Asi Vamos

Day 154 in Mexico

It was recently brought to my attention that I don’t blog as frequently as I used to. It’s true; when I first arrived here in September, I was blogging every week, and then every ten days to two weeks, and now… well, now, as I hit my five month mark, it’s definitely tapered off. But when I thought about it, I maintain it’s not because I’m lazy (or not only because I’m lazy). Everything at the beginning was new and fresh and exciting. Each day at work brought something new; I was learning all sorts of things about my host family (and their Zapatista involvements); I was having experiencing a wide spectrum of emotions, from frustration to elation at finally feeling comfortable in my job to homesickness around the holidays. But now everything seems to have evened out. I have bad days still, obviously, and I have really good days, but things seem to be rolling along just fine. There just seems to be a lack of momentous events to keep you all updated on.

I’ll do a brief overview. Life at work is plugging along. I’m still hard at work in the kindergarten, racking my brain for activities that’ll keep the kids occupied, semi-quiet, and teach them a couple words of English. My duties have also expanded somewhat in the community center; in addition to the afternoon workshops that I’m in charge of, I also do more regular translation work, both written and oral. The written translation involves working on the regular letters that the sponsored kids in the community center write to their US sponsors. The oral translation is more exciting; the La Estación community center has visits from immersion groups, which are foreigners, usually American, that come to Mexico for a week or two for an “immersion experience,” or to see what Mexico’s really like. Instead of coming to study Spanish at one of the many language schools or drink Coronas on the beach, these groups come to do work projects in the community; visit different local justice, education, or service organizations; learn about Mexico’s social and economic structure and see how some grassroots foundations address these issues; and usually do a little sightseeing along the way. These visitors usually come from universities, masters programs, churches groups, that sort of thing. La Estación is a natural choice, both because it’s funded by a number of local organizations that host these immersion groups and because it serves a very marginalized community that they come to learn about. Last year was a rough year for visitors; between the poor US economy and the budget cuts it brought and the swine flu outbreak, many groups chose to cancel. This year, however, things seem to be doing better.

I actually really enjoy when groups come in, for several reasons. Mostly I enjoy it because I get to translate, which I really like. My supervisor gives the presentation, I translate, and she often lets me field a lot of the questions. It’s also interesting to see what an incoming group’s perspective is of the community, especially since they get such a limited time there, usually not more than a couple hours. They often provide fresh perspectives or questions that I never really even considered, that allow me to see the community or my work in a very different way. For instance, as I was explaining what I do to a recent group, a person asked me, “Is it a priority that these kids learn English?” A simple question, perhaps, one that could even be answered with a yes or no, but it proved way more complicated and thought-provoking than it originally appeared. It made me a take a step back and actually really about what I’m doing. Is it a priority? Do I teach English because it’s what the kids benefit the most from, or is it to give me something to do? How much is it really a “priority” that I’m there, would their education really suffer if I wasn’t? I didn’t have a definitive answer to any of it, and I still don’t. In response to the student, I said that I didn’t know if it was necessarily a priority, but that all of them will take English classes once they get to elementary school (which is true), and even though they’re so young, at least this might give them a small head start on what they’ll eventually have to learn. Still, does their education hang on my presence there? Probably not, but at this point I don’t want to have that kind of power, to make or break their education.

Shifting gears to home life, things are going fine at the Angeles and Fernando home. They’re staying as busy as ever with all their church and community activities. We also had a language student staying at our house a couple weeks ago; my host parents occasionally host short term students from one of the local language schools, so this is something I was expecting. She was really nice, and I enjoyed having another person in the house. It spiced things up a bit, and it was nice to have another person at the dinner table. Her arrival also made me think of when I got here; hard to believe I’ve been here almost five months already. When I first arrived, even though Angeles and Fernando were really welcoming, I couldn’t imagine this being my home for so long; now, of course, it’s become just that.

Bueno, asi vamos. So it goes. I might be in a slight lull, but things are looking very exciting in the next couple months. Part of the program involves a weeklong retreat at the halfway point, where we’ll be visiting the US/Mexico border to talk about border policy and immigration issues that affect so many of the people we live and work with (I think I already mentioned that I haven’t met a single person in Mexico that doesn’t know someone in the States, many times a sibling, child, or husband). This week we had a mini-retreat to prepare for that, and now my parents come for a week of vacation (!!). A week after they leave we’ll be headed for the border, and then just a month after that’s done Ehsan will be coming to visit too! Whew. I get excited and tired just thinking about it all, but I’ll be glad to have a break in my routine at work and home, eager to do some reflection at our retreats, and extremely excited to have visitors. Living here has become, well, normal. I experienced this when I studied abroad as well. At the beginning, it seemed like I would never get used to it, that it would always be new and different, but I adapted. Here too; after awhile, it’s just normal, everyday life. I think having visitors, like having those immersion groups at work or students at home, will help me see my everyday life in a new light, or least remind me how special the opportunity to be here is. In any case, I’m looking forward to it.

That’s all for now. I hope all of you reading this from the Midwest (aka the arctic tundra) are handling the winter cold okay; I’ll try to send some of this eternal spring your way.

What I Did on My Christmas Vacation

Day 131 in Mexico

Happy New Year! Happy new decade, for that matter. So far, it’s been a relaxing 2010 for me – sleeping late, staying pretty close to home, and gearing up to head back to work. I feel pretty refreshed after a wonderful Christmas break, which I had just barely begun the last time I wrote. I was feeling kind of bad that I hadn’t had the opportunity to travel much, but this break certainly gave me the opportunity I was waiting for.

I began my travels with my Christmas trip to Toluca with my friend Sara, which I touched on briefly in my last blog post. Some family friends of hers invited us to spend the holidays with them, and they turned out to be the most hospitable, gracious hosts imaginable. They took us, as I also mentioned, to the Monarch Butterfly Reserve in Michoacan, and (like I also already mentioned), it was magical. Here are some pictures to give you an idea, though pictures couldn’t really capture the feeling of walking through the forest being surrounded by fluttering butterflies that landed on our hair, jeans, and gladly stepped up onto our outstretched hands. They must have been tired little guys, though, after coming all the way from Canada and the Great Lakes. The trees were so coated with them it looked like they were covered with orange leaves. The butterflies have a couple more months of Mexican hibernation vacation left, before they mate in the spring and then return their long journey back to the U.S. and Canada. Interestingly enough, it’ll be a whole different batch that goes back from the one that arrived; the males die after mating, and the average butterfly only lives about eight months anyway.

The day after our trip to the butterfly reserve was spent in Toluca, preparing for the Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) celebration at our host’s home. In Mexico, it seems that Christmas Eve is actually more important than Christmas Day. Many families get together on this day and night, but Christmas Day is pretty much a day to eat leftovers from the previous evening’s big meal and say goodbyes. Sara and I got to help in the preparation of bacalao, a dish of Norwegian white fish that’s salted, shredded, and then cooked with tomatoes, almonds, celery and spices. The dinner also featured a big ol’ turkey, tostadas, a version of Waldorf salad, and sweet breads for our dessert. We went to Mass in the evening, which was so packed that we didn’t even get a seat; we had to stand in the back. The choir, all festive in red scarves, sang familiar Christmas tunes with Spanish lyrics (Silent Night, Joy to the World), so I just sang along in English anyway. Many people also brought the baby Jesus from their nativity scene so it could be blessed by the priest, which was kind of interesting; so many people carrying around a (usually kind of creepy-looking) baby Jesus in a basket under their arms. After Mass, we went home to play dominoes, and then (finally!) began our dinner just after 11 p.m. In relative terms, this was pretty early; the custom is to have a midnight dinner and Christmas toast, and many families stay up into the early morning. Sara and I were so tired after eating so late, however, that we didn’t make it very long after dinner. Christmas Day began late, with some phone calls home and leftovers from the night before, and then our hosts took us to Mexico City for some more sightseeing; we got to see the largest Christmas tree in the world (so the signs claimed, although it was an artificial tree), the downtown zocalo with the National Palace, cathedral, and the enormous temporary ice skating rink, and then we went to the National History Museum, which is housed in the Chapultepec castle, a building used by past aristocracy; Porfirio Diaz, one of the most notorious dictators in Mexico’s history; and, randomly, also in Baz Luhrmann’s movie Romeo+Juliet. We finished the day with a tasty pizza dinner with cheesecake and then returned home to Toluca. Thankfully, Christmas wasn’t as melancholy as I thought it might be. The anticipation of it was actually harder than the day itself, both because I was so busy and because we were welcomed so warmly by this family. I am so grateful for them for making it a good holiday for us, and grateful also that next year, God willing, I will be back at home, appreciating how good it really is to be with your family at Christmas.

My Christmas travels didn’t stop there. The day after returning to Cuernavaca, I headed off with the four others in our volunteer group to Acapulco! We thought a few days at the beach would be just the thing to de-stress, and we were right. We actually stayed in Pie de la Cuesta, a lovely little seaside town just outside of Acapulco, with fewer crowds, fewer vendors, and a generally more relaxed pace. Our hotel, while simple, was like an oasis, and we had hammocks right outside our room on our balcony to relax in after our long hard days soaking up the sun, ha. The waves on the beach were pretty wicked to allow for swimming, but it was so good to lie on a beach for a few days, doing absolutely nothing (in my case, anyway; another member of our group was very excited to have long stretches of empty beach for her daily runs, a thought which never crossed my lazy self’s mind, ever). And the sunsets were magnificent; Pie de la Cuesta is famous for them.

On our last day we got up the energy to do a little sight seeing and went to see the famous Acapulco cliff divers, who were pretty spectacular. They dove off cliffs about 35 meters high (that’s approaching 100 feet) into a narrow, rocky ocean cove. Fearless. However, there was a lot of praying going on to altars of the Virgin Mary at the top of the cliff before they dove, which I don’t blame them for; I was nervous just watching them. Here's a picture; I don't know if it may be too difficult to see the diver, but he's there.

After our four days in the sun, it was back to Cuernavaca to spend the New Year with Angeles and Fernando. New Years here is celebrated a little differently than in the United States; it’s much more of a family holiday, actually pretty similar to their Christmas celebration. Many people go to Mass on New Years Eve as well, then go home and have a late dinner with their families and a midnight toast. All of Angeles and Fernando’s children and grandchildren were also around to celebrate with them. So, after the church service, we went back to their daughter’s house to eat pozole and tacos. At midnight, all the heads of the family made their toasts, and then we went around giving each other hugs and congratulations for the New Year. It was a quiet holiday, but not any less festive. I only made it till about 2, but a lot of the family stayed up, just hanging out, until 5! I guess I just don’t have what it takes to party with my Mexican family.

Back to work I go tomorrow, but not without feeling satisfied, both with my successful travels and a good start to the decade. Here’s hoping for more good times and travels in the year to come.