8 days left!

No pictures, but a few updates.

This will probably be my last blog while I'm here in Mexico, so I'll try and catch you up on a few of the details of whats been going on lately.

The US election was something that was just as closely watched in Mexico as it was back home (I'm sure). The Fox group was really looking forward to watching election night via the BBC but were disappointed to find out that Cuernavaca had recently changed all its channels so that the BBC was no longer available. After a short fit about all the news channels being in Spanish (and how we wanted to watch an AMERICAN election in ENGLISH), I decided the best option was to stream CNN live from my computer.

So here's the picture: Everyone huddled around my MAC Book on a dark but warm Mexico night, watching the night unfold miles away from our own country.

After the votes were tallied and the celebration parties had started, it really sunk in for me: I'm missing the most important night of the year. I wanted so desperately to just be in America, and celebrate like an American and overflow with American pride.

Mexicans are (understandably) so proud of their country though, that you have to kinda bottle it up, or it looks like you're stepping on toes.

The spirit of happiness about Obama being president elect wasn't just contained at the US border though. Mexico was extremely relived. Because a lot of what America does directly effects Mexico, Mexicans really hold their breath every 4th November. All the teachers at our school were pulling for Obama as decreetly as they could.

My host brother greeted me the morning after the election with some rude cuss words about Bush and how he didn't care who the president was, as long as he wasn't Bush and as long as he didn't screw things up for Mexico. I think he really did care though :) hahaha. You just can't NOT care.


Other news from Mexico is that we're all counting down the days until we can get on the plane and go home! Mexico has been a WONDERFUL experience, but as James put it, "It feels like a vacation thats just gone on too long." Some of us have had a much rougher time than others: host-family issues, sickness, a death in a family back home, and now, the newest issue: LICE! Yes, we're all very much looking forward to the sweet, sweet relief of Oregon (and for some of us, Washington).

Of course we're looking forward to Christmas with our families as well! Late November, and likely December, is just not the same in Mexico. Not with 75 degree weather and blue skies.

Ashley's host family decided to buy a real Christmas tree this year and I can't tell you the fits of joy she and I were both in when we went with them to pick it out. A 6 ft REAL Christmas tree here, imported from Canada, is $700 pesos. That's roughly $70 dollers! Its pretty ridiculous. Nonetheless, Ashley and I were rubbing its needles and getting its Christmas scent all over us! We even made a Gingerbread house while listening to Christmas music before we even bought the tree. I'm telling you guys, we're desperate here!

While the pine does offer vague memories of home with its scent, it's not the same when you realize you're not around family and friends, that you're not dressed in your winter's warmest, and that you're not tasting the bittersweet winter air on your lips every time you venture outside. You're not getting whisked into the frenzy of the holidays and you're not listening to English Christmas carols (just "Feliz Navidad" over and over again).

If anything besides an extraordinary cultural experience, Mexico has given me a sense of pride in where I come from and much appreciation for what I have in the US, including family, Oregon weather, and United States security.

When I left for Mexico, I could not wait to get out of America - even bragged about it. Now I know, even if America were a dump, there's no place like home. No place anywhere in the world that can make you forget it. No experience that trumps being with loved ones in a familiar setting.

Hence, why I'm counting down the days until I can step off a plane onto that weird looking PDX airport carpet, and trudge, both exhausted and excitedly, towards my family on the other side of the terminal.

I'll see you all in 8 days.

Guanajuato y San Miguel

To catch you up on my Day of the Dead experience, my teacher, Ana Maria, decided instead to take Marcy, Aubrey and I to Jardin Borda, which is a type of community garden/historical site in downtown Cuernavaca. There was a huge festival going on there with Mariachi Bands, offerings, incense, dancing and art. As we walked through the gardens there were huge 7 ft Catrinas everywhere, all dressed differently, made by local artists. La Catrina, as I explained in an earlier blog, is the main character of Dia de los Muertos. She's a skeleton that's usually dressed very fancy and is a joke that started among the upper class and slowly moved all throughout Mexico. She's been featured in Diego Rivera's murals and many caricatures. From what I can tell, she's meant to say that no matter how much anyone has, you still die in the end.

So as we walked around the garden admiring the Catrinas, we also bought some snacks (I got a mango on a stick) and listened to the mariachi bands which played their music over the many ponds in the garden. Ana Maria told us this was to raise the spirits of the dead out of the water. Later, there was a dance of some kind where a bunch of masked people screamed and twirled and were just overall creepy. One of them pulled me out of the crowd so I did some sweet twirling moves with them and everyone clapped. I was pretty much a hero. No lie. Haha.

The next day, Universal packed its students up and drove the 5 hours North to Guanajuato. About 4 hours into the trip, we stopped at beautiful San Miguel, a small touristy town, to stretch our legs and walk about. It being Halloween, everyone was hard at work in the zocalo making offering and covering the ground in artistic patterns made from various grains and flowers. Streamers were hung everywhere, incense was burning, and, to our surprise, there were tons of American tourists walking around. We'd never heard so much english since we'd arrived in Mexico! Lots of cars with Texas license plates too....I guess San Miguel really brings in the foreigners during this time of year.

Ramiro told us to wander around on our own, and as tired as we were, we weren't too happy about not getting a tour or any information about the city of San Miguel. So alas, I have nothing interesting about its history or people to share with you. We did, however, find a Starbucks that actually served Chai (a very hard thing to find in Mexico, even in Starbucks) and had a relaxing time there before doing some window-shopping and sightseeing.

After a few hours, we got back on the bus and kept heading towards Guanajuato, which ended up being further away than we anticipated. We finally arrived at our hotel after dark which meant that Guanajuato was a good 'n low 50 degrees. We were all freezing, tired, and some of us sick, so rather than check out the city at night, we ordered in pizza and went to sleep.

The next day we were up bright and early to check out a mine that Guanjauto was famous for. The mine was pretty boring but the guide was very interesting. By the end of the tour, we were all in agreement: he was definitely a drug addict. He was jittery and nervous and kept repeating the same things 3 times in a row. Luckily, he did know a little about what he was talking about, so it was ok.

After the mine, we headed further into town to see an old torture facility that the medieval church had used to keep its congregation in line. After seeing the most grotesque contraptions ever engineered for every sin in the book (and some that I wouldn't consider sins...) we got to see some of Guanajauto's famous mummies! Of course to go and see them, we had to climb down into a catacombe in which the lights went out halfway through our tour....I think they must do that every time they have a group of girls that wants to see mummies. I found this whole experience very perfect for the Halloween spirit and I'll just consider our mummy room as a haunted house visit. However, the idea of the church using torture, against its own followers nonetheless, left a bad taste in some of our mouths and provided for some interesting conversation all the way to our next stop.

A museum was our next stop. And honestly, by this time, we're all so incredibly sick of museums. This one talked mostly about Mexico's revolution (which we already know about). So we really just mosied around and scanned stuff before asking Ramiro to take us to lunch.

Which he didn't. He left us again and told us to do our own things with the rest of the day. By this time, feeling like our last real excursion had very little planning done beforehand, we decided to see the city on our own. So after lunch, we set off in search of the famous Lover's Alley which is a street where the houses are so close together that two lovers could lean from their balconies and kiss each other. The story about this alley is somewhat similar to Romeo and Juliet, where the rich girl in one house liked the poor boy in the other. When her father caught them kissing, he told his daughter that we would kill her if he caught her doing it again. Thinking he wasn't serious (she was, after all, his only daughter), she continued to kiss the neighbor boy until her father found them again and did indeed kill his daughter. The boy was so overwhelmed with sadness, he committed suicide.

I'm not sure if that story is true, but its a large tourist site today where people like to take pictures of themselves kissing loved ones. I, having no loved one, decided to wander down the street a bit until I found the coolest, picture-perfect man ever. You're thinking handsome, right? I'm talking photo-op. Half his face was covered in Samoan tattoos and he had a cool septum piercing. I asked if I could take his picture and he said yes, on one condition: That he be allowed to stare deeply into my eyes. I was like "Sure! Good deal!" thinking he was gonna ask me to buy some of this silver rings he was selling instead. So I took his picture in exchange for one awkward minute of the blinking game. After that, he told me he saw "the light of the sun" in my eyes. I felt right at home on hippie Hawthorne, Portland. He had me write my name on a piece of paper so he could remember me and then pulled out a bottle of perfume to rub on my hand, ensuring me that with this perfume I would have a wonderful day.

The day was pretty alright, seeing as after that, I went straight into a candy store and bought some of the popular sugar calavaras to bring home to the States. I think I went a little overboard, because I bought 7 of them. I hope they make it home to the people I bought them for.

While walking around some more, we met an exchange student like ourselves named Rachel, who was living in Guanajuato. She told us she had worked at a bar there that had great food so we followed her excitedly to find that we were too early and that they weren't serving yet. Instead, she took us to a secluded cafe that had the most amazing cheap wine and fried chicken (!!!). It was also dirt cheap. We were thrilled and spent a good portion of the cold, crisp night there, laughing and talking about home. On our way back to the hotel, it being Todos Santos, we got to see all these kids wandering the streets in costumes asking for money or candy. With the chilly night, it felt very much like the USA.

The next day we were supposed to see yet another museum, but to our pleasure, it was closed on Sundays. Again, Ramiro told us to fill our own time, so we dispersed to find food and say goodbye to Guanajuato. After wandering around and seeing what we could of the preparations for Dia de Los Muertos, we got back on the bus and went back to Cuernavaca.

As much as I enjoyed Guanajuato, like I said, it felt like their was very little planning behind it and we didn't get to experience Mexico's most unique holiday like we all would have liked to. It turned out their was more going on in Cuernavaca that weekend than there was in Guanajuato and we'd missed out thoroughly. But next to Oaxaca, Guanajuato was my second favorite excursion.

Pictures of Guanajuato and San Miguel can be seen here.
Also, if you look at my previous blog, I've uploaded a link for pictures of the market place in all its Day of the Dead glory, as well as my festival experience at Jardin Borda.