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.
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