Watching the World Cup in Mexico

Fortunately, my time in Mexico has happened to overlap with the World Cup.  It is even more fortunate that the World Cup happens to be occurring during my first month in site.  This gives me an easy topic of conversation to fall back on if I'm ever running out of ideas…plus everyone in Mexico is really excited about the World Cup.  If Mexico plays during office hours, my office sets up a projector, takes a break from work, and watches the games something I happily join in on.  If I'm not at the office during games I have watched them with my host family and everyone gets really excited during the games so it is a fun atmosphere at home as well. 

Today, Mexico had its final game in the Group stage and won against Croatia meaning that they advance to the knockout stages which is very exciting.  I was watching the game with my host family and after they won they asked if I wanted to join them in celebrating the win by driving around with the Mexican flag, and shouting "México" and other cheers. I said of course I would like to do that (all part of that whole integration, do as the locals do process) and off we went.

Mexican flag ready to go

Trying my best to look like a local

Others joining in on the celebration

As we started driving we soon came across other cars with excited Mexicans shouting, honking horns, and waving flags.  I would say 1 out of every 5 cars were participating in this ritual in Guzman.  People on the streets were also cheering and waving their own flags if they were available.  Overall, it was a really fun experience to see the whole city excited about this win and Mexico's success in the World Cup…here's to hoping it continues, next game is on Sunday!  ¡Viva México!

Random Photo of the day- Saw my first rainbow in Cd. Guzman after my run yesterday

First days in my new city

Now that I am officially a resident of Ciudad Guzman I thought I would share a few tidbits about the place and also a little bit about what I've been up to since I arrived…

So this is the view from where I work…not bad, right?  What you are looking at is Nevado de Colima, a volcano which overlooks the city.  The peak is not always visible as clouds tend to block the view on occasion, but they do move quickly so even if you wake up and the peak is not visible in the morning it will likely be visible by the time afternoon rolls around…something I am grateful for as I LOVE this view.  Also fun fact…just behind this volcano there is another one, Volcán de Colima, which is one of the most active volcanoes in Mexico.  Soooo the likelihood I'll experience an earthquake while I live here is probably somewhere around the 100 percent mark.

Nevado de Colima

 There is also a lake (or laguna) a few kilometers away from the city center.  This past weekend I was able to walk out to the laguna, a perfect Saturday activity, and snap this shot. Ciudad Guzman is not the largest city (~100,000 people, but you wouldn't even think it was that large) so it doesn't take long before you get to the surrounding rural areas…this picture is probably only 5 kilometers away from the city and you can see it is a rural landscape.  Also, here is an example of the clouds blocking the view of Nevado de Colima which should be easy to see in this photo as it is located pretty much in the center of this photo…darn clouds.

A view of Ciudad Guzman with the laguna in the foreground…here I am just a few kilometers outside the city center

So here's a view of the buzzing metropolis of Ciudad Guzman (Although I keep kidding about the size of the city, I actually do like the size, it is just big enough!).  This is the large plaza marking the city center where there are always a lot of people gathering, particularly on the weekends when there are events and store vendors that set up their tents looking to cash in on the crowds enjoying their weekend free time.  This is also the area where I have spent most of time when I'm done with work for the day.  There are many cafes and ice cream shops surrounding the square…I'm slowly (or maybe not so slowly) trying out every one of them so I can see who's the best!

City Center of Ciudad Guzman

You may have been wondering where exactly I am living in Cd. Guzman…or if you weren't before I bet at this moment you are.  The Peace Corps really likes having us live with host families and after living 3 months with a host family in Queretaro they have us live (at minimum) one more month with a host family in our new cities.  This gives us time to get acquainted with the city and figure out where we would like to live, as it is our responsibility to find our future housing.  While we have to live a minimum of one month with a host family sometimes volunteers choose to live longer as it may take more time to find housing and occasionally, some volunteers live the duration of their service with a host family.  Adapting to life with a new host family is always full of adventure as you get to know their routines and personalities.  My family here is much larger and louder than my Queretaro host family.  I am living with the two parents, their son and daughter (who I estimate are in their early 30s), the daughter's daughter who is 12, and me. Lots of different ages in the house!  They are a very fun family and the mom is a super woman.  She's always doing household chores, cooking, or attending church events, the longest I've seen her sit down and relax is probably 5 minutes.  She is an AMAZING cook…I'm having her teach me a few things about Mexican cooking as I'll be doing my own cooking soon once I move.  One ingredient I don't think I'll be purchasing anytime soon is this:

Not entirely sure what animal this is…my best guess is pig's head

I came across this plate of deliciousness one Sunday morning, I may have lost my appetite for a little while after seeing these.  I believe these (unknown) animal heads had been used to create the broth for a soup called Pozole which all Mexicans seem to love. Ingredients include a variety of meats, pork/chicken/turkey and then the main ingredient maize.  I don't have the same passion for Pozole as the Mexicans do, but I'll eat it and still be perfectly satisfied with my meal.

 So my host family lives a little bit on the outskirts of town (it's about a 45 minute walk to the downtown from my house) so I thought I'd give you an idea of the scenery of the street I live on.  If I'm being honest, this picture is for my Dad who is always asking about the streets. Maybe I can devote an entire blog later to the street varieties in Guzman to satisfy his inquisitive brain…opinions???  :)

Current street I live on, Serafín Vazquez

 Also since I have been here I celebrated my 23rd birthday.  My birthday fell on the second week I was here, always interesting to have a birthday when you have just moved somewhere. (this seems to happen to me a lot as I have an early summer birthday so often I am just starting a new job or internship somewhere when my birthday comes along, either that, or I'm traveling somewhere so I have a wealth of entertaining birthday stories).  I'm not the one to shout out that it's my birthday to these people I hardly know at the office.  However, by around noon that day I subtly mentioned it was my birthday to one person in the office and then watched as slowly the information was dispersed amongst everyone at the office until most people had dropped by and wished me a Happy Birthday.  Funny how fast news travels sometimes.  Later that day I was able to meet up with the other volunteers in the city who were in town and they took me out to eat at a nice Italian place in town and gifted me this gem of a cookie!

Birthday Cookie!

Between people in the office wishing me happy birthday, going out to dinner, my host family making the meal of me choice (they actually did this for me the day before), and receiving countless messages from family and friends I definitely felt loved on my birthday in this new place I call home.  Thanks to everyone who took their time to send me messages…it made for a special day indeed!

Ok I'm about to wrap it up I promise, one more thing…

The first weekend I was here the volunteers in Cd. Guzman (their site is the Parque Nacional Volcán de Colima) were part of a city wide event promoting the environment.  The event was in the city center and many organizations in the area set up tents/booths with activities for those passing by.  I was able to help out with their booth, which was having kids color coloring books the park had made with items and facts about the park (think animals/scenery/plants) and also playing a lotería game (think Bingo with a twist) one of the volunteers had made with facts and pictures about the plants and animals of the park. This was fun to be a part of as it was my first weekend in the city and gave me an opportunity to get a feel for the city and meet some people along the way.  I'm glad I was able to help out with this great event!

Just seeing if I can still color between the lines...

Concentrating hard to understand the Spanish

With the Peace Corps Volunteers who work at the Park
From left: John, Me, Whitney, a local leader of the scout program, and Mary (yes, another Mary, that's not a typo!)

So there's a taste of Ciudad Guzman and what I've been up to.  I am enjoying myself here and getting to know the city and people better each day and can't wait for what's ahead!

Last Weeks in Queretaro

I'm not even sure where to start this blog as much has happened since I last posted.  The biggest thing would have to be that I am no longer living in Queretaro.  Last week I finished training, officially swore in as a volunteer May 31st, and the next day I packed up all my stuff and headed to my new home for the next two years…Ciudad Guzman.  More on this later, for this post I'm going to try and catch you up on my very busy last month in Queretaro leading up to my big move.  I tried to include some of the highlights and more important parts which were hard to select as much happened (I know, my fault for not updating my blog more…that will change I promise), but here's my attempt:

So all the Environment Education volunteers (there were 11 of the 26 of us are EE volunteers…the other are either natural resource management or technology transfer volunteers) got to go on a weeklong field trip to Huizquilucan, a small town outside of Mexico City the first week of May.  The purpose of this trip was to learn about building ecotecnias (i.e. biointensive gardens, efficient wood burning ovens, compost piles, solar dehydrators…) I could go on and on, but the general idea of ecotecnias is that they are inexpensive, environmentally friendly technologies that families can use to make their lives a little easier while also being eco-friendly.  During our time here we were able to go into people's homes in the community and install these to get an idea of how it's done and how they work as some of us may be able to implement some of these technologies at our sites.

                 

                                Teamwork…assembly line passing bricks for the wood efficient stove up the stairs

The EE group and the family we installed the stove for…the completed stove is in the background

Hard at work watering the bio-intensive garden we made

Besides learning about ecotecnias, the other important thing we were able to do on this trip was to plan an Ecoferia at a local school in Huizquilucan.  Because we are Environmental Education volunteers, they thought it would be good for us to get some experience learning how to teach kids about the environment…Peace Corps is thinking ahead here!  So you may be thinking what is an Ecoferia? The best way I can explain it is think of a field day at a school where kids rotate through a variety of activities, but the difference here is the activities the kids participate in are environment related. 

The Logistics

Numbers: Grades 1-6 with around 15-20 students per grade.

Activities:  Our group split into pairs (with one group of 3) and we each planned an activity related to an environmental topic. The topics were water, outdoor recreation, biodiversity/traditional knowledge, deforestation, and animal adaptations.  My partner, Jesi, and I were tasked with teaching the kids about animal adaptations/what they are/why they're important etc.  We had to prepare a 20 minute activity for the kids as that's how long each of the stations were, but really we ended up planning 3 different activities.  We had to account for the fact that 6th graders may not get the same thrill from singing a song we wrote as much as 1st graders would so we adjusted our lesson plans accordingly.  We had a great time planning these activities for the kids and even more fun putting them into action and seeing the kids have a good time while either singing our song, (while Jesi played her ukulele and I showed them the dance we made up to go with it) putting on costumes, coloring masks, or building clay animals depending what grade they were. 

My Ecoferia partner, Jesi, and I in front of the poster we made with the lyrics to the song we wrote…we're quite proud of this song if you haven't noticed…occasionally the song will still get stuck in my head!

Costume activity…where we highlighted the various adaptations animals have by dressing up the kids in different animal costumes

All of us at the school assembly after our successful ecoferia

That about wraps up our week in Huizquilucan…it was an amazing week and we all had a great time getting away from the office a bit, getting our hands dirty, playing with the kids, and just overall getting to hang out with each other. Oh, and I also learned how to play Euchre and am now obsessed (who knew I'd be getting in touch with my midwestern roots in Mexico!).  Overall, this was one of my favorite weeks in Mexico by far!

At the top of a hike we went on while in Huizquilucan…Mexico City is right behind me

After we got back from this weeklong trip we had less than a month left of training.  This led to a crazy few weeks (hence no blog posts!) where we had final assignments and presentations to complete, meetings with the staff, continued Spanish classes, final events with our host families. My host family took me to a BBQ ribs place as I had mentioned many times during my time in Queretaro that I love BBQ so it was a very nice surprise for them to remember this and take me there for my final family event.  There was even country music playing and deer heads on the wall and the ribs were not so bad either…it felt like I was in the south again!  Oh, and I can't forget that they also had root beer, which was quite exciting!!! 

During our last month, we also spent a lot of time just hanging out together as a group as we knew our time together was coming to a close.  I immensely enjoyed my time in Queretaro and meeting all of the amazing people that make up PCM group 16, it certainly made for a bittersweet goodbye when I left as I was excited to get to my new home and begin my work, but sad to say goodbye (for now) to everyone I had gotten to know over the past 11 weeks…I can't wait until we are all back together again!

To close I will include a few photos from our swearing in ceremony where I became an official Peace Corps Volunteer.  The ceremony itself was simple, yet nice.  Our host families, counterparts, and Peace Corps Mexico staff were all there to see us swear in.  We listened to a few short speeches…including one given by a member of our group…which happened to be Jesi...who was selected by us to say some words about our group.  All the speeches were really well done and made you feel warm and fuzzy inside and ready to go tackle the challenges and take on the adventures that we are about to face at our sites.  

My host family all dressed up for the ceremony, Cecilia & Ricardo

Some of us after the swearing in ceremony…our final day in Queretaro