Gallos Blancos

View of the Stadium

This past Friday I was able to attend a soccer game in Queretaro!  This happened to be the last home game of the season for the Queretaro Gallos (or Gallos Blancos) and if they won this game they would go to the playoffs.  They were playing the Pachuca Tuzos which is a team based in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. The game was a lot of fun, the atmosphere was lively, and the soccer was entertaining!  The Gallos Blancos (the team I was cheering for) were up 3-0 with maybe 25 minutes left.  Things were looking good, everyone was excited, including us…

Enjoying the game with other Peace Corps friends

However, the tide started to turn when the other team scored a goal, and then another, and then another, and just for good measure they scored one more time….so by the end Pachuca won with a score of 3-4 :(.  In other words, Queretaro choked.  They had a comfortable lead and then the momentum switched so no playoffs for the Gallos.  Despite all this it was still a fun game to go to and see all the goals scored and experience the rapid change of the hometown fans' mood from confident and excited they would win to tasting the sting of a surprising defeat. 

Random Photo: View of the park that is near my home

FSV: Future Site Visit

I can now say I have successfully completed my first trip within Mexico…where did I go???  To visit my future site, Ciudad Guzman!  This is a fun and exciting time for all volunteers during the Pre-Service Training.

So what is a Future Site Visit (FSV)?

I visited the city and office where I will be working for the next 2 years!  As I write this I am realizing how bizarre it is that I accepted a ‘job’ without being able to meet with whom I would be working with or where I would be working…I didn’t even know what country I was going to be sent to.  I guess this is part of the allure of Peace Corps for me, not really knowing what to expect when you first sign up…

This was my first visit to Ciudad Guzman which is in the state of Jalisco…you know, the only place in the world where authentic tequila is made. I think a blog post about tequila is in my future considering this fact…  Anyways, Guzman is 2 hours southwest of Guadalajara, the closest big city. The city itself is in a valley with two volcanoes (one active and one inactive) overlooking the city.  Guzman is a mid-size city with around 100,000 people.  There is nothing flashy about the city, just your average place where people live.  I think this will make for a good home for 2 years as it seems like a very normal, comfortable place to be.  The weather is also quite nice…it doesn't get too hot and it doesn't get too cold!

View of the surrounding landscape, including one of the volcanoes, Nevado de Colima…the light post right in the middle really adds some character to this photo (sorry about that)

View of an average street in Ciudad Guzman

The site I will be working at is called CEFOFOR which is a part of CONAFOR (I'm learning a lot of acronyms in Mexico).  CONAFOR is Mexico's equivalent of the U.S. Forest Service and CEFOFOR is a training center they have for their employees.  They provide classes on a variety of topics such as ecotecnias (think solar ovens, water purification systems, composting toilets), they have buildings made using straw as insulation which  if made correctly will withstand the elements for 100 years, and they have a medicinal garden they use to inform people about the medicinal uses of plants.  I am unsure as of now exactly how I will fit into the puzzle that is CEFOFOR, I will just have to show up and figure out my place!  It's likely that I will be educating kids and people in the surrounding area about environmental issues, but we will see in the coming months.

View of some of the offices on the property of CEFOFOR

The 'Living Garden', This garden is used to show people what types of plants can be used for medicinal purposes

Pizza dinner at a volunteer's house in Ciudad Guzman.  In total, there will be 6 volunteers in Guzman in June when we arrive.

 On the final day of my visit the four current volunteers stationed in Guzman hosted a dinner for the two new incoming volunteers.  There is one other person in my group who will also be going to Guzman.  While we will be in the same city, we are going to be working at different sites.  There are quite a few volunteers stationed in Guzman considering its smaller size, but it will be nice to know some familiar faces come moving day!

So there's a (very) quick recap of my visit…it was a whirlwind 3 days as I got to know a little about what I will be up to for the next 2 years.

Translation Stories

When you are trying to learn a language it is inevitable you are going to experience a few mixups in terms of translation so I thought I would take this time to share 2 quick 'lost in translation' stories…

Incident 1:
It was last Sunday and I was out to lunch (as is the Sunday tradition) with my host parents and my host mom's mom.  So in a lull in conversation, because there are a few of those when you are learning a new language, I commented on the boxing match that was happening on the televisions in the restaurant.  What I wanted to say is that the boxers were skinny, (they must have been one of the lightest weight classes in boxing as they really were skinny).  I was convinced I knew the word for skinny, delgado, so I said that the boxers were skinny in Spanish.  They looked at me all confused and I wasn't sure why, my statement was easy enough there wasn't much room for error on my part as I only said a few words.  So I repeated my statement again, this time louder as I was convinced I was right, and they continued to give me funny/confused looks like what on earth is she trying to say.  Well it turns out somehow what I was saying was that the boxers were drug addicts…whoops.  Of course when I got home I went to look up the word for skinny and delgado is indeed one of the words you can use to say this so I'm not sure if they just didn't hear me correctly or what, but whatever I did it made them all think I was saying the boxers were drug addicts, they were all very amused by this mistake…Moral of the story: I'm not going to call anyone skinny/thin for a long time now just in case it gets misinterpreted as me saying they are a drug addict.

Incident 2:

So this next story was on Sunday as well…I guess my Spanish was not at its best on Sunday…

We (my host parents and I) were sitting at the kitchen table just chatting, I was trying to describe to them a place I had visited in the city Saturday night and they were trying to figure out where it was.  My host dad thinks he knows where it is and starts describing something about an airplane.  I became confused as I was not sure where in the conversation we made the jump to airplanes, but I tried to pretend I understood as he kept talking.  Eventually, I came to the conclusion he was talking about a plane crash that had happened in the city and I asked when this plane crash occurred, expressing concern because it sounded like it happened in the heart of the city and that this was a tragedy.  Apparently, he was trying to describe a restaurant that had a fake airplane sculpture on its roof that is made to look like an airplane crashed into the restaurant.  He was describing this because he thought it was nearby the place that I was trying to describe the location of and he thought I would have remembered this airplane restaurant.  I think I would have, but it turns out it was not nearby the place I was trying to describe as I saw this restaurant later that day and everything suddenly clicked in my head.  I'm not sure this one is entirely my fault as I was not prepared for a conversation involving a fake airplane crash that turned out to be the description for a restaurant…I mean that would be weird to describe in English, let alone Spanish.  Moral of the story….be prepared for very weird topics to come up in conversations.

My confused face on Sunday(or most days really).  This was taken when I got in the car with my family and had no idea where they said we were going.  I was a little concerned when they asked if I needed my water bottle and I declined, thankfully I did not need it….that would have been a tragedy if we were going on a hike in the 92 degree weather.

A typical day as a Peace Corps Trainee

I have now been in Mexico for a few weeks and if you were wondering what exactly has been taking up my time here this is the blog post for you…

For each Peace Corps assignment there is a training period, which is what I am currently undergoing.  So if we are being technical here I am not a full-blown volunteer right now, I am a Peace Corps Trainee, or PCT.  The amount of time one spends as a trainee depends on the country of service and how long each office feels is necessary to prepare their groups.  For me, the trainee period is 10 ½ weeks.  In this time they try to cram in as much information as possible so you feel prepared when you actually get to your place of service.  In order to cram in all this knowledge this is the typical day-to-day schedule for me:

The street I live on with my host family (these purple trees are everywhere a beautiful!)

7:30- Wake up and get ready

8:00- Eat Breakfast with the family. If you ever want to challenge yourself in the morning try waking up and immediately speaking a foreign language…I don’t care how many Sodokus you do in the mornings, nothing wakes your brain up quite like this.  This is also when my Spanish is at its worst so by the end of breakfast you figure your day can only go up from there…

8:30- Begin the walk to the office.  I meet up with 2 other PCTs who live nearby and we walk the 20 minutes to the office together.

9:00-5:30 Training.  A day's sessions/lectures will vary but here is a list of the variety of topics we may go over in a given day:

              -Peace Corps’ international development approach

              -Peace Corps’ guidelines/rules/stories/general information

              -Lectures on how to stay healthy/be able to self diagnose yourself…cue the gross                     pictures now

              -Sessions on Safety and Security

              -Sessions on Mexico’s history/culture/politics…the Political Science major in me really enjoys these lessons

              -Sessions on Mexico’s Environment/Natural Resources…because I am an Envionmental Education volunteer this important stuff for me to know

              -Sessions on Environmental Education…ie what is environmental ed, how do you design and implement projects at your site, this is the practical knowledge I will need for my assignment

              -Spanish Class

              -Spanish Class

              -Spanish Class

              -Spanish Class

We do get breaks between sessions.  Each session/lecture can last anywhere from 1 hour-2.5 hours, it just depends. We eat lunch every day from 1:00-2:15.  3 days a week Peace Corps provides lunch and the other 2 days we get to walk around and find our own places to eat nearby which is usually successful, but sometimes we come back with some interesting stories about what we ate.

You can see here that we have a lot of Spanish class.  We are divided into small groups according to our Spanish level.  My class has 4 people in it which is a great size for a language class as it guarantees a lot of talking.  Spanish class is actually one of the more fun times of the day…despite it often taking up half the day.  Classes are fun and interactive and fly by, something I can't say this is true for all of the sessions though...

5:30-7:30: After a long day of training it is nice to finally be done and walk home.  Some days we will go out for a beer after training, other times we will explore the city some, but most often people just head home after a long day at the office.

7:30: Usually I am back by 7:30.  I am greeted by my host mom’s daughter and 17 month old granddaughter as they come over every afternoon and stay until around 9pm.  This makes for a rowdy household to come home to as we all play with the granddaughter and I chat about my day….in Spanish.  I will eat a light dinner around 8 or 8:30 as the lunch meal (aka comida) is the big meal of the day

9:30: Finally the day comes to a close and the house is a little more quiet as all the family has gone home.  This is when I usually retreat to my room and do my homework and just decompress from the day, but sometimes I will sit and chat with my host parents for longer or watch whatever soccer game is on TV as my host dad always seems to be watching.

...and this ends my typical day as a PCT

On an adventure day…they served great cold drinks here, think milkshakes and frappes

View of Queretaro…you can see the old aqueducts in the background

A narrow street in the Central Historical District in Queretaro