Week 6 and Climbing!

Hope everyone has had a really good week, especially those on Spring Break. It was a pretty typical week, not quite as busy as usual so that was nice. This week is our last week of Spanish, but next week I am taking another course, in which I will be the ONLY student, so that shall be interesting but I think I’ll learn a lot, especially because I’ll be able to talk a lot. I think it might be a little bit shorter too, not to mention we can hopefully be flexible about where we meet and can be outside.

We have a really crazy week coming up, but exciting also. It’s the last week of Spanish so we have our final composition due and our final test on Wednesday. It’s also almost the last week of our history test so we have a take home essay test due for that. We’re going to a maquila on Monday, so that should be interesting. And then… on Friday… we move into our homestays.

I’m really excited about homestays, but also getting really anxious. We mostly move as a group here and even though I go off from the group and go into town every once in a while it’s going to be realllly different to be living with a family because I’ll have to be so much more independent getting around town. That’s both exciting and scary. I really hope I’m not too far from the school (and the Spanish school, which is really close to CEMAL). I’m also a little nervous about not seeing everyone very often. The social work program is living in a whole different part of the city about 45 minutes by bus away and I think my group will be a little scattered around parts of the city. I’m also worried about having down time to myself. That kind of thing is really culturally different and it’s kind of weird to spend so much time alone. I get so exhausted speaking Spanish and paying so much attention to everything around me every once in a while I really need to just shut down for a bit. I’m trying to figure out how I can take an art class in Cuernavaca a few afternoons a week, so that would be really fun.

For this second half I’ll only have one class of Spanish, so I’m really looking forward to having some free time to explore the city a little more and to paint and write. We’ve been soooo busy it’s hard to find time lately! I’m also going to go to some of the speakers that we have for the other class even though I’m not technically taking it. I can go to whichever speakers of class sessions I want, so can be really flexible if something interests me.

So anyway, I’m way ahead of myself talking about the coming weeks with out even talking about what we’ve been up to this week, week 6. Everything is going so quickly. It’s hard to believe!

Monday we had a speaker from the Cuban embassy. It was really interesting to hear about relations between Cuba and the US from the other side since what we here in the US is so biased of course… It was really hard to understand him though because he spoke Spanish with a Cuban accent which made it seem like he was mumbling at the end of each phrase. He mostly told us about how successful Cuba (and Castro!) have been at a few things, specifically education and healthcare. All education, through college even, and all health care is completely free, so that is doing wonders for social advancement because people have that. The healthcare is also free for anyone in South America, so lots of people travel to Cuba because they can’t afford care where they are, but it’s free for them in Cuba. He also emphasized how they can survive just fine with out US trade, it is just much more expensive and difficult because they have to trade with places much further away. The extra burden is putting a lot of people in poverty and desperation so that they cannot sustain themselves and must look for work elsewhere, like the U.S. He said the US embargo is unfair and unreasonable and the US is not doing so much based on values as controlling trade and keeping themselves in power. The US actually does do some trade with Cuba, but only certain things are sold to them and the US does not buy anything from Cuba, which increases imports disproportionately with exports, which is basically bad for the economy.

That was very interesting and what was ever crazier was that Chris showed us an article that night about the speaker we had being in trouble for beating up some protestors in Washington DC who were protesting the return of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba. It was unclear whether he specifically was directly involved, but he was with the group of Cuban diplomats that did. They were all covered under diplomatic immunity though, so were never charged. It seems kind of ridiculous that they couldn’t be charged, but it makes sense because it protects diplomats from being arrested for doing nothing, just because they are diplomats in sketchy government operations. I was surprised I hadn’t heard about it in the US though, seems like something they would jump on.
Thursday we went to the “IFE”- the Insituto de Federal Electoral, which is the supposedly independent, unbiased organization that runs all of the elections on every level, from local to federal presidential elections. There’s been so much fraud, especially when the president appointed who the election organizer would be, that it was VERY necessary for this organization, independent of the governing party, to be founded. I was excited about this because there were a lot of allegations that there were fraud in this past election that had a very small differential between the two candidates, Obrador and Calderon. They told us all about how they register people to vote and how they monitor the elections through the whole process so there is no fraud. A representative from each party (there are eight even though there’s only three that are really competitive) is involved at every level of the elections to insure that everything is fair, they are directly responsible for seeing everything through so can’t accuse the commission later. We asked them whether they thought there was fraud in the last election. I was expecting them to deny it, but they actually admitted that the system still had flaws and it was possible, and with such a close election it wouldn’t have taken much.

Friday we talked to a woman named Cherie White who had had some amazing experiences throughout Latin America. She was born in Chile, grew up in Cuba during the revolution and was there when Fidel took over, then to the US, then back to Chile after she finished grad school and now she lives in Mexico! She told us stories about Fidel marching through her town after he won the elections and how happy people were because the dictator before made life very miserable for many people and had a very violent regime. She was in Chile and was accused of being a Communist by the government and witnessed some of the military regime there, though luckily not directly. She had some really great stories and was really good to hear a personal story from all the events and dates we had been reading though in books.

And the week was over… phew!

Betsy and I went to La Maga which is a very small, fun little bar on Friday night. They had live music which was really good so we stayed there for a while then came home.

On Saturday I went climbing! Outside… and guess where? Mexico City.. the largest city in the world and we went outdoor rock climbing. We took the bus to Mexico City, which takes a little over an hour and a half, then a bus for a while, then two metro trains. We met one of his friends before the bus and another right after. It was really neat because I’d heard a lot about the public transportation in Mexico, but hadn’t taken any when we were there. It was so incredibly crowded, like rush hour in Boston. Then Chris told me, this is not crowded at all. We got picked up by another climber friend of Chris and drove not to far to the park we would be climbing in. It was great, it was almost like it was put there for climbers. I was a little nervous about the ratings because the lowest was a 9, but the ratings here are a little bit higher than those in the us, about one grade so an 8 at home is a 9 here. I was fine, though it certainly took a little work to get up. It rained a little which was unfortunate because it hasn’t rained in a month and of course, the one day I get to go climbing outside it rains during the day (which is unusual, especially this time of year). We took cover for a bit and then climbed some more, and then it rained some more. I tried to lead a route (a yoyo in Spanish), but it got too slippery when I was about half way up and I got scared. I did it after on a top rope though.

After climbing and speaking Spanish all day, I was exhausted. We all drove back to Cuernavaca, got some dinner at a taco place and went to the movies at cine morelos (which was free for us girls since it’s women’s week). The movie was Whale Rider which I think is one of my new favorite movies. I was teary most of the time, it’s really sad, but really good. I highly recommend it. It was strange after being in Spanish mood all day because the movie was in English with Spanish subtitles. The English was a little hard to understand because it’s based in New Zealand and I couldn’t help but read the subtitles, so my mind was in a bit of a scramble translating all sorts of things. It’s really weird when English sounds more foreign than Spanish, but I guess that’s a good things also.

After that it was to bed and up early for a lazy Sunday of procrastinating homework. And that is week 6!

On to week 7 soon… Wow, time is flying. Soon we’ll be half way through.

Michoacan- Butterflies and an Ejido!

This week was a lot like last week, but also really different. We had class all week (Spanish in the morning and history or a lecture in the afternoons) as usual and then went away realllly early on Friday morning to Michoacan, which is another state in Mexico to the North West of Cuernavaca.

We had two really interesting lectures. The first was about the current Zapatista movement, which is mainly taking place in Oaxaca. It is a group of mainly indigenous people that are fighting for the right to govern their own lands, not to actually separate from Mexico, but to be in control of their children’s education, their healthcare, community resources etc instead of the Mexican government. The government has not/ does not take the individual needs of the people into account, especially of the indigenous people that have been pretty much pushed out of society, or at least the indigenous “part” of people because almost everyone is mestizo, meaning they have both indigenous and Spanish ancestry. It’s something we don’t hear a lot about in the U.S, but is a huge movement in Mexico right now. When we do hear about it in the U.S, my experience has been that it gets portrayed as a guerilla terrorist group when actually they believe in more peaceful actions.

The second speakers talked about the state of gender roles in Mexico today, specifically address machismo and marianismo which are the presiding gender roles. Machismo is… macho… just what you would imagine and holds very strong in Mexico today. Marianismo puts women in subservient, care taking and virgin like roles, following after the Virgin Mary. Religion is very important and has a huge influence on many areas of life here.

We also had a really interesting lab group discussion about how men treat women who are strangers to them here. It’s a little different that the U.S because it’s more part of the cultural and therefore a little more expected/accepted. It’s pretty much impossible to walk down the street with out getting whistled at and have men say something. We’ve heard all sorts of funny things and have racked up quite a few marriage proposals as well. At first I think we were all a little offended by most of it, but we’re getting used to it. We’ve talked to a few Mexican women about this and also women who have lived here for a long time. It seems there’s an important distinction to make. One is called “piropo” which is more of a complement. It usually has sexual undertones but it’s not gross or offensive. For the most part, these are accepted by women who have lived here a long time. The other is basically sexual harassment which is when guys says something just nasty and violating. More and more women are encouraging each other to speak back to these sorts of comments which starts making a difference and giving that power back to the women. It was good to talk about it as it’s certainly something (both kinds) that we’ve all had to put up with here. We also got into a discussion about home and when guys “protect” girls that guys say nasty things too. We were somewhat divided on whether that was productive. On one hand it takes even more power away from the woman, on the other, the guys saying that it’s not cool is undercutting that system and can have an effect on the guy that said something. Not sure where I stand on that one… I think it really depends on the situation because I can see both.

It’s really strange here because there’s this very rigid sort of “gentleman” expectation where guys have to open car doors and close car doors and women never carry anything and things like that, for every girl too, not just for girlfriends. It’s kind of patronizing and I’m kind of torn between saying, “I can do it myself,” and accepting that as a cultural difference that I have to get used to. It’s a tricky balance. I almost slammed a guys fingers in the car door the other day because I closed it… Either way it’s hard to get used to.

So Friday morning we woke up super early to be ready to leave at 7 am for Michoacan, a state NE of D.F . It was a five or six hour drive.. bleh. We had to pick up a woman named Friné Lopez who organized the whole weekend trip for us. She is a great women who works a lot with rural development. We finally got there around one-thirty and settled in a little and had some lunch. We stayed at a little rustic hotel in Senguio, which is a really small beautiful town that reminded me of Huitzilac a little bit. After lunch we went to an ejido called El Calobozo, which is a shared kind of co-op sort of farm. I talked a little bit about it before. One of the farmers of the land, who had been the head of the ejido also, showed us around his farm and talked a little about how it worked. It was really interesting and beautiful.

After that we went to meet a group of women that were doing all sorts of little projects to bring income into their families and sustain the community. They had a group that did silk screening, one that made jewelry, one that sold organic vegetables and one that worked with making sure there was enough clean water to sustain the community. When we first got out of the car a very old woman kept touching Natalie and asking her for her shoes, her shirt and everything, but then we finally went inside to hear all the groups speak.

The next morning Betsy and I woke up a bit early to go for a short walk with Friné before breakfast. We walked up past an old church and into the mountains a bit and then came back. After b-fast we drove about an hour and a half to the butterfly sanctuary which was just incredible. The whole time I felt like I was dreaming.

When we arrived there were all these little kids running along the car asking if we wanted a guide or someone to watch our car while we were gone. Then a bunch of women came over and were asking us if we were hungry and telling us about their food stand and all the kinds of food they sold. Then we started our hike which ended up being about two hours each way. It was really dirty and dusty because some people could rent horses to walk down and since it’s been so dry, they horses just kick up all the dirt. We could feel it in our noses and it was in our teeth and just about everywhere. When we blew our noses afterwards it was all dirty and grossss.

When we first started walking we saw a bunch of butterflies fluttering all around and it was dreamy enough, but as we walked further and further there were just more and more even though we kept not being able to imagine anymore. It was like a fall say when it’s really windy and all the leaves are twirling off the tress constantly… it was like that, but butterflies instead of trees. I never imagined there could be so many in one place. I kept expected to wake up and have to go, realizing it was all a dream. When we got to our final spot it was where all the butterflies were hibernating and the whole tree looking like it was covered in orange flowers, but it was all butterflies. I put pictures on facebook, but they really don’t do what it was like justice. Any part where it looks like your computer screen is messed up or my lens was dirty.. that’s a butterfly. Imagine more butterflies than you could ever imagine!

Every year they migrate to this forest because they especially like the kind of tree that is there. There’s some other areas in other places they also go to, but where we were is the biggest one. It takes four generations to complete the migration from way down here all the way over different parts of the U.S and up into Canada. They’re mostly only in Mexico from November to March when they come to reproduce and hibernate.

When we got back from our hike everyone was a little cranky from being dirty and tired, but we sat down for lunch at a very rustic little restaurant and a few of the women who each own smaller restaurants worked together to prepare all the food for us, which was mostly different types of quesadillas and sopes (which are like thick tortillas which an edge, topped with salsa, beans, salsa, cheese and cilantro).

After that it was back in the car for the long ride home…

Saturday night I went out with Katie, Katie and Kate (that’s not a joke) to a Mexican friend of their’s really gorgeous house in a suburb of Cuernavaca. It had a gorgeous view of the lights of the city and we hang out for a while… I got to practice my Spanish for sure which is always fun.

And it is today! This week won’t be as exciting because we don’t have a weekend trip planned, but a few of us might take a little day trip, maybe to Taxco or somewhere else. Well… I think I’ve written enough and I’ve got homework to do. Have a good week everyone (especially everyone on Spring break! )

D.F- Mexico City

So… I haven’t written in a week… again. There’s just too much to do around here! It’s super exhausting, but in an amazing sort of way. Last week really drained me because there was so much going on. It got to a point I really just needed some time to myself alone. I’m having a good time with everyone here, but I realized I hadn’t been alone in almost a month so it was needed…

Anyway, we had classes Mon-Thurs as usual… pretty typical stuff. I had to miss class on Monday though because Anna and I had to go to immigration to get our visas renewed earlier than everyone else because when I asked for 180 days on my visa the guy gave me 30 instead of the normal 90 like everyone else got. It was a lot of waiting, a lot of paperwork and a lot of just running around. Everyone else will have to go soon anyway though, so its nto really a big deal… probably easier actually because then there was only two of us instead of the humungo group.

Monday afternoon we had a really great speaker about US intervention in Latin America. He started his talk with Sept. 11 was a very important and sad day. And America was entirely responsible for what happened on that day… Of course we were all thinking of the twin tours, but he was actually talking about a US financed and organized (proven be declassified documents) coup in 1973 of a Chilean democratically elected leader to put in place a dictator that ended up being one of the most opressive dictators of all of Latin America. The US wanted this leader because the current leader was implementing nationalist policies that would affect a huge US copper mining company… lovely huh?

It was hard to listen to all the things that the US has done, completely dominating weaker countries. It made me feel guilty and helpless. It was also hard ot hear about things that have happened concerning our government that I’ve never heard of in the least bit. In class that week we also watched a movie about the School of the Americas (which is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). It was all from the point of view of veterans who were coming from information within the military. So basically at this school they train scoldiers from other governements. Right now they label it “anti-terrorist,” but it really is training soldiers in corrupt governments to put down social movements that are taking place because people don’t have basic human rights. The amount of civiliians that graduates have killed is disgusting, most of them doing humanitarian work! So.. that was really depressing and I was almost crying. Its all to keep the US in power over the whole hemisphere…. read more here: http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8 “Consistently the countries with the worst human rights records have sent the most students to the SOA during the peaks of repression.”

So, on a more upbeat note… On Thursday we took off for Mexico City right after Spanish was over. I was a little bit terrified of Mexico City because… it’s only the biggest city in the world, and I’d read a lot about how dangerous it is. Nothing happened to anyone the whole time we were there, though I’d say there were definitely times I felt a bit sketched out.

The first thing we did when we got there was to have a talk with Patria Jimenez who was Mexico’s first openly lesbian congresswoman. She talked about the GLBT movement in Mexico which is pretty similar to that of the United States, except there is less freedom in most rural areas of Mexico when gender expectations are especially strong. We were in a neighberhood of Mexico city called Cayoacan that used to be its own city, but got absorbed my Mexico City’s expansion. We wandered around for a while afterwards and went to the Frida Kahlo museum which is her house. It was really neat.

We stayed in a really nice hostel right in the historic zocalo (center) of Mexico City, behing the main cathedral. The first night we set out on a mission to find some reggae bar called roots that Ashely had been to the last time she was in Mexico City. We walked around for a bit and couldn’t find it, but it was a nice walk. The historic area is so beautiful. It reminded me of Rome a little bit (pictures on webshots soon).

The next day we talked with a woman about the feminist movement in Mexico. It was also really interesting to see the parallels there with the US and hearing how the movement is in conjunction with many of the other Latin American countries.

Then we walked around Mexico’s largest public University- UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonomous de Mexico). It’s HUGE. It has 250,000 students and tutition is FREE (though it’s really hard to get in). It’s the center of a lot of the liberal thinking and social movements in Mexico. We went to this strange circle that showed all the volcanic rick that the school is built on and it has these strange cement triangle around the perimeter. I can’t explain it very well, but there’s a picture on facebook.

In the afternoon we talked with two young women that are part of an organization called Catholics for free choice. It was really interesting to hear how they were working for rights for young people and especially women within the bounds of rigid Catholicism. The majority of the country is Catholic. They said a lot of people have been exiled from the church though and that it is a very radical topic.

That night we went to the bar on top of the roof of our hostel. It was gorgeous, though a little disturbing to see how huggge Mexico city is. In every direction is just sprawled out as far as I could see. Then we went to the sketchiest place I have ever been. We found that reggae bar… it was like behind a cillard club through a little ally. It was very very creepy. When we got there everyone was smoking pot and this really sketchy group of guys kept trying to get close to us. It wasn’t crowded at all and we’d just move away, but they wouldn’t get the hint at all. There was also pretty much porn playing on a big screen in the front. It was scary so we only stayed a little while.. good music but super creepy place, not fun at all. So we went to bed…

The next day we took a tour of the National Palace, which is more of a symbolic, tourist spot then an actual government function building, though some still goes on there. We got a tour and got to see the huge Diego Rivera mural of Mexican history. Pictures on webshots… It was grogeous and then we just had time to explore around Mexico City which is gorgeous, but so so crowded. We wandered around and went to the art museum which was also really interesting, then back to Cuernavaca….

I relaxed a little in Cuernavaca and just bummed around listening to music. This was the point I really needed time to myself, so it was nice to be home.

That night I went out with a few of the girls here and a bunch of Mexican guys they have been hanging out. The first bar we went to wasn’t letting anyone in even though it was pretty much empty. So we went to another place called Red Blue Lounge which was really fun. It was like a big blacony and it had all these beds around with lots of pillows to sit on. We hung out, talked a bunch and danced a little. It was fun to speak Spanish so much. I think I’m better when I’ve had a drink…

Sunday I surprisingly woke up to go hiking despite being out until past 2. I was glad I did though. We went to Zempoala (the same place we rode horses for the first time). It was really gorgeous and I felt so free being outside.

So, that was my week!

Pie de La Cuesta

So… I haven’t written in a while! Last week was pretty mellow, just a lot of class and stuff like that. I went into town with Kate and Katie one afternoon and we did a little bit of shopping and went out for a drink, so that was really nice. It’s always nice to get out of the house for a little bit. It’s really fun to be in a big group, but can also be overwhelming.

We started our Spanish classes last Monday. They’re all going really well. My teacher’s name is Elia and she is really nice and funny. There’s only five of us in my class so it makes it much easier to learn than like in the huge Spanish classes that I’ve had before in school. It’s mostly conversation based which is good too, thought I hope my writing doesn’t get too behind. The class is three 50-minute sessions (10 min breaks in between) four days a week. It’s about 2/3 just having conversations, so it’s like chit chat time. My Spanish has certainly gotten way better since I’ve been here. I think a lot of it has to do with confidence and it’s really been a lot of fun since I started feeling brace enough to speak (which was surprisingly quick!) I’m really excited for my homestay because I feel like my Spanish will reallllly improve then.

Oh yeah… I learned something fun in Spanish the other day! We learn a lot about Mexican culture in our conversations.

The only other exciting thing that happened during the week last week was that we went out for Jessie’s 21st birthday on Thursday. It’s not as big a deal here because we can all already drink, but it was a good time. It started out with just like seven of us at Los Arcos, which I’ve talked about before. Then almost everyone in the program came and we took up three tables and everyone was looking at us funny, but it was a good time…

On Friday morning we had a lecture about the Virgin of Guadeloupe and then Betsy, Jessie and I took off for a beach called Pie de La Cuesta (Foot of the Hill), which is just a little bit North of Acapulco! After a week of more school like activities we were certainly ready for a break/ an adventure.

I learned a lot about buses also… mostly that they do fill up so you have to be really early or by tickets ahead of time. We ended up spending more than two hours at the bus station waiting for the bus. We finally got on the bus for a long ride at 4:30. The trip takes like 4.5 hours. We drove through some gorgeous mountains and saw the sun set over them which was so beautiful. There was almost nothing for a long time, just kind of dry, arid mountains, some low shrubbery and lots of cactuses… huggge cacti.

We stopped a few times on the way there and finally got there a little after 9. The bus actually goes to Acapulco and then we had to get a taxi to take us to Pie de La Cuesta, which is about a half hour ride. While we were waiting in the bus station we called the hotel and made a reservation so everything was pretty much all set when we finally got into Pie de La Cuesta. Our hotel was called Cabanas Maria Christie and was run by a nice man named Enrique who spoke a fair amount of English. We were starving, having not eaten since lunch time. He sent us to a restaurant just a bit down called Coyuca 2000. It was good food and Betsy and I had really good enormous drinks we were a bit tipsy after.

We called it a night and went to bed to the sound of crashing waves and the smell of sea salt which made me extremely happy.

When I woke up in the morning I was nervous that it was cloudy, but actually the sun hadn’t come up over the mountains on the other side quite yet. The sky was perfectly blue, with not one single cloud. We went right out to the beach to lie in the sun and play in the huge waves. After a little breakfast we brought from the little store next door we went for a walk down the beach to a shipwreck of a whale watch kind of type of boat. It was really cool because when there was an especially big boat it would wash through the deck and come flying out the other side. We lounged for a little longer on the beach and in hammocks that were right out in front of our room under a little cabana. The waves were huge and there’s a really dangerous under toe so we didn’t really go swimming, just a lot of playing in the waves.

There’s also a really gorgeous lagoon on the other side with lots of islands and bird life, but we didn’t really have time to explore both so we spent most of our time on the ocean. We’ll just have to go back to explore the lagoon…

After lunch Betsy and I went horseback riding on the beach. for the first half we just walked down the beach on the horses for a little bit, maybe a little bit of trotting. Then one of the guys we rented the horses from came on my horse with me to make it go really fast. We went so fast, it was such a rush and so scary! The horse was really runnnnning on the beach. It was so fun.

More lounging until dinner, a little homework and bed with the waves again!

The next day was pretty much the same… lots of lounging and walking on the beach. We headed back to the bus station at one for a 2:40 bus we had already bought tickets for (we learned our lesson after going there). This time we got the “plus” bus which is a lot nicer and also doesn’t make any stops along the way so takes a little less time. We were in the front row and I spent the whole time trying to figure out what the signals the bus drivers were giving the other passing buses were. He would wave in several different ways or wave a piece of paper. Needless to say… I never figured it out.

So that was my last week! I hear there’s lots of snow up North, it’s so strange to think about. Whenever I think about home it’s like the weather here… like mid June, but I guess that’s quite wrong… Whenever I sign onto the e-mail the Clark webcam shows me how snowy it is up there. Hope all is well with everyone! Let me know how you are!

La Boda (Wedding)

So last weekend I went to a crazy wedding in Amatlan, the second town that we had homestays in. After I had been there for like three hours the family asked what I was doing and said to come because it would be a lot of fun with “mucho baila, comida mexicana, musica and cerveza!” (dancing, Mexican food, music, beer). They said to bring a friend so I invited Betsy.

We set of on the bus for Tepotzlan, a town a little bigger near Amatlan earlyish in the morning. From Tepotzlan we got on a little bus called a “kombe” which is like a van mixed with a bus because it looks like a van and is the same size, but it has seats around the edges like a bus, handles and a sliding door that connects to a lever by the driver like a bus. It was about a fifteen minute ride.

I had called the family we were going to be staying with (which was also my host family) the night before, and I think I left a message, but I wasn’t exactly sure. It was a little awkward to just walk up and say “we’re here!,” but a lot less awkward than you would think because the “mi es su case” truly applies every place that I’ve been. They are very welcoming and everyone goes in and out of their friend’s and family’s homes with out announcement.

We had a little breakfast, of course, with the families all we do is eat! Then we went with our host mom back to Tepotzlan in a kombe again with bags filled up high with orange peel boxes, decorated with dried flower petals and with candles inside. We went to a few little stores or stands and she sold her boxes to the vendors who would then sell them to the tourists. In only about half an hour, she sold probably about 30 or 40 boxes, so it was neat to see her business in action.

After we returned back to Amatlan on the kombe we heard lots of music. They asked if we wanted to go see and we went out. First the band, which was made up of nine men playing all sorts of brass instruments and drums played behind the groom and his whole family walking to the church. We somehow ended up walking with them, which seemed fine though we felt a bit awkward at first. Then we did the same with the bride, who was dressed in a crisp white dress with a long train that two adorable little kids carried. Most of the men were wearing cowboy dress up attire (creased wrangler pants, button up shirts and crisp hats). Only a few other people were dressed up and then almost everyone else was just wearing day clothes.

We didn’t stay for the mass since it is a very tiny little church and we already felt like outsiders enough. I have never really felt tall, but many of the people of Amatlan are quite a bit shorter than me, and then that included with being a gringa and Betsy (who is quite a bit taller than me) sure did stand out!

Back at the party spot a lot of the women from town were working away making beans, meat, rice and of course fresh tortillas for the party. There were two cooking stations set up. They had probably been cooking since about 8 or 9. We got there around 12:30.

The groom’s house, where the party was at, is a very modest cinder block house with just two rooms and a non-flushing toilet out to the side, but it had sure been set up for a party! There were 6 or 7 tarps of different sizes and colors patch worked to form a large pavilion, lots of sort of tacky “nuestro boda” and “mi baptismo” (it was also a baptism) decorations which had pictures that looked like they had been cut out of wedding dress catalogs. Lots of pink and frills. There was also these beautiful garlands of flowers and pin wheels hand made out of paper that spun in the wind. There were a bunch of long tables set up all over. When anyone can bring guests you can imagine how hard it is to plan!

After a little while we heard the music again and the bride and groom came up, followed by everyone who was at the mass. Everyone sat down and ate the food that many of the women had been working for all day. They also brought in two ginormous 4-tier cakes, one for the wedding and one a little smaller for the baptism. Everyone was talking and drinking… lots of beer and tequila of course. I thought that was a stereotype that Mexicans drink a lot of Corona and tequila, but it is pretty true… lots of Victoria beer though, but that’s made by the same company as Corona and tastes pretty similar… just a little darker and heavier.

We met two little kids, Armarosa and Vincente, who Betsy had met during her homestay in Amatlan. They became our guides and entertainers for the afternoon, which was really nice because we felt a bit awkward and our host family was busy conversing and cooking. They were so cute, bringing us chairs, telling us what is appropriate to do at a certain time, getting us drinks and teaching us Spanish. Eventually it started raining and we were getting a little wet, so Vincente sent us under a little overhang and then dried off our chairs when it stopped. I taught him how to make a paper crane out of a paper napkin, which he seemed to really enjoy. After a while of paper cranes and some magic tricks, they said that there was going to be bull riding!

Vincente brought us chairs right in front of a fenced in circle that had one tiny corral on one side with a big gate and then a larger corral filled with bulls on the other side. They put one bull in the little pen and got him all ready to ride (putting a rope for the rider to hold on, covers on the horns and basically making him really mad). Well that was going on, a, interesting dance started up back under the tarps (which was about 20 feet from the bull pen). At first there was just a man dancing with a live turkey on his head, but then everyone else started joining in by picking up a piece of food, a drink or a beer (or case of beer in some cases). They all danced around in a circle in sync with the music (that was being played by the same nine-man band). Arma and Vincente dragged us in and gave us drinks to dance around with which was really fun though a bit strange because we weren’t sure why. We asked one of our teachers who lives there later and she said it is a giving of dowry to the wife and her family.

So then we were back to the bull riding. It was a little strange because someone would get on a bull, do the cowboy bull riding thing well it bucked it’s way across the pen (about 10 feet) and then the bull put its front legs down and but up in the air. Then the cowboy got up and they dragged the bull in the big pen and got a new bull to ride, which once again did the same thing which took about a minute and a half. There was only one I saw that went a little longer, running in a circle. That went on until they went through all the bulls. Betsy and I suspected that it was B.Y.O.B- Bring Your Own Bull.

We spent some more time just hanging out, the band was playing the whole time and a new band set up on a big stage that had speakers stacked all over like a huge concert. Once the next band started playing lots of people started salsa dancing. They moved a bunch of tables out of the way to make a big dirt dance floor. At first we just kind of watched. I really like dancing here, which is funny because I don’t at all at home. It’s really different dancing and I also don’t mind so much making a fool of myself because I just blame it on being American. I like it, but I must say that I am a TERRIBLE dancer. I think they laugh at us!

I danced with my host father once and then from then on I was dancing almost every dance! Betsy was too! We just kept being asked which actually got quite annoying. As the night went on people got drunker and drunker. We drank a tad, but not much at all. There were some older men that had to be hobbled out hanging on other people’s shoulders because they couldn’t walk. It was crazy. There was one guy who really creeped me out because he kept asking me to dance and wouldn’t take no or I need a break for an answer. When we were dancing I could barley hear but he kept testing my Spanish and at one point said, “Do you understand the word “amor”(love)? So now you know why I didn’t want to dance with him anymore. I sat down and Vincente said, “love at first site!” They all thought it was funny and supported be “no.” My host father finally came up and took me to dance while the other guy was asking, so that was a relief. After that I danced with my host brother for a while and then the guy came back and he said something to him and the guy left. It was nice feeling protected like that by people I wasn’t even really close yet. Everyone certainly watches out for each other in all situations.

We danced and danced and danced, which was fun… I was getting so tired but every time I tried to sit down for a little rest I would get pulled out of my chair for more dancing. At one point there was a big fight which was a tad bit scary because I saw one of the guys almost get strangled. It seemed to be between the bride’s family (her brothers) and some guys from Amatlan. It was a full out fist fight brawl. The band singer kept saying “Have respect. Please for the family, have respect.” Eventually they all got pulled apart by others around and it all calmed down. I think most of them left. The bride was from Santa Cruz and the groom from Amatlan so we were wondering if there was some rift between the two regions. We asked one of our professors and he said people from Santa Cruz have a reputation for using bad language and being more sexually loose, but he didn’t think anything beyond that.

Eventually Betsy and I couldn’t dance anymore, nor hear much because the music was so loud! We told out host family we were very tired and needed to go to bed. Then we waited around for a while because nothing moves very quick in Mexico, which is nice. Of course waiting meant more dancing… Eventually, after saying bye to everyone we finally walked back home more exhausted than I think I’ve ever been. That was at midnight! So we were at the party for just about 12 hours.

Our house wasn’t far from the party and we heard the music at a volume I would listen to it to dance to there! We also had the first band staying in the room next to us, so they were quite loud. But none of that mattered because we were fasssst asleep…

The next morning we had a little breakfast of hot milk and pan dulce (sweet bread), then they said we were going to “almorzar” which is the big breakfast meal- there’s four meals usually, a small desayuno early, a big almorzar at about 10, comida at 2 which is the biggest and then cena at around 8 or so. So right after a little desayuno we went back to where the party was to eat some more… leftovers! Betsy and I shared a plate which was already too much food.

We said our goodbyes before heading off to Tepotzlan for a little bit of shopping. One of our host brothers decided to come with us to show us around and hang out a bit (he’s the one who is going back to LA soon). It was really nice and we just walked around for a while before taking the bus back to Amatlan.

Rural Homestay Week

Disclaimer: I’ve been away from computers all week and experiencing some pretty amazing stuff, so…. this is undoubtly going to be a very long blog. I’m also exhausted and therefore in a slightly strange and goofy mood. I’m going to start writing tonight, but probably won’t finish. I’ll split it up into sections according to where we were… for your viewing pleasure of course! (and my writing)

I am going to once again affirm my love for this program and tell you how much I’m learning and thinking so I don’t have to say it about everything we did this week, because it was absolutely amazing…

So on Saturday morning we set out with Anne, the director of the programs here to Cortes’ palace which is in downtown Cuernavaca. The museum has a bunch of different things, but we were mainly there to see Diego Rivera’s mural which depicts the conquest and a little bit of the Mexican revolution. It’s a beautiful mural and gives a really great sense of the progression of the conquest and then a small part of the revolution of 1910.

HUITZILAC

After that we set off in the vans for Huitzilac, a small rural town with indigenous routes up in the mountains in the pass in between Mexico City and Cuernavaca. We were up at around 10,000 feet so it was a bit chilly, but very very beautiful. We first spoke to an elder of the village who told us the story of how Huitzilac was named (it means hummingbird). It was a really interesting story so I’ll get it up if I get a chance to type it up. He was a very cute and wise old man who also spoke to us about the concept of history. He has written two books where he goes to the source of the history, oral tradition or direct experience, and writes his books off of that history.

After that talk we went to the community center where we were to meet up with the host families we would be staying with for two nights. I was really nervous about my Spanish, the food, what my family would be like, their house and everything else, especially when we all got there and everyone was standing around awkwardly. The concept of time is much more relaxed here so not much starts right on time. It’s kind of nice though.

It ended up that I, and another girl in my program, Natalie were staying with the brother of the man we spoke with earlier in the afternoon. He was a very nice older man, but Natalie and I got very nervous when he didn’t know how long we were staying or what the disinfectant for fruits and veggies was for. He took us back to his house, which was pretty modest, but very comfortable. We all sat around the table for a while in silence which was very awkward. It was very hard for both Natalie and I to understand his Spanish so it was hard to carry on a conversation.

He never married and we were worried the whole two days was going to be like this. A little bit later his niece came home though and she lives in the same house with him with her family to take care of him. Her husband, 2 daughters and her grandson also lived in the same house. We were relieved when she came home and seemed to have a much better idea of what was going on. It was hard to understand her also, but not as difficult as before and she was very welcoming and friendly towards us. She made us dinner which were like deep fried quesadillas. They were really good, but it was a little bit of a guessing game because they all had different fillings in them. We talked a little more before Natalie and I were exhausted and retreated into our room at 8.

The next day we had a huge breakfast of tamales dulce (every meal was huge)and a hot drink made from corn called atolé. They make different flavors of it. We first had guayaba which is a small, sweet and a bit tart fruit I really like. Tamales Dulce are some sort of grain and sugar in corn husks and cooked. They were very good, though pink and I couldn’t figure out why.

We spent the morning with a group of students from a local high school, talking to them and then hiking up a super super steep path in the biological corridor. It was all loose dirt and a really wide path because it separated the two states of Mexico and Morelos (where Cuernavaca is) and also to stop a forest fire from spreading further. It was a short, but very difficult hike up, but we were rewarded with gorgeous views on all sides. Victor spoke to us about environmental issues and then we hurried down to make it back in time for lunch with our families. I pretty much ran the whole way down in switchbacks because if you tried to go slow it was like surfing in dirt and your shoes would fill with first.

COCK FIGHT

We had lunch with our families. Natalie and I went to a barbeque of lamb at Don Delfino’s house (the brother of our host), which was really delicious. After that our host mother was asking if we wanted to go somewhere and saying “muerto,” which I new meant death, “gallo,” which I didn’t know and “hijo,” which meant son. So we were very confused but nodded our heads in agreement anyway (we got really good at this). So we walk up and it’s like we’re walking into someone’s backyard and there are these two girls that say “15 pesos,” but my host mother said something really quick and we just went in. This is where the real shock was. There were mostly men, maybe a few women, all huddled around a large pen fenced in with wood. Inside the pen two men were pressing roosters faces together in the middle of the pen. One of the men was our host mother’s son. It was a really interesting atmosphere, everyone was very excited and eating and drinking and to the left there was a guy counting out money, and to the right a man announcing things threw a microphone. It was really crowded and Natalie and I sure stood out, being one of few women and also the only gringas.

The roosters (gallos!) wear these hooks around their legs and then they jump all over each other. It was really sad because they get really bloody from poking each other with the hooks. Everyone was cheering and I was trying really hard not to cringe and be that American who didn’t understand. We’ve talked a lot about being culturally relative and sensitive, but it’s hard to think about that in relation to something like animal cruelty.

Anyway, if one of the roosters gets too close to the other one’s neck then they separate them because if they get stabbed in the neck then they die right away. It’s like rounds in wrestling and in between one I saw them take a capful of Gatorade and poor it on the rooster’s head! Then they have it some to drink, which I thought was really hilarious. We asked about it later and they said, oh, it needs electrolytes. So I think Gatorade has a new commercial… Eventually the other rooster could no longer be made to stand up so they pronounced the son of my host mother the winner. He won a portion of the money that people had bet on his rooster winning. Before each rooster fight, the men show of their roosters and try to get everyone to bet on them. The next fight, the rooster’s neck got stepped on and it died right away, which was really bloody… then we left.

In the afternoon we had a lecture about environment from someone from the municipal government of the town. There’s basically two governments, the municipal which is what we would typically consider government and is more formal and then the communales, which is a group of leadership from the community that has been around for way longer than the formal government has. There is definitely a bit of a power struggle and tension between the two.

That night was better with the family because they both opened up more and it was quieter so we had more of a chance to just sit around and talk. After dinner we had quite an interesting shower experience. It was pouring rain, but we needed to go to her father’s house (Don Delfino’s) to take a shower because they didn’t have running water. The houses are neighbors.. kind of. Usually to get from on the other you need to walk around the block, but since it was raining we took a short cut… kind of. We went up stairs in the house and then out on the roof, across the roof, down a ladder, through a backyard and workshop and then finally into the house for a nice hot shower.

The next day we all loaded up into the back of a truck with a few of the students from the day before and a bunch of tools to do some community service project with the communales (the other sector of gov). We went higher up into the mountains where it was freeeezing. There was even ice on the ground!! All of the men we worked with were men that use the land, to farm, harvesting dirt, or in other ways so they have to work to give back to it in order to get a permit they need to use the land. Each has a certain amount of area they have to maintain each week, by digging fire trenches and planting trees. We dug out a wide path so if a fire starts, it won’t got far. It was really hard work, but interesting to hear from all the men and so beautiful.

We finished quicker than expected so went to this holy place with lakes in the mountains for a little bit, just to hang out. It was really cheap to ride horses so a bunch of us all went for a ride on paths around in the mountains for about forty-five minutes. It was so beautiful and I’d never really ridden a horse before! Only ponies…

Then we had a community lunch because it was the opening of a new community center/ theater of the communales. There was lots of live music and good food and almost the whole town came out. And lots of tequila of course… A priest also blessed the area with holy water.

AMATLAN

And then we were off to Amatlan which I think is probably my favorite place that we have been yet. It’s a little bit lower, but still in the mountains and really really beautiful, with reddish rocks kind of like the South West towering up from all the mountains that surround the small town. It’s a really gorgeous and supposedly sacred healing place. There aren’t really pictures because we were told it was considered somewhat offensive to take pictures since they consider it a real “taking” of something of the land and the people who live there. I saw this play out in mixed ways though, sometimes it really seemed so and other times people would say, take a picture, take a picture. The family Natalie and I were with was really nice and their Spanish was much easier to understand. They also had a really nice house with running water, which was quite a luxury. It all seemed fairly new so I think it was partly from money from working in the states. It was a woman named Lucina, her husband Antonio and her two son. Antonio had worked in Atlanta and in Canada and one of her sons had just gotten home for the Christmas season, but was about to go back to Los Angeles to work again.

Hearing stories about immigration and them walking through the desserts for three nights made it all hit really home. I knew it all happened before, but to have faces and names and stories makes me think about it all in such a different way.

We went to a party for a holiday that was that day at our host mother’s sister’s house. There was great live music, good food and it just a really great atmosphere. We stayed up pretty late talking with them about all different things. I felt much more at home there, which was a relief because I was so exhausted from the homestay before. Speaking Spanish either way is really tiring though, so we couldn’t stay up to late and were off to bed soon.

After I had been there for about three hours they started asking us what we were doing on Saturday. Natalie was going to Acapulco, but I wasn’t doing anything so I got invited to a wedding on Saturday. The culture here is very different. It’s only rude to bring uninvited guests if you bring more than five or so, other than that everyone just plans for a ton of people.

In the morning we talked with this man Nacho about indigenous rights and other issues facing the town, which was very interesting. Then we went to the fields on a women named Dona Irene who is very old and never married, but still plants her lands each year. After that we hiked up to the sacred spot in the mountains where two rocks meet. Nacho led us in a ceremony that was suppose to allow up to absorb all of the good energy of nature. I could really feel the tingling in my arms, it was so strange, comforting and relaxing all at the same time.

That night our host mother shower us how she makes money, which is by making boxes out of dried orange peels. They were beautiful, decorated with dried flowers. I painted a little bit, which they seemed interested in and then we talked about all different animals and I drew a few things to give her ideas for her boxes.

HACIENDA

We didn’t have much time in the morning, just enough to say goodbye and have breakfast (which is actually a huge meal) before setting off to Xoxicalco, which is an important archaeological site further South. It was beautiful and really impressive, especially the parts about the observatory and scientific calculations that they can’t even do today!

Then we were off to the hacienda, which was… finally… our break! The hacienda is huge and very very old. It kind of felt like something out of Disney world, like a colonial theme, but it wasn’t crowded and it was all actually realllly old. It was all built around the 1500s! After the revolution of 1910 many haciendas were sold because they were destroyed in the war and because the whole cause of the war was to take land ownership away from a small percent of the population that did not rightfully own in the first place. It was a bunch of old buildings and then behind sweeping fields of mostly sugar cane under the mountains. It was so gorgeous. We had sessions in the morning, but the afternoons were left for us to relax by the pool and do other activities. There was a climbing wall, so I got to do that a little bit which was fun.

Both mornings Betsy and I went on the most amazing run ever. I hadn’t exercised in a while, but it felt so great to run (helped it was flat too). I ran for like an hour and 15 minutes, which was probably about seven miles… and it felt so good. The sun was rising up over the mountains and everything was so beautiful.

It was nice to return back home to Cuernavaca and Casa CEMAL, which has really begun to feel like home. It was relaxing, though Betsy and I woke up early the next morning to take a bus to la boda (the wedding) in Amatlan.

Adventure to Tepotzlan

Uh oh… I have lots to say again! Katie and I have decided that it has been an excellent past twenty-four hours.

So last night all of the girls who love in my room (there are four of us all together) went out to eat for some roommate bonding time. We went to a beautiful little restaurant called “La India Bonita.” It was gorgeous, a garden all around lit by candle light. We sat out under the stars on the patio. Not only was it a beautiful setting… the food was delicious as well. We decided to try a traditional appetizer from the city of Tepotzlan because that’s where we were going to go exploring the next day. I have no idea what it was called or what was in it… but it was a really good sort of dip thing we ate with chips and tortillas. For my meal I got enchiladas con salsa verde which was also delicious. Oh yeah… and sangria!

We had made a plan to meet a few of the other girls downtown at 9 to go out for a few drinks and just hang out. The city was bustling with families and couples and a mariachi band also. All of the historic buildings get lit up so it is just beautiful and so alive at night. We went to a bar which has an inside part that is all open to a patio part that is bigger than the inside part. It’s called “Los Arcos” and is right off of the square. They had live music and a few people were dancing salsa. There were so many different kinds of people there, which was very interesting, from young kids out with their friends to families to older couples. We didn’t even know it, but we just barley caught happy hour which ended at 10. I had margaritas which were delicious. There weren’t a lot of people dancing, but a few of us danced salsa when some guys asked us. I’m not so graceful since I’ve barley done it, and am not sure I would be if I had, but they were really good about it, telling us what to do and being encouraging. Salsa is entirely led by the male, so most of it was easy, they just spin you which is so so fun and makes me feel like I’m five again. Some songs or beats have more spins than others though I can’t figure out the rhyme or reason. We all had a really good time and I got to hang out with some people in the program I hadn’t gotten very close to yet. It was great too because two of them, Aimee and Elyn decided to come hiking with us the next day!

We went to bed around one, joking the whole time about us being the old folk of the group. A bunch of the other people stay out a lot later and are just much more into the party scene than the bunch I was with. It was a good time and we laughed about it though, all of us light weights swaying a little bit while walking home. It was easy to get up earlyish this morning to start our adventure which was key!

Today is a special Mexican holiday which I can’t remember the name of, but it’s the end of the Christmas season. Everyone was going to mass today with there baby Jesus dolls that are dressed for god and then left to be blessed and then brought back home and sat up in a little chair to signify Jesus’ growing up. It is a really interesting tradition because all around town adults were carrying these little baby dolls dressed up in fancy clothes around like they were babies- in their arms of in baskets. I had to get really close most of the time to realize they weren’t real children, or in a few cases… that they were real children. Walking through the streets we saw lots of what Lisane, one of the program coordinator, calls “jesui.”

Anyway, that was what we saw both in Cuernavaca and in Tepotzlan where we went on our day trip. Tepotzlan is a city about 40 minutes from Cuernavaca by bus. We walked to the mercado (same place we did the market survey) and then somehow found the right bus. The buses that go city to city are mostly like greyhound buses, but no A/C or bathrooms. It wasn’t crowded at all, so we just hopped on. When we got to the city, the bus backed into this little alley and they told us this was it. We were going to hike up to a pyramid on top of a mountain that is now a national park. It’s a bit of a tourist destination, so we expected it to be easy to find, but there were noooo hints of it.

Eventually we asked a guy for directions. He was very nice and told us to go up two streets and take a right towards the church. We did find a beautiful old church (picture on webshots,) but is, it wasn’t at all the pyramids. The thing is… it’s culturally wrong to say no to someone, so even if you don’t know where they’re asking directions to, you just make it up to be nice. It’s hard to get used to coming from the rushed, one destination mind of home, but I’m learning to relax and go with the flow a little more.

Eventually someone told us to just walk down any street as far as you can towards the mountains. This ended up actually working and along the way we found a really nice dog friend! It was as if he knew we were a little lost and chose to guide the way. We hiked in two groups and he would stay in between the two, making sure everything was ok with everyone. There were lots of other people on the trail and he stayed with us when we took breaks (a lot of them… it was realllly steep). It was really funny. It reminded me of my boyfriend’s family’s dog, Cy who was also always a great leader when hiking.

The hike was pretty tough, but we ended up doing it in about an hour and a half. The view from the top was well worth it. The pyramid was neat, but nothing too exciting, but we could see lots of mountains around us and both cities below. It was beautiful.

On the way down there were some stairs that our dog friend was scared to go down. We decided to keep on moving because it was taking so long and we knew he would go down eventually. It was sad to leave and we all felt a little guilty. A few minutes later though, he came running down smiling… I think I want to write a children’s book about a Mexican dog that runs the town and takes people hiking to the pyramid. He was so funny, never stopping to bark at the other dogs.

We caught the bus back to Cuernavaca, walked home and had a nice relaxing afternoon because we were all exhausted.

Tomorrow we leave for a week of rural homestays (two rural homestays and then a retreat to an ex-hacienda). I’m really excited and I think I will learn a lot. I’m a little anxious, especially because they scared us about scorpions, but I think I’ll be ok…

Adios hasta Viernes!

A Short One!

Pool at Universal

So today, another short one. They’ll be short from now on I think, well except when I get back from a long trip of not writing much… thank god! It won’t take an hour to read this one (or a few hours to write!) This is good because I have homework and I’m already so exhausted!

So this morning we had another class session of the history class. We talked about the ancient civilizations of Mexico and the way its taught in schools (about as much if not less than the US) and other things like that. It was interesting and reminded me of all the archaeological sites I’ve been to in the past few years.

After that we had a little break. I laid out in the sun in the hammock studying Spanish a little. It was so beautiful and relaxing even though I was a little bit nervous for our Spanish placement test, especially the oral part. It didn’t help that Rose and Brooke were talking about how intimidating the lady could be.

Then we were off to the Spanish school which was absolutely gorgeous. Pretty much everything here is behind walls and gates which is nice because it’s like a little secret garden behind. There’s flowers everywhere and everything is so green and clean and fresh. All the classes are outside under little overhangs so it won’t be so painful to be in class on a beautiful day, which there are many of. We have class for three hours in the mornings four days a week, from 8-10:50 with a few small breaks. The school is also another hang out spot or place to go and study so that is very nice. They have a pool, a ping pong table and a racquetball court and just nice places to sit out and read. There’s even a view!

After lunch we watched a movie about feminism and then walked over to a better space for all of us to have a discussion… for three hours. It was broken up into little discussions though and was all very interesting, so it wasn’t bad.

And that is my day! I think I’m going to start writing every few says now that there isn’t so much going on and school’s started up. More soon!

Day 5, First Day of Class

Cortes' Palace

Well, today was another long day, but not quite so crazy. Classes started up so that is putting us into more of a routine and taking up blocks of time. The house is much quieter! Everyone is a little overwhelmed. It’s hard to go from our days of exploring in such a pretty sunny city to doing real work all day (well I guess we haven’t’ really found out what real work is and can’t complain. Anyway, it’s like coming back from vacation but still being in the same place! I’m sure we’ll all get into the swing of it soon enough.)

We had out first class session this morning. The class is called “Mexican History, Culture and Cosmovision.” For all those that don’t know what cosmovision is, like I didn’t, it’s the way one looks at the world. Broad enough topic for you? I have no idea how we are suppose to cover all that in I think 10 weeks. We have two 2-hr class sessions a week and 2 excursions or speakers. We have two teaches. The main one is Antonio, who seems great so far. The other’s name is Stephanie and she is really nice in a sort of comforting, mothering way also. There’s something about her voice. Then there’s also Chris, the TA. There’s eleven of us students, so it’s nice and small and even from that we break into 3 groups for discussion sometimes. We just talked about the concept of history a little today.

It was really interesting and engaging. I found myself using a lot of things I have done in classes last semester too, especially Carib. Women’s lit and Lit Theory (which was really more like life theory). It’s great to be able to make use of that stuff in a completely different context and have something to say. It made me want to take the other class which I’m not signed up for right now so I decided I’m going to audit it. It’s a small group so I feel like I’ll get left out of a lot and feel lost if I don’t take the class. All I have to do is go to class, but I think I’ll do some of the reading also though. I won’t have to do the work work though.

The rest of the day we just had some sort of workshops about how we think about things, especially about thought processes and then about community building. They try really hard to make this a really healthy, safe space and I think it is really working. We got to talk about a lot of things that people were worried about which made me feel much better. We’re just all starting to really understand each other better.

Then Betsy, the Katie who doesn’t live with me, and I went downtown and ran around for a while. We got back just in time for a speaker that talked to us about the Mexican political system. It was all really interesting and I didn’t know much about it before so was trying really hard to concentrate despite it being confusing and a long session.

Then dinner… lots of good conversation after dinner. We’ve already had so many great conversations that I’ve learned so much from.

Then… lots of homework… and… now I am SO ready for bed.

Ah… finally a short blog huh? Sorry they’ve been so long, just a lot to say. I think they’ll start getting shorter now.

Day 4

So yesterday afternoon I pretty much spent all the time blogging, e-mailing and hanging out with the girls around here. Everyone has really interesting ideas and experiences so there’s always a good conversation to be had… usually at least one that is about something tough to talk about, but it feels good to think.

After dinner we watched a movie about globalization, mostly about NGO’s using cheap labor in foreign countries. The whole concept of the movie was that third world countries (it’s PC to say that here, or so they say) are now “racing to the bottom” in order to attract foreign investment. This includes very low wage standards and also very lenient environmental standards. It was so sad to hear about the ways that these countries were being destroyed, basically by capitalism that really only benefited the occupying NGO. It was so depressing to watch and think about the ways the richest countries are basically taking advantage of the poor country’s helplessness. It made me feel so lost. There are so many little things that I can do, but there’s so much that is such a larger issue that I feel I could never have any influence on. Some things would be so easy to change, just be being human and giving people basic human rights, but the big cat (it was literally an animated cat in the movie which was strange) would loose a few cents so won’t think of it. It’s like sitting and watching something and just letting it happen because I can’t do anything.

I’m hoping that we will talk about this feeling of helplessness a little bit later. So much of what we talk about and who we talk to is so encouraging and empowering, yet so many of the facts are also so disheartening that I feel discouraged and helpless. We also talked about this after we did the market survey and just realize how bad things really are. We all had really similar feelings about feeling helpless. It was good to talk about it and I started thinking about how you really just have to accept that you can’t completely change things, but that little “tryings” can have a little bit of difference. Even that is sometimes hard though. We’ve talked a lot about sweat shops and foreign made products. It’s almost impossible not to depend on imports from places where people are being treated inhumanely. It makes me feel guilty. Hopefully all these feelings will sort themselves out as we talk about it more.

Being here is making me think about being a teacher a lot more also. There’s so much that I’ve never learned about things going on in different countries, and I don’t mean to be a downer and only mean the terrible things, though there are plenty of them. There is also really great things going on everywhere that never really get talked about, especially when talking about a “poor, suffering, terrible” third world country. That was the other thing we talked about a lot… the fact that the superpowers and all their tourists exercise even more power by making these countries insufficient and in desperate need of our help to teach them how to be like us, because that is obviously better.

We read a poem about the idea of taking photographs as a sort of exercising of that power because it does the same “oh poor people” or “oh, happy Mexicans wearing bright clothing,” basically just stereotyping of cultures. I had never thought of taking a photograph as something that could mean so much, as so much of a responsibility. So many pictures that people take, myself included, are actually for such self centered purposes… a sort of look what an adventure this is, look how brave I am, look how I am “helping.” They just affirm that power differential and play into those stereotypes. When people take pictures they may be looking for something especially interesting of unusual, but I think a lot of the time, they have an idea of a picture in their head and are just waiting to find it. I am totally guilty and it really made me think about how I want to take pictures. This is not to say not to take them, but to make sure that they tell the whole story, whether through the diversity of images or an actual written or verbal story.

So, all that made me think about teaching and how that can be my little difference. I’ve been doing much too much thinking here and though it is confusing and depressing and tiring, it is also thrilling in some ways and exciting! I am thrilled with how the program really encourages us to do so, and pushes us.

So where did I really leave off? Right… the depressing movie.

So after that I was about ready for bed. My brain had enough and was ready to shut down. Then someone brought over the Sound of Music, which I had watched a bazillion times when I was little. I also talked to Chris for a bit, who had come back from climbing. He said we should be able to go climbing sometime soon, so I’m really excited for that. He also said that a few of the people that he goes climbing with are girls so wa hoo! I watched a little more of the movie and then was off to bed.

Today was an insanely busy day and my head is just filled with new knowledge and thoughts and experiences.

First thing after breakfast we had a meeting with all of the staff that work around the house. That’s one thing that is really nice, they encourage everyone to really get to know each other and integrate the cooks and cleaning women and administrative people and maintenance people and the door man (only on thurs, fri, sat nights) and the teachers into the whole community. The people who work here are amazing people with so much more than I realized going on outside. I think they purposefully hire people that are making differences in everything we study around here.

We broke off into small groups at one point to have a conversation with one of the staff members to get to know them better personally and ask them anything we wanted about them or the area or Mexico in general. I was in a group with a woman, whose name I don’t remember, who works in the kitchen. Religion and family were very very close to her heart, in ways both good and bad so she wanted to talk about that. She told us how more than 30 years ago she became very involved in the church and how she read the bible to give her and her children rights. At that time she and her children only ate beans and didn’t have any rights in the house while her husband would go out drinking to the cantina. She started demanding rights and money to support the family as well as getting more involved in base Christian communities for a liberalization of women’s roles. Her husband told her that she could choose him or the church. Her children saw her standing up for herself and for them and told her they would support her in all ways, with money and personal support. She chose to leave her husband, a radical move at the time! Now she works getting women’s rights in a base Christian community.

It helped me feel better about feeling helpless to hear about how much she had stood up for herself and for change.

After that we learned a little about how the school’s pedagogy and such. Then we were put into groups of 6 and sent off with 100 pesos and a shopping list to a market on the other side of downtown. It took us a while to get there walking, and we certainly got a little lost. I got to speak and ask for directions and things like that a little bit which was very exciting. The market was so crazy once we got there. There was so many different things going on and so many different people. They sell everything there, from shoes to dog food to spices to batteries to Jesus dolls. It was crazy. Our mission was to buy tomatoes, black beans and a newspaper and then to check the prices for tampons and a tube of toothpaste. It took a while to find what we needed, and a lot of walking by a lot of rare meet and chicken feet and everything you could imagine, those were just the most memorable. Every few feet there was a new smell, smells that were sweet and made me thirsty, smells of chamomile that reminded me of tea on the Inca trail, smells of meat, and dog food, and newspapers, and new sneakers. It was so strange and so overwhelming to have all of my senses constantly registering new things.

It was quite an experience, with quite a purpose. We were given 100 pesos, which is about ten dollars. We bought a kilo of tomatoes and a ½ a kilo of black beans for 8 pesos (about 80 cents) each and then a newspaper for 10 pesos (about a dollar). Everything seems really cheap huh? That’s what we thought and was the whole point in having us do this exercise. The minimum wage (but only half the population works in the formal economic system where it even applies) is about 47.6 pesos A DAY.. which is about 6 pesos or 60 cents an hour. So we calculated how many hours someone would have to work for each item. For tomatoes or beans it was 1.3 hours, for the paper, 1.6 hours, for tampons, 4.5 hours, for toothpaste, 2.5 hours. Then we figured out what the US price would be is a minimum wage worker in the US had to work the same amount of hours for the item. The cost of tomatoes was $8.18/ kilo as well as for ½ kilo of beans. The paper cost $10.21. The tampons $27.86, the toothpaste $15.38! It was certainly a rude awakening to how insubstantial the minimum wage is, leaving people desperate for anything they need to sustain themselves. It makes the need to immigrate just to be able to live seem much more pressing.

All of the groups had the same sort of assignment with different items. The craziest was diapers, which cost 54.90 pesos (5.50) for a package. That is about 9.5 hours of work, and the equivalent of 53.80 in the US were a minimum wage worker there to work as much as one here would have to in order to buy them.

I’m just in complete shock about all of this… just puts things in perspective for sure! Be careful when you say something is cheap… .

So, that was the long exhaustttting day. We had a good dinner and talked about all of the exciting places around here where we want to go. There’s so much to do and even though I know that I have a lot of time left, I feel like it can’t possibly be enough already!

I’m sitting here watching a movie with little Kevin. He’s actually five. He has so much energy. It’s 9 o’clock and he’s out swinging. The other night when I went out I came back at 1:30 and he was up watching a movie with Fransisco, the night guard for weekends. I don’t know how he does it…

Well, hope everyone is keeping warm up there. It sounds like it’s been a bit chilly. I’ve been thinking of everyone! Sorry these are so long, I hope everyone is finding at least parts of them interesting. It’s been a good way to unpack everything I’ve done and stop and think about it because there’s usually not time of energy when it’s first happening. There’s just so much going on! Hopefully they will get a little shorter as time goes on because there’s no way I can spend this much time writing each day… there’s too much to do. A viscious, but fabulous circle….

Buenos Noches!

Day 3

It’s always hard to remember where I left off. Our days are so full and I’ve spent any free time that I have talking to everyone who I’m living with or exploring the city. I’m surprised how comfortable I feel here. I thought it would be much harder to come to such a different place with a new language and customs and so many people I’ve never met, but I feel surprisingly calm… exhausted, yes, but very relaxed.

So, I left off with salsa lessons. I have never been a big dancer, especially the dancing that most people my age do in the states (which really isn’t dancing). I don’t have much rhythm and am always pretty shy about it. I’m trying hard to keep trying new things though. I haven’t really been giving myself any options about doing something that pushes me a little bit and it’s working out well. The teacher of the salsa class was a woman from the Spanish class where we will be taking classes. She taught the class mostly in Spanish, but it was ok because I understood almost everything she said. It was a lot of fun despite being a little crowded and reallllly hot in the living room we were in. I danced with a girl named Katie (there’s only two guys in the whole program and one of them chose not to take the class). It was so much fun, lots of spinning and swinging around and around. I was wearing a very swirly skirt and it just made me feel like I was a little girl again.

After the dance class we had dinner. A bunch of the girls from my program and our RA/TA, Chris, sat outside and some really great conversations about all sorts of things. It’s fun to be with new people because there are so many new stories to tell and hear.

After dinner we watched a documentary about immigration from Latin America to the US called “Wetbacks”. Mostly it followed people from Nicaragua trying to get all the way up to the United States, which means crossing three borders where they could potentially be sent back home or suffer other things much worst. It really made me think about the whole immigration issue from a personal sense, rather than the politics behind it which is what everyone is always thinking about at home. None of the people that were immigrating were going because they wanted to be American so bad or because they were greedy or anything like that. They really just had no choice. There was a man talking about how dangerous it was and how many people die or are killed along the way, but at the end he said he would rather die trying and have a chance than die of starvation because he had no money and there were no jobs available. It was so sad and made me so mad to hear these Texan cowboys who patrol the border for fun talk about how all the Latin American immigrants are terrorist, when in fact they were just trying to get here to eat and are usually the most law abiding of anyone because they can get deported so easily. And they just want to build a wall? Putting more money into keeping them out instead of helping their economies or just stopping taking advantage of their economic system would stop the whole chain instead of just making it worst and worst. Another thing that really surprised me is how hard it was to cross through Mexico. Many of the police and immigration officers make minimum wage, which is not nearly enough to live on. Give someone who can’t afford to live on their wages a gun and authority and what do you think is going to happen? There is a ton of corruption and violent crimes perpetrated by the police! Sorry, just a little rant…

We were talking in orientation about what to do if you feel unsafe in a situation. They said the police is probably not the best resource, but that people around will almost always be willing to help you out. I have not had too much interaction with people around here yet, but every single time I have they have gone out of their way to help us. On our scavenger hunt, everyone we asked for directions was happy to give them to us and one woman even kept guiding us in the wrong direction, walking with us until she had to go her own way. Also today we were trying to cross a fairly busy street and a man stopped the traffic for us, made sure we were all the way across and then finished crossing himself. The TA/RAs told us about how the community really looks out for each other since the police is not as reliable and so far I have found that to be true. It is so comforting to see people smiling, greeting and looking out for each other like everyone should. It’s so different than in the U.S, and I think part of what makes me feel like this home, at least for a little bit.

So that’s my anti-American rant… On with my day.

After the movie a bunch of people were already all dressed up to go out dancing. I had been brave enough salsa dancing and wasn’t exactly ready to try it out on my own. I was also really tired and dirty and sweaty from the long day. I passed on that, but then Rose, a really sweet girl from Chapel Hill, who was also hear last semester, invited Betsy and I to go out for a much more mellow, low key night with the TA/RA of the social work program, Hillary. The four of us walked downtown to a gay bar, not sure of the name, to meet one of her friends. It was a really interesting scene. Everyone here goes out much later because the bars pretty much don’t close until the sun comes up. we were told we didn’t really need IDs so didn’t bring them since we weren’t bringing purses but then we got there they asked for IDs. It was the first time that I could have been IDed and I missed it! They finally let us in after we told them how old we were and that we were in college. It wasn’t every crowded when we first got there, but then it got really crowded all of the sudden. Especially when the drag queen came out and started singing. I ordered my first drink… Corona, like a typical northerner in Mexico. It felt strange, but was fun. We talked for a while there about all different things before heading home.

This morning we woke up and it was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. I ate breakfast and talked to some other girls for an hour and a half. Then we set out for a little exploration of the city. It’s about a 10-15 minute walk from our house and fine to do during the day or at night with a bunch of people. We just walked around a lot and went in a bunch of different stores. They have everything, especially a lot of shoe stores for some reason. Today was especially busy in town because it is Sunday. The weekends fill the city with tourists and vacationers from Mexico City. A lot of wealthy people from Mexico city have weekend homes here amidst a lot of poverty. We also stopped at some of the tourist sites along the way, but didn’t spend much time there because we will be going on tours of many of them soon.

On the way home we walked by Jardín Borda, which is this beautiful garden on the edge of the city. On Sundays admission is free (usually only 15 pesos, which is about 1.50) so it was very crowded, but still gorgeous. There were lots of families going for little walks after going to church or having lunch and kids running around playing. It felt like a dream, there were fountains and flowers everywhere tucked in these secluded spots by tropical greenery. The smell and the air was wonderful. We walked around for a bit, but then decided to head back to the house for lunch.

There is a little boy named Kevin who also lives in the house. I’m not exactly sure how old he is, somewhere between 6 and 9 probably. He is deaf, which was funny because nobody told us that for a while and everyone was trying to talk to him and assuming their Spanish was terrible. He is the cutest little kid and quite a character. He certainly finds ways to communicate and make himself heard despite being deaf. He is always sliding around the floors, running around making funny faces and pointing for us to play with him. Katie showed him her camera and he was enamored, taking pictures of everything from us to dirt and the view. He is quite the little photographer, lining things up and getting in crazy positions for the best shots. He enjoyed taking our portraits very much and lined us up for a group shot, telling us to put our hands up in the peace sign. The picture of the house from the last post has him taking a picture in it.

I’m about ready for a siesta, more later…