así es….de mi punto de vista, pues

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything and I don’t have any terribly good excuse for not writing.

Our last day of language school was exactly two weeks ago. We spent the weekend in Cuernavaca for Independence Day and the festivities that go along with that…this mostly includes stuffing ourselves with posole (an amazing soup that’s got chicken and pork and corn and deliciousness) and tortillas and taquitos (rolled tortillas fried with potatoes or cheese or meat inside) and other good things. We went to the central plaza for the “grito,” where the state head of government gives a speech, which were followed by the longest and closest fireworks display I’ve ever experienced. It was pretty impressive.

That Sunday we went to Mexico City in order to catch a bus to Olinala (the town where I am currently and will be for the next ten months). We spent the next three days exploring the town…we met the family whom I’ll be working with fairly closely…their names are Liz, Martin, Isaiah (age 5, nearly 6) and Micah (age 3). We went to a gathering and ate lots of amazing food (the tortillas here are corn and incredible…nothing like what you buy in the states), introduced frisbee to a number of the kids and talked and laughed a lot. We went to a waterfall with Martin and the boys.

Right now Olinala is very green; it’s the end of the rainy season and it’s beautiful here. The other SALTers are jealous that I get to be here for the rest of the year with Liz and Martin and the boys in this gorgeous countryside with really friendly people. (Of course, none of them have seen their work placements yet, so their jealousy could be misplaced).

I met my family and the other SALTers helped me move furniture in. My family painted their house and my room in preparation for my arrival! My walls are a bright blue….it is a very cheerful color.

From Olinala, we bussed back to Mexico City. On that trip I experienced one of the more miserable moments of my life….I came down with something that manifested itself on the bus. I managed to throw up and have diarrhea simultaneously in the ridiculously hot, tiny bathroom of a large moving vehicle. It was pretty much awful. I continued with the diarrhea and throwing up for the next 36 hours and Hannah joined me in this experience. Lisl took very good care of us, making us drink liquids and encouraging us…we were not going to die and we would, in fact, get better.

We spent the night in Mexico City and left for Chiapas on Friday night (we had arrived in Mexico City early Thursday morning). It was about a 13 hour bus ride…there were two 3-year -olds and two 5-year-olds in our group, in addition to the 9 adults. We definately stuck out. Luckily the kids all get along, for the most part. In Chiapas, we met the other part of the team (Enrique and his son, David, met us in Mexico City to travel down with us)…Kirsten and Eli (short for a name I have a hard time pronouncing) and their two children, ages 3 and 1. It was very interesting to observe all the kids and their parents.

Enrique is the project coordinator for the Guerrero team. Olinala is in the state of Guerrero, one of the bigger states in Mexico. The Guerrero team consists of Enrique, Martin, Liz and I. I’m excited to be working with all of them…everyone seems to be pretty laid back, but enthusiastic about the work here.

After Chiapas (we visited some ruins, learned about some of the traditions of some of the local Native Americans, explored the city of San Cristobal where we stayed, and learned about the work that MCC is doing in Chiapas) we traveled back to Mexico City. Liz and I went to the Australian Embassy that morning (Wednesday) to see about some grant money that we had applied for. It was a good learning experience because, you never know, I might be in a position for asking for grant money in the future

That night was our last night together as SALTers for awhile…we walked around Mexico City and spent a good amount of time on the metro. We laughed and talked a lot, which is our usual habit and ended the evening by watching Princess Bride. Hannah left at 10 the next morning to go back to Cuernavaca…she’s going to working at a primary school/community center there. Lisl left next…she took a flight to Tucson, from where she will travel to Nogles, Mexico, where she will be living with a host family and working with BorderLinks. I was the third one to leave on my overnight bus to Olinala. Dan was being picked up by his host family last night.

That brings me to now….I’m listening to chill music while blogging and eating ice cream (a traditional treat in the Dyrst household after a doctor’s office visit….Micah has chicken pox). Martin is putting together a sewing table for one of the women’s groups here and Isaiah and Micah are currently pretty excited by anything to do with Thomas the Tank Engine. Liz and I are going to make brownies and chocolate cookies.

Tomorrow I’m planning on moving into my new house and this whole next week, starting this evening, is a town celebration of the town’s saint, San Francisco. My job is to settle in and meet people. I’ve already been invited to be on a basketball team and people are very friendly….everyone says “Buenas dias” and smiles when you pass them.

I’m looking forward to the next ten months quite a lot

Mexico City is called both Ciudad de Mexico and D.F. by the locals…so I try to use both to blend in more…

We left for DF early Saturday morning…we stayed in Cuernavaca Friday night because it was Tanja´s last night…and arrived quite sleepy. Saturday afternoon we went to a Cruz Azul vs. Pachuca soccer game. It was great. Our seats were quite high, but our angle was good and we could see everything very well. Cruz Azul is a Mexico City team and the vast majority of people there were supporting the team.

The concessions sold were also quite interesting…we got a kick out of the Cup o Noodles being hawked as well as the chips that came with hot sauce. Actually pretty much everything came with hot sauce and limon. We got a plate of mixed nuts and they came with a packet of hot sauce (which we decided not to put on) and a half of a lime that we chose to put on and they were amazing. Limon (lime) is added to pretty much everything here and it is amazing.

Yesterday Dan, Hannah, Lisl and I went to Casa Azul, the Blue House, that Frida Kahlo lived and worked in. Frida Kahlo was married and divorced and remarried to Diego Rivera. She´s famous for her art in her own right as well. This year is the 100 year anniversary of her birth and a wide variety of items that had never been viewed by the public is now on display. Items ranged from Frida´s own paintings, Diego´s sketches, letters between the two and from and to others, books owned by the couple and quite a lot more. I believe it was the most crowded museum I´ve ever been to. There was a lot to see and read and we were glad we had arrived early.

For those who get bored with food talk, don´t read the next paragraph…

Following the museum we went to a mercado (market) down the street and ate some amazing food. I had a gordita (similar to a papusa…corn flour and water dough surrounding whatever filling you want) and a quesadilla. I had a bean, cheese and onion gordita and a squash flower and cheese quesadilla. The cheese in the gordita was similar to a non-fat ricotta cheese…it was amazing. The cheese in the quesadilla was Queso Oaxaca, a cheese that behaves similarly to string cheese, but it´s a bit saltier and tastes better. The salsas that were out were incredible. One of the red salsas was only tomato, chiles and salt, cooked. It had a very complex flavor and I´m not sure how that was accomplished with only three ingredients. One of the other salsas was a tomatillo (salsa verde) salsa that was also amazing and it was fresh. My host family always has tomatillo salsa available. Mmmm…

We had an uneventful trip back to Cuernavaca following our explorations of the market.  Movies are always shown on bus trips here…this time it was Seven Years in Tibet, dubbed in Spanish.  This would be a great movie on a long bus ride, unfortunately the ride from DF to Cuernavaca is only an hour and a half…about half of the movie.  Thus far we´ve never seen an entire movie on one of these trips, though I´m sure I will get many chances on my rides to Olinala.

And…finally….pictures!  In no particular order whatsoever.  But here´s the link.  Let me know if you have trouble with it…

http://www.pixum.co.uk/viewalbum/?id=2654272

I had my first experience with refined Mexican machismo on Friday night.

We had a dance class on Wednesday afternoon, teaching us the basics of salsa. It was a lot of fun even though we had no males to dance with besides the teacher (who was very good). Dan and the German boys refused to dance despite the teacher trying to lure them in with lower prices for the class.

Friday night, Tanja, Lisl and I went out to Los Arcos…a restaurant that many people, families, couples and people just wanting to dance or wanting to watch the dancers, go to as they have live music every evening. When we arrived, all tables were full, but a man managed to get us a table next to his table. He was a street performer and spoke some English, which he enjoyed practicing on us. He also danced with all three of us and attempted to teach me cumbia, another dance that is pretty common here. He proclaimed Lisl a good dancer and me a good student

Another man asked me to dance….he also spoke some English and, it turned out, he was very good at repeating some phrases. His favorite was, “I don`t bite.” He asked me to dance a number of times, of which I acquiesced four times, but as he kept trying to kiss me, I began to decline the invitation. Lisl finally told him to quit it and go away.

It was a very good learning experience. Most of the machismo I´ve encountered is just catcalling and comments in the streets, like “Hello ladies” or, Hannah got this one, “Welcome to the Mexico” in English. This guy was educated, definately more upper class, and I think was basically a nice guy, but my limits on what was alright while dancing were slightly different than his. It´s a cultural thing to some extent, but it doesn´t help that a lot of our movies portray women as um…shall we say, hussies.

Saturday morning Lisl, Hannah, Tanja, the German boys (Henning and Nils) and I set out for Las Estacas, a river that you can float down. It was much fancier than I expected…basically a middle-class resort of sorts. You could camp or stay in bungalows, there was minuture golf, pools and an amazing river which we could indeed float down without rafts or tubes or anything. There were platforms you could jump off of and swings over the water. We had a lot of fun, despite the on and off again rain. The styles for men´s swimming suits ranged from what I typically think of as European to the more standard American long shorts, while most of the females were more covered than women in the US typically are.

To get to Las Estacas we took a Greyhound style bus, then a combi (a VW van with the seats emptied out except the back seat and bench seats around the sides, so you´re all looking at one another.

Transportation seems to be relatively cheap here in comparison to other things. Clothes are definately not cheaper and food, depending on where you go, is about the same price as the US. Tortillas and plain white bread from the bakery are very cheap as are the fruits that are in season. Things bought at a grocery store are generally not cheap.

On Sunday, Tanja and I went to the supermercado (grocery store) to buy things for a desert that Tanja was going to make. It was a Wal-Mart grocery store despite the lack of the branding on the outside of the store. The generic products were all Wal-Mart brand. There were quite a number of items from the US, including organic products. We had to ask where to find pretty much everything because the items we needed were not in the places either of us thought they would be. It was an amusing adventure. When we were checking out the cashier asked Tanja a question which she didn´t understand so she repeated herself for me and I didn´t understand, so she repeated it again. Tanja and I looked at each other, then back at the cashier and grinned and said, ´”no.” We had no idea what she was asking. This seems to happen with relative frequency, depending on the person we´re speaking with. We´ve found that smiling helps out in most situations.

Hannah and I went to the central market to explore the never-ending maze of crowded aisles…parts of it were similar to the Centro in Santa Cruz, but there were a lot more crazy aisles and stairs. Hannah and I came to a dead end at one point in a food section…a lady asked if she could help us (meaning, can I serve you food) and we asked, rather sheepishly, if they could help us exit the building. All three of the ladies sitting there cracked up…it was great. We ended up laughing for quite some time and they told us we should come back and eat with them sometime. We promised we would and still intend to make good on the promise in the next week and a half.

There are a few vegetable/fruit type things that I´ve never seen before and are quite interesting. One is a long, fat bean-type pod that, when it is opened, appears to have fuzzy, white beans in it. One vendor, when we asked her what it was, opened it up for us and let us try it without buying anything. It was sweet and you sucked off the outside….the white fuzzy part and in the middle there was a large, green lima bean looking thing, which you did not eat.

So far one of my favorite dishes here has been sopes (a thicker corn tortilla, with refried beans (which are nothing like the refried beans out of a can at home and are pretty much amazing), tomatoes, cheese and sour cream, or whatever you so desire on top….Mexican pizzas, they´re called. I also very much enjoy the chiles rellenos and the quesadillas and, of course, the many different types of salsa.

I´ve been trucking through books…on average probably one every two days and I´m afraid that I´m going to run out before we go back to Mexico City this weekend. I´m not sure what I´m going to do once I´m in Olinala…I won´t have an English language library at my disposal then.

Okay, this is getting rather long, though I could write more….oh! to answer a few questions: dabong is a card game that is a cross between crazy eights and uno. You play with regular cards, with pretty much any number of people though at least three is best. You deal five cards to every person. Set the cards in the middle, turn over the top card. Person to the left of the dealer lays first. You can play on the same suit or same number (a queen can lay on a queen or a heart can lay on a heart, for example). 9s reverse, 8s are wild (you can lay any 8 on any color or number), 2s make the next person draw two. Your goal is to not have any cards in your hand; points are bad (like golf).

The twist to the game is that you can dabong. You can dabong when all the cards in your hand add up to the last card laid.  Cards are worth their face value while in your hand.  (2=2 and so on…jacks=11, queens=12, kings=13, aces can be 14 or 1 in your hand).  So, if someone lays a King and you have a 6 and a 7 in your hand, you can dabong.  You can dabong at any time (you don´t have to wait till your turn), except you probably don´t want to do so on your own card.  The person who gets dabonged gets all the points that you laid down on top of their card.  Points are the face value of the card, BUT 2s double everything in your hand, 8s are worth 58 and aces are 14.  So if you laid down an 8 and someone dabonged you with a 2 and a 6, you´d get (58 + 2 + 6)*2 = 132 pts.  Unfortunately for you.  Your saving grace is that if you get 500 pts. exactly, you win.

I probably forgot at least one rule in this, so if anyone notices, let me know.

I am now going to go watch a movie at my teacher´s house with all the girls…chick flick