Too many goodbyes to count....

Last week was a week full of ups and downs for me.  It was great because I was finally sworn in and thus can call myself a volunteer, our days in training were much shorter, and I didn’t have to think about my language proficiency test because I was done with it.  However, last week was also a week filled with hugs and goodbyes and lots of good lucks.  Of course most of those goodbyes are only temporary because at a minimum I’ll be seeing folks when we return in late February (?) for some more training.  However, the hardest goodbyes were those with my host family. 

It’s amazing to me that people can come to mean a whole lot to you in such a short amount of time (11 weeks), especially when you don’t really speak the same language.  But it did happen, by the time I had to say goodbye I was truly sad to have to leave, not only because Lupita (my host mom) had spoiled me, but because they had embraced me and included me as if I was child #6.  

Lupita and me after the swearing-in ceremony

 They didn’t just provide me with a place to sleep and food to fill my belly or help me with my Spanish.  They worried about me, chatted with me, laughed with (and probably at) me, included me in family events like baby showers and birthdays, shared their tequila and mescal, and gathered together for one last comida my last night just to say goodbye to me.  

One example of how wonderful this family was, is that when the grandmother heard that all my stuff wouldn’t fit in my suitcases she brought me a bag so I wouldn’t have to go buy one and then on top of that gave me a pair of awesome Mexican doll earrings (picture coming later).  Another is when I had to go to the hospital to get an xray of my foot (because it turns out I broke my pinky toe), Lupita offered to take me even though her life was already crazy with having to help Manuel, her husband, with pretty much everything because at the moment he isn’t able to walk.  Further, not only did she gather her family for my last night, but spent hours in the kitchen that day preparing a wonderful comida.  I can’t wait to go back to Queretaro and share with them my experiences here in Puebla and wow them with my (hopefully) awesomely better Spanish.

Mi familia!

 So while I had to say more goodbyes than I liked, I’m ready for the next part of my journey.  I’m ready to be one step closer to living on my own again and cooking for myself, not only improve my Spanish, but also learn how to talk about climate change in Spanish, make new friends here in Puebla, find ways/things to get involved in outside of work, and determine how I can best contribute in El Flor del Bosque (the park I’m working with).  So here’s to not having to say goodbye for a while and instead lots of hola’s, and much gustos. 

Oops!

Okay, so I am really bad at this blog thing, there are so many things I want (and have wanted to share), but by the end of my very full days of training my brain is complete mush and doesn't want to cooperate.  Thus, I will summarize a few things that have happened since my last entry.

Piedra Grande (October 15-26)
I left October 15th, along with the other environmental education (ee) folks, for a very small town in the state of Mexico called Piedra Grande for our almost 2-week practicum.  One of my main focuses as an ee volunteer will be to work with folks in the communities surrounding my park on understanding the purpose of ecotecnias (green technology) and helping them get them into their communities.  Some of the ecotecnias I helped build and took extensive notes about were a rain cistern, a more efficient wood-burning stove, solar (food) dehydrator, and a couple family gardens.  I now have a pretty good understanding of what is needed to build these things - in the case of the cistern lots of mixing of cement, sand, gravel and water - and in a couple cases think that with a little help I could actually be in charge of the building process.  So friends whenever you're ready for a large-scale, backyard food dehydrator, I am your woman.

Me inside the cistern watching the master at work

While we were there we also put on an ecoferia (eco-fair) at the local primary school.  This for me was even harder than the physical labor involved in building the cistern.  While I do have some experience teaching and working with kids I've never done that in Spanish.  Preparing to teach our short lesson on water (The Incredible Journey for all my ee friends in the states), was good in that I learned lots of new words in Spanish and realized that I needed to change my teaching style a bit to make things work.  That is I needed to do way less talking, ask short-answer questions, and make things very hands-on (and of course in the perfect world always have someone around who knows Spanish to help me).  I think that Greg (another trainee) and I did a great job leading and along the way adapting the activity and the kids really seemed to enjoy traveling the water cycle.  There are many things I took away from my experience in Piedra Grande such as talking to people doesn't have to be as scary or intimidating as it can sometime seem, building things for people is way more fun when they help and you get to interact with them, casual conversations can help you learn a lot about a community, and I want to continue working on my Spanish so I can have even more conversations and be an even better teacher.

Dia de Los Muertos (November 2)

Celebrating dia de los muertos or day of the dead in Mexico was both a beautiful and a slightly sad experience for me .  It was beautiful in that it is a time set aside for families to not only remember their loved ones who are no longer with them, but to actually get together, clean and decorate their loved ones graves, and reminisce.  Some of these gatherings were quite simple, while others included hiring large bands to play graveside.  The sad part for me were the forgotten graves, the graves of people who's families lived far away or they themselves were no longer around.  In fact, a group of us went to the cemetery to see what this was like and ended up cleaning one of those graves.  While we definitely got lots of stares (most likely due to our obvious gringa-ness), someone at a nearby grave let us borrow their brush so we could really clean the grave.  The other sad part for me is that I actually had someone to think about and mourn for because a wonderful woman - DEB TYMAN - who helped with my high school year group and went to the Presbyterian Church in Whiteville with my family, and who was just an all-around awesome lady passed away while I was in Piedra Grande.  So as I laid those flower petals on this unknown grave all I could think about was Deb and her beautiful smile and how lucky I was to have known her.