Saturday, March 27, 2010

Personal Hygiene in Mexico











There are a few things I have had to adjust to in Mexico. The personal hygiene aspects have been the biggest. Here, you obviously cannot drink the tap water under any circumstance. The locals here dont even drink the water. They all have drinkable filtered water delievered to their homes. Eating salads is very iffy. Anything that is washed in tap water can make you sick, so this includes the mojority of fruits and vegetables. Soup is ok if the water has been boiled. The street food often involves some tap water, because of this we refuse to eat any food from the street vendors. Some people have warned us about having ice in our drinks, but none of us have had problems with that. I brush my teeth and wash my hands with the tap water. That is it. When you go the the bathroom here, there are waste baskets next to the toilet for your toilet paper. The plumbing here is so bad that even toilet paper can cause problems. Taking a shower is definately different. My shower barely has water pressure (if I can even call it 'pressure') I am pretty sure the water just falls out. This makes it difficult to take quick showers, which you need to learn to do here. Otherwise, you will run out of warm (not hot) water. My first day, I actually did not get to take a shower because their hot and cold knobs are backwards here. So, I sat there waiting for the cold water to warm up for 10 minutes. I passed up the shower idea. I was not about to shower in freezing cold water. I later asked my host mom what was wrong with the shower, and I realized how silly I looked when she told me about the knobs. I have grown acustomed to showering in the middle of the day after comida (lunch). I never thought this would be my daily routine, but it gets so hot here! Showering in the middle of the day after a sweaty walk home is more refreshing.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Daily sounds of Mexico
















About every morning I awake to the crows of a sickly sounding rooster. The first morning I heard him I was very confused. In my half awake state, I tried to think of what on earth could make such a horrid sound. He kind of sounds like hes dying... but, I have grown kind of fond of the sickly croons. I hope to find where he lives sometime. In Mexico, I have noticed that the doors are VERY loud. Most doors here are made of metal and have metal sliding latches for locks. EVERY door I encounter in my day makes loud clanking and screeching noises no matter how hard I try to silence it. Our walk to school is along some noisy and busy streets. The buses are very loud and they are Everywhere! They remind me of angry elephants stomping down the street, pushing and shoving to fit in a spot of the road. There are also cars that make noise intentionally to draw customers; like the gas tank truck. The one that comes through our neighborhood has chains with pieces of various metals attached to them dragging from the underside of the truck. Another car sells fried bananas, and it has a loud steam whistle that goes off periodically as it drives through the streets. Some sellers use megaphones attached to the top of their cars to get peoples attention. I am not sure what they sell. I have tried to figure out, but it is hard to understand static-y fast spanish. Once we are at school, we have a nice big wall that blocks most the street noise. Our school has a nice courtyard with trees that attract birds regularly. The birds are quite chatty. They make slightly different sounds than the ones at home. Their soft clicks and chirps are a nice relief after having you ears beat by the grumbling of the street cars. I enjoy the birds. A different kind of chirping I hear many times a day is the whistling of the Mexican men as I walk by. Being a white girl, I have gotten a great deal of attention in the streets. I don't think it is because I am exceptionally pretty, I am pretty syre its just because I am white... Males of all ages (even their 'cops') call after us as we walk down the street. I am not sure it this is meant to grab our attention, or to alert the whole street that white girls are coming. Their favorite call is yelling "Guerras! Guerras!" which is a more 'polite' version of Gringa. Other lines we have heard include: "I lohve yew" o "te amo", "beyutifull", "que guapa", "waaooooow", "deliciosa", "precisiosa", "candy", "barbie", "hola chicas, quieren un latin lover?"...the men here really know how to enchant a woman... Some girls enjoy the supermodel-like attention. Others get rather flustered. It doesn't bother me so much. I find it rather funny! At night, I notice I often fall asleep to the barks of the neighborhood dogs. They all seem to feed off eachother. If one gets alerted, a wave of barks starts. It eventually settles down to wait to the next reason to cause a fuss.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Oaxacan baby shower, Feb. 19











Jose hosted a baby shower for her niece at our home. I was really excited to see what it was like! Actually, there is no word for "baby shower" in Spanish. You just say "baby shower" with a Spanish accent which ends up sounding like: baybee shao-wearr. Jose said I must be there for the pictures. I didn't exactly know what she meant. I thought she maybe wanted me to be the photographer? Or maybe just to smile and look pretty? I found out at the party that she hired a professional to take pictures of everyone for the newspaper! I didn't feel like I should be in the group picture, but Jose insisted. She has now bought me the newspaper where the group picture was published! :) I was in the local newspaper! As a random white girl in the back! wooooo!! ...But the baby shower was just like in the US. There were games, food, presents and a lot of chatty women. I ended up drinking alcohol for the first time and I didn't even know it! I didn't think alcohol would be served since the party was for a pregnant woman! There was a red juice looking drink that had bits of apple floating on top. I absolutely loved it! So, I asked one of the women sitting by me what it was, and she said it was a combination of red wine, lemonade and something else. I was so shocked after hearing 'red wine' that I don't remember a thing she told me after that... I couldn't believe I had just had alcohol for the first time and I didn't even know it! I couldn't help but think it was humorous... I figured this would happen considering Mexico :) I found that a lot of the older women were drawn to me. They all were saying how 'cute' I was (I think/hope) and asked me so many questions about where I was from and how I learned Spanish. Everyone arrived at 7 or so. I left to go to bed at midnight. The next morning Jose told me some didn't leave until 3 AM! They reeeally like to party here :)

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Impressions from the first week. Feb 15-18
















Professor Markens is teaching our Archeology class. I have never taken a class like this and it seems rather interesting. His Spanish is very clear and he speaks slower that the native speakes. This will really help with understanding. Ron is teaching our Mexican Art and Text class. I am really excited about this one. My Spanish teacher, Saul, is by far the best Spanish teacher I have ever had. Since Spanish was his frist language, he understands it like my other teachers have not. He has fun games for us to play too :) On Wednesday we were informed about the volunteer project we are doing during a 4 hour orientation. It was after we already had 4 hours of class without eating lunch. It was rather exhausting, but I am really excited for it! We are going in seperate groups to teach English to a more indigenous town in Oaxaca called Teotilan De Valle. We dont have classrooms. We will be teaching outside on the ground. We get a white board to use visuals. The English lessons are split into 4 levels: kids/itty-bittys 5-8 yrs, tweens, adults with no English knowledge and adults with some English knowledge. And I get to teach the itty bittys!! I am so excited to teach them. I will definately be using a lot of games! :) I am the 3rd group to go, so its not my turn until April. On Thursday, I woke up to a strange sound... I fell in and out of sleep and eventually realized it was rain!! When I had gone down to eat breakfast, Jose asked me if I wanted to go back to sleep and skip school because of the rain... I thought this was so funny! I explained to her that only ice would stop us from going to class in Oregon. She then offered me an umbrella and I kindly told her that we typically dont use those in Oregon either and that I would be fine. I think she thought I was slightly crazy... A little later Chavo asked me the same thing! I thought it was so funny that rain is seen as such a nuisance here. The streets are not designed to handle rain, so there were a lot of puddles. On my walk to school with Libby and PJ, we saw a mother holding her little girl as she peed in the street... oh Mexico, you enchant me so...

Friday, March 5, 2010

Monday, Feb. 15
















First day of school! I had flashbacks of kindergarten. The nerves from last night came back in a vicious new form. My host dad, Chava (nickname for Salvador), attempted to show me how I would walk home. It was very difficult to understand because the way he drove was not the way I would walk. So, this led to getting HORRIBLY lost with PJ and Libby on our 'adventure' home. We walked around for about 30min longer than necessary. Thankfully, PJ's host mom's sister found us poor lost children and drove us to where we belonged. Once we finally figured our the proper way to walk to and from school, we realized that our disaster was a result of one fatal wrong turn. We SURELY will not be making that mistake again... After comida* Ron took us to the zocalo and market. At the entrance of the main strip is the gorgeous Santo Domingo cathedral. Around it are many vendors, stores and little restaurants and bars. It is SO lively here! The zocalo is a shaded central park (minus the grass) with restaurants and another cathedral surrounding it. There are so many people who come just to hang out there! We don't really have something like this in the U.S. We then visited the market that had Everything! Fruit, vegetables, purses, toys and clothes are all I wish to list right now. They have an aisle that I will forever avoid now that I know where it is: the meat isle. Oh my word... Good thing Ron was leading us through this, because I held my breath and looked at my feet once I had seen too much. The meat hung poles and hooks. Everything was raw and bloody. There were whole naked chickens that had a yellow tint to their skin. Their beaks hung open and various slices on their bodies did the same. These revealed guts I never wanted to know was in a chicken. I am pretty sure I also saw severed cow legs, because I saw hooves that were definitely still attached to something... If the sight of the carnage wasn't enough to get you, the smell surely would have... So, to, sum this up I am NEVER returning to this section of the market! Thankfully, Ron then took us to a chocolate factory. This immediately made me forget the sight I had just seen. I sampled the most delicious chocolate milk with ice chips in it. They also showed us how they made their chocolate with cinnamon, nuts and other spices. The market overall was so colorful and lively. There were so many people!
*Spanish word for "food" but also is the name for lunch. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day here. Everyone gets a break from work or school to return home for comida.

*Spanish term for central city square. where all the action is.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Sunday, Feb. 14











This day we traveled to Cholula. Cholula was a beautiful Catholic church built on top of an Aztec pyramid that has now turned into a hill. On our way up we bough chapulines (crickets!) to snack on. They were not as good as cheetos, but interesting none the less. The church was pretty, but the story behind how the pyramid and the people who lived in its vicinity were taken over was rather gruesome... This kind of tainted it's beauty in my mind. After this we went back to our hotel, ate lunch and went to the bus station again to begin our final journey to Oaxaca!! The bus ride was about 4 hours through arid valleys. The terrain was gorgeous! The cacti (plural for cactus?) were as thick as pine trees are back home! For some reason, the first thing that came to mind was: it would really suck to trip and roll down these cliffs :/ ...so the bus was nice. We watched Transformers and College Road Trip in Spanish. When it finally got dark and we could see the city lights of Oaxaca, my nerves finally hit me. I didn't feel ready to meet my host family. I wasn't about to take off sprinting with my 100lbs of luggage, so I managed to get up the courage. Our families were waiting for us in the bus station with sheets of paper that had our names on them. I grabbed my luggage and searched for my name. The cutest woman with glimmering eyes and a bright smile was holding my name. Her warm presence stifled the horrible surge of nerves that hit me that moment (Thank goodness). Her name was Josefina, but we call her Jose. Mauricio, her son, was there to help heave my luggage out to their car. My first words in Spanish to them had to be, "It is VERY heavy". They attempted small talk in the car. I tried, but stumbled quite a bit on my words. I don't know that I have ever been so nervous. Jose showed me my room and every closet, shelf cupboard and crevice in it. She then proceeded to explain the TV remote like I had never seen one before (it was rather cute). I was then given a sandwich for dinner and was left to unpack my things. I fell asleep comforted by the fact that the bed I was going to sleep in for the next 4 months was very cozy.