from tapes, but Isaac didn’t know a word. What if he were homesick? What if I were homesick? What had I gotten us into, anyway?

I looked out the window. The air was fresh and clear, scrubbed by recent rain. In the middle distance rose two magnificent mountains, Popocatapetl and Iztaccihuatl, his sleeping wife. Burnished by the afternoon sun, their high snowy peaks gleamed like crowns. Gleaming too were the spires and domes on the low hills around us.

The driver down-shifted. Now we were jouncing over cobblestones. Lining the streets were fantastic brick buildings studded with tiles, blue and white and green and red and yellow.

“Mommy,” said Isaac, who’d been asleep on my lap. “Where are we?” Like Dorothy waking up after the cyclone, he stared out the window and rubbed his eyes.

“We’re in Pueblo,” I said. “Grab your things. Let’s go.”

Warm Family Welcome

The Echeverrias. Warm and numerous, the people we lived with were the key to our vacation. They might have ignored us, or they might have smothered us with attention. I’d imagined both scenarios. But in fact we were treated like privileged guests.

We had the run of the house, including the master bedroom (where young and old gathered at all hours to watch TV). Yet they never intruded on our privacy. The room they’d given us was off-limits. I could retire there whenever I liked, to read or nap.

Isaac gravitated immediately to Paolina, a sparkling 6-year-old with hair to the middle of her back. And I liked her mother, Carmelina, right from the start. In the course of our stay we discussed everything from politics to raising teen-agers (she had three).

I felt lucky. Our families seemed perfectly matched.

Checking around, I found that most of the others in the program were as pleased as I was. (The program’s housing coordinator is a woman of great tact.) And the two (out of 50) who complained were promptly switched to different families.

House in Suburbs

Accommodations. We lived in a modern two-story house in the suburbs a 10-minute bus ride from the localo. It was the sort of house where adults could put their feet on the sofa and kids could jump on the beds.

Besides electricity, hot water, flush toilets (three), a refrigerator and other amenities, the Echeverrias had a part-time maid.

We were given a room belonging to two of the younger children. The beds were low-slung and Strawberry Shortcake’s sugary smile beamed from posters on the walls. Prepared for the worst--a childless home--I’d lugged a whole suitcase of Isaac’s toys. I needn’t have bothered.

Cars, trucks and puzzles lined every shelf, dolls and stuffed animals obliterated every surface, while from the closest oozed games and puzzles, blocks and soccer balls. Isaac stopped in his tracks when he saw the array. Then with a whoop he dived in.

Meals. Knowing Puebla to be the culinary capital of Mexico, I wasn’t surprised that I liked the food. Proud of her heritage, Carmelina served many Poblanan specialties, sopes , chalupas and mole. There was also every sort of fruit, from apples and bananas to mangoes and prickly pears.

What I hadn’t expected was the procession of vegetables, some cooked in soups (delicately flavored with lime), others raw in salads (soaked first in desinfectants and washed with aqua purificado) , and some even juiced in the family extractor.

Trying Indigenous Foods

As for Isaac, he’d never had it so good. Hot dogs, fries, Jell-O and pancakes. Carmelina’s offerings, often prepared just for him, almost parodied American kid food. He did come to like certain indigenous foods though--Mexican chocolate, for instance, and bolillos , the crusty white rolls served warm from the bakery next door.

Health. A bout with turista seems almost a given for travelers, no matter what they eat or drink. We’d brought along an antibiotic called Bactrim, which worked miracles. We needn’t have bothered--in Mexico it’s available over the counter everywhere.

The Language. Spanish classes (from 8:30 to noon, Monday through Thursday) were small and lively. My classmates ranged from college students (the majority) to senior citizens.

We were taught to speak and understand rather than read and conjugate. Our teachers, all Poblanas, kept us posted on goings-on about town as well as the local slang.

Getting about in Spanish proved much easier than I’d anticipated. By using only a handful of key words and phrases, I found I could function. When at a loss, I’d slap an o or a on an English word, shift the accent a notch or two to the right, and hope for the best. Even Isaac got into the swing of things, though his attempts, like mine, sometimes misfired. While el carro worked, la milka didn’t.

Baby Sitters in Mexico?

Getting Out. Before we began our stay in Puebla, one particular fear had eclipsed the rest. What if there were no baby sitters? The prospect of having Isaac on my hands day and night the whole month was so demoralizing that I thought of scrapping the trip. But of all my fears, this proved the most groundless.

Mornings while I went to class, Isaac stayed with Carmelina. I could have dropped him off at the children’s activities program. But why spend the money ($80 every two weeks) when he was having so much fun at home?

As for non-school hours, day or night I found I could go out whenever I liked. There was always a grandmother or a teen-ager around to look after Isaac.

So I went to the theater ($3), to concerts ($2) and to movies (45 cents). I shopped in modern malls and potters’ studios. I had my hair done (80 cents for shampoo and blow-dry) and I sipped Monte Negro at outdoor cafes.

The freedom was intoxicating. No prearrangements, no deadlines.

But whenever I did take Isaac along, I found I felt almost as free.

“What if he gets bored this afternoon on the historical tour?” I asked Max Contrerras, our program director. “He won’t,” Max said. And he was right.

Fort With Cannons

We went to a real fort with real cannons that you could climb on, the ones Gen. Zaragoza had used on Cinco de Mayo to rout the French.

“What if he bothers the adults this weekend in Taxco?”

“What if he does?” Max shrugged. “Kids here are a part of life.”

So I took Isaac to restaurants, the kind with white tablecloths. And nobody minded when he wandered around the dining room.

I took him to a shopping mall. A woman and her son, strangers, joined us for lemonade and then drove us home. I took him to a river near Cuernavaca. Some children let him ride on their inner tube all afternoon.

I took him to Vera Cruz on the Gulf Coast. During the five-hour bus ride, teen-agers tickled him, old people patted him, a girl played damas (checkers) with him, and a woman let him climb onto her lap where he slept until we arrived.

I didn’t even need a baby sitter. Kids are a part of life in Mexico.

The address of the study abroad program I used: International Universities, 766 West 23rd St., San Pedro, Calif. 90731, phone (213) 833-9064. Outside California, (800) 547-5678.