así es….de mi punto de vista, pues

I don´t believe that I have said anything about how beautiful it is here yet….someone asked me what it looks like here and that they had this image that Mexico was a flat, dry desert. Which is somewhat what I had in my head, having only been in the NW corner of Mexico before and that was kind of what it was like.

Olinalá is in the mountains of southern Mexico. I´m not sure what this range is called, but the views are incredible. The mountains aren´t terribly high…after all the temperature only changes here about ten degrees (in C, not F) throughout the whole year and it never snows. Or freezes, as far as I´ve been able to figure out.

Right now it´s quite green and wildflowers are blooming all over the place. On my first drives out into the communities where we work, the sides of the roads were green and orange….wildflowers about two inches across and very orange, named St. Miguelitos, lined the roads. Yellow has overtaken the orange now as a wild sunflower has become dominant. There are still pockets of orange though and the drives are often quite beautiful, what with the colorful flowers in the foreground and the incredibly steep mountain background.

Zinnias grow wild here and impatients are a common flower that people have in their landscaping. Both grow to be enormous…much larger than what I´ve seen in the states. There is also a purple trumpet flower that climbs over fences, buildings and other plants which takes the breath away when you come upon a large section unexpectedly.

Olinalá is in a small valley…when I´m walking from the center of town to my house, I can look up and see a bright white church at the top of the hill in front of me…people often run up the hill to the church for exercise. There are also three small shrine-type things that tell the story of Guadalupe on the road up to the church.

The roads on which we travel to go to the communities are, for the most part, terrible. Our average speed once we get off the main road is about 25 km (that´s km, not mi….so it´s even slower). We do a lot of bouncing around. The roads are pretty windy, as they are in mountains. For those that went to Bolivia, and went up to Moro Moro, it sort of reminds me of that. Actually the whole area rather reminds me of Moro Moro. Drivers here are, in general, better than what I experienced in Bolivia. So, if you want to come and visit, you don´t have to be quite as afraid for your life

There is potential to have some confusion with the turn signal as it is not used here to signal that you are about to turn, but to signal that the person behind you can pass you. So, as happened this morning, there was space for us to pass, so we went to do so, but just as we were speeding up, the pick-up in front of us began to veer into our lane. He was turning into the next road. If he had signaled, we would have known that he was turning. But we are used to US driving. If he had signaled and we were drivers used to driving in Mexico, then it would have been obvious we could have passed then. Seeing as he didn´t signal we should have anticipated the possible left turn coming up. Ah…so it goes…just as long as you´re paying attention you´ll more or less be fine

A couple people have asked me about pictures….which I´ve attempted to get up several times now but have failed repeatedly. So my goal this weekend is to either find a different uploading site or actually figure out the one where I already have pictures posted.

This may be ever so slightly difficult as I´m supposed to play in some sort of basketball goings-on tomorrow. Elly (actually spelled Eli, but that´s more confusing for our English-speaking minds) is our team captain. She informed me at practice early Wednesday morning that a team from Tlapa (a city about an hour away from Olinalá) was coming to play an Olinalá team. The Olinalá team is to be made up of people from all the Olinalá teams and my team picked me to play on this team. I tried to say something along the lines of, “what?!? you´ve got to be kidding! i´ve only been on this team for a week and a half! you can´t pick me to be a part of an all-star team when I don´t even know the names of everyone on our team! nor do i have the vocabulary to ask you what you actually want me to do.”

Instead I just said, “What?!? Why me?” Elly repeated what she just said, thinking I didn´t understand and then when she realized I did understand, said something different that I didn´t understand at all. So my interpretation of this is that I´m tall and maybe I´ll intimidate the other team with my height and whiteness. Vamos a ver…(we´ll see how it goes)…

my time in olinalá started off with a bang (somewhat literally) and has continued at a rather breakneck pace. i´ve been working 10 and 11 hour days because a) we´ve got to get stuff done and b) i need to supplement my personal knowledge about all sorts of things. this is something that mcc warns us about and encourages us to be sure to take time off for ourselves.

i joined a basketball team as a part of taking time off for myself and also getting to know more people. the women´s basketball league runs all year round here and seems to be quite popular; in a town of 4800 inhabitants, there are eight women´s basketball teams. my first day as a part of the team, sunday, we played in a tournament. i started as a post (me! a post!) without any of them ever seeing me play before

we won our first game, which allowed us to continue on…we played our second game at around 1ish (and lost, thankfully, otherwise we would have had to play again and i played all of both games, till the very end)…and it was so incredibly hot. ugh. and i haven´t played basketball for ten years nor done sprints for 4. i managed to foul out of the second game in the last quarter. this is the first time i´ve ever fouled out in my life…i was actually angry enough about one call (i was not physically touching the girl with any part of my body) that i tried to protest to the ref…the conversation went something like this (with me waving my arms around in general frustration):

me: ¡I not me she touch!
ref: Shrug, “He called it, not me,” pointing at the other ref halfway down the court.
me: ¡But she was all the way down there! (the other ref was a male)
ref: Shrug, “Too bad for you”
me: ¡argh!

i glanced at Liz and Martin as i turned to run back up the court and they were both grinning. looking back i think i was the only person in all the games (there were five games total) to say something to the refs…apparently that´s not just done here. i´m the same height as another woman on the team, but pretty much everyone else is much shorter. at one point, i held the ball above my head and there were three girls jumping around me trying to touch it. there are some perks to being tall even if i have to be a post.

Liz and I got a plan more or less fleshed out for the gardens, which is rather exciting. tomorrow morning is our first meeting with one of the groups, so we´ll see how it goes.

well…i should get going…i´ve got practice at 6:45 tomorrow morning in the plaza and i haven´t seen my family yet today.

oh, but interesting sidenote, we´ve had nine peons (the literal translation for the word they use for this type of worker is peon! ha!) staying at our house for the last two nights. they´re from aways away and only one spoke fluent spanish. the rest spoke naut (that´s short for another name for the languge that i don´t know). naut is pronounced now-ought. they were helping miguel in his fields with the corn. they strip most of the leaves and such from the stalks and leave the ears on to dry. when they´re dry, they pick them and de-kernel (is there a word for that?) them and from that, you make the flour from which you make tortillas. so right now there´s all these dead looking fields of mutilated corn around, but pretty soon they´ll all just be fields before they become dusty places for erosion to occur….at least this is my understanding.

oh yes, and there was a question about the doves in my family as well as my floor. i´m not exactly sure what the purpose of the doves is. i´m not sure if they´re going to be eaten or if they´re just around for the cool noise they make or what. right now we have a bunch of dove chicks underneath the stove in the kitchen. i haven´t actually seen them, but i can hear them chirping. there´s also one dove that keeps bringing in long skinny twigs and, today, it brought in a small piece of netting. it always seems very furtive when it´s got stuff in its beak and it goes straight for johnny´s room. i´m guessing it´s building a nest, but i´ve not yet been privvy to johnny´s room, so i´m not exactly sure what´s going on.

one of the cats did eat one of the doves and every once in a while i catch one of the gatos crouched with tail twitching, watching the birds. there was much distress at the death of the dove. i found it rather amusing because it was just like a cartoon…all there was were a few feathers still floating in the air and a guilty looking cat who quickly disappeared.

the floor in my room is tiled. i think that all the bedrooms are. well, except for johnny´s, cause his is in the kitchen and the kitchen has a dirt floor. but even part of the courtyard area is cement. i haven´t figured out why the kitchen isn´t paved with anything yet. sometime i´ll ask. but after i´m here for awhile longer.

ok. now i´m done.

The past few days have been a little crazy, what with the festivals and such.

First, though I´ll introduce my host family…

My mother´s name is Rosalva and she´s probably late 40s; my father´s name is Miguel and he´s probably around the same age. They are both very kind and both excited (especially Rosalva) to have me in the house for the next year. They´ve made me feel very welcome…Miguel has told me numerous times that “what´s here is yours also” and I feel very comfortable around the house.

I have a sister, Judy, who, at age 24, has two kids: Sandy, age 3 and quite full of energy and David, age 2, who is not quite so full of energy and still a little shy around me. Miguelito is 19 and Johnny is 15. I don´t see either of my brothers nearly as much as I see, and talk with, Judy and Rosalva. There´s actually three other sisters that are living in the States right now. All the girls are married. And Judy is the oldest. The other three are between Miguelito and Judy.

Both Judy and Miguel have also lived in States. Both of them also speak more clearly and more slowly than anyone else in the house, which is a great help in my general understanding. Oftentimes Rosalva will say something to me very quickly and, when I don´t understand, Judy repeats it in a different way and much slower. My goal by the end of my time here is to be able to understand Rosalva´s quick speaking and reply in a complete, grammatically correct sentence.

Our house is located about a ten to fifteen minute walk from the zocalo (the central plaza), where quite a lot of things happen. At the moment I can hear fireworks being set off….there was a fireworks display last night as well…more about that later. The first room you enter is the living room/Rosalva and Miguel´s room….their bed is at the back of the room. If I would happen to come home after they would be asleep, I can also go in another way…but they have gone to bed later than me every night I´ve been here thus far and I think this will be the usual routine.

The second room is the kitchen, at the back of which is Johnny´s room. His room is partitioned off with shower curtains and what appears to be a pallet or two set on their sides and used as doors. The kitchen is the only room that does not have a cement or tile floor. I´m still slightly surprised every morning by the packed dirt and the doves and cats wandering about. Exiting the kitchen brings you into the courtyard area. There are limon, orange, mandarin, chili pepper, avocado, guava, mango and palm trees here, beneath which chickens and doves live (the chickens are not allowed in the kitchen). There are also several goats that reside in pens and I generally don´t see.

The rest of the rooms all open up to this courtyard…there´s a covered sidewalk that you walk along to get to my room. My room has bright blue walls and is fairly decent sized. I just got a mosquito net to go over my bed, which will hopefully cut down on the number of bites I´ve been receiving.

The town of Olinalá is not terribly big, but large enough to have four neighborhoods, all of which have their own celebration days. Because this is one of the biggest celebration weeks here, a lot of people have come back from the States for the week. Quite a number of men have tried their English out on me….mostly just “hello” and such greetings, but I think that will be cut down on some once this week is over and people go back home. Very few white people make it out here….luckily it´s a small town, so I´m hoping that people will get used to the site of me and my novelty will wear off quickly.

I´ve been invited to be on a basketball team…not because of my skills (they´ve never seen me play), but because of my connection with Liz, who they seem to think is pretty cool (as do I). People have been very friendly in general. People say “Buenos dias” when you pass them and smile and have been very forgiving of my butchering of their language.

I feel like I´m missing things, but I also feel like I´m repeating myself…so if there are things you want to know, leave a comment or email me and I´ll post in reply.