Death by Deodorant!

Or at last almost death...

Now that might sound like a funny title to you, but as I found out earlier this week for me it might just have been possible.  For those of you who don't know I am very allergic to soy and by that I mean back in college within one week I went to the ER twice because I couldn't breathe (anaphylaxis).  A couple weeks later I found out this was because I was very allergic to soy and that I needed to avoid anything with soy in it. Over the last 11 years I've managed to mostly keep my body happy by not eating soy, religiously reading the ingredients in all the food I buy, lotion, and shampoo.  Last fall, to my utter dismay I discovered Burt's Bees had changed the ingredients in two of my favorite products (their chapstick and some awesome hand lotion) and sadly they now contain soy.  However, for some reason I had never thought to read the ingredients in deodorant, sadly I learned this past Monday night why I must now add deodorant my long list of things whose ingredients I must read before purchasing.

Honestly I assumed at some point during my first few months here in Mexico that I would have an allergic reaction and probably need to use my inhaler, however I assumed it would be because of the food I ate.  However, Monday night when I got the splotchy, super itchy rash on the top half of my body I was shocked because I wasn't having any problems breathing instead I couldn't stop itching and my skin just looked gross.  It wasn't until Tuesday morning, when I started going over what other than food (by now I knew food wasn't my culprit) was new in my life and the only thing I could think of was the deodorant I had just started using that I bought right before leaving the states.  So then I read the ingredients and sure enough it contains hydrogenated soybean oil.  I can't believe it that now makes two "natural" products companies that since being purchased by much larger corporations that have changed the ingredients in their products to include soy - thanks a lot Burt's Bees and Toms of Maine.  Thank goodness for Benadryl and soap and water, which helped clear up my rash in about 36 hours.

Don't worry friends I brought more than one thing of deodorant with me and thus will still be smelling fresh and clean with the help of my Arm & Hammer deodorant.

Is it really October?

I can't believe it's already the 14th of October and I have yet to post about Dia de Independencia and my Future Site Visit.  So here it goes I am condensing those two blogs into one.

Future Site visit (Sept 26-29)

This has got to be the most exciting part of training (or at least thus far), not only did I get to meet the people I'll be working closely with, but I actually traveled to Puebla to visit El Flor de Bosque and actually met just about every single person within the state park system I'll be working with (except my bosses boss).  Yep that's right I met the staff of 3 different state parks and was given a tour of each by their environmental education staff.  It was amazing to me how different these three parks were even though they are very close to each other.  There are a few things I took away from my visit the city of Puebla is BEAUTIFUL, living in such a big city is going to be a challenge for the girl who loved living in remote Minnesota, and that Mexico is ahead of the US in how they present climate change to their citizens and how their state parks are serving as huge resources (more on this once I start my service).
Also I am very lucky to be working out of El Flor de Bosque, where I will get to work in this amazing park just outside the city of Puebla, get to also work with the communities around the park, and possibly spend some time after I've learned the ropes well working out of another state park.

This park has everything, including a huge reserve they have been reforesting for almost 20 years

Unfortunately all the pics I took in the reserve didn't really turn out, except for this one!

This is a view of Puebla from one of the highest points in the reserve, it's amazing how close this 13,000 state park is to the very large city of Puebla.

There are a few major things I learned while spending those two days with my counterpart, my Spanish is nowhere as good as I thought it might be and thus I need to start studying the words that will be useful for my job - like the names of plants and animals, how to describe climate change (or cambio climatico - and I need to start having more conversations.   All of my counterparts (and by that I mean that I have at least 10) are very knowledgeable and nice and I can't wait to get back and ask them lots of questions.  By the time my two years is up, I am going to know a whole lot about green technology, I'll actually know how to build a rain cistern, dry toilet, and food dehydrator (Austin and Tanya as soon as I figure it all out I'll definitely share), I'm going to learn about and then work with the communities on worm composting, backyard gardens, natural medicine gardens (super excited about this), and lots of other cool things.  Finally, I also figured out why my counterpart kept talking about me needing boots instead of tennis shoes, that would be because of the rattlesnakes (cascabels) that are in the park.  I of course only figured this out when I saw my first (of what I'm thinking will be many) rattlesnake here in Mexico and he once again repeated I needed to wear leather boots, thus I'm very glad I brought my hiking boots with me since I'll be wearing them quite a bit.

Dia de Independencia (Sept. 15th)

Viva Mexico!

  Independence Day was very fun and exciting.  I started with a play about Mexican Independence on Thursday, continued with a fiesta during lunch on Friday, and watching a whole separate celebration.  On the actual day, I spent the morning exploring on my own and then spent that evening/night celebrating with my host family.  The entire family - grandparents, kids, grandkids, greatgrandkids - came over to my house to celebrate with some traditional food, lots of music and tequila, and later that night singing and dancing.  Here are some shots of that night.

My host mom cooking.

My host dad and his dad