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.