Am I in Mexico or Seattle?

Day 21 in Cuernavaca

Well, unfortunately the beautiful weather has subsided for now and has been replaced by almost relentless rain. It not only pours every night, it now rains almost every afternoon, and some mornings as well. It seems to have been perpetually cloudy for the past week and a half, and my host family said that Mexico City is having some pretty major flooding problems. Yikes. I look forward to seeing the sunshine’s return (my Arizona summer tan has, alas, faded away).

I’ve completed my first week of work and am just starting on the next. I’m still working on figuring out my role at work, as there appears to be a lack of the workplace structure that I am familiar with. I’ll walk you though what has so far been a typical day: I arrive at my first work site, the community center at La Estación, shortly before nine, at the tail end of their breakfast program. One of their most successful programs is their breakfast program; they provide a hot meal with juice and jello to the neighborhood’s mothers and children. Between 100 and 120 people show up between 8 and 9 a.m. every weekday to eat, and it’s no dining hall. It’s a rather small space that for an hour comes alive with people. The mothers in the community sign up for rotating breakfast shifts every week, doing all the shopping, cooking and cleanup. They make a mean breakfast, though it’s not a breakfast that I’m used to. I am now, before nine in the morning, eating tamales, enchiladas, quesadillas, tostadas, and everything with salsa picante (translation: spicy!). It’s really something. Then I go to the kindergarten. There are three different levels, from three year olds to five year olds, and I’ll be teaching (or trying to teach) them some basic English – colors, numbers, basic vocabulary. This first week I spent observing, and now I’ll be forming some lesson plans and starting this week. I think we’re going to start with the color red. The three year olds don’t know their colors in Spanish yet, so it will be interesting for all of us, especially since I have no teaching experience and the kids can be rather… rambunctious.

When the kinder gets out at noon, I go back to the community center (it’s right across the street). So far, there hasn’t been too much to do there; the center offers workshops, but apparently the workshops haven’t been doing well, and it’s hard to maintain an interest level in the community. I did go to a reading workshop for children on Friday afternoons, where the kids can borrow books to take home, bring them back and exchange them for a new one. It’s a good program, but not very many kids came. I imagine that the day to day life in the community, which as I mentioned is one of the most marginalized in town, can be so demanding that attending community workshops almost inevitably takes a backseat to other, more pressing needs. There are several very dedicated women, however, that spend a lot of time in the center. I’m beginning to understand the importance here of “placticando,” or chatting. Face to face communication is not curtailed like it is in the U.S. There is a lot of importance placed on simply talking, chatting, and catching up. I spend quite a bit of time placticando, either at work or with my family, though my Spanish is definitely in need of some improvement. Hopefully that will come with time. We also eat in the early afternoon as well, and starting this week I’ll be going into the women’s homes to eat. I’m very much looking forward to that; some of them are talking about teaching me how to cook, which sounds fabulous, though since I’m so inept in the kitchen it might be harder than they expect.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I leave after lunch and go to Casa Tatic, where I am helping seven to nine year olds with their reading, homework, and spelling (in Spanish). I’ve only been twice, but it seems to be a good fit for me; there aren’t as many kids (in the kinder at La Estación, class size averages around 30), so I can sit and work with them individually. I feel more like a tutor or reading specialist than anything, and it’s really a joyous feeling to sit and listen to a little girl read a book aloud. We also eat at this worksite; Casa Tatic is part of a larger group of programs, and it not only provides an after-school program, but the kids get a meal, a vitamin, brush their teeth, and get some play time. A couple of them haven’t gone to school, and this is their only place to learn how to read. It’s really an impressive program, I think.

My host family continues to include me regularly in their activities. This Saturday I accompanied them to the prison outside of Cuernavaca. Every Saturday they and other volunteers visit the inmates, bring a meal, and host a Mass. I walked with them into an outdoor courtyard with about 400 inmates milling around. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous; in fact, my eyes nearly bugged out of my head. We’re taught to be wary of men here in general, that they can be more verbally aggressive than men in the States, and I was walking into a crowd not only of 400 men, but 400 men convicted of crimes? However, it turned out to be a really good experience. All of the men were very kind, friendly, and respectful. I ate with a few of them (eating is a very common theme to my activity here, if you haven’t noticed), and one even got me a Coke when I said I didn’t like the water (which isn’t really water, it’s fruit juice, or agua de whatever fruit). Many of them came up to shake my hand after the mass, and a couple even spoke some English to me (not much more than “where are you from?” but I was still impressed). I definitely think it’s an activity I will continue with.

I’m enjoying the company of my fellow volunteers, though I do miss seeing them as much as I did when we were in orientation. Still, it’s nice to meet up and chat, and watch television when we can, haha. Poor Peter is seriously missing his tennis and football, and I almost died when I went to Sarah’s house over the weekend and Friends was on. I am such a television addict; it’s like going through withdrawal. I also miss my kitty friends, though I did stop by the retreat center this week to say hello. They didn’t seem overly impressed to see me.

Looking forward to this week; it’s Dia de Independencia on Tuesday night/Wednesday, which kicks off with the Grito de Dolores in the city center and is followed by much celebration and a day off on Wednesday. Should be quite the experience. Also hoping the weather will improve, but we supposedly have a month to go in the rainy season. Ah, well. Hasta pronto!