Not a lot has happened since I last wrote, but this semester I'm going to try to write with a little more regularity, so I'll just fill you in on the normal events of the week.
Even though it was a pretty average week, it started off with a bit of excitement Monday morning. Sunday we went on a day-trip to see some ruins and visit a local colonial town, so when I got home, I was exhausted and still had a ton of work to do for my monday morning class, so I ended up staying up late to finish it. And since my class is at 8am, that meant I didn't get a lot of sleep that night. (Actually, I got 7 hours, which should be more than enough- I remember back when I'd average 6 1/2 plus 5am crew practice, a weights session and hours and hours of homework and an orchestra rehearsal and just keep plugging along like it was nothing. Mexico has made me weak!). So anyways, I was in my class monday morning, which is the history of the Mayans and super interesting, but as we were going into the last 20 minutes of the two hour class I was feeling sleep deprived and starting to fade. The all of the sudden I gasp and jump out of my skin because the kid sitting in front of me has an iguana on his head!! It's a good foot long head to tail and it's just sitting there on the top of his head. It had a rope clumsily tied around its body, and the rope was connected to the kid's sweatshirt string, acting as a leash. I assume the iguana was inside his sweatshirt for the previous hour and a half of classes, but I really couldn't tell you. Needless to say, I was alert for the rest of the class!
Speaking of pets in class, this would probably be a good time to talk about the difference in classroom culture here. Although iguanas aren't an everyday experience, many other distractions are. At smith, if you cell phone goes off, you have to deal with the wrath of the professor and evil glares from your classmates. At the BUAP, professors don't bat an eye if cell phones go off, and students often answer them and have a conversation while the professor is talking. Many professors will even answer the phones mid-lecture. Students are constantly coming in late (sometimes up to an hour!) and also leaving early, or just walking out for five minutes and returning with a cup of coffee or a candy bar. Side conversations are not uncommon. Some professors are known to smoke in class. People will do their make-up and check text messages. There are so many times when I'm in class and I think, thank god I don't have attention deficit because it would be impossible to learn in this environment. But it isn't like this in every class. Some professors won't allow student to walk in late and demand the full attention of their students. And usually this type of distracting behavior dies down once the professor really gets into their lecture and the students have to pay attention, but even it's existence on a lessor scale has been a big adjustment for me.
After the iguana incident, nothing in my week seems very exciting! I spent most of my time reading for classes, going to classes and running track. Friday was a bit more exciting. One of my friends from the program, Keith, had really bad stomach problems and ended up having to go to the hospital and stay for two nights! Poor kid. I am so thankful nothing like that has happened to me yet! So Friday we took the bus to a part of puebla I haven't seen before to visit him. The hospital was really nice and he was in good spirits, but I still felt bad for the guy. Apparently he has some kind of amoeba infection that's was eradicated in the states in the 1940's!?!? The scary thing is he doesn't know how he got it...
Friday was also our welcome comida (lunch/dinner), although this semester it was considerably scaled down- no host families, mariachi bands or traditional Mexican costumes! After the meal, a bunch of people came over to my house to plan our trip for next weekend. We have monday off and no classes on friday, so we're going to the state of Michoacan (where we went for the day of the dead) to spend time in the lakeside town of patzcuaro and at the monarch butterfly sanctuary. So my next post should be full of beautiful pictures and interesting stories!
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Back in Puebla!
So now that I am all caught up on last semester, I can finally start to write about this semester!
So far, being back in Puebla has been really great. I got into Mexico on January 3, and spent a week going through the orientation with the new group. There are three people, including myself, who stayed from last semester, and 12 new people. Even though we did almost exactly the same thing on this orientation as we did on my orientation in August, it was really nice to get to know the new group a little bit before we got to Puebla. I also had a good time revisiting the anthropology museum, climbing the pyramids again, and going back to the basilica of the Virgen of Guadalupe. Also, not everything was exactly the same. For example, this was the first time I saw the zocalo of Mexico City on an average day- all the other times I've been to the zocalo it has been jam packed with protesters and Obredor supporters! Also, Rouwenna and I took sunday off from the orientation and did some of our own exploring. We went to the museum of modern art with a friend of Rouwenna's friends who lives in Mexico City, and then he took us to a part of Mexico City called Coyocan. They had their own small zocalo, full of people out enjoying their sunday evening. There were these amazing drummers and lots of people dancing to their beat. We got some tortas (which is what they call sandwiches on the certain circular rolls here) and some hot chocolate and just had a great time people watching and taking in the sights.
The next day, we came back to Puebla. The first few days were a little weird for me, as I was trying to readjust to life in Mexico and also to the fact that a lot of the people I used to spend my time with weren't here anymore. But now that I've been back for two weeks, I feel like I am at home again. The new people in the group are all really cool, and I've had a lot of funhanging out with them. We went dancing last saturday night and last night we went out to a bar with live music. Thursday night we went to a party at a fellow exchange student's house. He's from Germany and on a different program, so he rents a room at a house with six other Mexican students. They were all really nice and it was fun to meet some more mexican students outside the classroom. I've also been spending a decent amount of time just chilling out with Israel.
And of course, I am getting back into the swing of going to classes, doing reading and writing papers. I am pretty happy with my classes though. In CU, the more campus-like campus, I am taking Latin America: Politics, Economy, and Society and International Organizations in the International relations department, and "Neoevolucionism and Marxism" in anthropology. I am also taking a history class about the Mayans in the centro, the campus in the center of town. I am really excited because the only class I have with people from the program is the Latin America class. I'm the only american in all my other classes so I will be forced to really pay attention and interact with the other students. I am also really excited because, although my mondays, tuesdays and wednesday are really busy, I only have one class on thursday and no classes on fridays! My schedule, combined with the fact that we have a lot of days off this semester, means there should be lots of traveling going on!
So far, being back in Puebla has been really great. I got into Mexico on January 3, and spent a week going through the orientation with the new group. There are three people, including myself, who stayed from last semester, and 12 new people. Even though we did almost exactly the same thing on this orientation as we did on my orientation in August, it was really nice to get to know the new group a little bit before we got to Puebla. I also had a good time revisiting the anthropology museum, climbing the pyramids again, and going back to the basilica of the Virgen of Guadalupe. Also, not everything was exactly the same. For example, this was the first time I saw the zocalo of Mexico City on an average day- all the other times I've been to the zocalo it has been jam packed with protesters and Obredor supporters! Also, Rouwenna and I took sunday off from the orientation and did some of our own exploring. We went to the museum of modern art with a friend of Rouwenna's friends who lives in Mexico City, and then he took us to a part of Mexico City called Coyocan. They had their own small zocalo, full of people out enjoying their sunday evening. There were these amazing drummers and lots of people dancing to their beat. We got some tortas (which is what they call sandwiches on the certain circular rolls here) and some hot chocolate and just had a great time people watching and taking in the sights.
The next day, we came back to Puebla. The first few days were a little weird for me, as I was trying to readjust to life in Mexico and also to the fact that a lot of the people I used to spend my time with weren't here anymore. But now that I've been back for two weeks, I feel like I am at home again. The new people in the group are all really cool, and I've had a lot of funhanging out with them. We went dancing last saturday night and last night we went out to a bar with live music. Thursday night we went to a party at a fellow exchange student's house. He's from Germany and on a different program, so he rents a room at a house with six other Mexican students. They were all really nice and it was fun to meet some more mexican students outside the classroom. I've also been spending a decent amount of time just chilling out with Israel.
And of course, I am getting back into the swing of going to classes, doing reading and writing papers. I am pretty happy with my classes though. In CU, the more campus-like campus, I am taking Latin America: Politics, Economy, and Society and International Organizations in the International relations department, and "Neoevolucionism and Marxism" in anthropology. I am also taking a history class about the Mayans in the centro, the campus in the center of town. I am really excited because the only class I have with people from the program is the Latin America class. I'm the only american in all my other classes so I will be forced to really pay attention and interact with the other students. I am also really excited because, although my mondays, tuesdays and wednesday are really busy, I only have one class on thursday and no classes on fridays! My schedule, combined with the fact that we have a lot of days off this semester, means there should be lots of traveling going on!
Monday, January 01, 2007
Chiapas
My trip to Chiapas deserves so much more than the short entry I am going to devote to it, but the truth is, tomorrow I am going to start accumulating more experiences to write about, so last semester needs to be finished before then!
Chiapas is the southernmost mexican state, bordering Guatemala. It is legendary for its beautiful natural scenery and for its indigenous population, including the Zapatistas- the indigenous resistance group that on January 1, 1994 (coinciding with the day Mexico signed NAFTA) staged a small rebellion in San Cristobal de las Casas to fight for their rights. The Zapatistas still exist, living in self-sustained, autonomous communities throughout the mountains of Chiapas. It has been a dream of mine to visit Chiapas while in Mexico, so when the opportunity to go presented itself, I jumped at it. The opportunity came back in October when Jenna and I went to a meeting of immigrants’ rights organizations that her professor invited her to. At the meeting, we learned there was going to be a huge conference on immigration in Chiapas in the beginning of December. I emailed the guy who was in charge of the conference and he told us it was free and that we were more than welcome. And since it was an educational experience, we got the program to pay for our bus tickets, which was a huge help, since they came to around $120.
It was kind of tricky figuring how long we wanted to stay in Chiapas and what we wanted to do and who wanted to go, but in the end, it was Katy, Cassie and I who went. It's about a 12 hour bus ride to San Cristobal de las Casas, which is the city where the conference was, and the buses only run over-night, so we left wednesday evening in order to get to the conference on thursday morning. As we were taking the bus to the bus station, I could help but wonder what we had gotten ourselves into. We'd traveled on our own before when we went to Veracruz, but that was only for the weekend, it was four hours from puebla, we were a group of 10, not three, and I hadn't really had a direct hand in the planning. For this trip, it was up to the three of us to figure out how to get where we needed to go, judge safety, book hotels etc. But everything pretty much went smoothly, and anything that didn't we were able to take in stride.
I was very pleasantly surprised by the bus ride to San Cristobal. The seats were huge and reclined almost all the way back, so I slept pretty much the whole twelve hours. We got to San Cristobal around 7am, so we took our taxi to the hostel we wanted to stay in. We couldn't check in yet, but we dropped off our stuff and headed out to check in at the conference. Although we were tired and gross from the bus ride, the morning in San Cristobal was enchanting. There were women in different types of indigenous dress with baskets on their backs, setting up their crafts at the market, people eating steaming tamales and backpackers everywhere. The city itself reminded me of a combination of Puebla and Cuetzalan. The streets were cobble stone and the side walks were so narrow we could hardly walk two abreast, never mind all three of us in a row. The buildings were no more than two stories high, and each one was a different bright color. And as we walked to the site of the check in, the early morning light was glistening off everything.
I was honestly pretty amazed when we showed up at our destination and there was actually a conference going on. All we had been going on was the one vague email I received back in October, and in the back of my mind, I wondered if there might have been a miscommunication, but now, the conference actually did exist. We registered and sat through the fist session before we sleepily headed back to the hostel to relax and recuperate a bit. That afternoon we attended some more discussions, had some tasty vegetarian food (both Katy and Cassie are vegetarians, but that worked out well because san cristobal caters to the crunchy, backpacking, vegetarian type). That night was a lot of fun because the hostel we were staying in was full of young people from all over the world, and there was a bonfire in the courtyard of the hostel where everyone gathered around. We talked to people from Spain, Canada, Holland, Australia, Norway, and England. It was really neat to hear the stories of the backpackers who have either taken a semester off or are just not going the traditional path and instead are wandering the world. There was something very attractive about the idea of having nowhere you needed to be for a few months and just exploring at your own pace.
The colorful cathedral in San Cristobal de las Casas
Dancing at the goodbye fiesta
Chiapas is the southernmost mexican state, bordering Guatemala. It is legendary for its beautiful natural scenery and for its indigenous population, including the Zapatistas- the indigenous resistance group that on January 1, 1994 (coinciding with the day Mexico signed NAFTA) staged a small rebellion in San Cristobal de las Casas to fight for their rights. The Zapatistas still exist, living in self-sustained, autonomous communities throughout the mountains of Chiapas. It has been a dream of mine to visit Chiapas while in Mexico, so when the opportunity to go presented itself, I jumped at it. The opportunity came back in October when Jenna and I went to a meeting of immigrants’ rights organizations that her professor invited her to. At the meeting, we learned there was going to be a huge conference on immigration in Chiapas in the beginning of December. I emailed the guy who was in charge of the conference and he told us it was free and that we were more than welcome. And since it was an educational experience, we got the program to pay for our bus tickets, which was a huge help, since they came to around $120.
It was kind of tricky figuring how long we wanted to stay in Chiapas and what we wanted to do and who wanted to go, but in the end, it was Katy, Cassie and I who went. It's about a 12 hour bus ride to San Cristobal de las Casas, which is the city where the conference was, and the buses only run over-night, so we left wednesday evening in order to get to the conference on thursday morning. As we were taking the bus to the bus station, I could help but wonder what we had gotten ourselves into. We'd traveled on our own before when we went to Veracruz, but that was only for the weekend, it was four hours from puebla, we were a group of 10, not three, and I hadn't really had a direct hand in the planning. For this trip, it was up to the three of us to figure out how to get where we needed to go, judge safety, book hotels etc. But everything pretty much went smoothly, and anything that didn't we were able to take in stride.
I was very pleasantly surprised by the bus ride to San Cristobal. The seats were huge and reclined almost all the way back, so I slept pretty much the whole twelve hours. We got to San Cristobal around 7am, so we took our taxi to the hostel we wanted to stay in. We couldn't check in yet, but we dropped off our stuff and headed out to check in at the conference. Although we were tired and gross from the bus ride, the morning in San Cristobal was enchanting. There were women in different types of indigenous dress with baskets on their backs, setting up their crafts at the market, people eating steaming tamales and backpackers everywhere. The city itself reminded me of a combination of Puebla and Cuetzalan. The streets were cobble stone and the side walks were so narrow we could hardly walk two abreast, never mind all three of us in a row. The buildings were no more than two stories high, and each one was a different bright color. And as we walked to the site of the check in, the early morning light was glistening off everything.
I was honestly pretty amazed when we showed up at our destination and there was actually a conference going on. All we had been going on was the one vague email I received back in October, and in the back of my mind, I wondered if there might have been a miscommunication, but now, the conference actually did exist. We registered and sat through the fist session before we sleepily headed back to the hostel to relax and recuperate a bit. That afternoon we attended some more discussions, had some tasty vegetarian food (both Katy and Cassie are vegetarians, but that worked out well because san cristobal caters to the crunchy, backpacking, vegetarian type). That night was a lot of fun because the hostel we were staying in was full of young people from all over the world, and there was a bonfire in the courtyard of the hostel where everyone gathered around. We talked to people from Spain, Canada, Holland, Australia, Norway, and England. It was really neat to hear the stories of the backpackers who have either taken a semester off or are just not going the traditional path and instead are wandering the world. There was something very attractive about the idea of having nowhere you needed to be for a few months and just exploring at your own pace.
The second day the conference was held at site just outside of san cristobal. To get there, we had to take a taxi, and at first, our taxi driver didn't even know where we going, but after driving along a dirt road through a neighborhood of tiny concrete block houses with chickens in the front yards, we arrived at a tiny agricultural college.
***
Ok, all the above was written the day before I left, but I am now back in Puebla and ready to start updating you all on a new semester. So the short version is Chiapas was amazing. In San Cristobal, we divided our time between the conference and exploring San Cristobal. We went horse back riding to a small town where all the women and girls wear wool skirts that look like black-faux fur tied with wide embroidered belts. We went to a church that was nothing like I've seen- a true mix of Catholicism and indigenous religion. The ground was covered in pine needles, there were no seats, just people kneeling before rows of thin candles melted to the ground, air filled with incense and chanting, and the music of 6 or 7 harpists. We rode through the mountains with crazy guides who liked to make our horses go fast and saw women washing their clothes in streams. We ate lots of long meals (actually not lots- we did lots of snacking and strategically planned our meals to save money) and did lots of shopping to spend the money we saved on meals. We met a cool anthropologist at the conference who is just a few years older than me, and is doing her research on the mexican- Guatemalan border and invited us to stay sometime if we don't mind cots.
We took a five hour bus ride to palenque after the conference which was the worst bus ride I've ever taken. It was pure mountain curves for five hours straight- even after dramamine I felt sicker than I ever had in my life. In palenque we stayed in cabanas in the jungle and ate pizza in the humid night air, surrounded by huge brilliant green leaves. We spent hours at the ruins of palenque, exploring at our own pace, refusing to pay a guide and using our lonely planet photocopies instead. They were the most beautiful ruins I've seen yet, and one of the most beautiful places I've seen period. We remarked that we could understand how the rulers of palenque believed themselves to be gods as we stood on top of the pyramids over looking miles and miles of lush jungle. We also visited two stunning waterfalls, Misol Ha and Agua Azul. At Agua azul, we bought tiny bananas from a little girl and shared them for a snack. The bus ride back home wasn't quite as pleasant since we stopped at nearly every town between palenque and puebla, and also had to stop for migration officers looking for illegal guatemalan imigrants. But over all, it was an amazing trip. I was very proud of the three of us for sucessfully pulling off such a big trip by ourselves.
After we got back from Chiapas, we only had a week left of the semester, so time flew by. My birthday was that Tuesday that we got back. I slept all morning and then at lunch, my family acted like it was just a regular day, and then surprised me with a cake for dessert. After dance class, we went out to a bar to celebrate my new legality which wasn't quite so new, and afterwards, everyone came back to my house for hot chocolate and the rest of my birthday cake. In the next few days, I took an anthro exam, wrote a research paper for my dance class, and practiced like mad for our dance performance at the goodbye party on friday. We were all really nervous about the performance since we never practiced with all the elements- the high heeled shoes, the skirts, the music, the rocky patio, our partners- and we were still learning choreography up to two days before the performance. But miraculously, we somehow pulled it off and actually had a good time doing it!
Horseback riding up the side of a mountain
Katy and Cassie outside the conference site on the second day
The colorful cathedral in San Cristobal de las Casas
Eating pizza in the jungle
Me at the ruins of Palenque
More beautiful ruins
Dancing at the goodbye fiesta
Israel and I the goodbye fiesta
Me and my host family
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)