Tales of the Peace Corps

Visa Update

2010-05-17T12:30:00.003-05:00

Three weeks ago I spoke to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez. I was told then that my application materials have been received and were still being processed. The representative at Visa Services told me to call back today, May 17th, for an update. I just got off the phone with Visa Services and was told that they have not scheduled us for an interview and that I should re-send all the application materials if I want to be considered for a visa interview. That means running off about another 50 photocopies and paying another $50 in UPS charges and then waiting another 8 weeks for processing in Ciudad Juarez... you've got to be joking!

So I spent the majority of my day trying to call various agencies (the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, Customs & Immigration Services, National Visa Service, etc. etc.) trying to find if there was anyone who was actually accountable for the work (or lack thereof) being done at the Consulate in Ciudad Juarez. As should have been expected, this was futile. Apparently, the Consulate is semi-autonomous. Although run by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security and housing the offices of USCIS who conducts their work in coordination with the National Visa Center, no single entity is fully responsable for the entire process nor can the access information they may at one of the other entities depending where in application process you are, nor is there any oversight agency to whom you can report problems. Basically, if something goes wrong you are stuck with two options, give up or bend over and it.

I decided to call the Consulate one more time (and incur another fee on my credit card) in desperation, not really knowing what would come of it. I spoke to a different agent this time who, thankfully, was much more helpful. He confirmed that in fact my documents were not lost, had been received in March but that no interview had been scheduled because for some apparent reason they were unaware that I wanted one (because apparently I was just going through all this as an excersize in stress management). He did say, however, that he was going to "escalate" my file, which apparently means that the Consulate will dust off and either schedule me an interview ASAP or explain why they cannot (e.g. I need to send up more information or documents and further delay the process). Again, apparently if I had not called to check the status they would have just left me waiting for years on end with no explanation or communication on the matter. I know I should be thankful that I finally encountered someone who actually wanted to help, but all I can think is that I wasted money talking to the first idiot today and now I have to pay to call them back in two weeks because they can only communicate with us by snail mail. I swear, the next person that tells me that a Mexican is perfectly welcome to come to the U.S. as long as they do so legally... is going to get knocked out!

Sure, just come here legally...

2010-05-17T11:32:00.001-05:00

Since the passing of Arizona’s new law, immigration returned to the forefront of our collective attentions. Unfortunately, the media is doing its part to perpetuate several misconceptions, the most common of which also happens to be the one with which I have direct experience. It goes something like this: “if they want to come to the U.S., they can do so legally.” What most fail to realize, however, is that our government has put in place a complex web of logistical, financial and safety road blocks to prevent the legal immigration of poor Mexicans.

Late last August I married a Mexican woman whom I met while serving in Mexico with the Peace Corps. Our foray into this bureaucratic nightmare began early last October by downloading and filling out an application for an immigrant. On this application it is clearly stated that there are three methods for obtaining an immigrant visa for the U.S. – the lottery, employer sponsorship and sponsorship by a family-member who is a legal resident. It goes on to state that Mexicans, though, can only qualify for a visa if sponsored by family member legally living in the U.S.

That was about the most easily understood part of the instructions, the rest may as well been written in Chinese. We consulted the Embassy’s Web site for clarification, but only encountered contradicting instructions so as a last resort we decided to call the Embassy’s 1-900 number – the only way to contact them with questions about visas. Despite paying by the minute for the phone call, I had to continuously fish for information from the representative, who clearly did not want to be talking to me. In fact, she at one point told me: “you know all this information is ‘clearly’ laid out on our Web site.” I responded by advising her that “clearly” is a subjective term to which she bluntly informed me that actually it is pretty clear.

Eventually, we managed to figure out the forms. Our next challenge was figuring how to submit the $355 filing fee, payable only by cashier’s check issued U.S. currency. We spoke with several people at our bank; all insisted that a check could only be issued in pesos. It took going to a branch office in a bigger city 3 hours away to finally get a check issued in dollars. It was late October before we could finally mail back the application and it was not until February before we received notice from the Embassy that our application was approved and forwarded to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez for further processing. Despite the fact that we live only an hour away from Mexico City and that there are 11 U.S. Consular offices in Mexico, the Consulate in Ciudad Juarez –the most dangerous city in Mexico – is the only office authorized to process immigrant visas for Mexicans.

That letter came with instructions to download another packet of forms from the Consulate Web site and mail them back to their offices. In addition these forms, you are instructed to begin collecting a long list of documents that you will need to bring to your upcoming interview in Juarez in order to prove your identity, financial stability and marriage – with triplicate copies. Because I do not work in the U.S., I had to recruit my mother to co-sponsor my wife’s visa application so that we met the financial requirements of the immigrant visa.

Eight months into the process and we are still waiting for our visa interview appointment to be scheduled in Ciudad Juarez. When we do eventually get an interview, we will have to pay approximately $600 for plane tickets, plus hotel and food costs for three days minimum stay. You see, as part of the approval process my wife also will have to undergo a physical exam at one of the only two clinics in Mexico authorized by the Consulate, which they recommend doing three days before the interview in case there are problems or delays with the results. We have been advised that this exam will cost us $150 plus the costs of any required vaccinations; apparently $300 is the average total medical cost. Another $400 will be due at the interview for processing, plus costs for UPS shipping of the visa. When all is said and done, we expect to have invested well over $2,000 for her visa. I have called there (also a toll number) several times, but they could only confirm receipt of the additional materials in early March and that they were still being processed. Even I am beginning to think that at this point it would have been cheaper (and faster) to hire a coyote.

So the next time you hear someone claiming that they have no problem with immigrants, as long they come here legally, do me a favor. Remember that the illegals predominantly consist of the poor, marginalized, rural citizens of Mexico. They do not have the resources to download forms or make 1-900 calls; much less pay for travel and shipping costs, processing fees and medical exams with vaccinations. In the end, I have to say that admire the vast majority of illegal immigrants. After all, how do you look your hungry children in their eyes and tell them to hold on for eight months or more because daddy needs a visa? When faced with that difficult decision, they had the courage and integrity to decide that taking care of their families was the most important thing. If that isn’t family values, I don’t know what is.

The Little Things You Take For Granted

2010-04-05T20:13:00.001-05:00

As I anxiously count down the (hopefully) weeks that I have remaining in Mexico, I thought I would turn my attention to some of the little cultural idiosyncracies that differentiate life in Mexico from that of the U.S. This is intended to be an ongoing list, mostly for my own venting, but if you have lived outside the U.S. you may wish to contribute as well...

1. Free public restrooms. I just took my garbage out to the street to find a young man urinating on my building, in plain view and not the least bit disturbed by my interruption (or lack thereof). I guess when they collectively decided as a culture to charge for the use of a restroom, even to clients at many establishments, they did not foresee this unintended consequence, or perhaps they just don’t care. As I once explained to Lety, Americans are an ‘entitled’ society. If we are conducting business at an establishment, we feel entitled to certain accomodations (such as free restrooms) and would be most offended if told we had to pay extra such accomodation. It may be arrogant, but at least we don’t have people peeing on public streets in broad daylight, sober at least. Even our bums usually have the courtesy to seek a dark alley or a park tree.

2. Apartments with water and tenants protected by the law. We are now on week 3 of no water in our kitchen and constant outages in the bathroom. When we complain to the landlord, his response is to tell us to fill up our buckets with at the spiget in the patio for use in our homes. My neighbor apparently went as far to threaten withholding the rent to which he responded that if she did not like the situation, she was free to find another place to rent. I guess this old man has nothing better to do with his days than to clean and prep an apartment to go on the market for another month without rental income. In that case, why does he not have time to fix the plumbing?

3. The customer is always right policy. The examples of how this mentality is not shared by most business in Mexico are too numerous to describe. Over the past two and a half years I have learned that any attempt to complain to management about poor service or products is usually a futile exertion of energy on my part. If you are lucky enough to receive more than just a blank stare, you are probably being told that you always have the right to spend your money somewhere else. I forget the exact number, but apparently these proprietors have not learned the basic economic rule that it costs somewhere in the vicinity of twice as much to recruit a new customer as it does to retain a current one. Most recently I went to the market in search of fresh cilantro. As per the norm, I asked the man at the first stand for $1 peso’s worth of cilantro. He responded by saying that they only sell a bushel for $2 and he did not care when I explained that I could not use that much before it would go bad. So I walked to the stand next to him where I successfully purchased a bushel for a peso and as I walked past the first stand, he gave me a disgusted look. Annoyed, I told him I was sorry but he had his chance.

More to come as I encounter them...

The End of the Road

2010-03-11T11:03:00.002-06:00

It's been a long time since I last wrote. I wish I could say that it has been due to a lack of time, but that seems to be all I have now days is an abundance of free time. As some of you may remember, I was trying to extend my service for another 6 months after the director of the park informed me that they were no longer going to sponsor the community service activities of the eco-club I founded in one of the communities in the park. Well, about the same time this was going on, the state government made a power-play for control of the park and to make a long story short, the federal employees with whom I had been working with for the past 2 years were removed from the park's administration.

This resulted in complete disarray on the part of Peace Corps because their contract for volunteer service is with the federal government and we needed their approval to extend my service. I was given an extra month to try to sort things out, which I used to meet with the local delegation of the Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat as well as with the new park administration. I managed to work out agreements with both agencies but my attempts to communicate this with the Peace Corps staff went largely unanswered until a few days before my provisional extension was due to expire at which time I was informed that it was now too late to work out anything. In the end, I shouldn't have been surprised as this lack of professionalism is typical for the staff here in Mexico. The sad result is that the ecoclub has now been disbanded by the national director for lack of a facilitator and the kids who have dedicated a year of their lives to improving their community will not finish what they started. They now have to find another government agency to sponsor their community service requirements for graduation, which will inevitable take their work outside of their small town as they seek service in the bigger city of Pachuca.

All this has left me with a rather bitter feeling toward the Peace Corps as an organization. Like so many government agencies, they are too myred in their own bureaucracy to be truly effective in realizing the goals they have set for themselves. I guess that should not be a surprise, but I was really hoping that the Peace Corps would be different. That's not to say there has not been any successes in the Mexico program, but rather that those successes a that result of the volunteers' ability and dedication to triumph despite the Peace Corps, not because of it. I won't say anymore on the issue for now as I plan on writing a seperate piece dedicated to the topic which I intend to share with my congressmen and perhaps a few newspapers.

Since my work with the Peace Corps ended, I have been filling my days hunting for jobs and working on the mountain of paperwork needed for Lety's visa. The job hunting is going as well as can be expected. I've probably sent out at leat 100 applications and resumes and have only had three interviews. One never went anywhere, the other turned out to be an unpaid position (a fact which they did not advertise) and the other would have ended in a job offer, at least so I was told. That was with the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, who informed me that I was going to be hired and that HR was going to contact with the details but before they did I decided to withdraw my application as it appeared we were still several long months out from receiving Lety's visa. I still scour the Internet looking for a job in the case that the perfect one might be availabe and Lety's visa will get approved at the same time.

On the visa front, our application was finally sent from the Embassy in Mexico City to the Consulate in Ciudad Juarez. We then sent another long packet of forms to fill out and send to the consulate, which had to be done before we could be scheduled for an interview (the next step in the long process). This whole process has left me with a lot of sympathy for the illegals in the U.S. We have had to deal with a series of representatives that really did not want to talk to us, much less help us over the telephone. Because of this we have relied heavily on the Internet to download forms and look up instructions. We had to pay $300 do the Embassy to file our paperwork and have been told we will need to pay another $400 to the Consulate at the visa interview. Every phone call to them requires a credit card charge of $7 and we have easily racked up a couple of hundred dollars in UPS fees and photocopy charges. The only Mexicans have the means to do all this are those that are not trying to immigrate to the U.S. I've contacted my congressmen about this but as is par for the course, they have not responded (not surprisingly, being that my permanent residence is in Florida, they are republicans and most like anti-immigration reform).

Anyways, we remain patiently waiting for notice of our interview appointment and dreaming of starting fresh in the U.S. and more specifically, escaping the mountain climate and returning the beach. It's a probably a good thing that I am not working as it has afforded me the time to handle all the logistics of her visa application and preparing for our (hopefully) upcoming move. Lety does continue to work. Her boss knows that she is preparing to leave but has been supportive, thankfully. I pass my days taking care of the house, the laundary and preparing dinner like a good little house-husband. I've found time to experiment with new recipes and expand my repetoir, much to Lety's delite. I also think our cat has become spoiled with me around all day. She follows all around the house and always wants to play, much to the dismay of my hands and ankles and any other exposed skin on my body. Luckily, the landlord either has not noticed her return or has chosen not to say anything. Hopefully, by the time he does we will have a departure date anyways.

Despite the cut-back in our lifestyle, due to the loss of one our incomes, we still manage to get out of the house every now and then. Usually it's for a cup of coffee or walk around the plaza. There's also the requisite Saturday dinners at her parents' house, though that is becoming a chore as we get up early on Saturdays for Lety's English classes before going to her parents' house. We joke that we can't wait until we are living far away from our families so that our free time will be ours again. Last Saturday we also managed to escape for a while to check out a free concert of some big Mexican pop singer and an air show. We were having fun until our niece got a nosebleed and we had to bring her to the ambulances before heading home for the night. This Sunday we have a big family dinner to celebrate Family Day. If it's anything like last year, at least there will be beer and tequila.

Until next time...

Christmas Vacation

2010-01-18T15:02:00.002-06:00

Well, I finally got around to sorting through the 800 and some odd photos from our recent vacation to Chiapas, Guatemala and Belize. I tried to make this as brief as possible but it was a long trip and we did a lot, so wait until you have some free time to read this (photos are linked to title)...

Day 1: We left for Tuxtla Guiterrez from Mexico City by bus. We purchased the tickets in advance and realized too late that we had made our hotel reservation in Palanque. So our 12 hour ride turned into 18 hour ride since we had to buy another ticket from Tuxtla to Palanque. Actually, turned out to be a bit longer since the driver had to make a middle of the night stop on some desolate intersection to meet up with his girlfriend. Rained the whole time, which didn’t help our travel time either.

Day 2: Still raining. We finally arrived in Palanque and checked into our hotel early in the evening and quite exhausted from the long haul. Only really had time to grab a bite to eat, stock up on some supplies and reserve our passage to Guatemala for the next day.

Day 3: Still raining. We left early in the morning, finally, after our transport arrived an hour late to pick us up. About mid-day we arrive at the border town of Fronterra Corozal. The townspeople, avid Zapatistas, wouldn’t allow our van to pass through the town so we had to unload our backpacks, walk down the road and board a town-approved local transport (a cargo truck in which we loaded like cattle into the back). Everyone had to pay $15 pesos to the town for “town improvement” tax... sure didn’t look like that is what they were using it for. After passing through the immigration kiosk we boarded a large gondala which ferried us for an hour across the Río Usumacinta to Guatemala. After paying $20 USD per person for our tourist visas we were shuttled another 5 hours to Flores. Still raining, we dropped off in downtown Flores only to be told that our hotel was another 45 minutes away in the town of El Remate. We started walking around trying to find a taxi but only encountered motorized rick-shaws. A friendly Guatemalan family in a rick-shaw stopped to help us by calling their friend, who has a regular taxi. The gave us a ride to the bus station where their friend drove us to our hotel. Our hotel was a lovely complex of cabañas set in the jungle with its own vegetarian-friendly restaurant and located close to the Mayan ruins of Tikal.

Day 4: Still raining in the morning we decided to sleep in and cancelled our tour to the ruins. By mid-day the rain had stopped so we found a local combi (public transport) that took us to the ruins. Tikal is a series of pyramids that tour over the jungle canopy and home to Howler Monkeys and Toucans (in abundance). A truly magical place unlike the majority of the ruins we have seen in Mexico. Star Wars fans will recognize Tikal as the filming site for the moon of Endor (where the rebel base is located and home of the Ewoks). At the end of the day we went back to wait for a combi where we were dropped off. After an hour of waiting (by now the rains had started up again) we were told that there were no more combis and we had to buy seats on a tour bus to get back to our hotel. We spent the evening relaxing over a few beers and window shopping at the artesan shops.

Day 5: Still raining, we woke up early to catch our bus for Belize City about 7 hours away. Most of that travel time was spent at the border crossing. We finally arrived in Belize City around 3PM where we instantly bombarded by beggers offering to find us hotels or restaurants and taxi drivers. We were on our way to the island of Ambergris Caye so were able to dodge most of these people as we were dropped off right at the water taxi terminal. By 4PM we were on our boat making the hour long journey to the island. Thankfully, we managed to leave the rains behind in Guatemala. We arrived at San Pedro, the only real town on the island, and checked into our hotel we had reserved after reading Lonely Planet’s recommendations. Upon seeing our room, we quickly discovered why this particular hotel was popular among the backpackers... it was cheap and basic. It’s only amenities, besides its beachfront location, were that it came with free moisture stains, cockroaches and the ever-so-pleasant smell of insecticide. We immediately left the room to spend the evening lounging on oversized couches on the beach at a cozy little bar next to the hotel.

Day 6: After breakfast we made it a mission to find a better hotel, since it was only a day before Christmas Eve, this practically an impossible mission. After seeing several rooms comparable to where we were at, we finally found a cheap hotel that was clean, on the beach and came with all the regular amenities (i.e. cable TV, clean towels, maid service, etc.). So we checked in and enjoyed a real shower before walking out the back door onto the beach where we found a dive shop willing to give Lety the resort-diver course (even though she doesn’t know how to swim very well) so we could go diving together. We made reservations for the next day then rented a couple of bicycles to spend the rest of the afternoon exploring the island. We rode to the other side in search for the Palapa Bar, a popular drinking establishment on a pier that we never did find but enjoyed some excellent black-bean burgers with cajun fries (man how I missed thoughs) at another restaurant we found nestled away in the expat community. In the evening we stayed close to the hotel, eating and drinking at their beachfront bar while watching the other tourists play Chicken Bingo on the beach for free drinks (and the honor of cleaning up after the chicken).

Day 7: Lety and I found a nice little Cuban restaurant to eat breakfast before going out diving. Our first dive was at Hol-Chan National Park. Within seconds of entering the water we were greated by nurse sharks, snappers, angelfish, jacks, barracudas and jewfish not too mention the finger, mustard, cactus, brain, starlet and blushing star corals as well as sea fans. After about an hour we boarded the boat again and headed out to go snorkelling at Shark Ray Alley. This is where the guides bait the water with various fish parts to attract nurse sharks, eagle rays and sting rays before prompting you to jump in the water. It was touristy, but I have to admit I enjoyed swimming around the water chasing nurse sharks and rays with my camera. Lety was more interested in staying close to the boat and viewing the wildlife from a “safe” distance. Still, she got bit by the diving bug and was eager to sign up for two more dives the following day. In the evening, we dined on Chinese food before Lety went to Christmas Eve mass at the local Catholic church while I waited at the bar next door and chatted with a retired American expat about the ups and downs of living on the island.

Day 8: Christmas Day. Lety and I joined a group of ‘regulars’ to go diving at Victoria Canyons and Sandy Point on the reef. We saw much of the same species, including more sharks, with the exception of a 6-foot green morray eel, some beautiful blue sponges and a juvenile sea turtle. Both dive spots where characterized by deep, coral canyons that you made you feel miniscule as swam through them. Lety was officially hooked on the sport. In keeping with the truly eclectic style of Belize, we found a Lebonese restaurant for dinner and enjoyed a nice conversation about politics and the economy with the two brothers who owned and ran it.

Day 9: We caught an early ferry back to the mainland just as the rains came to the island. Guess we can’t complain too much. On the mainland we caught a taxi to the bus station only to find out that the buses going to community of Bermuda Landing, where our next hotel reservation was, were suspended for Boxing Day. I knew Belize was formerly a British colony but it did not occur to me that they would celebrate Boxing Day. We were unable to reach the hotel manager to cancel our reservation or seek transportation advice so we took another cab to a guest house close to the water taxi terminal. After checking in and grabbing a bite to eat we finally received a call back from the hotel manager who offered to come into Belize City and pick us up for $25 USD. We thanked the nice people at the guest house and told them to keep our money before grabbing our stuff and heading into the city to meet our ride.

By the late afternoon we arrived at Bermuda Landing and checked into our cabin in the jungle. Bermuda Landing is a town which banded together in the 1980s to create a Howler Monkey sanctuary after an American scientist informed them of the dwindling population of monkeys due to development and habitat loss. We hired a local guide to take us into the jungle and bring us face to face with a couple of troops. We were lucky enough to be able to touch a few and sew some babies. Later, at night, we hired another local guide to take us on a three hour canoe ride in the jungle to look for nocturnal wildlife. We saw several nightjars, herons, a paca (a rodent the size of a large cat) and crocodiles. Our guide, plucked a baby croc out of the water and passed it to Lety to hold who was yelling at me to translate to our English-only speaking guide that she did not want to, which I ignored as I was fumbling for my camera. In her effort to avoid the croc she nearly dumped us into the water but eventually she did hold it before passing it to me. Later on, our guide found a three foot juvenile croc which managed to wrestle into the canoe as well.

Day 10: We were so enamored with the sanctuary that we decided to stay an extra day. We spent several hours drinking beers on the front porch of our cabin, watching the toucans dart from tree to tree and took a hike down to the bridge to watch a troop of monkeys climb around the branches of nearby trees while giant, orange iguanas lounged by their side. All our meals were home cooked by the hotel manager and served to us on picnic tables by the cabin. We were the only ones staying at the resort so we enjoyed lengthy conversations with the staff over dinner and breakfast and excellent personal attention.

Day 11: In the morning we headed back to Belize City to catch our bus back to Flores, Guatemala. Even though it had only been a week since we were last in Guatemala, the border patrol made us buy another visa... I’m fairly certain this is not legal since a tourist visa is good for 90 days. In Flores, we had to do some hunting for a decent hotel room and found one that was do-able for the evening. We then headed out to dinner at a what appeared to be a lovely restaurant over looking the giant lake that surrounded the island town of Flores. An hour after we ordered our food we flagged down the manager to ask what was taking so long and were told that there was a large table that was taking up their attention. He claimed they were ahead of us but I pointed out that we were actually here first and that six years of working in restaurants has taught me one important thing, never tell a customer that there are more important customers than him. He said if we didn’t like the service we could leave but just then our waitress arrived with our meal, so we unfortunately stayed.

Several bites into my veggie burrito we realized that it had fish. The waitress response was that it was my fault because she only heard me say I wanted a burrito and that I shouldn’t worry “it’s a little bit of fish, nothing will happen.” I informed her that it was against my religion to eat animal flesh so she proceeded to quiz me on my religion. I told her it was none of her business so she offered to get us something else but we told her we had no interest in waiting around another hour for more food. We asked to speak to the manager again but he refused to come to our table so we paid for our drinks and Lety’s plate and promptly left without leaving a tip or paying for the burrito.

Day 12: We woke up early and checked into a better hotel before taking a combi to the town of Poptún. Our plan was to arrive at the Finca Ixabel before 9AM in order to take a cave-river hike but we arrived 15 minutes too late so we decided to hike around the trails in the hills outside of the town. The trails, we were told, were well marked and we were even given a “map” but quickly found ourselves lost in the jungle-clad hills. We eventually retraced our path back to the finca after several hours of meandering around several different side trails trying to complete the supposed circuit. After eating at the finca we headed back to Flores and found a cave system just outside of town that we were able to explore on our own, though without the underground river.

Day 13: At 5AM we were on a bus heading back to Mexico. At the border we charged another $20USD per person to leave the country. We were not charged this when we left to go to Belize so we argued, as did everyone else on the bus, but to no avail. A Dutch woman refused to pay and was told she was not welcome back to Guatemala to which she promptly replied “I live in Amsterdam, I have not intention of ever coming back.” The bus cheered her on. After being ferried across the river to Mexico once again, we were promptly greeted by the local townsfolk who once again charged us to pass through and prohibited our tour bus from entering. We were told that one of their combis was going to take us to Palenque for a fee to which the entire bus revolted since we had just paid a good chunk of money in Flores to be taken all the way to Palenque.

After several minutes arguing along the side of the road, our tour guide agreed to pay the combi driver but we were still left in the middle of the city of Palenque to find our own ways to our respective hotels. Lety and I hiked to the bus station were we found another combi heading to the campgrounds at the ruins of Palenque were we wanted to stay. We were planning on camping since it was almost New Year’s Eve but lucked out and found a rustic cabin on a stream in the jungle for about $10USD per night. It was very simple but clean and located within a small community of about 6 different campgrounds (collectively callen El Panchán) each with cabins, tent sites and a few restaurants.

Day 14: We signed up for an all day tour of the major attractions in the area including the Mayan ruins of Palenque (like Tikal, they were set amidst the jungle), the towering waterfall of Misol-Ha and the series of jungle cascades and (frigid) bathing holes called Agua Azul. On the tour we met a young expat couple from Texas and their baby girl who fled to Guatemala for a fresh start after their home was foreclosed on and their business went into a heavy tax debt. We returned to El Panchán and celebrated New Year’s Eve with an intimate dinner at one of the restaurants before looking for our new friends at the local bar where a salsa band rang in the new year.

Day 15: We jumped on another bus to go to San Cristobal, a charming colonial town set in the mountains of Chiapas, famous for its retention of the indigenous culture. We arrived late in the afternoon and decided to opt out of any tours of the nearby indigenous towns, instead walking the downtown district of the city listening to street bands playing marimba from the plazas before grabbing some take out from a local vegetarian restaurant and relaxing in our hotel room.

Day 16: After an all-you-can eat buffet at another local vegetarian spot, we boarded a bus for the hour drive back to Tuxtla. We left our backpacks at the baggage check in the bus station and took a combi downtown to catch another combi for the suburb of Chiapa de Corzo, the jumping off point for a speed-boat tour of Cañon del Sumidero. We had just enough time to take the 2 hour tour (again, half an hour of which was spent waiting for our boat driver to finish making out with his girlfriend whom he met up with on another boat in the middle of the reservoir at the end of the canyon) and return to Tuxtla for dinner before starting the overnight journey back to Mexico City.

Day 17: We arrived in Mexico City early in the morning and caught a bus for Pachuca. We arrived home in time to shower and straighten up the house before Lety’s family came over for lunch, to exchange Christmas presents and share in our travel stores. By late afternoon we were finally left to crash in our own bed for a few hours before returning to work the next day.

Caos

2009-12-09T12:11:00.002-06:00

Lately I feel as though I am stuck in some wierd episode of The Twilight Zone. One hand I was busily preparing to close my service. Most of my projects have been wrapped up to the best of my ability. The biggest being the environmental education center (photos linked to title). Only four exhibits remain to be installed, though it remains to be seen how we are going to finish them being that the director of the park decided to deliver my computer to the regional offices while I was out-of-town. I came back to an email from the grafic designer that she had lost the information for these four exhibits, which were saved on my computer. It would have been nice to have been given advance notice that I was no longer going to have a work computer so that I could have backed up my files first.

The other big project, my ecoclub, has been thrown into limbo at the last minute. The other week the director of the park informed me that the park was no longer going to sponsor the ecoclub and took away all their projects in the park. With only a few weeks left before my close of service it now appeared as though the ecoclub was going to be disbanded by the National Director due to a lack of a facilitator. That's when I began discussions with the Peace Corps about extending my service another six months in order to have time to look for a new agency to sponsor the efforts of these young adults so that they may continue to serve their communities.

Normally this would not be a big deal except that, also in the past couple of weeks, the state government made a power play in the park and effectively tried to kick out the federal government (with whom Peace Corps has a contract for volunteers). What followed has been several weeks of headaches and stress as my departure date drew ever closer, the ecoclub students prepared to go on Christmas break, no one in the park new if they would continue to have a job, and Peace Corps had no idea with whom they needed to negotiate an extension of my service. To further complicate things, there appears to be a very real possibility that the federal government will be temporarily removed from the park and the Peace Corps only has the authority to send volunteers to work with agencies of the federal Environment and Natural Resources Secretary. So the future of all volunteers in the park hangs in the balance.

Last night I finally received a partial reprieve, a provisional extension of 30 days, in hopes that by this time next month things will have calmed down a bit and the issue of extending my service until June 2010 can be revisited with whomever is running the park. At the very least, that gives me the luxury of turning my focus on my own Christmas break/vacation plans (Chiapas, Guatemala and Belize) and putting these politics behind me for a couple of weeks.

The frustrating thing is that I am only trying to make sure that this group of disadvantaged teens continues to have the opportunity to develop their leadership skills, serve their community and improve the natural environment... an opportunity these young people, especially the girls, otherwise would not have. You try to do the right thing and all you get is problems and resistance. I guess it's true what they say, it's not easy to do the right thing.

Fería de los Globos and Guanajuato

2009-11-17T13:58:00.002-06:00

This past weekend Lety and I made a trip up to Leon, Guanajuato to visit a friend one last time before she departs for another Peace Corps assignment in Ecuador. We arrived late Friday night thanks to some poor planning on my part. It was a three day weekend, so like an idiot I did not buy my tickets in advance and had to wait three hours in the bus station for the last available departure to Leon, but better late than never.

After a quick three hour nap at our friend’s house, we met up with another volunteer and her boyfriend to drive across town to the Fería de los Globos (hot-air balloon festival). It was a beautiful day to spend walking around the lake, snapping some photos and grabbing lunch; but there was little more than that to do. Much to our dismay, they were not offering rides.

The afternoon was spent, for me, being drug around the Zona de Piel (Leather Zone) in Leon by my two shop-aholic escorts on a long hunt for the elusive perfect, pleather purse and wallet for Lety. Though they put up a good fight, in the end they were captured (much to the dismay of pleather wallet). Guess I can’t complain too much, Lety does make her own money and is free to spend it on what she wishes (and I spent an equal sum of money the next day on two plates, more on that later). In the end, I got to sit down (finally) and have a beer so the afternoon was not a complete waste.

The three of us woke early the next day and Lety and I prepared a pancake breakfast for our host and the other volunteer before heading out to city of Guanajuato about an hour away. Guanajuato is an old Silver mining town nestled in the valley. There seems to be a lot of these in Mexico, which surprises me, having always thought of the Spanish conquistadores coming here for the Aztec gold rather than the silver. Still, each is different and worth visiting.
Guanajuato is a three-tiered city with the first consisting of subterranean roads and walkways built in the remnants of the mining tunnels. The central business district and historic center can be found at the second, ground level while most of the brightly colored residences make up the third which climbs up the surrounding mountain sides.

We had only the day to spend there, so our tour was a quick and dirty one at best, a teaser if you will. The day was spent visiting the neoclassical Juarez Theater crowned in warrior statues, walking through the old train-station turned market shopping for handicrafts, snapping some photos of the old fort were the decapitated heads of the four heroes of Mexico’s independence (Jimenez, Hidalgo, Allende and Aldana) were hung by the Spaniards from its four corners (http://www.oldandsold.com/articles02/mexico_travel28.shtml), passing by the birth place of Diego Rivera and enjoying a mid-afternoon lunch at a French restaurant in one of the plazas before making the climb to the overlook and monument to another independence hero – Pipila – above the town for some twilight shots of the valley below. Along the way, I managed to find two hand-painted decorative plates depicting El Catrin and La Catrina, two skeletal folk figures synonymous with the Day of the Dead in Mexico.

We returned to Leon to enjoy one last meal with our friends and the next day we were on a bus to Mexico, ending what will probably be our last vacation until my service ends in December. Click the title of this post for a link to the photos.

Saying Goodbye…

2009-11-11T19:07:00.002-06:00

It’s been a few weeks since my last entry and a lot has happened in that time. The week before last was our close of service conference in Querétaro. It was four days of medical tests and reflection and re-adjustment workshops. Most of us were in agreement that we could have gone without the touchy-feely stuff and the reflections on two years with work as they tended to be more geared toward the typical, fresh-out-of-college, never-travelled-before Peace Corps volunteer. It was, however, the last opportunity we had to all be together in Mexico.

Every night was filled with last parties and dinners out that provided us ample opportunity to reminisce about our first nights together in Washington, the crazy stunts we pulled during training and the excitement we shared while exploring the country. Tears were shed, photos were taken and promises of reuniting in every couple of years in the states were made. Others in the group could not wait to get out of Mexico and return to life stateside, counting down the days until they could officially leave their sights without breaking their contracts. The week was, to put it mildly, emotional.

For some of us, it was also a chance to say our final good-byes to our host families with whom we shared three months of our lives, who fed us and invited us into their families and whom we most likely would never see again due to the difficulties most Mexicans experience upon trying to get a visa to visit the U.S. Fortunately for me, my host mom is getting married next year to her American boyfriend and will soon be moving to upstate New York. So rather than say good-bye, we said see you on the other side.

We returned from Querétaro just in time for Día de los Muertos. Though traditionally depicted in the movies as a carnival-ish party in the streets, it is really more of a somber couple of days spent with families. Our weekend was spent at the family’s cabin in the mountains with lots of relatives, tasty food and cold weather (click the post title to link to the photos). The family alter was constructed and adorned with oversized marigolds, votive candles and freshly cooked food that was eaten throughout the day but constantly replenished. Like all good things though, it had to come to an end and it was back to work for me.

These past two weeks at work have been chaotic as the park continues to exhibit stress over finishing up all my projects now. The painting of recycling, compost and trash containers has been taken away from the ecoclub due to time constraints and assigned to a member of the park staff as well as has been the painting of guide signs for the interpretative trails. In fact, in my absence the ecoclub has all but been declared defunct. In my opinion, the park staff – most likely due to cultural characteristics – lacks the directness and discipline to direct a group of high school kids. Things tend to get scheduled for ‘ahorita’ which can mean today or next week, so naturally the kids have managed to post-pone much of their work and to avoid conflict (as most Mexicans are apt to do), tighter deadlines and talks with school administration have not been implemented. So instead the park has thrown its hands in the air and called it quits. The effect this will have on the kids will be devastating I am sure, and the loss to their personal development as well as that of their communities is sure to be worse; but what can I do considering that I am leaving next month? While I am here, I will continue to fight for them. That’s about all I can promise right now.

The trails continue to be constructed by the team we contracted from the community and the quality remains excellent. Unfortunately, a very long section needs to be redone since the two points that we were originally told extended outside the park boundaries actually turned out to be several dozen meters. A fact withheld from us until it was too late. And then there is the education center, which for reasons unknown to us continues to be a cluster you-know-what.

We are trying to stick to our original plan of inaugurating the center during the national week of conservation observed the last full week of November. Whether or not we will make this new deadline remains to be seen as we have spent the last two weeks and especially the last couple of days correcting, re-correcting and re-re-correcting the designs for the museum signs. The whole process has left us scratching heads as our comments on the designs sent to us continue to go ignored and then the designs get sent back to us for our final approval. What they are thinking, we do not know but we have now asked the volunteer designers several times to release to us the files in a format that is editable so that we can make the necessary corrections ourselves.

The designers have stalled all week and today have finally said that they would rather come up to Pachuca on Friday to sit with us go over each design one by one. Hopefully we can still begin to mount the exhibits next week because we are planning on inviting some local schools, the Peace Corps, government officials and the newspaper to the grand opening in less than two weeks.

Only a few weeks to go and I will be free from this place once and for all. My only hope is that all the work I have done hear does not fall apart while I am here to see it.

Full Steam Ahead... Again.

2009-10-20T10:00:00.004-05:00

The irony did not escape me as Lety and I sat infront of the China Express, Subway and Sushi stands in the food court of the mall this afternoon. A little more than two years ago I signed up for this experience hoping to be sent to some exotic Far East Asian country in order to escape the capitalism of America. Here I was in the pinnacle of American corporate dominance enjoying my chop suey and eggroll while serving in the Peace Corps. And yet, I still have the audacity to complain when my water or electricity happen to go out for a day or my Internet connection is running slower than normal.

Aside from that, things are going full speed ahead with my projects as the park prepares for my upcoming departure. I guess it took the termination of my contract to light a fire under their collective butts, better late than never. The trails are finally being reconstructed and they are turning out to be quite impressive for a team of amateurs.

The ecoclub is starting up its new campaign for the year, a community recycling initiative, and the park is collecting the materials to build three large holding cages to store the recyclables until they reach a sizable enough quantity to warrant the costs of being shipped off to a yet to be determined facility. And the first stages of the interactive environmental education museum are being put into place with the third week of November set as our deadline for final installation. We hope to have a big inauguration on the 23rd of November to celebrate its grand opening. My fingers are crossed that we will finally meet our deadline after so many false starts.

Photos de Isla Isabel

2009-10-06T16:18:00.000-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38221638@N02/sets/72157622400184189/

A Day at the Beach...

2009-10-05T15:22:00.001-05:00

Albeit for only a relatively brief moment, I was able to return to my one true home last week… the beach. Even better… an island national park. It is no secret that my true loves in life (aside from Lety) are the ocean and wildlife. So it was with much eager anticipation that I agreed to assist a fellow volunteer with the education side of her coral reef preservation project on Isla Isabel in Nayarit.

I arrived at her home in San Blas on Friday afternoon (after a 13-hour, overnight bus ride with a driver that had to stop and pee every hour) so that we could have three days to plan our class that we were to give to a group of fishermen that have, in recent years, been clashing with the administration of the national park over fishing quotas and related regulations. My colleague had been working on recolonizing the bleached remnants of the coral reef that surrounds the island, which had been heavily impacted by the fishermen (contamination, sedimentation, anchoring, overfishing, etc.) as well as by a warming of the water caused by both cyclical variations (el niño) and anthropological activities (in this region most notably shrimp farming, development and fishing).

Our goal was to educate the local fishermen about the interdependence of fish and reefs and how implementing sustainable fish catches, not only will they be conserving the fish populations for the future but they will also be helping to save the reef as well as ensure a future income for their families. So after a weekend of planning and late nights in front of the computer (intertwined with a trip to the beach, a few movies and lots of Bacardi), we headed down to the small dock to catch our ‘panga’ for the island.

It was a rainy 7AM when we gathered to make the ride out to the island, but we decided to wait for the rains to let up before leaving in order to avoid a miserable three-hour ride. A few hours later, the rains were finally starting to let up and we decided to venture on as we only had until 12PM to make it to the island otherwise the strong afternoon winds would slow us down and eat up all our fuel (no to mention adding to the danger of the ride). So we stopped by the seaside hotel to pick a university professor, his two young sons and his two students (and their mountain of gear and supplies – think: the heroine in those stuck-in-the-middle-of-nowhere movies) and sailed out to see.

Of course, this is a Corey-trip so smooth-sailing it was not. We had barely made it out of the port when we noticed the second panga was stalled several hundred meters behind us. As it would turn out, they had water in their gas tank and flooded out the motor so we towed them back to the docks and called the mechanic. We all laid about the boats, roasting in the now almost mid-day sun, as the mechanic began tearing apart the motor, only arising in anticipation whenever they tried to crank the motor. Eventurally, it did turn over and by 11PM we were finally on our way, again.

Luckily, the seas were smooth. Unluckily, there was little in the way of wildlife to see. At one point, a brown-footed booby took a break on the side of our boat. Later, another decided to race us toward the island, weaving over and behind us while we cruised at full-throttle (with a 150hp setup) as if to say: “is that as fast you can go?” What we lacked in wildlife on the trip out to the island was definitely made up for once we arrived. After almost three hours on a boat barely fit for most Minnesota lakes, two tall cliffs appeared on the horizon. As we approached, hundreds of birds could be seen soaring high above the emerald-green covered rocky cliffs, the remnants of a long extinct volcano. We sailed into a little cove commonly known as Bahía Tiberonera (Sharkers Bay), the site of the coral reef recolonization and the fishermen’s camp.

After moring down to a rope anchored on the beach in front of the fishing cabins, we unloaded our gear (while having to practically plow over the professor’s boys, who always seemed to be underfoot the whole time we were there) and made the short trek through the low trees and the cacophony of nesting frigate birds in heat to the abandoned visitors’ center, a cement-building that never was completed after finding out that the saltwater was causing the cement to crumble prematurely. We set up tents in the empty shell of the building and set about cleaning the kitchen and dinning areas of rat, bird and iguana droppings. For the next three days, this was home.

Once camp was setup, we had the rest of the day to play so some of us doned our snorkel gear and headed out to the bay. It was also the only way to sooth our now mosquito-bite covered bodies and avoid the swarms of the little buggers that plagued us onshore. Soon, it was dinner time and we all gathered around the plastic tables to eat our tacos while audience of a dozen or so iguanas encircled us with their heads pointed upwards in hopes that some tasty morcel will fall from the table. Not receiving any scraps from the table, they followed us to the sink and repeated their beggings for food. Some decided to study the compost bucket instead, conducting a cost-benefit analysis in their tiny heads of the risks involved in attempting to scale or tople the container, motioning with their front feet as if to be seriously considering an attempt.

Day two on the island was the major work day for us. I had tried to get some hiking in while on the island, mostly to visit the old crater and to search for some blue-footed boobies that supposedly call this island home, but alas the mosquitos guarded the nesting grounds well and kept me from venturing more than half an hour into the woods before turning me away. I had to resign myself to the fact that I was not going to see any blue-footed boobies on this trip. We conducted two dives on the new reef colony in the early afternoon. The first was to document the monthly growth of the coral transplants; the second was to photograph the reef and the species inhabiting it. After our dives we grabbed a quick lunch before heading to the fishing cabins for our class.

Twenty fishermen in all showed up for our class, which lasted a total of two hours. The park biologists were impressed with the fact that the fishermen had stayed for the whole class. Apparently, they have a habit of getting up and leaving half-way through these little talks. I thought it went fairly well though I would have liked to seen a higher level of participation. Still, after some proding, we did achieve moderate participation from the audience, a few laughs and even some heads nodding in agreement. At one point, a large pelican even waddled into the cabin to listen a spell, probably attracted by all that talk of fish. Only time will tell if the park continues fostering that understanding and relationship that was started that afternoon on the beach.

The third day I arose early and sat on cement patio of the visitors’ center – coffee in one hand, camera in the other. I spent a good hour or more just watching the courtship behavior of the frigate birds as the males inflated their red throat sacks and clacked their beaks to attract their mates. After breakfast, we broke camp – which took most of the morning thanks to the professor and his insistence on one last dive before we leave – then left port for the mainland once again.

If you didn’t happen to catch this before, I will say it again… this was a Corey-trip, so not without its problems. Just outside Bahía Tiberonera, one of our boats motors got flooded and stalled. Leaving us floating in the current for over an hour as one of the biologist frantically attempted to repair it in open-sea. Of course, the other boat did not offer any help. I guess the professor had a schedule to keep. Needless to say, we got the motor fixed and made it back to the mainland in one piece and just in time to unload all the professor’s junk, without his help, so that he could drive off and leave us stranded at the dock.

A Day at the Beach...

2009-10-05T15:22:00.000-05:00

My Birthday and other Stuff...

2009-09-26T20:39:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I wrote, things have been busy this past week or so. My birthday was the 14th, which was fairly low-key this year. On the 15th we had a cook-out in the park to mark my and Mexico's birthdays. Fire-roasted corn on the cob, sopes and tequila... always a good mix. In the afternoon we went to the in-laws to do the same. More sopes, pazole (my fav) and beer... also a good mix. The festivities lasted until the wee hours of the morning (about 4AM) and the next day was mostly spent recovering.

Since then, we have started constructing a new trail in the park and continue to busily work on meeting on our new deadline of mid-November to finish the environmental museum in the park. Now that I only have two months left, it seems a fire has finally been lit under some butts and everyone (including myself) is trying to get my projects to a good handing-off point before I leave. They finally appointed someone to take over facilitating the Ecoclub when I leave (which they have been dragging feet on since I started the Ecoclub) and now all that remains is finishing up the interpratation training course we started before the wedding (something they also dragging their feet on).

Outside of the park, I have also been busily trying to get the paperwork started for Lety's visa. A task proving to be both a headache and a wallet-ache. My job hunt continues without much success (unless you count the 'although you are highly qualified, you were not the most highly qualified candidate' responses). I was originally optimistic that there were so many environmental jobs being posted on the internet, but severely underestimated the competition in the industry. I guess all those years living in Florida has given me the mistaken impression that I was the only environmentalist out there.

On top of it all, I have been trying to get a start on my close of service reports and forms. Those are not worth explaining other to note that it's a fine example of governmental bureaucracy... a lot of un-checked numbers, duplicate forms and hot-air blowing. Luckily, I am in San Blas this week helping a volunteer out on one of her coral reef projects and have been able to escape the cold rain in the mountains of Pachuca for the hot and humid rains on the beach. More to come on that in the next post...

Link to photos of wedding

2009-09-07T14:39:00.001-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38221638@N02/sets/72157622165946131/

The End at Last...

2009-09-07T13:15:00.001-05:00

After months of preparation and a seemingly endless barrage of problems, life is finally returning back to normal for Lety and I. Both weddings are now done and over with, with relatively few hitches and we are now enjoying our new lives together as a married couple.

The religious wedding was, well… religious. A lot of pomp and circumstance and endless preaching about the importance of God in our matrimony, needless to say I found it difficult to maintain my attention during the hour-long ceremony. As it turned it out, the priest that performed the ceremony had never presided over a wedding before, oddly enough, and there was no rehearsal before the big event. It showed, as no one really knew what they were doing but we had a few laughs trying to figure it out along the way.

The event was more than just the wedding night for us. Out-of-town visitors kept us busy for several days before and after the wedding ceremony, playing tour guide and sharing several Corey-stories over bottles of tequila and wine. It was actually a bit surreal, kind of like the movie weddings where everyone gathers upon one city from far-flung locations (in our case from all over Mexico, Montana and Iowa) to share the special day. Although most of family did not make it, I felt well supported and surrounded by my extended, Peace Corps family as well as my mother, stepfather and my best friend… people who have known through various stages of my life, for better or for worse.

Then there was the ceremony, held in Lety’s family’s small mission-style church complete with white lilies, a guitar duo, limo and lots of well-dressed friends and family. The night culminated in a reception at an elegant hotel with caterers, a mariachi serenade during dinner and the quintessential DJ and master of ceremonies directing us through all the kitschy wedding reception dances and stunts. In true Mexican fashion, the party lasted well into the wee hours of the morning (4AM to be exact).

The following day, the new extended family gathered upon the house of Lety’s parents to share leftover food and beer, dance and open gifts. My parents and Katie were able to take in some true Mexican culture watching and learning how to dance to ranchero music and eating the red grub worms that live in the maguey plant (well, at least the reception was vegetarian).
The wedding week ended with a quick tour of Mexico City and Cuernavaca with my parents and now Lety and I are once again left alone to start our new lives together, but not before cleaning the house after a week of guests and parties and washing laundry. Ah, the domestic life. Tomorrow, it is back to work.

Here are some photos from the wedding in Acapulco

2009-08-25T11:33:00.001-05:00

http://flickr.com/gp/38221638@N02/hD91a7

Home at Last...

2009-08-24T21:00:00.001-05:00

It’s been a wild week to say the least but I am finally back in my home (after several delays thanks to a bus that broke down twice on the freeway, but this is a happy story… I promise). Now only if I just had the time to relax.

Last week I and about 45 other volunteers and Mexican counterparts attended a four day long workshop on biodiversity management just outsides of the city Querétaro. We stayed in ex-hacienda that was built around 1620 and, according the elderly groundskeeper, still houses the occasional bump in the night – though a late night, drunken ghost hunting expedition through some of the closed off tunnels proved rather fruitless.

The workshop itself was just about as fruitless, unless you count the many new friendships that were made over three successive nights of tequila and beer binge-drinking. I never got my bachelor’s party so we made sure to celebrate as much and often as possible while away from work. In the end, it was the perfect bachelor’s party for me… good friends, tequila and conversation. I never was one for the strippers anyways.

By mid-afternoon on Thursday we were all saying our good-byes and heading back to our respective corners of Mexico. I arrived in Pachuca fairly late in the evening but just in time to change the clothing in my backpack, make one last phone call to the fiancé and head to bed so that I could be well-rested for my early-morning departure to Acapulco.

After hitting the morning rush hour traffic in Mexico City and a half-hour delay on the freeway just outside Acapulco due to an accident, the bus arrived just in time for me to catch a cab to the city center to make some last minute copies and hit the ATM before my meeting with the representative from the civil registry office. We went over some last minute details, checked facts and submitted documents in preparation for the big, little event on Saturday. It had been a long day and even longer week, so after a quick bite at a local vegetarian restaurant I met up with the owner of the villa I had rented to hitch a ride up the mountain to our secluded retreat.

The place was breath-taking, but how could it not be? A five bedroom, four bath house clinging the side of a cliff overlooking a small private cove (Mimosa Beach) and the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, complete with swimming pool, hot tub and plenty of outdoor lounging spaces to facilitate wasting away the hours with a tequila in-hand watching the pelicans, frigate birds and eagles circle the cliffs and waiting for the perfect sunset. That was how most of the weekend was spent.

The only interruption in this peaceful routine came at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon when the justice of the peace arrived and – in front of the owner of the villa, her friend, her housekeeper/cook and her groundskeeper – married us on the pool deck overlooking the ocean and the cove down below. It was a simple ceremony in which we improved our own vows (that was a surprise for Lety and I) and the justice latter espoused her wisdom on gravity and the beauty of the commitment we were about to make followed by a toast of wine and a private evening in a big empty house with a swimming pool between two newlyweds.

The weekend was perfect, just how I always wanted to get married. Now, it is back to reality and the city as I find myself once again running around trying to tie up a thousand loose-ends before the next big day this Saturday when we will do this all over again, but this time in front of an audience.

2009-07-23T19:07:00.001-05:00

A Break From the Norm...

2009-07-23T17:09:00.000-05:00

I took a break this week from what has become the norm of late, wedding planning and working. Okay, so it was not a complete break as I did manage to accomplish a few wedding related things but the stress of cancelling groomsmen and the rising cost of the whole process (mostly thanks to paperwork fees with the Mexican government) was getting to the point where I felt like my own sanity required a few days respite from it all.

A fellow volunteer, Amy, paid a visit over the weekend and up until Wednesday afternoon which provided the perfect pretext for my mental vacation. She came to get some advice on a marine ecology project she has planned in San Blas but we spent most of our time sight-seeing. Lety and I started the tour by taking her up to the mining town of Real de Monte for their annual Festival de la Plata (Silver Festival) for a few hours to sample some local pastes, shop for jewelry and listen to a few bands playing on the closed off streets.

The next day we hung around Pachuca, visiting the mining museum and the photography museum as well as a few city parks and plazas before preparing a lasagna dinner, thank you Amy. On Monday we spent the afternoon hiking around the park, taking in the panoramic vistas from atop La Muela and then grabbing some giant quesadillas in the mountain town of Mineral Del Chico. The altitude and the steep trails left her a bit whipped out so the next day was a relaxing day around the house, which left me some time to talk to the caterer for the wedding and we even managed to talk some work-related stuff.

For her last day, I took Amy up to another mountain town called Huasca which is famous for its Basaltic Prisms, a geologic phenomenon resulting (if my geology memory serves me correctly) from ancient lava tubes and/or flows (not quite sure which). I won’t provide too much detail on the process for fear of exposing my lack of volcanology expertise. Getting there was a bit of a pain since the public transport will only take you as far the town center (despite what the drivers may tell you before hand) and from there you have to catch a cab to the prisms. I had asked a nice lady on the transport how much it should cost, because cabbies love to give out gringo discounts (i.e. higher than normal prices to the foreigners), and of course the cabbies all ganged up on us around the plaza insisting on covering $20 pesos more than the standard local rate.

We finally talked a driver down to just a $10 mark-up but the jackass did not tell us upon dropping us off that we had arrange a time to be picked up. That, we only discovered upon asking the elderly man at the ticket gate how we were supposed to get back since there were no taxis lined up anywhere nearby. Oh well, too late to worry about that now so we paid our entrance fee and passed through the gate.

The prisms turned out to be the all too typical Mexican tourist trap… cement sidewalks leading to strategically placed viewing and photo opportunities all lined with stands selling alcohol, junk food and China-quality souvenirs. Of course, it would not have been a complete Mexican tourist attraction without the obligatory dirty lake with boat rentals, four-wheeler rentals and horse rentals (both of which consist of doing guided laps around a small circuit – far away from anything that would resemble nature). There appeared to be a short hiking trail but its entrance eluded us. Nothing left to do really except take our snapshots grab a bite and head back to town for some lunch and artisan shopping.

At the end of the day Wednesday Amy caught a bus to visit another volunteer in the nearby city of Puebla where she planned on buying some Televera pottery, which although beautiful is also quite expensive for a volunteer’s budget (in my opinion, but feel free to buy me some whomever is reading this). Left alone once again, my attention today has been turned back to wedding planning and trying to make whatever small advances I can in that aspect while still waiting for some than friendly hotels and judges to get back to us regarding our planned civil ceremony on the beach. For tomorrow… it’s back to work (ick).

2009-07-08T22:04:00.001-05:00

4th of July

2009-07-08T21:44:00.002-05:00

Not a whole new and exciting this past week. I continue to give my interpretation class to a group of about 6 ecotourism providers in the park. We are also getting very close to installing the first stage of the education center. Unfortunately, the trail work is on a prolonged stand-by mode as we await funds.

Wedding planning has been considerably more productive. We finally have a few proposals in from caterers, I think I found a limo to rent, we picked out our rings and I found a few tuxes I like. Now if all my groomsmen show up I will be happy.

In a departure from the norm, I celebrated the 4th this year. Normally I do not when I am out of the country. Somehow it just doesn't feel right. Unlike years past, this year was not celebrated with camping trips, a day at the beach or the obligator drunken botte-rocket fight (that last one is probably for the best).

We did have a BBQ at the park with most of the staff, a few of our volunteers and three gringos. One of our friends and fellow volunteer from Tlaxcala came up for the weekend to share in the fesivities. Lots of food, friends and later in the evening... beer. Good times.

And I thought we banned torture...

2009-06-30T16:31:00.001-05:00

Things picked up once again this past week as several events seemed to coincide at the end of the week. The designs for the first round of museum signs for the education center came in with a bunch of format and technical errors. On Thursday we called the designers in for a sit down with the whole park to go over ever sign with a fine-toothed comb. That was a good 5 hour process involving projecting the designs on the big screen and going around the table discussing (and arguing) every detail, but it seems like they are on track for making all the changes we requested and that this will definitely a first-of-its-kind education center for Mexico.

Later that day Peace Corps staff and volunteers arrived at the park for the final two days of the mid-service training for the group that came after mine. Throughout the course of these two days the other volunteer in the park and I got the opportunity to show our progress on the various projects on which we are working, or at least a sampling of them. I briefly presented them our designs for the new education center, showed them a sampling of the interpretative trail signs and the education signs at one of the campgrounds, and introduced them to the members of our ecoclub to whom they were able to pose questions about their motives and projects.

Leti came home Friday night, as usual but, as usual, was swamped with her studies and tired from a long day at work and then traveling to Pachuca. This schedule really appears to be taking its toll on her. Her health was failing her the previous week due to stress, according to her doctor. This was actually good news because her parents thought she was pregnant and her aunts thought it was because she was not eating meat (and, hence, were ready to start forcing her to eat it again). Leti’s blood work came back and the doctor told her, in front of her aunt, that she was perfectly healthy and that everything was well within normal and that she had absolutely no cholesterol. Needless to say, her aunt now leaves her alone about the whole vegetarian thing.

Unfortunately, knowing what is making sick does not always mean you can prevent it from happening. Leti was up until 3AM Sunday morning working on an assignment for her class and at 6AM we were up and getting prepared for what would turn out to be the most boring 12.5 hours of our lives. We spent all day Sunday in “Premarital Classes” listening to the Catholic Church tell us why homosexuality is bad, sexual positions are OK (like I really wanted graphic sex advice from the Church) but birth control is not (except for the rhythm method… need I say more?), children are an absolutely necessary product of a good Catholic marriage (and that is why the world is now overpopulated) and these children must be indoctrinated into the Church so that it may continue (because apparently the “word of God” does not speak for itself), that the women should learn how their husbands like their food cooked and clothing ironed (Leti doesn’t cook, I am definitely getting ripped off on that one), they should also be understanding when he comes home from a bad day at work (I suppose they should also have his martini waiting), that women should also not expect too much and be happy with whatever amount of money her husband gives her every week (come on now, I’m a teacher… so if she earns more than me?), that the couples should not live with either of the in-laws (ah… duh!) and someone should be in-charge of the finances (1,2,3… not it!).

It was hands-down one of the most sexist and condescending experiences of my life and to top it all off there were religious songs and games interspersed throughout the classes and an exam at the end (right before the required mass) which asked you to describe the importance of the Church and prayer in your marriage and rearing of your children. Obviously, I did not answer any of those questions and, surprisingly, they still gave me certificate of completion even though they stated in front of the whole class that they wanted to assure that these “seeds” have been planted – while holding up my exam as an example (I guess mine were duds).

Oh well, at least I have a two-month break before having to return to the Church again.

A Productive Week...

2009-06-16T21:39:00.000-05:00

This past week I started up a new, two-month long course in the park to train the park staff and a few ecotourism service providers in how to design and implement interpretative programs. I have about a dozen students and the first two classes have been well-received. This will be the first in a five part series of courses that will lead to a certification as a park naturalist, which the park staff will need as part of their training and the service providers can use to distinguish themselves from other service providers.

The local chapter of Ecoclub International which I started up in the park has created a mascot and is now in the process of designing anti-littering messages using the mascot that they will paint on our trash cans around the park. We also starting planning a two-day camp for them in which the local office of the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources will provide a leadership workshop, we will paint recycling bins and garbage cans and one of the local ecotourism companies is going to provide rock climbing lessons and a workshop on Leave No Trace.

I also recruited five more students from a local high school to do their community service in the park. They will help us build large cages to store recyclables and a worm-composting bed, both of which will be incorporated into the education center I am designing and constructing.

We also did a walk through on a new trail route we scouted for one leg of an interpretative trail circuit. The director and the forest engineer approved the route so now we are working on getting government money to help pay local workers to do the labor. I have also been busy helping Peace Corps prepare for two workshops that they will be having in our park. The first is in June and is the mid-service training for the group that arrived after mine. The second is a biodiversity monitoring workshop that will be in August. The director and I have been arranging lodging and food for the visit, which was not as smooth of a process as I expected but all is taken care of now. All in all, it’s been a fairly productive week for me.

On the personal front, Leti and I spent the weekend at home this time around. We ordered the invitations for the wedding and stopped by the church to drop off some paperwork. I also put a deposit down on the reception hall, though now that I have seen the lodge in the park I really want to have it up there. Unfortunately, it can only hold about half the number of people we are expecting so it is not feasible. Oh well, still holding out for my civil ceremony on the beach.

Pics from Weekend in Cuernavaca

2009-06-11T22:12:00.002-05:00

Ok finally posted pics from last weekend but just discovered that when I try to change the title of the post it loses its link to the album. This a new phenomenon no doubt thanks to photobucket deciding to redo their website (this didn't happen before). I also see that Spanish characters do not appear and the names got screwed up on the titles. Lesson learned for next time.

2009-06-11T22:09:00.001-05:00

It's always interesting with me...

2009-06-08T18:05:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the swine flu, a mountain of work at the park and Leti’s graduate studies it has been a long time since we have been able to escape for a weekend. Everything fell into place for us, though, this past weekend. The flu has fallen by the wayside for the time being and we are once again free to roam about the country. I am running light at work while I wait for the rest of the team to catch up. And Leti finished her latest class on Friday.

We took advantage of this rare opportunity by heading to Cuernavaca, Morelos for a few days and it could not have been more needed after a stressful week of wedding plan and a director who, even after attending a training workshop, still does not seem to understand the difference between a Peace Corps Volunteer and a civil service volunteer. Unfortunately, as most of you reading this have come to expect, a weekend getaway with me is never a simple one.

After leaving work in a mad-dash down the mountain Friday afternoon, I grabbed a small backpack of clothes and jumped on a bus to Mexico City’s Central de Autobuses Norte. Leti and I were going to meet at 8:30 in Central de Autobuses Sur so I had to jump on the Metro (subway) to get across one of the largest cities in the world. For some odd reason I thought that would only take half an hour. Long story short, it was 9:30 before we were finally on a bus heading out of the city, but that is barely a minor inconvenience compared to what followed.

When boarding the bus we were forced to put our backpacks in the storage compartment below the bus. We purposely travel with small backpacks so that we can easily carrying them onboard and Leti argued that her computer was in her backpack, but they assured us that they would be safe below but that we could not board the bus with them. Normally, first-class buses will give you a baggage claim ticket when you check your luggage below. This one did not but the porter continued insisting that we check our bags and tht the hatch would not be open until we arrived in Cuernavaca.

We arrived in Cuernavaca around 11 at night and we were the last ones off the bus as we hurriedly gathered up our travel pillows, snacks and carry-on. When we went below for our backpacks, mine was missing. Considering our interaction with the porter before we left, we were understandably livid. The porter at the station in Cuernavaca basically said that there was nothing he could do and that they were not responsible for lost luggage. That set both Leti and I off and the poor man had it coming at him in both ears. I informed him that I had $3600 peso in my backpack, all my clothing and an underwater camera housing (obviously he did not care). Leti reminded him that this is exactly why every other first-class line has baggage claim tickets and porters and that he sure was responsible for stolen luggage.

Another hour was spent at the station filling out reports and tearing a new one into the head of security (who also really did not seem too concerned). So in keeping with my promise to him, I am advising anyone reading this and travelling in Mexico to avoid the Pullman bus line.

Now almost midnight, we were pointed in the direction of the city center and the nearest ATM and sent on our way. It was only a few blocks to the zocalo (center plaza) but we were now tired and stressed and wondering why does this stuff always happen to us. We found the ATM and crossed our fingers in hopes that I had not maxed out my withdrawals for the day with the $4000 I took out earlier (and then left in my backpack). Thankfully we got the cash and then found a friendly stranger in the plaza to point us to a nearby hotel. We did not make reservations ahead of time as the majority of hotels in Cuernavaca with an internet presence are out of our price range and the hostels are not much cheaper.

Luckily, it was a clean and secure hotel. We looked at a second one that was recommended by a friend but returned to the stranger’s recommendation. Once we dropped off our remaining luggage, we did the only thing you can do at 12:30 in the morning in a strange city with no change of clothes and very little money… went to a nightclub in the zocalo and got our drink on. There we met a young drunk woman and her even drunker aunt who were inviting us to go jet skiing and every other thing imaginable under the sun. They would not let us escape the conversation so when the younger one went to the bathroom we quickly excused ourselves from the drunken aunt and stumbled our way back to the hotel at 3:30AM.

The next day we woke up around mid-day and decided to take a walk to the bus station. Things starting turning around for us at this point as my backpack had actually been returned and I was extremely thankful I had the foresight to put luggage locks on it before I left. Though Leti went off again asking why they did not call either of the two numbers they had for us to let us know. So now I was able to shower, shave and change in time to catch a bite to eat. We walked around several blocks looking for a vegetarian restaurant that was recommended by the drunks (first mistake) and even more turned around as every stranger we asked (second mistake) gave us different directions. Finally, we ended up a few blocks away from the hotel (but different street) at what everyone insisted was vegetarian restaurant, though you would never had guessed it by the meat-laden buffet. In the end, we found a real vegetarian restaurant almost in front of the hotel.

The rest of the weekend was awesome and, thankfully, uneventful. We ate in hip little cafes on the zocalo, listened to live music and public concerts and visited three parks within the city. The first was a gorge in the middle of the city with mult-leveled walkways that carry you past small cascades and lush vegetation. Next was the former garden of Manuel de Borda, a silver mining tacoon. It was small but lush and a haven for local artisans. We had some interesting conversations and Leti took an hour long painting class.

Finally, we hiked across town to visit a waterfall with concrete-banister walkways that lead behind the water and around the gorge, though the path behind the falls was obviously closed while we were there. It was still a great, romantic weekend and a pleasant surprise for me (I prefer more natural vacations, and the beach). After one final meal on the plaza it was back to the real world once again.

Presa Jaramillo

2009-05-19T12:43:00.002-05:00

More of the same...

2009-05-19T11:36:00.005-05:00

Well, what can I say but that it was a pretty mundane week down here. Things are more or less back to normal after the media whipped us up into frenzie over the latest great plague that was sure to destroy us all. Everyone has returned to work, though the schools and government installations (including the park) remained closed until the 18th.

I continue to work diligently on my two main projects: the trail system and the education center. Both of which are fairly far behind schedule but the park doesn't seem to be stressing over it so I refuse to as well. In the search for good pictures to use in the education center, one of the guardaparques (rangers) and I took a hike down to my favorite dam to snap a few pics (see the album link in the posting above). That is actually a sad commentary to anyone who knows me well... I actually have a 'favorite' dam.

I know, I know... I can rattle off a hundred reasons why dams are ecologically destructive but the unfortunate reality is that if not for the dams (and one tiny stream) I would not have any waterbodies nearby to nourish the pisces in me (my rising sign, which rules over your spiritual side). All my life I have lived close to water, whether it was the lakes and rivers of Minnesota or the beaches of Australia and Florida (not to mention the swamps). I still may not be able to dive, swim or kayak here but I will take what I can get at this point.

This past week presented a new challenge for me as well in that my fiance began her new job in Mexico City. After four months of unsuccessfully looking for employment Pachuca (and even being told that they wanted to hire a man instead), she was forced to expand her search radius as it were. It sucks for us since she spends her weekdays living at her aunt and uncle's house in Mexico, an hour away, but it was a wise career move for her. She is making decent money - which she needs to continue paying for her graduate studies - and gaining experience in her field. So now we are reduced to chatting electronically during the week and playing catch-up on the weekends.

We also continue to wait (less and less) patiently for Peace Corps to get their act together and approve our wedding. As soon as they do we want to have a civil ceremony on the beach so that we can start the paperwork for her immigration to the U.S. Unfortunately, they continue to not provide us with any updates and remind us that the process can take up to 4 months (nevermind that they took 4 months to start it in the first place), but I will save my PC-ranting for a separate blog entry for this much to rant about and little space to do it here.

In the meantime, we have settled on Saturday August 29, 2009 for the religous ceremony. We have also found out that Leti's sister appears to be joining us in the U.S. Her boyfriend of the past 4 years is applying for his visa so that he can work at his uncle's hotel in Denver. Apparently they plan on marrying before then (in secret) so that she can follow him. That works for us in two ways. First, Leti will now have family in the states as well. Second, we will not be the first ones to leave her parents behind in Mexico (nor marry civilly in secret getaway).

Really about the only progress I have been making lately is in the kitchen. I am really getting my vegan banana-walnut recipe perfected lately and can now make three different types of excellent salsas. Those recipes more or less perfected, I have turned my attention to vegan chocolate-chip cookies and vegan spicy black bean burgers. Great strides are being made on both fronts, though both still remain far from perfected. And who says the Peace Corps is not exciting?

Rock Climbing at Diego Mateo

2009-05-09T21:59:00.005-05:00

Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-09T21:59:00.004-05:00

By Tuesday we were fairly bored with the house and looking for things to do. It was day 5 of being grounded to our sites due to the recent swine flu epidemic. Likewise, all public venues in the city were closed so it was equally boring outside the house as it was inside. Thank the gods for downloaded movies and cable TV.

Nonetheless it was Cinco de Mayo, a holiday I celebrated passionately in the states (hey, any excuse to drink tequila) and could not justify letting slip passively by unceremoniously. Leti and I hooked up with a couple of friends to spend the day rock climbing in the park, which thanks to being my official site, was actually not off limits during our lock-down.

I had actually planned this excursion about a month ago as a birthday present for Leti. She had mentioned on a few occasions that she had wanted to learn how to climb but had resigned herself to the possibility of never doing since I had previously climbed and knew that I did not enjoy it so much do to my extreme fear of heights. I am firm believer that you should try every experience at least once, especially if it means pushing your limits some, but she did not want to do it if I would not.

Well, being the super-great boyfriend that I am asked my friend to take us out climbing for the day and kept it all a surprise from Leti. She did not know until we arrived at Diego Mateo Valley and started pulling out all the climbing gear.
She took the sport like a fish in the water. Without fear she ascended and descended the rocks and even after slipping a few times and having to regain her footings on the rocks, she still ascended several faces alone without skipping a beat. My friend, who is also an instructor and rescue climber, said that she was a natural and could potentially turn out to be a great climber. I, on the other hand, am more comfortable below sea level, not above it. A few ascents were enough to get my blood rushing and my nerves rattling for the day. The things you do for the love’s sake.

For the next couple of days our bodies ached and moved about like a decrepit, old couple but she was stoked from the experience and extremely grateful for it. I was not so stoked but proud, nonetheless, that once again I refused to let my fear of heights prevent me from doing something (though I really, really, really hated standing on a tiny rock peak 200 feet up in the air). Perhaps stupidly, I did ask for full climbing lessons before I leave Mexico. After all, you never know when your plane will fall out of the sky and you will have to climb your way out of a canyon. I figure as much as I hate heights, I hate dying slowly in canyon more.

I tried posting the photo album like usual in the entry below but photobucket "updated" their software so of course nothing seems to work now. Please let me know if you have trouble connecting to the album.

Living with the Pig Flu...

2009-05-06T17:58:00.005-05:00

Well thanks to the pig flu (and all the meat eaters that brought industrial pig farms in close contact to the rest of us), this week I was left with little to share in the way of work and personal stories. So, I thought I would take the rest of the world on a mini visual tour of life in Mexico during the pig flu epidemic...

Normally the weekend of 5 de Mayo is celebrated with a long weekend and out of town trips. This year, every public venue was closed, transportation was culled down to a bare minimum schedule and the people that did venture out of their homes only did so behind their 'protective' masks (if only they knew that they really don't help against the flu).

Long weekends are normally an excuse for Peace Corps volunteers to get out and explore the country, but this time around we spent the weekend grounded to our sites leaving us to roam the city aimlessly looking for a way to entertain ourselves. We could not work since all government offices were shut down for 5 days, movies theaters, concert halls, playhouses and museums were also boarded up for the weekend. The plazas were the only public areas that remained open, though all 5 de Mayo celebrations were cancelled.

No one exempt for the hysteria surrounding the pig flu, no one. This was one of the more trendier clothing shops in the city, showing their ever-present relevance to modern times.

Based on what I've seen CNN, actually most of it right this time around. If anyone has pics of the U.S. or whichever country they are living in during this time, please pass them on or better yet post them to the blog.

Small Steps, Big Headaches...

2009-05-02T12:19:00.001-05:00

These past two weeks have been jam packed with work. Last week, thanks to the help of about ten volunteers from the local rock climbing club, we were able to finally close off and completely cover what had to be one of the worst trails in the park (see photos below). It was steep, fall-line trail that busted your back whether ascending or descending it but even more importantly it had been gullied out from decades of channeling water down the mountain as well as recent timber extraction activities, which also left the mountain side riddled with ruts from where donkeys dragged out huge logs. Everything had to be covered with organic debris to provide mulch and compost and check dams had to be installed every 20 feet or so to stop the soil from continuing to erode. It was a lot of hard work; it would have been nice if some of the other ‘ecotourism’ operators in the area were there to assist.

This week our attentions were turned to scouting a new trail to replace the closed one. After scouring over orthophotos (topographical maps superimposed on aerial photos) I had a few possible routes sketched out. An afternoon scaling the sides of rocks and beating our way through densely covered slopes convinced us, however, that the side of the mountain was best left closed off to visitors. We are now dividing up the tasks involved in creating a trail management plan that we can present to the park director when we try to sell him on the idea next month. A major selling is sure to be designing the trails with limited entry points (i.e. the campgrounds and the visitors’ center) so that we can finally begin to charge user fees to raise funds for the park. As it stands now, we have the legal authority to do so but lack the means since there are several uncontrolled entry points to both the park and the trails and a severe lack of staff to even think about patrolling the park for violators.

My work continues with the education center as well though I really beginning to seriously doubt our ability to complete by the 5th of June. I am just about done with my research and writing for the second stage but we still need to sit down with the graphic designer to choose photos and layouts for the exhibits. With the recent pig flu (yes, pig flu, not H1N1… screw the pork industry) epidemic getting some face to face time will prove difficult as they are based in Mexico City. I cannot wait until this project is done and I can focus on the next headache. I have so many projects that are half started but put on the back burner thanks to the trails and the education center. I can’t believe that I only have 8 months to finish everything!

2009-05-02T12:18:00.001-05:00

The doldrums...

2009-04-22T10:07:00.002-05:00

With each passing day it becomes clearer and clearer that I need a vacation. Unfortunately there is not one in site until the end of May. Until then, I continue to be pulled in all directions at the park. The other week we discovered the park rangers were busily ‘restoring’ a trail that we thought we had successfully argued to close. This led to yet another meeting with the director to question whether or not I was still in charge of the trails. I was told I was but the director did not want to waste anymore of his staff’s time with training workshops. That he wanted to see them working, getting results. I tried explaining that you cannot skip steps 1-3 in the process just to get to step 4 and expect the results to be good. The work they were doing on the trail was not what the trail needs and not good quality, basically it will all need to be redone next year. But it continues to prove to be a constant battle as the Mexican culture is not one that is big on planning ahead or for the future.

It was also during that meeting Thursday afternoon when I was finally told that a group of ten volunteers from the local rock climbing group were coming in to the park Monday to work on the trails, leaving us only Friday to plan but I was already booked up all day in a planning meeting for the education center we are building. The pressure was laid on during that meeting as well for we have to complete the installation by the 5th of June when the United Nations is proposing to hold a large (300+ people) event at the park for World Day of the Environment. No problem.
On top of all that, I did not get a vacation or even a weekend off last week thanks to Samana Santa, which is the busiest time of year in the park. Around 33,000 visitors descend on the park over a four-day weekend.

You can imagine the chaos (and ecological damage), though thankfully this year was considerably less busy than last year. Suspicions are that it was a result of the global economic crisis as the main source of money for Mexico is remittances from workers in the U.S. Of course coming into Semana Santa, the staff was all guns-ho about actually offering some interpretative programs to the visitors for the first time this year but no one wanted to put the full effort into them. A few of the biologists did take small groups out on guided walks to look for birds or reptiles but I was the only one who showed up every day to run the children’s nature-games. Of course, no one said thank you for the sacrifice and the burn out factor that is resulting combined with an apparent lack of gratitude are wearing on me.

This past weekend also came and passed without rest. Two volunteers from Puebla were in town visiting so we were back in the park Saturday taking them on the trails and showing them the mountain town of Real de Monte. Sunday we stayed in Pachuca but we were busily running from museum to museum until I had to part ways with them to go back up the park, to the town of Mineral del Chico so that Leti and I could have a sit down with her priest. This was basically an excuse for the priest to get me alone in a room and confront me about my (lack of) religion.

He asked me why I left the church and tried to guilt-trip (as any good Catholic would) me into returning the church for the sake of Leti and our future children. I, of course, asked why she should not leave the church for the same reasons. That it is unfair to ask one person to give up everything they believe in is wrong for whichever person in the relation was the point. He asked how we can expect to make a marriage work if we have such different philosophies to which I responded: how can you say that when you don’t know either one of us? We share a love for the planet that extends equally among all the life on it as well as the environment, we share a dream to start our own ecotourism business, and we share a love of travel and learning and world cultures. We both have a laid-back, no-stress outlook on life and expect nothing less than honesty from the people in our lives. We only differ, I said, on the small issue that she believes in God and Jesus Christ while I do not.

In the end, he agreed to solicit the Bishop for a dispensation of faith but only if we agree to discuss whether or not we really want to get married for the next two months. The fact that I have to send out invitations now was lost on him and only served to anger Leti, who is only trying to do the right thing by her religion but is quickly losing her patience with it. I, however, had none to lose with regards to the church. The idea of running off to the beach and eloping is becoming even more appealing to the both of us but Peace Corps is dragging their feet on the background investigation which will take four months to complete and which they did not even start until three months after I informed them that I wanted to get married. I have yet to see exactly what it is that the PC staff actually does other than sitting around write up new policies to justify the existence of their jobs, but I guess that’s government for you.

2009-04-14T19:29:00.001-05:00

The Last Mad Dash...

2009-04-07T11:29:00.000-05:00

Semana Santa is almost upon us and we in the park are hectically making our final preparations. This past week my attention has been focused on the park’s trails, which as I have mentioned previously, are in quite a sorry state. The trail restoration workshop I had been developing for several months now was once again postponed because, of all things, the park rangers were too busy restoring the trails. After the other volunteer and I had checked out the work being done on the trails, I went to the director of the park and strongly suggested that the workshop was necessary before they advance too far with the unsustainable ‘repairs’ that they had started. Thursday afternoon he agreed to let us give the workshop Friday morning.

Not all the work being done was bad but what was being done incorrectly was a serious safety and sustainability problem. So after informing the park rangers and a few volunteers from the local rock-climbing outfitters, we were finally able to discuss the process of trail restoration in the park. Unfortunately, our field work part of the workshop was quickly thrown aside as the director of the park decided that he wanted us to visit another trail and that we ‘had’ to have a lost-cause portion of that trail open for visitors over Semana Santa.

In short, we never really got to do any practical work in the workshop; a fact noticed and commented on by one of the climbers. The other volunteer and I left the workshop disappointed in the director’s apparent lack of confidence and respect in our expertise and ability to plan the workshop. Now we are struggling to maintain control of the project as we seem to be continuously left out of the loop on the trails and decisions continue to be made by the accountant director with no solid foundation in the ecological needs of the park or trail system.

Fortunately, in an ironic sense, trail work was temporally halted Friday due to small forest fire started by a careless hiker. I guess there is always a silver lining, though the trail work was immediately started up again Saturday and continues all this week. I hate to imagine what the impact to the trail will be if even a small portion of the expected 33,000 visitors pass over it this weekend. The erosion and damaged vegetation from the extraction of fallen timber along this fall-line trail are already horrendous.

As if giving a workshop and putting out a forest fire Friday were not enough work, two school groups also arrived in the morning. One, the middle school was expected but the elementary school was a surprise visit. The little brats came pouring out of their bus, paper kites and party foam in hand, and proceeded to take over the forest. They were climbing trees, running through the woods outside of the trails and summiting hills; all the while leaving torn off strips of paper from the kites and empty cans of party foam all over the forest. Several of us were struggling to keep up with the amount of litter they were creating and progressively more irate, we continued to plead with the teachers to keep their students under control. In the end, it was said that they were not welcome back to the park.

The weekend provided at least some time to relax and let off steam. On Sunday we celebrated the third birthday of Leti’s niece. I’ve discussed before the importance of this birthday in Mexico, so I won’t rehash it now other than to remind everyone that it is the religious ‘presentation’ of the child and involves godparents, a mass and a (of course) a party. I was not too crazy about the mass to begin with, even less so when we arrived and I discovered that it was also Palm Sunday. That meant the church was packed and we were forced to stand outside in the patio and listen to the mass over the speakers.

If there is anything worse than a Catholic mass (which in and of itself is long and boring) it’s a Catholic Mexican mass outside. For two hours the hot sun beat down on us while the priest repeated himself over and over again and appeared to amuse himself in the quantity of ways he could make the same point. I love the Mexicans dearly, but I would never accuse them of being able to say anything in 20 words or less. Thank the gods there was at beer at the party.

Drowning in Work...

2009-03-29T21:53:00.002-06:00

During training they told us not to tackle the big projects. We all want to change the world, they said, but we need to do one small step at a time. I feel that I have only had big projects since my first day on site over a year ago now. The trails in the park have their signs, which were used as an example recently during a workshop given by the national commission for natural protected areas about designing interpretative trails. Now my attention has turned to the rehabilitation of the trails, which are in a pretty sad state right now. Next Wednesday I will be giving a workshop at the park on just how to do that.

I have also been working steadily on the creation of our education center, which is proving to be yet another monumental task. Our designs for the first stage are finally in with the graphic designer who is created the museum displays and the carpinter who is constructed the infrastructure but we are so so so far behind. The plan was to originally have the first stage installed by Semana Santa, just one week away, but that now appears unlikely. We will, however, have some of it installed. I hope.

Four members of my ecoclub will volunteering in the park during Semana Santa, selling arts and crafts made from recycled materials, giving a presentation on solid wastes and helping us run children's activities. Of course, that means that while all my fellow volunteers are traveling around and taking a much needed break from work, I will be slaving away in the park.

This past week I also hosted a volunteer-trainee who was sent to see 'volunteers in action' as it were. He seemed to enjoy his time in the park. We took him to meet with the owner of a local greenhouse which the park helped established so that he could talk to the man about the ins and outs of running a small business in rural Mexico. He also accompanied me to my ecoclub meeting and I showed him some of the work (or lack thereof) on the trails. Thursday night we went out for drinks with some coworkers so he also got a chance to experience some of the more social aspects of being a volunteer at site. At the bar we met some lawyers who kept inviting me over to their table for tequila and photographs with their girlfriends. Needless to say, I got pretty drunk by the end of the night. The trainee was in much better shape since he doesn't drink, but he still hung in there for the night like a trooper and seemed to hit it off well with my coworkers anyways (who happen to be big drinkers). I would say he got the real experience, which is more than we got as trainees.

Now it's time for a few hours of relaxation before starting our last final dash to Semana Santa and all the craziness that brings to the park.

Weekend Escape

2009-03-10T13:32:00.004-06:00

Things at the park continue to keep me feeling swamped as we continue to scramble in our preparations for Semana Santa. My team and I are in the final steps of sending our technical info to the graphic designer to create our museum exhibits for our education center. My trail restoration workshop is undergoing a grammatical review by my counterpart as I busily search for flagging tape (oddly hard to come by in Mexico) to mark the trail work sites. I am also working with ecotourism operators in the area to organize them as volunteer leaders which will manage groups of temporary workers in the trail restoration project. We are hoping to have the first 1/3 of the museum and the trail work completed before Semana Santa. I have also been told that the Commission of Natural Protected Areas wants 10 more interpretative signs installed in the park. Apparently, we are the first of their areas to have installed interpretative signs and they were really impressed with how they turned out.

On the personal front, Leti and I continue our wedding planning as per the norm lately. We are currently looking for a church and seeking a dispensation of cult from the church to have a mixed wedding since I am non-believer. I’ve read that the process can take up to 2 months so we are probably in for a long ride. In the meantime we continue to wait for Peace Corps to start their background check on Leti so that I can be approved to marry her. Unfortunately, the seem to have more important things to do (like reminding me that I would be breaking the rules if I married her before the check was completed) than send me the required forms, despite my repeated requests for them. It’s just one headache after another and we haven’t even begun planning the details yet. We decided to take a break from it all this past weekend and visit some friends in Tlaxcala.

Tlaxcala was a pleasant town with clean streets and a cozy plaza surrounded by thick trees and red and white colonial buildings. We did not have the opportunity to do much site seeing aside from a stop at the government palace to see the vintage murals depicting the history of the region brightly painted all over the interior walls. Most of our time was spent visiting with our friends over a few cold ones and strolling through the artesan market where, of course, we had to add to our collection of Mexican paintings. We did not get to see any of the natural attractions around the town but we were fine with that since we mostly just wanted to be with one of our friends who is going an extremely difficult time right now. We will save the nature tourism for our next foray down there.

Finally, Leti and I moved into our new apartment last night. We had reached the conclusion a few weeks ago that it was time to get our own place. Living with a (messy) roommate meant we had no privacy and very little free time since we were always cleaning up after him. Our new place is much smaller but we feel as though we have twice as much room since we are no longer confined to two rooms. Leti still won’t be living there permanently until we are civilly marriend but it still ‘our’ first place since we picked it together with the intention of living there together after we are married. Right now we are busily unpacking boxes, re-arranging furniture and decorating. We both cannot wait until we can relax and enjoy the place to ourselves.

Valentine's Weekend

2009-02-19T11:04:00.001-06:00

Things continue to go well with my work in the park. Last Friday the education director for the local office of the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources gave a two hour workshop on solid wastes to my ecoclub at the park. They are also working with us to host a litter clean day in the park right after Earth Day. We are organizing the event with every school in all the communities around the park. The ecoclub has hit a minor road bump in their used battery recollection campaign. The Secretary was originally going to accept the batteries has now backed out due to it basically being a pain in their ass to deliver the spent batteries. Funny, I thought there were in the business of protecting the environment regardless of whether or not it was easy. Oh well, such is government.

The kids are now looking for alternatives but moving ahead on their other campaign, which is going door to door in the community to educate about the importance of recycling and hand out plastic bags for households to separate their trash. They are going to collect the bags once a week and once they have a ton of recyclables, a local company will come by to pick them up. To chip in and set a good expample, I am working on the park administration to try to start recycling there as well (ironic that we don’t already, I think).

I continue to plow away at the creation of my own workshop on trail restoration, which is now mostly complete and just awaiting a final review by my counterpart (for grammar errores... I feel like a high school kid again). I have also lined up a few representatives from the community, mainly from the mountain biker association and the rock climber association, to be volunteer leaders in the trail restoration project along with our park rangers. Ever two steps behind, the umbrella agency that I work for (the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas) has created its own workshop on trail maintainence that my director will be sending me to in April. I hope it is somewhere cool. The last workshop they threw was in Meridia in the Yucatan.

It is also now official that we will be finally creating an environmental education center after several months of my pleading the case. I would like to take credit for the decision, but I cannot as the Commission is now mandating that we have one before we host a big event in the park in June for the World Day of the Environment. So now this graduate student from Mexico City and I are working hard at compiling information we want to include in the center so that we can later pick out the most important stuff and design exhibitions and activities to relay the info to the public.

In personal news, Leti and I escaped to the colonial city of San Louis Potosi for the weekend. We visited with some fellow volunteers, walked around the brick streets and plazas, at lunch in a roof-top restaurant overlooking the main plaza with its historic theater, church and museum, did some shopping in the street and took in a symphony pops concert of Queen’s music. Aside from that we are continuing with our wedding planning, getting quotes from various hotels and reception halls as well getting the ball rolling with the church stuff. We have hit a slight road bump there as well since every priest we talk to is telling us that we have to get married in God’s temple. I maintain that the mountains he created are more God’s temple than some brick and mortar structure created by a group of men stealing money from the masses. As you can imagine, Leti does not let me speak.

Bitter-Sweet

2009-02-08T21:29:00.001-06:00

He was definitely instrumental in forming the man I am today, ironically. Though never much of a naturalist and far from being an environmentalist, I always eagerly anticipated each visit to grandpa’s for I knew we would most likely be spending the afternoon at Maplewood Nature Center. Binoculars in hand we spent hours, all with my two brothers, wandering the trails looking for all sorts of small woodland creatures. Our favorite spots were the floating boardwalks that afforded us magnificant panoramic views of the wetlands nestled away in the busy suburb of St. Paul. For him, I’m sure it was just a quiet way of enjoying an afternoon with the grandkids. For me, it was the foundation of my studies in the natural sciences and the sign of the varied career in the environment that has come to me.

I reflected on this for the entire half-hour car ride to Fort Snelling as the cremated remains of my beloved grandfather sat upon my lap. It has been said that I am fortunate to only have memories of my grandfather as a relatively healthy man, that I am lucky to have never seen the shell of a man that existed in his skin during those finally months and days. Given the choice, however, I would have gladly accepted those less-than-perfect images of him if it meant I could have at least said good-bye.

When I left for the Peace Corps, my grandfather supported my decision with all of the love and support that a grandparent would be expected to give. He did not doubt my conviction nor my motivation. Even though his strength was clearly leaving him, for reasons then unknown, he did never guilted me into staying close to home. A veteran of World War II who helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp, he understood well the importance of venturing far to serve humanity.

Considering all that he did to shape the man I am and the service I chose to provide to my country, it is truly a shame that my country chose not to be by my side in this trying time. It is ironic that if our positions were switched, if it were I that were dying and he that were volunteering, the Peace Corps – according to their own policy – would have sent him to the states without question. It is ironic that upon hearing of this illogical policy, the very people I was sent to help had again and again offered to pay my way to the states. While my own government said he was not immediate family, the Mexican government told me to forget about my work and go now to be with him and the rest of family whom need me more than ever in this difficult time.

This past week has been a bitter-sweet week to say the least. I obviously mourn the passing of an important man in my life, but it was nice to see family and friends again after so much time away. I feel abandoned and deceived by own government, I feel appreciated and even loved by these people in this foreign land. The service between a volunteer and his host agency is a reciprocal one indeed.

Busy at Work

2009-02-08T21:27:00.000-06:00

Due to a death in the family, I did not get to post last week so I will get you all caught up now. Things continue to go at a considerably faster pace than the previous year. I am busily working away on the creation of a training workshop in trail maintenance for the park. I have been talking with a few local user groups, primarily the rock climbers and the mountain bikers, trying to get them involved in the upkeep of their trails. We hope to have the workshop and get a few teams out restoring the trails next month.

I have also received word that the park has found more money for interpretative signs so I will be revisiting the trail system in the coming weeks to decide which trails will now receive signs as well. I have also been working the regional leader of the Mexican mountaineering society to create new and improved trail maps and to install informational signage on the trails to depict distances, directions and highest/lowest points for every trail. We hope to get all the interpretative trails restored and outfitted before Semana Santa (Mexican version of Spring Break) in April, which is the busiest time of the year for the park.

Aside from the trails, I am also moving ahead on the planning and designing of an interpretation center in our visitors’ center. A graduate student from Mexico City is working with me on this in conjuction with her thesis. I welcome the help as the projects at my site seem never-ending. Case-in-point is the Eco-club which I formed in the municipality in the park. These kids have been wheeling and dealing with the local Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources and have made agreements for the recollection of used batteries, aluminum cans and PET (plastic bottles). The have also began giving talks at local schools about the importance of recycling these materials and are planning a door-to-door educational campaign in the community. Way to go kids!

I’ve been away from work for the past week, visiting my family in Minnesota due to my grandfather’s death. It was nice to see everyone again, though I wish it were under better circumstances... and weather. Though mild by Minnesota standards, I still froze my ass off up there and was happy to return to the only occasionally freezing weather of Pachuca.

As usual, my travel was not without incident. My flight landed at 11:40PM Friday night in Mexico City, well after the last bus to Pachuca had left for the night. Leti had arranged for a friend to meet us at the airport and drive us back to Pachuca. Unfortunately, this friend never showed and we were forced to sleep overnight in the airport, sitting at a table in the food court until the first bus left for Pachuca left Saturday morning. We were not the only ones to do so, apparently it was a popular hang-out for travelers with overnight lay-overs. Still, I hope Leti took the opportunity to contemplate the value in having a Plan B. As for me, it was only slightly less comfortable than sleeping on my backpack under a bench in the Nadi International Airport in Fiji.

Leti and I spent a lot of quality time together this weekend after a week apart. It was really good to see her again, I definitely feel at home now that I am with her again. Of course I also had some QT with my cat Chica who spent all night Saturday sleeping in my bed and has not left my side since my return home. Monday it is back to work and the chaotic schedules, for a week at least. We are planning a weekend a retreat over Valentine’s day to make up for the cancelled anniversary trip the weekend before.

Panteón Ingles, Real de Monte

2009-01-27T15:42:00.001-06:00

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Day at Amajac's Thermal Waters

2009-01-27T15:19:00.001-06:00

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Trail Restoration

2009-01-27T15:15:00.001-06:00

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Sorry for the delay...

2009-01-27T14:10:00.000-06:00

Well, the new year is here, marking the half-way point of my service and the do or die point for most of my projects if I hope to start and finish them before returning to the states. This means there was no slow easing into work after our two and a half week Christmas vacation. Instead, I had to hit the ground running.

Over the past two weeks we received and installed 18 interpretative signs for the two circuits near the visitors’ center, began planning the restoration of over 4km of interpretative trails, restarted the weekly Ecoclub meetings, started designing the environmental education center, and began planning the startup of a mountain bike rental and guide service in the park. On top of all that, we received a new Peace Corps volunteer at the park. She transferred in from Puebla and will be working with the local communities on income-generating ventures (i.e. small business development).

I’m relatively happy with the way the signs look, though the federal offices of CONANP did tie my hands quite a bit with regards to the design. Several key concepts to designing interpretative signs were not included because of this, but there was not much I could do about it and here there are, for better or for worse. My attention has now turned to trail restoration and the education center. I am in the process of creating a workshop to train four volunteer leaders (one from park, one from the community and two from recreational user groups) in how to design and restore trails. The park director is seaking government aid to hire four teams of laborers from the community that these volunteers can lead in restoring the trails around the park. In the meantime, I have recruited the director of a local mountaineering group and am working on the director of a mountain biking league to participate in the process.

Just as I was finishing up a framework for the education center, a graduate student from Mexico City came and asked us if she could do her thesis research in the park. As it turns out, this involves creating an education center and training guides. We agreed to let her work with us on this since she will hopefully be bringing funding for the project (it’s a win-win situation). I’ll be working closely with her in the coming months to ensure she follows our vision for the center and to guide her in work since this is my area of expertise. She will be the fifth volunteer specialist we have recruited for the park in the past two months... and they told me that the culture of volunteerism does not exist in Mexico.

Our Ecoclub is back into the swing of things as well after a well-deserved break for the holidays. We had our first meeting of the year last Friday. They informed me that they have been talking with the local delegation of the Secretary of Environment, whom has not only agreed to receive all the used batteries that they will collect from area schools but have also invited these teens to attend three workshops in February and wants to work with the park administration to help sponsor the club.

In personal news, Leti and I have decided that we want an outdoor wedding; most likely in the park where we met. We have begun the process of looking for a priest and searching for a reception hall. Due to recent elections and a change in the municipal president, Leti has lost her job and has been searching hard for a new one while still juggling her studies and ‘me’ time. We have also been extremely busy these past three weekends with birthday parties, including one for her mom and for her older sister. We have had two every weekend except this past one, when we had a break and were only obligated to attend one. We have managed to escape for the past two Sundays though, once to Santa Maria Amajac, which is basically a hotel complex with geothermally-heated pools, and once to Real de Monte, which is a quaint little mining town in the mountains near Pachuca where we spent the afternoon walking around the Panteón Ingles (English Cemetary) – a relic of the days when the Cornish first settled the area and began mining silver.

It was actually kind of creepy since the cemetary looked like something out of a vampire flick and the repetative death dates on so many tombs conjured images of dozens of trapped and screaming miners throughout what was apparently a rather dubious history of operations. Likewise, there were many tombs of children and babies, making me wonder what life must have been like in colonial Pachuca, as well tombs of beloved wives and dedicated nurses. Lending to the creepiness, it appears that the cemetary has been unkept since its last intombment in the ‘70s.

That’s all for this entry. Sorry for it being a bit longer than normal but it has been a few weeks since I last posted.

Weekend in Valle de Bravo

2009-01-06T12:16:00.001-06:00

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Eleven Months & Still Going Strong...

2009-01-06T11:43:00.002-06:00

In keeping with tradition, we made a weekend getaway to celebrate our anniversary, this time opting for Valle de Bravo in the state of Mexico. Valle is a small mountain town with a population of around 27,000 and an elevation of approximately 5400 feet. Originally a sleepy pueblo in the hills, a hydro-electric dam built in the 1940s flooded the 21 square-kilometers of the valley and allowed Valle to become a trendy lakeside retreat for the wealthier Mexicans to spend their weekends and holidays.

Unlike Acapulco or Cancun, however, a walk around Valle still feels like your walking through a charming small town in the mountains of Colorado or eastern Europe. It’s colonial architecture more reminescent of those regions than of Spain such as is found in the colonial city of Querétaro. Its considerably lower altitude in comparison to Pachuca meant that even in January the weather was perfect for spending a day at the lake.

Of course, getting there was not easy. We missed the last bus out of Mexico City to Valle Saturday night and had to revert to Plan B, grabbing a bus to Toluca (an uterly boring city that shuts down way too early for a Saturday night) where we spent night (actually only 4 hours) and got up early (4:30) to catch the first bus to Valle (about 1 1/2 hours away). It took a few coffees to wake us up in Valle but we did make the most of the day, eventually. We took an hour long cruise around the lake, enjoyed a beer on the terrace of a bar overlooking the marina, rented a couple of mountain bikes to make the perilous journey to a waterfall on the east end of the lake (we had to share the hilly, windy road with the crazy Mexican drivers who respect bikers even less than they respect pedestrians), we ate dinner on a floating restaurant and bought three hand-painted (with images of lizards) terracata roof tiles at the local artesan's market.

Still, there was so much we did not have time for that we agreed we had to return soon. The monarch butterfly reserve would still be populated with the little buggers until March, the skies were filled with hang-gliders and para-gliders, sailboats dotted the lake, a larger waterfall further up the lakeshore and a large rocky outlook all remained for our next trip.

We arrived at the bus station just as the 7PM bus was leaving. In keeping with our luck the driver ignored us and did not stop as we tried to wave him down so we had to wait for the 8 o'clock bus. This meant we arrived in Mexico at 11 and were forced to take the Metro (subway) across town since all buses to and from Valle only pass through Mexico's Poniente station and all buses in and out of Pachuca only pass through its Norte station. The last bus to Pachuca left at 10:30 so we were now stuck in Mexico and Leti had to work Monday morning. Her aunt, who lives in Mexico, agreed to pick us up from the Sur station so we paid $150 pesos for a cab across town as the Metro was now shut down for the night. We arrived at her house in time for a quick three hours of sleep before grabbing the Metro to the Norte station and catching the first bus back to Pachuca. Luckily, I did not have to work and was able to go to sleep in my own bed. I have no idea how Leti managed to survive the day but she did and I love her for it.

I knew I had found my soul mate when I saw that we are both happiest while traveling. Moreover, she travels like a pro. Youth hostels, sketchy hotels, missed buses, late-night subways and dishonest cab drivers... it all just rolls off her back. For me, it never is a problem. I have come to expect and since I often travel alone I never concerned myself much with the details of schedules.

I always feared that traveling with a woman would mean sacraficing flexibility and economy for itineraries and resorts, but as Leti likes to often remind me; material things are not important, as long as we are together we should be happy. She sealed the deal when she told me over our Christmas vacation that she cannot wait to tell her future kids what had happened to us. I always say that it is not the toys you collect but the stories you can tell for which you will be remembered.

New Year

2009-01-05T14:45:00.002-06:00

New Year's Eve this year was a considerably more toned down event than in past years. In Mexico it tends to be a more family-orientated holiday than in the states. There are certainly no shortage of parties here, but traditionally speaking (and my new family is very traditional) the night is spent with a family gathering that - as with any other Mexican get together - involves plenty of drinking and culminates in a very late dinner (around 11PM). At midnight a toast is given and twelve grapes are eaten while reflecting on your twelve greatest wishes for the new year (I have no idea how that one got started).

I spent the night at Leti's parents' house and the next day we all went to the family's ranch/cabin in the mountains. It was a pretty laid-back day, eating all the left-overs from the night before (soy tacos, mole, pasta salad, apple salad, and fruit salad) and lounging around in the grass while taking in the mountain vistas. Preferably, I would rather have been in Mexico City. I had reservations at a swanky youth hostel in the city center where there was a huge free concert (some 10,000 people were estimated to be in attendance) but all things considered Leti thought it best that we cancel the reservation and do some parental ass-kissing. I hope it worked, it's never been my strongest skillset. Regardless, it was a fun night and her father seems to warming up to me again (thanks to tequila and pulque).

A few of the pics are posted below.

New Years Celebrations with Family

2009-01-05T14:44:00.001-06:00

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Oaxaca Vacation Highlights

2009-01-02T11:30:00.001-06:00

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Our First Christmas...

2008-12-31T13:02:00.001-06:00

Our first Christmas together was spent exploring the wonderful west-coast state of Oaxaca. It is one of the poorest states in Mexico and has one of the highest populations of indigenous people whom still hold on to many aspects of their traditional cultures (for there are many different ones in this region). Despite the poverty and, most likely because of the cultural diversity, we found Oaxaca to be one of the richest places we have visited. We did so much it would be impossible to try to tell it all but there were a few highlights worth describing.

Not was this our first Christmas together, but it was Leti’s first Christmas away from her family. It was also her first backpacking experience. I lent her one of my smaller packs and we stayed in hostels the whole week. She did not know it, but in a way it was test to see if how compatible we were traveling together. Up until now, we had always stayed in hotels, which are my least favorite places to stay when traveling. You just cannot beat the ecletic, international vibe of a good hostel and you cannot help but to meet all kinds of interesting people in hostels. Thankfully, she passed with flying colors and proved to be quite the adventurous trooper, not complaining at all and cheerfully interacting with the other guests.

We started our week with two nights in the capital city of Oaxaca. Oaxaca is a charming colonial city with architecture reminescent of Pachuca but with an atmosphere more like Querétaro. The main plaza was adorned with white Christmas lights and a giant tree. The plaza and streets were filled with holiday revelers and performers. Music and chatter filled the air. It was truly a magical place.

Just outside the city limits lies the ruins of the ancient Zapotec city of Monte Albán. Though I admit to be well beyond the burn out stage on ruins, we thoroughly enjoyed our day there. The ruins date back to around 300 to 700 AD, its peak period when it was populated by some 25,000 people. The site itself, though, has been occupied since around 500 BC. Its hilltop location provides for stunning views of the city and nearby villages (most of which specialize in a particular artesanary such as wood carving, pottery or wool-weaving – providing for a wealth of day trip opportunities).

Nonetheless, we were more than happy at the end of two day in Oaxaca to make the long and grulling trek over the windy and bumpy mountain road to the beaches of Puerto Angel. Puerto Angel is a touristy yet quiet port once the center of marine turtle harvesting but rejuvenated by a small crowd of European and Americans whom have discovered the beautiful little cove and understandably fell in love with it, moved there and opened up a slew of youth hostels, guest houses and B&B’s. The turtle industry gave way to turtle tourism and the nearby beach of Mazunte hosts the Mexican Turtle Center, an aquarium specializing in the graceful creatures.

We tried to visit the center Tuesday. Unfortunately, after walking an hour before finally catching a ride in collective taxi (i.e. the back of a pick up) we were greated by a notice that the center was closed for maintainence on Tuesdays. The day was not a complete wash, however. We caught another collective taxi to the next town to the west called Playa Ventanilla where we took a boat tour of the mangrove estuary, say several crocodiles, egrets, herons, and almost frighteningly large green and orange iguanas.

Then, as the sun set over the ocean we helped release baby sea turtles on the beach and cheered as they all instinctly raced for the pounding waves. It was a heart-warming experience to say the least – to be an active part in the preservation of an endangered species, to see those cute little guys run to the great unknown ocean and the (hopefully) life that awaits. Go guys, go!

The surf and diving are said to be decent in Puerto Angel and its surrounding beaches, though we never had the opportunity to investigate. In retrospect we should have spent more time there and have promised ourselves that we will return to these amazing beaches. After some debate, we pushed on to our next stop – Puerto Escondido, apparently made famous by an Italian movie from the 1990s which led to a wave of immigration from Italy and, consequently, more Italian restaurants in one area than I have seen in most cities in the U.S. Equally popular is the Mexican Pipeline, the world’s third best surfing wave (so they like to claim, it was less than spectacular while we were there). Within hours of being in Puerto Escondido, we missed Puerto Angel. Puerto Escondido is the Daytona Beach of Mexico. It’s not nearly as big as Cancun or Acapulco, but widely popular among young European travelers and the in-the-know Americans. The beaches were crowded (though surprisingly not too noisy) and hectic.

Thankfully, it was large enough to accomadate and the hostel was lively and entertaining. I taught Leti how to body surf their as well as the fine art of using chopsticks while introducing her to sushi (vegetarian of course). We spent Christmas in Escondido which actually turned out to be one of the best I have had in a number of years. For one, I was with Leti but it was also because everyone in the hostel cooked up a big dinner, paid for by the owner who also provided us with several cases of beer. A young French man played classic rock tunes on the guitar while we all sang along. There were travelers from Britain, France, Norway, Czech Republic, Slavakia, Amsterdam and of course the U.S. and Mexico.

Puerto Escondido is also where Leti and I took a sunset ride on the beach with a couple of rented horses. As the sun was setting over the ocean and we sat at the foot of the rocky cliffs on at the far end of the beach, I told Leti that I loved her more than anything and that all I wanted for Christmas was for her to marry me. I pulled out a 1.5 caret aquamarine (her birthstone, with smaller blue sapphires – my birthstone – on either side) engagement ring which eagerly let me put on her finger. Unfortunately, we had to end the day by riding in another cramped collective taxi (this time van) through those mountain roads back to Oaxaca.

We spent our last two days of vacation back in the city, visiting the museum of Oaxacan culture and taking an all day tour of the giant cypress tree in Tule (approx. 180 feet in circumfrence, 132 feet tall and 2-3,000 years old), another set of ruins in Mitla, the wool-weaving town of, the calcium cascades of Hierve el Agua and a Mezcal distillery. The tour lasted until about 8 at night, the night we planned to leave. By the time we got to the bus station they were no more seats left for any bus heading Mexico City until the following afternoon. We were forced to grab the last two seats on the next bus heading to Puebla.

Although much closer to Oaxaca than Mexico City, Puebla has limited service to Pachuca and Leti had to work the next day. As it were, we arrived in Puebla at 4AM and had to wait until 6:30 before we could catch a bus to Pachuca. Needless to say, Leti was a bit late and very tired for work on Monday. Still, she says it was the best vacation of her life. I have to say it was mine as well.

Pics from our office holiday party

2008-12-16T12:35:00.001-06:00

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Pics from the Virgen of Guadalupe Festival in Querétaro

2008-12-16T12:25:00.002-06:00

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Meeting the family...

2008-12-15T10:09:00.001-06:00

After all had left, save a few straglers, Leti came into Querétaro to spend the weekend getting to know the city – for me – will forever be inextricably linked to México. We started our weekend together in this romantic city strolling the colonial streets and grabbing a quick dinner at a charming little French cafe. We strolled some more and found our way into a nightclub for a little dancing and drinking before returning to the hotel. The next day was spent with my Mexican family whom had been anxious to meet Leti since they first found out about her so many months earlier.

For almost five hours we caught up on all our personal news over a few tequilas and light comida (lunch). It is always good to see them as they are the only family I have here. Many of the other volunteers did not even bother to visit their former host families, but none of the other volunteers had a family quite as great as mine. In fact, several still ask about mine as though it were their own host family. In true motherly fashion, my host mom proded us with questions about when we were going to get married and freely gave her unsolicited advice about my role and responsibilities as a husband to a Mexican woman. Also in true motherly form, she spent quite some time unabashedly bragging about her other son (me). Eventually, we had to part ways but not before they all promised to make the trek out to Pachuca to visit me.

The rest of the day was spent browsing the streets for various arts and crafts to take home. Hard to believe that as much time as I have spent in Querétaro, I have never purchased anything for the house from there. I eventually settled on a tin, painted lizard to hang on the wall and Leti (surprise) settled on earrings. Neither one of us really wanted to leave Querétaro’s clean streets and busling-yet-laid-back atmosphere to return to the noise and garbage of Pachuca and we pushed back our departure until the last posible minute. Unfortunately, this meant we did not get back home until around 12:30AM making today a potentially long and dificult day of work. Thankfully, we have our office Christmas party today and it is the beginning of our last week of work before two and a half weeks of vacation and more traveling.

The Midpoint...

2008-12-15T09:50:00.001-06:00

As usual, we kicked off the week-long reunion by catching up over a few drinks and joke about the upcoming medical and dental poking and proding that the U.S. government requires at this point in our service, as well as lement the inevitable barrage of policy talks and program development, though a definite highlight was being able to talk with the Deputy Ambassador from the U.S. A few volunteers living in Querétaro opened up their home to the rest of us, giving us a comfortable setting to toss back a few cold ones, share some grub and fill everyone in on all of our achievements and tribulations since our last official reunion last spring. It was soon obvious that a lot has changed over the past eight months.

Several bragged of successes in organizing their communities and launching ambitious projects. Several others were considerably more somber as the recounted organizational breakdowns and the realization that their grand expectations for their work might never be come to fruition. The harshness of the reality of working in the government in Mexico was stark for some, for others it was filled with pleasant surprises. It was all the luck of the draw but drastically different from the exhuberance we all had when we reconnected after the first couple of months on the job. Nonetheless, all were able to positively reflect on and share their amazingly and rewarding personal connections in their respective communities. Oh what a difference a year makes.

It is hard to believe that we have come so far. It seems like only yesterday that we were randomly bumping into each other at airports across the country, easily recognizable by our standard-issue blue information packets. We were all so nervous the first three days in Washington having left all we cared for in the world to embark on a journey into the unknown. We clung to each other instantly for we were all we had and over the next three months of training we formed strong bonds that, a year later, seemed to be able surmount severe clashes in personality, rampid rumors and the test of time and distance.

There is a comfortness to these reunions much like that of returning to your hometown after spending time away at college. Whether it is the familiarity of the city or the people is dificult to say, but in the end I suppose it does not really matter. Undoubtedly, we all leave refreshed and relaxed; ready to face the challenges of the following year. For some, two years of service might seem to long of a commitment, but for our group it became blatantly clear during the course events of our ‘midservice training’ that anything less would be futile.

The common thread in all of our experiences is that our biggest accomplishments during our first year of service was our integration into both our communities and our workplaces. Coming into both as not only an outsider, but a foreigner as well necesitates a long time and a lot of work in order to do so. Trust has to built, relationships have to be formed and the systems have to be learned before we could even possibly imagine pitching projects, much less achieve any success with them. A year later, that is where we are all at; anxiously looking forward to the pending successes in the coming year.

Staying true to form, these conferences and workshops are never all work and no play. Every night was spent as though we were young college freshmen, away from home and on our own for the very first times. Only this time around, we are all a little older and (hopefully) a little wiser. I suppose it is what the college experience would have been had we all had brains and money. That does not mean it was by any means tame or boring.

Aside from the party Sunday night, we also headed to one of our old stomping grounds (Harry’s) Monday night. We ran into two other volunteers from a previous group who are getting prepared for their close of service in a few days and the subsequent return to life stateside while taking in a few two-for-one margarittas. Listening to them talk of selling all they have accumulated and saying their final good-byes to their new friends contrasted greatly from the stories of another two volunteers whom we met up with later on in the evening.

These two were only six months into their service and busily running around their sites, learning the city and their work centers. For them, everything is still new and exciting. The naivite was almost reinvigerating. By the time we reunited with them, the majority of the group had already called it a night. We were prepared for a long night but, as also always seems to be the case, circumstance intervened as two young Mexicans took a liking to our two female volunteers in the group. In the middle of a dance, one leaned to me and uttered a quote that shall forever remain ingrained in my memories of her: “He’s got a bonner, we gotta go.” Despite our sudden desire to leave, the young men insisted on paying our tab and the women, not mildly but not unamuzed, put the men in our group in their debts for it.

The rest of the week was filled with parties and drinks just as it had started until, sadly, Friday afternoon arrived and along with the time to once again say our good-byes. Some of us will most likely run into each other over Christmas break as many of us are traveling to the same part of the country. Fun as it is to get together with our little groups, they never have the same feeling as when we are all together in Querétaro.

Ecoclubes Internacional Pics

2008-11-25T11:52:00.001-06:00

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Ecoclubes Internacional Conference

2008-11-25T10:48:00.002-06:00

After a rollercoaster ride of planning, this past weekend’s conference for Ecoclubes Internacional has finally come and gone. Between the parents who (understandably) did not want to send their children off with some foreigner for a weekend and the rainy weather cancelling our fundraising efforts, I was not sure the trip would even happen for a while there. As always, however, everything came together at the last minute. We were finally able to find three students who were able to persuade their parents to sign the permission slips and who happened to have a small amount of money to contribute to their costs. Along with a sizable contribuition from the local presidencia (mayor’s office) and the park administration (and a lot of last minute scrambling on my part), we were on our way to the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve in the state of Querétaro.

It was around seven at night when we arrived in Querétaro and we were greeted by three other Peace Corps volunteers stationed in the reserve. Actually, without their help as well I probably could not have made this trip happen. Not only did they pick us up at the bus station, but they arranged free housing for us for the duration of the weekend and showed us around the town to give us our bearings. The students were content to spend the first night casually walking around and did not want have dinner so I used the opportunity to catch up with my fellow volunteers, which is always nice when live and work in isolation from each other. After dinner we spent some time watching a cultural dance festival in the town’s plaza before calling it a night.

I turned down an inventation to go out to the bars with one of my friends, thinking that I was going to go to bed early and be well rested for the next day’s conference. I should have known better, being that I was returning to a house with three teenagers away from home. It was a several hours before I finally got the chance to go to bed, but I enjoyed the opportunity to sit up with them and get to know each other. It was several more before they finally calmed down, stopped talking and I was able to fall asleep. Unfortunately, it was only several more before they were walking me up to get a start on the day.

The conference, I believe, was a great and hugely beneficial experience for all. Students from several different communities in the states of Querétaro and San Louis Potosi were in attendance and sharing the successes and problems of their community projects during the previous three months. They all made a point to welcome us to the ecoclub fold and to explain their organization to us. Afterward, a few of the groups stayed after to give us advice and answer our questions, as well did the president of the organization in Mexico. It was great to see the students interact with other environmentally-minded peers from different parts of the country and to see them learn from each other in the way that I am sure they did.

My students left the conference with many great ideas and re-energized to start working in their communities. The trip, however, was not all work and no play. One of my Peace Corps friends and his girlfriend were nice enough to take us out an hour-long hike up to the top of a nearby mountain to enjoy a few drinks (for the adults) at a mountain-top bar with panoramic views of the town and the cloud forest. That pretty much wiped us out for the night thanks to the lack of sleep from the night before. So after the hour hike back into town, a quick bite to eat and a brief walk around the artesan shops in the plaza; we returned to our lodging for a quick nap, which turned into a long night’s sleep and – consequently – we never made it back out onto the town Saturday night.

One student in the group stood out in particular from the rest, though there were all great kids. He was a last minute change to the lineup of the group and when I met him for the first time at the bus station, he came across as a shy but respectful and fairly straight-edged kid. By Saturday I came to learn that could not be farther from the truth. Like to many other kids I knew while teaching, he came from a less than perfect home and is struggling to make the best of a few bad decisions in his life, he even dreams of going to college. He was hardly shy either, in fact he is actually very charismatic (i.e. impish). We spent most of the weekend trying to one-up each other on practical jokes and witty banter. He frequently called me papi (dad) and even though it was started as a joke, I could not help but notice something about him that made me think that maybe he was really desperate for a positive adult-male influence in his life.

I would like to think have made a big impact in the lives of many of my former students, but if that is the case with this one I would be particularly touched. Not only am I not his teacher, but we obviously come from two very different cultures. I am most definitely the only American he has met and I obviously am only in Pachuca for a limited time. As with all the students, I hope that years from now he will look back on this trip with fond memories and maybe even credit me with providing him with the opportunity; even if he never makes it to college or his family life does not improve.

It was yet another reminder of why am doing this, to make as big of an impact on the lives of as many people as posible in a (seemingly) all too short period of time. I am really excited to see these kids take the reigns on this new community action group and look forward to seeing what all of the accomplish through it.

Metztitlan Pics

2008-11-25T10:47:00.001-06:00

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Weekend in Metztitlan

2008-11-18T20:01:00.000-06:00

On a personal note, this past weekend was a three day weekend for us in Mexico. Leti and I celebrated it by traveling a few hours north to the Barranca de Metztitlan, another national park in Hidalgo and the site of another volunteer. Actually, six of us volunteers reunited there for the weekend. Leti bravely threw herself in this mix of Gringos and patiently put up with all the English speaking.

As usual, getting there was a less-than-smooth process. The only bus service to Metztitlan is second-class, which meant seats were first-come, first-serve. Thanks fo having to put our luggage below, Leti and I were forced to stand at the front of the bus for about 40 minutes or so. They had every seat filled and the aisle from the back to the front, and down the steps to the door.

The driver kept yelling at us to not block his view out the right side. Isn’t that something they should think of before they sell so many tickets? He kept pushing us toward the back, and consequently me into the safety bar to one side and the person ahead of me to the other, a few times doubling me over. There was one empty seat at the front of the bus with a plastic bag on it so Leti had kindly asked the lady if she could move her bag and allow Leti to sit.

Even Leti did not understand her response, but since the bag was not moved we were sure it was favorable. After about 10 minutes of standing, Leti just sat down on the seat anyways and squished the bad (I was so proud of her, normally she is way too sweet). That only lasted about another five minutes until the bus pulled over on the side of the road and the driver’s wife (or girlfriend) boarded. The driver told her to sit, she said there were no seats, he told Leti to get up.

I told Leti, in a voice I was certain the driver heard, that we would definitely be contacting the bus company since we actually paid for seats and should be entitled to one before the someone travelling for free. Leti said we should get free return tickets for that, the driver turned his head a bit but said nothing. Half an hour later, in a small town outside of Pachuca, a few people got off and Leti squeezed into a pair of seats in front of a long line of standing men. Did I mention that I love this girl?

As with all my trips in Mexico, the screwed up travel situations always pay off in the end. Saturday for us was spent at catching up with a few Mexican coleagues that live up there over some tequila, food and music. After catching a breakfast of quesadillas, fresh fruit and hot tomales in the local market, we spent Sunday hiking around the laguna, taking in the sites of white pelicans (in the middle of a high desert) and historic rock paintings. There are definitely no shorage of magnificant views in Metztitlan. Every where you look there are tall mountains covered in barrel and biznaga cactus (among smaller species). Thanks to the recent rainy season, it was even surprising green (remember... it’s a mountain desert ecosystem). Everyone was pretty exhausted from the night before, so the drinking was kept to a minimum when returned (only 4 bottles of wine over dinner).

Monday we took a short hike around town before half the group left for their respective sites. Leti and I parted the group for a few hours to tour the ex-convent on the hill. It was pretty neat for a nunnery, lots of intricately painted walls and tiles and (of course) an amazing view. The ever-greedy Catholics wanted $25 pesos in exchange for permission to take photos. Given my extreme distaste for the church, I had to sneak around the interior of the complex hiding my camera from a crotchety old nun that chewed me a new one because I was apparently supposed to know this ahead of time. I didn’t feel too guilty, judging by the looks of the place the church definitely stole more than its fare share of money from the villagers over the centuries (which also apparently was never re-invested into the community... go figure, too often Catholics seem to be all talk and no action). Besides, the old nag wasn’t even nice about it; certainly not Julie Andrews (in more ways than one).

Luckily, we returned to our friends apartment and some ice cold beers. It was a nice break in preparation for that second-class bus ride home. We caught up to the bus on the street as it was leaving town, so we were not allowed to throw our luggage below. There were plenty of open seats so we threw them in one but it didn’t take long before the driver had picked up enough people along the side of the road to fill the aisle again and we forced to jam our bags on the floor inbetween our seats and the seats front of us. If you are trying to imagine what we did with our feet, it’s probably best that you don’t. We made it home and it only took a few hours for the feeling to come to our butts, that’s all that is important.

It's a Rollercoaster...

2008-11-18T19:59:00.000-06:00

My excitement over the speed at which the ecoclubs probject was moving along was soon quelched by the reality that is fundraising, group organizing and parental permissions. The students agreed to hold a carwash this past Saturday to try to raise some funs for next weekend’s conference in Sierra Gorda. We had one planning meating scheduled before then, to which only three students showed up... none of which were even planning on attending the conference and only one of which really wanted to do the carwash. Thankfully he convinced the other two to help him.

The third blow came from the parents who, despite the apparent eagerness while talking to me the week before, now are (understandably) concerned about sending their kids off with the strange American for a weekend. I told the teacher who has been helping organize all this that I would talk to the park about the possibility of us taking one less kid in exchange for taking a parent. At the time, the park director agreed with the idea, now he does not.

The park’s new position, one day before a scheduled meeting with the students and their parents, is that the park will help students attend but is not in the business of helping the parents. If they do not want their kid to go alone with me, they are welcome to come with but at their own cost. I cannot wait for tomorrow’s meeting. I am now having serious doubts that this trip will even happen being that these parents are too poor to properly feed their families, much less take a weekend trip two states away.

In more positive news, we had a presentation in front of an entire school this moring. I talked to the students about the importance of volunteering and how we needed their help with some environmental interpretation projects around the park. The principal has offered us 240 students to help pay for and install species ID signs as well as clean and restore one trail before December 5.

The Ball is Rolling, a Pleasant Surprise...

2008-11-10T16:16:00.000-06:00

I guess after spending the better part of the last ten months working primarily on one project, the interpretative signs for our trail system, I am not acostomed to a very fast pace of work. That was why I was taken off-guard last week when I went to talk to the principal of a small school located in the town in the park about starting an affiliate of Ecoclubes Internacional there. Basically, it is a student-run community-service environmental non-profit.

The next morning I was told that a small group of about nine students had expressed interest and I was invited to come speak with their parents Friday morning. When I arrived Friday, I started be meeting with the students and explaining the organization to them in more detail. By the end of the discussion, another six students had wondered into the circle and wanted to join. I met with all their parents to describe Ecoclubes and to ask for their permission to take the students to the national Ecoclubes conference in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve at the end of the month.

In reality, I will most likely only be able to take one student but the other students understood and all agreed to pitch-in on the fundraising efforts even if they could not attend. I found that to be a very positive sign of their willingness to work together toward a larger cause, which they will need to do if they are going to successfully tackle environmental problems in their community. I guess we’ll see if it lasts. We have our first meeting this Friday to elect their President, VP and Treasurer.

I also mentioned that I wanted to start up a volunteer program in the park, sort of a ‘Friends of the Park’ iniciative. Today I interviewed our first volunteer even though I still have not finished outlining of what exactly the program will consist. Generally, however, I know I want to create a network of volunteers from which we can call upon to assist us with education programs, fundraising programs and manual labor programs. This particular volunteer was better suited for the education programs and fundraising programs and brought with him several good ideas (and useful professional connections). I’m really hoping that I can expand the program offerings of the park while reducing the work load for the already over-worked staff. Fingers are crossed.

Día de los Muertos

2008-11-03T11:43:00.001-06:00

Last year we celebrated Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) as tourists. You may remember the photos of the street festivals, concerts, stands and parades that I posted. Interesting as it was, I have to admit that I gained a whole new respect for the day this year; despite the fact that Pachuca does absolutely nothing to celebrate the day (unlike Querétaro).

As I mentioned in my previous post, Thursday night we constructed the family altar in Leti´s parents´ house. An altar for the Día de los Muertos consists of a series of ascending steps (there is a set number but in reality it varies depending on the size of the house). Aside from that, the designs tend to vary greatly from house to house. We constructed a giant star, covered in Cempasúchil (or Cempoaxóchitl) – basically an oversized marigold – in the center we place the steps and covered them with a table cloth.

Friday was spent preparing the food and placing all the offerings and idols on the altar. In our case, we started with about a dozen candles in glasses with name tags to represent each dead relative or friend. Around these were offerings of the favorite foods of each loved one: various candies (suckers, chocolate skulls, hard candies, etc.), baked goods (including pan de los muertos – bread of the dead), beans, rice, tortillas, chicken, red and green moles (my favorite Mexican sauces), candied pumpkins and squashes, and various vegetable dishes. They even go as far as placing bottles of beer, pulque, tequila and packages of cigarettes on the altar.

Saturday is when the majority of the food is actually placed on the altar and the extended family gathers to see the altar. In Leti’s family the tradition is to start at one house, read the story of one of the 5 Catholic mysteries (I have no rememberence of these) and say the Rosary. Afterward, the move on to another relative´s house and repeat the process until all five mysteries have been read. At the sixth, and final house, they just say the Rosary and spend a bit longer talking and eating snacks offered from the altar.

Sunday the entire family gathered in the afternoon at the house of an elderly aunt. Each household brought dishes from their respective altars, including the tequila and pulque, to share amongst each other. After the feast (and finishing off the alcohol) we gathered up a few five gallon buckets of cempasúchils and drove off to the cemetary. There we swept out the tombs of Leti’s paternal grandparents (responsibilities for the family tombs and plots were divided up among the family) and filled stone vases with the flowers. When all was done, we headed back to Leti’s houe with her aunt and uncle from Mexico City to eat dinner (I cannot believe how much these people eat), talk and drink some more.

I was not really sure what to expect going into this. Part of me thought it would the family gathered around the altars sharing memories of the departed. A rather solemn event, generally speaking. In reality, it was more festive. The entire family together sharing, eating, talking, joking around. I particularily like how the dead are honored with their favorite foods (and vices). There really was not anything sad at all about the weekend. Although I cannot bring myself to ‘believe’ in any diety-based relion (and I have particular issues with Christianity) and I am rather adament about not wanting to be pumped full of toxic chemicals and placed in sealed box (throw me in the sea to be eaten be the sharks and recycled I say); I would definitely like to be remembered in this way after I have left this world.

Family Altar for Día de los Muertos

2008-11-03T11:41:00.001-06:00

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Preparation for Día de los Muertos

2008-10-31T11:11:00.002-06:00

It has been a while since I have had to do family nights, particularly for the holidays. I guess being Mexico does not excuse me from such obligations. Last night we spent the evening at the house of Leti’s family building the altar for Día de los Muertos. For those of you who do not know or understand this holiday, it is a hybrid holiday between the traditional celebrations of the indigenous Mexicans (Mayans, Aztecs, etc.) and the Catholic faith (go figure, they take everyone’s holidays).

As many of you already know, Halloween was traditionally a pagan holiday celebrating the harvest and, thus, the continuity of life after death. The day after is traditionally celebrated by Christians as All Saints Day. The Mexicans take it a step further and use this day to pay honor to all the dead children in the family (as all are believed to be innocent, or saintly). The second day of November is the actual celebration of the Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos). On this day, families honor all the adults in the family whom have since left the earthly plane of existence.

There many ways in which a family may choose to honor its dead. All families traditionally construct an altar consisting of several steps (symbolizing a stairway to heaven, if you will). On each step various offerings are placed including a special bread only baked during this time of the year, fruit, tequila and giant marigolds – to name a few. Idols are generally placed on the top step and may be a photograph, personal affects and/or name tags. A family will generally meet up at the house and travel together to the graves of their loved ones where they will sweep and clean the tombs, place bouquets of flowers and sometimes hire a Mariachi band to serenade the resting souls. More traditional families, I have been told, may even exhume the bodies and clean the bones. Afterward, everyone returns to the house for a large meal, drinks and rememberence.

While setting up the altar (a four plus hour event) I could not help but to laugh at how, in whichever culture, family holidays are all the same. Throughout the evening members of the extended family passed by the house to drop food and other offerings for the altar. Of course, no one left without also offering their two-cents on the design of the altar. The simple process of stacking tables and boxes, covering them with a tablecloth and placing the objects took more than four hours because the job was halted several times for last minute redesigning at the request of various family members (and the subsequent bickering the accompanied). It was just like trying to setup a Christmas tree. Then, of course, there were multiple breaks to gorge ourselves on food being prepared for the upcoming festivities such as beans, rice, grilled veggies and one of my favorites... tomales. Still, the mission was eventually accomplished and I was finally able to go bed, tired but stuffed.

Presentation to Laboratorio Estatal de Salud

2008-10-31T11:11:00.001-06:00

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Laboratorio Estatal de Salud

2008-10-31T10:58:00.002-06:00

I'm a little behid on my posts lately, but my computer was recently hit by a particular nasty virus (one of many that seem to plague the networks across Mexico) and is in for repairs, so I've been posting from work whenever I get a free minute or two (which is not often these days). Aside from my work on the restoration and development of the interpretative trails in the park, I also do some community work speaking to various organizations about conservation issues. The most recent of these was last Thursday's talk which I gave to the Laboratorio Estatal de Salud (State Laboratory of Health).

This was a particularly interesting (and a little nerve-racking) talk for me since I was speaking to a group of my peers. Normally, I give my talks to students, tourists and community organizations consisting primarily of lay-people. This time I spoke to a group of about 15 scientists and technicians. I made sure to research my presentation well so that I could defend myself and sound somewhat intellectual about my theme. On the other hand, it was also nice to not have to over-explain a lot of concepts since these people already knew the basic science behind much of what I had to say.

Being that I really couldn't teach these people anything new in regards to the science behind our environmental problems, I decided to focus my talk on developing an environmental consciousness. I spoke to the cultural, political, economic and ethical aspects for many of the issues facing the natural world today and closed with a discussion on simple things that we can do in our homes, offices and communities (particularly with regards to the national park) to make a difference.

Everyone was very inquisitive and participated in an open discussion on the topic. I was given a nice recognition for my services and the director asked if I would review the environmental education program she is developing for her staff. All-in-all, a good experience.

Pics from Bat Trip to San Louis Potosi

2008-10-31T10:57:00.001-06:00

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A Week in the Swamp...

2008-10-24T14:35:00.000-05:00

Well, actually it was a marsh. I spent the week in the ‘cienaga’ located at the foot of the Sierra Gorda mountains in the state of San Louis Potosi. Picture the Everglades, but with a mountain backdrop. It was probably just about as hot too.

Getting up there proved, as usual, to be a small adventure. I went to the bus station several hours early, thinking I was well prepared after having done my research online to find out the times and companies of routes up to Ciudad Valles. It was all for naught as the company that was supposed to have a direct overnight route according to the Web site, was now saying that they did not. I was directed to another bus line, but was told to wait 10 minutes since the system was down. After sitting in front of the counter for 30 minutes I returned to the lady to ask how the system was doing. She told me it was up and running but now the bus to Ciudad Valles was not passing through Pachuca. She offered no details nor an apology for leaving me to wait (in front of her) for half an hour.

At this point I was late for Leti’s thesis defense for her bachelor’s degree (yeah, I know... they take it pretty serious down here), so I had to jump in a cab and race across town. Two hours later, the defense was over and I was in another cab racing back to the station. A different person was working the previous counter and informed me that the road to Valles was blocked and that it didn’t matter if I left from Pachuca or Mexico City, I couldn’t get through. He did offer a 12 hour trip through several small towns as an alternative but after talking to a friend in San Louis Potosi I opted for a bus to the city of SLP instead. I was told I could get on a 12:30 bus to Mexico City and then from there to SLP. “Great, I´ll take it,” I said; only to be told that it was not available until tomorrow. So why did you offer it to me then!!!!!

To make a long story short, I eventually went home and slept for a few hours before returning to the station and purchasing a trip to Querétaro and from there to SLP. I arrived late, of course, and had to buy another bus trip to the cienaga where I arrived in the late afternoon. It was just in time to drop off my things and change my clothers before we headed out into the field to set up mist nets to catch bats with a visiting representative of Bat Conservation International.

We spent three days in the marsh, either wet from the marsh itself or from the rain that almost never stopped falling, catching bats and visiting local elementary schools to talk with children and parents about the value of bats. In this part of the country, dominated by farmers and ranchers, vampire bats are often found feeding on cattle. Although rabies is present and kills several cattle (and a few people) every year, it is not nearly as widespread as the people think. Nonetheless, they usually kill any bat they see believing all are vampires.

Over the course of three days, we only caught a total of seven bats from four different species. None were vampire bats. There was never a dull moment in the cienaga as we routinely found ourselves having to deal with the type of conditions that can only arise in the middle of a rainy, rural marsh. We spent one afternoon stranded at the house of an kind, elderly woman who made us lunch in her log-cabin-style outdoor kitchen and allowed us to nap in the corn-husks piled in the back of her pickup under the carport. We had one pickup, nine people and several boxes and bags of computer equipment. It was not raining when we left in the morning so we didn’t think much about the space issue as there was plenty in the pickup bed. In the end, three of us had to don full rain gear and tough it out in the back while the rest of us crammed in the cab along with equipment.

Another time we were scheduled for a talk a local school, which turned out to be closed. The locals still wanted the talk so they broke out the hammer and crowbar and proceeded to bust the lock on the gate to the school. Luckily, one of the classrooms was left unlocked so no more breaking and entering was necessary.

At one point, upon hearing that we were there studying bats, a local rancher insisted on taking us out to a cave where he knows there are lots of bats. We soon found ourselves trudging through the marsh in water, at times, up to our wastes passing through shrubs and small trees on our way out to an island. Jokingly, someone asked if there were crocodiles in this part of the marsh. We were told there were in a tone that suggested we were stupid for even asking since everyone knows that there are. Still, we pushed on and the vote to turn back was made until we reached a thicket of trees that required near-full submersal in the water to pass.

We were miserably wet and cold for the rest of the day, thanks to the ceaseless rains. Thankfully, another local family invited us to their house for food, beer and tequila. After several hours, half the group was no longer in the mood for bat catching (for obvious reasons) so we decided to hang up the nets at this family’s house. As it turned out, it was our most successful location for the entire three days.

Late Friday night, we packed up our gear and made the hour drive back to Ciudad Valles. I passed the night at a few bars with two other volunteers who are stationed there and crashed at the house of one. Saturday I caught a ride with a fellow biologist in our group to the city of San Louis Potosi, about five hours south. There, I met up with a few more volunteers working in the city and we got caught up over a few glasses of wine and a much needed veggie-friendly dinner (there are only so many rice, beans and tortillas you can eat). The next day we attended the symphony, grabbed lunch and I was on a bus (of course, one of three) back home, finally arriving in Pachuca at 1 AM.

It was a fun trip, all said and done. It reminded me of being camped out in the rainforest in Australia with my class catching bats (and other critters). Unfortunately, a series of animal-grease ladden, unclean-kitchen-prepared meals in the country meant I was severely sick for the majority of it. In fact, only now is my stomach finally normal again. I guess that’s just life in rural Mexico for a vegetarian.

Pulque in the Country

2008-10-24T14:33:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

A Subtle Reminder...

2008-10-13T11:42:00.000-05:00

Work continues at it’s usual pace. A new project has landed in my lap, a presentation on conservation for the employees of the local laboratory of health. I prefer teaching to adults (they usually are much behaved) and look forward to the opportunity to discuss water conservation and agriculture (since they mostly work with analyzing water and food quality) but I have to admit that I am more than a little preocupied that I will be talking to a set of peers (other scientists) and, therefore, have to up my game a little and not preach to the choir.

In other news, I have been given a subtle reminder of just exactly where I am and how unsafe it can be here. When we sign up for PC we know we will not be going anywhere that’s battle-torn but that we might be caught in the middle of domestic issues that will put us on high alert and remind us that, although I may be in Mexico, I am not hanging out in some laid-back vacation paradise (as some have suggested). Currently, Pachuca is throwing its annual fair, a big event here that attracts a lot of attention. Our park has an exhibit there as well and I have been informed by a few of our staff there that security around the fair is on high alert.

A group of narco-trafficking terrorists involved in a recent masacre over the Mexican Independence Day holiday in Morelia has reportedly placed a bomb threat on the opening and closing ceremonies of the fair. Luckily, nothing happened at the opening but everyone remains on high alert as the fair progresses. Likewise, my girlfriend who works in the City Hall of a small municipality in the park has informed me that her boss has warned the entire staff to be extremely careful with incoming phone calls as the same group is trying to extort money from the heads of police in about a dozen municipalities in the state. This apparently includes the municipality of Pachuca as I have also been told by a coworker that a bomb threat has been placed on the City Hall here as well.

A quick Internet search has not turned up any news stories validating these threats but I cannot help but to wonder since so many people I know personally (and that work for the government) seem to have inside information on them. At this point, Peace Corps is treating it as a rumor but advising me to stay on alert in case something should happen and I need to be locked-down or evacuated. Considering I live a few blocks from City Hall and work a few blocks from the fair grounds, I have been paying extra close attention to the news recently.

In less dramatic events, the social calendar continues to be full. Leti and I spent the evening of Wednesay night at her house talking to her parents. In Mexico, traditionally a relationship is formalized by the boyfriend discussing his feelings for the daughter and their desire to continue seeing each other. Saturday evening we went to a baptism party for the daughter of a friend. As with most events such as this in Mexico, it was a big party with lots of food and beer that lasted well into the night. Sunday the guys and I spent the afternoon in the ‘campo’ or country drinking pulque (fermented maguey juice) by the liter. It was definitely an experience for a germ-a-phobe such as me.

The elderly man’s house consisted of wooden posts (actually small tree trunks) with metal siding nailed on to make the walls and the roof. The yard was a dense garden of fruit trees, herbs, chilies and assorted vegetables complete with roaming chickens and dogs and pots and dishes handing from nails on the posts in the ‘patio.’ Judging by the severed legs hanging out in the ‘sink’ area, I’m guessing the chickens weren’t pets. There was no bathroom, not even an out-house, which made my mind wonder about far too many things. Obviously, running water was not present either. There were buckets to wash hands, dishes, etc. but no soap to be found anywhere.

We drank pulque served in large (1-2 liter) ceramic bowls from five gallon buckets. He graciously fed us nopales (prickly-pear cactus), carocoles (snails), chilquiles (grub worms that live on maguey), esquites (corn kernals) and tortillas. Thankfully, my friends explained upon arrival that I was vegetarian and I was not asked or expected to eat the snails nor the worms. I am pretty sure I must have drank about 6 liters or more of pulque and ate a few nopale tacos and esquites, earning the man’s respect I would assume since he kept refering to me as ‘nieto’ (grandson). That didn’t stop him nor any of the other old men that had gathered around the table drinking home-made pulque and anise liquor from throwing the more-than-occasional ‘gringo’ jab at me.

It was all in good fun though and made sure to retaliate respectfully when appropriate, garnering further respect from the men who all admitted I was ‘buena onda’ (a good person). Today I feel a little queasy in the stomach but I am not sure if it is a result of the pulque or eating unsanitary foods in such unsanitary conditions. Probably a bit of both.

Is this what Peace Corps meant by ‘integration’...

2008-10-07T10:47:00.001-05:00

In work life, my main project (developing the interpretative trails in the park) continues to move along at a slow pace. The designs for trail signs have been submitted and the restoration of the trails has begun, but with a price tag of just over $20,000 the search for funding will prove to be difficult. Being a national park, we don’t qualify for many of the aid programs available in Mexico and under Mexican law we are not allowed to collect fees from park visitors.

I’ve been using the ‘down time’ to start some other projects. I am creating a survey for the villagers around the park to gauge the quality of benefits they are receiving from the park, what are the expectations/desires of the park and what are their community needs. I’m hoping the data will be useful for focusing the park’s future community aid projects. I am also developing a workshop for non-formal environmental educators which I hope to give to the park staff, a few employees at the State Laboratory of Health and few soon-to-be educators in a soon-to-open environmental education center nearby.

I have also started talks with the president of Ecoclubs International in Mexico about starting up a branch of the organization in one of the towns near the park. Many other projects are in the works such as creating our own environmental education/interpretation center, creating eco-camps for kids and working with the Department of Education to better incorporate environmental education in the classroom. Of course, more on all of these as they progress.

In private life, this weekend was another long one. Friday night Leti and I attended a birthday party for a friend. It was a young friend so there was plenty of dancing and tequila (until about 4AM). Things started out slow, Leti and I pretty much kept to ourselves. Eventually, however (probably as the rest of the guests become drunk and lost their inhibitions), I found myself being sucked into a group of curious guys eager to ‘cruce’ with me – basically interlocking arms and racing to finish your drinks. They were not happy when Leti wanted to leave and tried convincing me to ditch her. There was a time in my life when I might have considered it, but I guess I’m a better boyfriend now (sorry to all the ex’s).

Saturday was the ‘presentación’ of my friends daughter. This is the 3rd birthday and considered to be a big deal here because it is considered to be when Mary presented Jesus, some wait until this point to baptize their children as well. The festivities normally consist of a Catholic mass (as does every important occassion in Mexico), a big lunch (‘comida’), music, a piñata, a big cake and (of course) lots of beer and tequila. Traditionally, the party is paid for padrinos (godfathers). Unlike the U.S., in Mexico there are usually several, each making a contribution to the celebration (food, alcohol, music, etc.). I was asked to be a padrino and help out with the Mariachi band.

What never siezes to amaze down here is the extent to which they will go to make me feel comfortable. I have been to many a friend and family wedding and birthday party in the U.S. More often than not, I am left to dine on a few side dishes that don't contain meat. Here, every such party I have been to there has been a special plate requested just for me. Ironically, Peace Corps advised me to give up my vegetarian diet so as not to offend the host country nationals; not that I ever would. Judging by how the hosts of the party run frantically from table to table serving food, beer and tequila - even at their own wedding; it is definitely in their nature to be accomodating to their guests.

We didn’t stay as late for this party since it was in a town (Real de Monte) in the mountains, just outside of the city. When the last of our friends were leaving for the city, we felt it was best to hitch a ride with them since taxi and bus service was non-existent there at this time of night. It was also an outdoor party on the top of a mountain, in other words windy and cold.

Sunday was considerably more tranquil. We had tickets to the youth symphony but were late getting out the door and decided we had missed too much of it to make it worth the trip. Luckily they were free tickets. Instead, we opted for the movies. The selection was pretty dismal for our time constraints and we decided our best option was a Mexican comedy called Divina Confusión. The budget was clearly less than that of a Hollywood movie, but the plot was surprisingly entertaining... the Greek gods decide to spend some time experiencing human life on Earth and choose Mexico for their forray. Throughout the movie they meddle in the personal lives of a young couple accidentally causing all kinds of trouble. Worth the watch if it comes out state-side.

That’s all for this week.

Two Mexicos...

2008-09-30T10:54:00.000-05:00

Work is moving along nicely. I’ve switched to spending almost 100% of my time in the central offices instead of the park offices for various reasons. Primarily, I switched counterparts since the last one thought he was my supervisor and not my counterpart (i.e., rather than work with me he expected me to handle every project related to environmental education and ecotourism by myself). My new counterpart works out of the administrative offices and we have a much better relationship. He realizes that he is my partner and we bounce ideas off each other and he’s been good about reviewing my projects and helping out in whatever way he can. As a side benefit, I have Internet and telephone access in the offices which has proven critical these past few weeks in moving my sign designs (for the interpretative trails) through the bureaucracy in Mexico City as well as starting the ball rolling on developing an affiliate of Ecoclubs International in my park.

My social calendar is full once again. It seems to come in waves. Leti and I had a wedding and birthday party to go to Saturday. We started out at the wedding, arriving at the church just as the mass was ending (oh shucks). After the mass, everyone went to the couple’s house for ‘cena’ (dinner). Unlike American weddings, the receptions here are pretty basic, non-elegant affairs. Aside from the bride and groom, no one was dressed up (not even in the church). Dinner was prepared by the females in the family laboring over a comal (an outdoor griddle) making tortillas, nopales (cactus), rice and meat. Thankfully, I love nopal tacos or I would have starved.

There was no toast from the bestman or a dollar dance. Instead the bride walks around the tables with a glass collection box for monetary donations from the women and the groom has the men sign his shirt and pin a bill to it. There is also a tradition of putting the couple on two chairs and the women do a congo line around the bride trying to knock her off the chair while the women in her family try to protect her. Then the men do the same to the groom. Eventually everyone was dancing to cumbia and ranchero music typical of Mexican fiestas and extremely dizzying with all the twisting and turning and off-beat steps (I am still having trouble learning how to dance these). Thank the gods for tequila (if it helps in speaking Spanish, it has to help in dancing Mexican right?).

What struck me most is the house where the couple lives. Living in a relatively nice (by Mexican standards) downtown apartment it is easy for me to forget just how poor parts of Mexico are. The party was located on the outskirt of the city in more of a compound than a house. There was a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom but all in separate buildings made of un-finished concrete-block with steel-panel roofs. The bathroom was more of an outhouse as it consisted of a toilet (without seat) and a barrel of water for flushing (and I’m assuming bathing). The dinner and dancing were staged outside under a party tent (the rental of which must be quite a profitable business in Mexico as they are at every fiesta). Coincidentally, I was again reminded of this ‘other’ Mexico the following day as Leti and I watched the children living below me bath in 5 gallon buckets in the patio.

We left the wedding party around 11 to go to the birthday party of a friend of Leti’s. This was a decidedly more urban affair. A group of about a dozen friends met up at a popular nightclub (Manduka) to dance to electronica music and pound back brandy and cokes (a popular drink among the younger crowd in Pachuca). It was a late night that completely wore us out for the next day, causing us to miss yet another wedding. But there’s always next weekend and another party (a friend of mine’s daughter is turning 3, a big deal in Mexico).

Mexican Independence Day

2008-09-26T14:44:00.000-05:00

Well, due to technical problems with Photobucket™ I have not been able to upload photos for a few weeks but everything appears to be working now so here is my attempt to get you all up-to-date.

El Grito…

The Mexican revolution against Spain began on September 16 with a ‘grito’ or shout for independence in the town of Guanajatu, marking the beginning of their war to become a nation. Every year on the eve of their independence Mexicans in every city and village across the country put on an elaborate festival culminating in a cry for freedom from the municipal leader or, in the case of capital cities, the governor. In Pachuca, stages were setup in two of the largest plazas for evening concerts and carnival rides took over the streets near the government plaza. Traffic came to a standstill and most offices and business were closed for celebrations.

Because Leti’s aunt is the president (or mayor) of the municipality of Mineral del Chico, we were obligated to make our way up to the park for their festivities. The small, old mining town was lined with red, green and white strings of lights and lighted bows and bells adorned the centuries-old church in the main plaza. Throughout the evening we walked the cobblestone street getting our fill of fresh tamales (among other standard Mexican street fare) and tequila. We watched the show of traditional dances and the coronation of the Queen of the Patriotic Holidays for the municipality until, finally, at just before 11PM the declaration for independence was read aloud from the balcony of the city hall.

At the end of the reading, the president of the municipality rang a bell and gave the battle cry which ended in the call-and-response cries from the audience of “Vive Mexico” and then the lighting off of fireworks over the church. At 11:30 everyone gathered to cheer the setting off of the ‘castillo’ – a tower of spinning, rotating, color-changing fireworks the lasts nearly half an hour before finally launching a spinning saucer into the night sky over the plaza’s garden. I could not help but to marvel at the braveness (or stupidity) of the scene as the workers lighted the fireworks with short, open flames only a few feet from the spectators who were not barricaded off from the tower nor any other part of the spectacle. Sparks and burnt remains of the fireworks fell freely upon surround trees and people and yet, amazingly, no fires were started. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier, two men dressed in papier-mâché animal costumes with a rack of lit fireworks attached ran through the crowds on the streets surrounding the plaza.

With all the fireworks lit off and the commemorations complete, the band mounted the central gazebo in the plaza and put the crowd to dancing and reveling in their drunkenness to traditional Mexican cumbia, rancheros and norteaño music. We left at 3:30AM and there were still crowds dancing and music blaring. I definitely have to say it puts most American Independence Day parties to shame (except maybe Floatrite campground in Wisconsin).

My 32nd Birthday Celebrations...

2008-09-26T14:43:00.002-05:00

Today is my birthday and end of a weekend of celebrations. The parties started Friday night after work when my friends and girlfriend took me out for a nice dinner at a traditional Mexican restaurant in a small mining town outside of the city called Pachuquilla. After dinner, we headed for a night of drinking at our usual hangout where the waiter promptly greeted me with a female with whom he thought I could pass the night. As always, I explained that I have a girlfriend and that this time she was actually here with me (but in the bathroom).

Apparently, while in the bathroom, Leti was approached by another woman and asked if she was “working” too. Although, at this early point in the evening Leti was already thinking that she wanted to get the hell out of there, she was trooper and drank with the guys until about 1:30 in the morning before we left the boys to their paid-for escorts. The following night we attended a birthday party for a friend of the family’s but it did not take long for word to get around that my birthday was on Sunday. Although the main focus was on our friend, in the midst of everyone gathered around the table singing traditional Mexican songs while four men played the guitar, they did stop to sing me Happy Birthday in English (at least as best as they could). Of course, being a Mexican party, there was no shortage of food or tequila that night either.

Today, we (Leti, her sisters, niece, neighbor and I) headed back to Pachuquilla for their annual fair. More than anything, they all went to watch the bull riding competition. I started with the group but eventually had to leave the bandstand after the second rider. I can only imagine how it must feel to have your nuts tied up and a bunch of screaming people surrounding you. To me, it was clear that they were scared. Leti and I excused ourselves from the group and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the fair enjoying the food and checking out the various markets.

After a few hours we went back for the rest of the crew but arrived just in time to witness a mob of people surrounding an extremely massive bull. The crowd whipped the bull with ropes and crowded as it spun and spun until it eventually fell to the ground and they descended up it. What they did to it I do not know nor do I want to know. I found the scene so aggressive and disturbing that I let go of Leti’s hand on while we were making our way up the staircase and said I have to go. She ran down the stairs after me and we spent the next hour walking around the fair again in silence as she tried – ever so caringly – to calm me down. Still, it was well into the night before I could get that horrible image out of my head.

After the fair, we all returned to my house where the girls sang me Las Mañitas (the Mexicans’ birthday song) and we enjoyed a chocolate and M&M cake. We called it night relatively early since we have to work half a day Monday before heading out for yet another night of celebrations (this time for the Mexican Independence Day). Leti was worried that it was the most tranquil birthday I have had but I reassured her that the only thing I really wanted was to spend time with her. The rest was just bonus material.

My Birthday

2008-09-26T14:43:00.001-05:00

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Museo de Antropologia in Mexico City

2008-09-26T14:20:00.002-05:00

Photobucket Album

Natural Areas Management Workshop in Tequila Country

2008-08-31T09:59:00.000-05:00

I just got back from a week in Jalisco (that's where tequila is made, a pilgrimage of sorts I guess). Peace Corps along with Mexico's Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources and National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (translated names of course) sponsored a three day workshop on best management practices in protected areas. All the volunteers working in protected areas in Mexico along with our Mexican counterparts were in attendance. We did a lot of sharing of ideas, collaborating and brainstorming and then toured the Nevada de Colima National Park (the southern-most active volcano in Mexico).

It was a great opportunity to see how some other parks are solving common problems and making things work. It was also a good networking opportunity; I made several good contacts including the Mexican president of Eco-clubs International who is going to send me some volunteers to help get the organization started up in my park. My counterpart and I are excited to get a several new projects up and running. I also got invited to visit a few interesting places and to lend a hand in a few more. It was not all work though as many of us volunteers had not seen each other for several months and took full advantage of the time together to catch up on our lives, our projects and our experiences over a few drinks at the end of the day. Of course, our new friends (the Mexican counterparts that accompanied us to the workshop) joined us on occasion.

The workshop also served to strengthen the professional relationship between volunteer and counterpart. Many of the volunteers had expressed disappointment in this area, including myself. I really think this past week allowed our counterparts to see the Peace Corps as an organization with its own rules and missions and not just as a vague name behind a volunteer at their sites. I know for a fact that mine left the workshop with a deeper understanding of what is Peace Corps and who are the volunteers, including why we are here both as an organization and on the personal level of each volunteer. We all developed a more clear action plan to carry us through the next year’s worth of projects which will hopefully make us all much more effective at our posts.

'Shroomin in El Chico...

2008-08-19T11:52:00.000-05:00

After a week of scouting ‘shroomin’ trails and researching a presentation, the group of American mushroom hunters finally arrived at El Chico. For the first time in 8 months I was able to do this in English. Although my Spanish is reasonably well, I cannot express myself to the extent I can in English and have often wondered if the audience is thinking “yeah, right… this idiot has a Master’s degree.” I gave a 30 minute talk on the history, culture and biodiversity of the park and introduced them to the staff. A few tried out their English but for the most part I had to translate. At least now I think they understand how I feel giving all these presentations in Spanish.

Afterward, I took the group to a nearby mountainside forest where we spent a few hours hunting mushrooms of all types. I rotated myself among the group while various members took it upon themselves to teach about identifying edible mushrooms. I think I could recognize a few, but definitely not all. Edible and non-edible, I was amazed at how colorful their baskets of mushrooms were by the end of the hike. As many forests as I have hiked through, I never noticed (nor tried to, admittedly) this tiny, almost hidden world. Who would have thought that there are so many different species of fungi and that many of them are actually kind of cool looking?

Check out the photo album below.

'Shroomin

2008-08-19T11:36:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

The Simple Things in Life...

2008-08-11T20:09:00.003-05:00

In personal news… It was a pretty low-key weekend for me this time around. My roommate jokes that my social life is on an alternating weekend schedule. That’s fine with me. I rather enjoy some quiet time. Another volunteer did come and visit Saturday afternoon but we still kept it low key. We walked around an artisans’ fair in the government plaza where I scored a few more things for the house. That pretty much wore us out so we stopped in a nearby restaurant for a few cold ones before meeting up with Leti and catching lunch at a vegetarian restaurant. Sometimes, I swear I have an easier time being vegetarian outside of the U.S. than within it (at least in Florida).

The highlight of my weekend, oddly enough, was buying a washing machine for my house. A friend, and reader, recently told me that everything happens in our lives to teach us a lesson and that mine was to learn patience. Well, after this experience I know she must be on to something. The store wanted to charge me $120 pesos to deliver the small machine three blocks to my place. So I recruited my neighbor to help me out for $30 pesos. We couldn’t find a decent, nearby parking spot thanks to road construction so we opted for a half-assed park job in between to cars and a delivery truck on a blocked off side street. Basically, no one was leaving until we did.

We thought it would be an in and out quickie, but the sales lady was new and probably just a little bit too old to working with the computers in the store. Long story short, it took us about half an hour to simply ring the darn thing up and pay for it. Just when we thought we were out of there, she informs us that she has to register me as a client to complete the sale and allow me to leave with my now-paid-for machine. That meant another half an hour on the computer as she had to re-start the process over several times; each time asking me for my name and address. After second time, my neighbor started getting frustrated and impatient and began answering her questions for me… “su nombre es Corey Scott Determan, es C-O-R-E-Y (etc. etc.). I was actually starting to feel sorry for her, though I was also anxious to get home and install my new toy.

I never thought I would be so excited with the purchase of washing machine. I guess, for one, it’s my first. In the past I have always used dry fold service and even did so here in Pachuca up until now. After slowly watching all my whites turn a grayish-blue, however, I knew I had to breakdown and make the purchase. Now on a volunteer’s salary, I couldn’t afford much. It’s just a 5kg capacity, semi-automatic washer. To give you an idea of how small, I lifted up a flight of stairs by myself without even straining a muscle. If you’re not familiar with semiautomatic washers… that basically means I have to fill it up with water through a hose connected to the laundry tub, turn the water off, set the agitation timer (no fancy fabric setting), then open up the drain and wait for all the water to leave so that I can close it up again, refill it for the rinse cycle, then manually drain it again only to finish the whole process by ringing out all the excess water from each individual article of clothing.

In truth, it’s only slightly less work than hand-washing but it’s actually pretty easy to do and I have to admire its simplicity. Had they sold these in the U.S. I definitely would have bought one for my apartment. All you need is a regular electrical outlet. The darn thing can quickly filled with two and a half five-gallon buckets of water. Plus, I cannot imagine it uses a lot of electricity; at least compared to the behemoths we’re accustomed to stateside. What I think I really enjoy about it, though, is that there is something about spending a Sunday afternoon washing clothes in your own place that makes you feel at home. I also enjoy the rooftop view of the city as I hang my clothes out to dry along with everyone else on their own rooftops in the neighborhood.

I'm 'shroomin at work...

2008-08-11T20:06:00.001-05:00

In professional news… I’ve pretty much finished the design phase of the interpretative trails for the park. Well, for the three most commonly and easily accessible trails at least. The blank check I was once given for this project seems to have fallen by the wayside. I’ve been told that they will do what they can now and save the rest for later. At this point I’m trying to get the designs for the signs approved by the CONANP office in Mexico City but they’ve been re-vamping their website (through which they accept sign submissions for review) for the past month. I’ve finally been instructed to email them, which meant spending a few hours converting them all to pdf files, but the email was shot back to me. So close, yet so far.

I’ve been using this down time, however, to prepare for a group of American and Canadian mushroom hunters that will be spending the day in the park with us next Monday. Although I am far from a mushroom expert, I am the only English-speaker on staff. Needless to say, I’ve been researching and learning a lot over the past few weeks to prepare. They are bringing their own mushroom expert, so luckily I won’t have to fake that, but I have been preparing a short seminar on the nutritional and socio-economic benefits of mushrooms for the communities in the park. For those of you not familiar with rural Mexico, Semernat (the Mexican Department of Interior) supports mushroom cultivation in rural communities as means of supplementing their nutrition (primarily protein) and income (grants are often given to build commercial mushroom greenhouses).

I’ve also been trying to identify some good ‘shrooming trails in the park on which to take the group. So far I haven’t had much luck. I spent all day today hiking around the back trails of the park with a few coworkers and none of the mushrooms we encountered were edible. We have the rest of the week, fortunately, to find a few trails. I can’t say I mind the work. Not only has been researching mushrooms been highly educational for a water guys like me, I get yet another excuse to spend my days wandering through the woods and seeing some beautiful mountain landscapes.

An Afternoon in Tula...

2008-08-04T14:09:00.001-05:00

To celebrate our six month anniversary, Leti and I spent Sunday afternoon at the archeological site of Tula. Tula was a regional capital for the Toltecs around 980 C.E. and, in its time, was the largest city in Mexico. The site is well known for its pyramids and huge sculptures which are believed to pay tribute to the Toltec kings. Originally, all the sculptures were hidden from view and supported a roof structure on the top of the pyramid. Likewise all the columns originally supported a roof. Later in history, the site would be taken over by the Aztecs who changed a lot of the carvings and looted the place. It was also briefly used by the Spanish.

Compared to Chichen-Itza, Tula is much smaller but some of the architectural elements are more impressive. As is evident with most Mexican ruins, it appears that the Tula were also aficionados of an ancient ballgame that may or may not have involved human heads (depending on the archeological site, I have read both). All said, it was a pretty interesting site especially considering that lays a short 20 minute walk from the central district of the city of Tula (pop. about 28,000). The view of major chain department stores and bustling streets surrounding thousand-year-old pyramids and statues is weird juxtaposition to say the least. I can only imagine what the ruins in Mexico City are like.

In a nice gesture, the park guard let into the site for free. Apparently they only charge foreigners and asked Leti if I were one. Of course she did not lie so the guard asked if I had a national student IDA to which I replied that I have one for a university in the states. I’m pretty sure it was because I was with Leti, but after a short pause he told me to just go ahead and enter for free. As for the transportation to and from Tula, that’s another story (of course). I almost hate to mention this story and if you have been following any of my blogs you will know why.

After a lovely dinner at Casa Blanca in downtown Tula, we hurried back to the bus station to try to catch the next bus back to Pachuca. The most unfriendly lady in Mexico was working at the counter and told us that the bus left in an hour and fifteen minutes. Leti asked if there wasn’t anything sooner since she rode her bicycle an hour to my house so we were racing the sun to get back (it’s a 1.5 hour trip by first-class bus). The lady told us that the 6:30 bus was an economy bus and that it would take 2.5 hours to reach Pachuca so Leti bought the later first-class tickets. As we were wondering what to do for the next hour we got to talking. In Pachuca were told that the economy bus was only a half hour slower than the first-class. Considering the economy tickets were $38 instead of $57 and that it was leaving an hour earlier, we thought we might actually get back to Pachuca around 8:30 instead of 9 if we took the economy line.

Well, the not-so-happy-with-her-job counter lady refused to exchange the tickets at first. After some talking with Leti she said that she would but that the economy tickets were only $7 less (remember… $38 in Pachuca, but apparently $50 in Tula) and that she was going to charge us a convenience fee of $7 per ticket to exchange them (hmmm). I guess it was a good thing that Leti was handling this because I most certainly would have said something. Then again, maybe I should have been handling this… we did get on our economy bus (for which we paid first-class prices) immediately but were not five minutes into the journey before we started complaining to each other about how uncomfortable we were.

Our seats, obviously, did not recline, were jammed into the bus pretty close together and were barely cushioned. Instead of a movie we listed to the radio (thank the gods for iPod once again). We could not sleep because of the bad and noisy shocks coupled with the rustic Mexican “highway.” We felt like we were dying of thirst for nearly 2.5 hours (yep, wasn’t only .5 hour longer so we arrived at the same time as the first-class bus which left an hour later) because there were no bathrooms and we were afraid to drink any water (not that we could with the way the bus was bouncing and the wide mouth on my water bottle) after having already downed a couple of beers during dinner. Still, we managed to entertain ourselves for the duration of the trip by telling jokes (and then trying to explain them across the language-cultural barrier), playing with the camera, complaining about our sore asses and making fun ourselves for being spoiled “first-class” travelers.

Pics from Afternoon in Tula

2008-08-04T14:01:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

Back in the Water...

2008-08-04T11:48:00.000-05:00

My career came full circle this past week. I arrived at the office to discover several coolers filled with empty sample containers. My counterparts informed me that they were going into the field to collect water quality samples from two of the campgrounds, two reservoirs and a stream in the park but also said that had no experience in how to do so. I was quickly recruited to help out after mentioning that I worked as an environmental scientist for five years doing groundwater contamination assessments.

I had previously thought that my days of doing this work were over. After all, I am an environmental educator now; but it really was not a bad experience, almost fun. That’s when I remembered that it was not the technical work I disliked; it was the corporate politics that permeated it which I thankfully do not have to deal with down here. It was interesting to see how the process is carried out down here, from sampling to the lab. The containers were quite different and no preservatives were used which made the holding times all that much more critical. Being that this type of work is normally the responsibility of CONAGUA, the park was not exactly equipped for it and jerry-rigged sampling tools were created onsite. Clean sampling techniques were definitely not a preoccupation

We collected the samples at the campgrounds to compare against drinking water standards, even though no one in Mexico would dare drink tap water, which almost kind of makes you scratch your head… why are there even drinking water standards, are they even enforced considering the water is never safe to drink? The rest of the samples were collected to see if raising trout in the park would be feasible. Regardless of the intentions for the data, the lab had taken advantage of the park’s naivety in the subject and had ordered a full kit. I think I was able to help save them some money once we arrived at the lab by advising that several of the parameters were unnecessary and only a few of the metals really needed to be run considering the mining history of the area. Though I probably made it up for the discount by insisting that two other parameters that were not offered (nor capable of being offered) by the lab be included.

After having lived in Florida and Australia for the past ten years, water has become my specialty. I worked in water quality for five years, I studied coastal systems management in Australia and I focused on aquatic biology in my classroom. What really excited me was that I was afraid that living in the mountains and working in the park, I would not be able to continue working in a field that really interested me. While I have enjoyed learning about mountain and forest ecology, I’m relieved to have this opportunity to return to what is familiar to me. Moreover, in keeping with my new career track, I am discussing the possibility of incorporating the fisheries program into a school-based environmental education/service-learning opportunity for the area’s students. I feel that hatching eggs and raising fry in the classroom and having students conduct ongoing water quality testing could be an excellent, hands-on opportunity to teach students physiology, anatomy, ecology and environmental scientists as well as skills like researching, report writing and community service. My fingers are crossed.

Weekend in Acapulco with Friends

2008-07-29T21:13:00.002-05:00

Ok this is a really long one but I think the whole story was worth telling...

After a delay in getting the car and then waiting for the final member of our party to meet up with us, we were finally able to leave the mountains of Pachuca for a sunnier side of Mexico last Friday. After work Leti, her sister, her sister’s boyfriend and I loaded up a car we borrowed from another friend and began what was supposed to be a 4-5 hour drive to Acapulco. We had not counted on getting lost in Mexico, in a roundabout nonetheless, for two hours. I lost count of how many times we circled the darn thing but it was appropriately deemed “la glorieta de un mil vueltos” (the roundabout of 1000 turns) by Diego. Finally, after stopping to ask for directions with each revolution (each time receiving different directions) we escaped and cheered as we headed down the busy city street.

After a few blocks I noticed several familiar stores… at first a 7-11, but there could be many of those. Then we started passing less common stores such as VIPS, Sanborns and then a tell-tale billboard. It dawned on me that we were heading down the same street we came in on so I advised the rest of the group but we continued until about the third or fourth familiar landmark and then we were all in agreement. It took us several more direction-asking stops to navigate a circuit back to the roundabout (it was a divided street with many cops, so no u-turning) where we looped around again for another half hour or so until we were finally shown the correct exit and this time we were really on our way to Acapulco.

Our trip was not exactly smooth sailing from that point on. The freeway was riddled with a surprisingly high quantity of traffic for such a late hour that was coupled with frequent construction and late closures. Long story short, it was about 4 AM when we finally arrived in Acapulco. Of course, we had trouble finding both of our hotels on a one-main-strip town (go figure, we did after all get lost in a roundabout) and had to ask for directions several times though in our defense the entrance was tucked away behind a row of palms and all the hotel towers look the same from the street.

We were all too tired to do anything Friday night so we retired to our respective housings. Leti’s sister and her boyfriend stayed in a suite on the beach and Leti and I rented a condo a few blocks away, also on the beach. The condo was beautiful and spacious for just the two of us. We almost felt guilty about having so much room and not using it all but the penthouse view of the beach made us quickly forget these concerns. In fact, we hardly even left the condo. We spent all day Saturday lounging around the beautiful twin pools only heading down to the beach for a short walk (the current was obviously violent and no one dared enter the water). We did leave for breakfast Saturday to eat almost entirely veg-Mex restaurant called 100% Natural.

Saturday night we were getting ready to go hit the nightlife when we noticed a group of people gathering on the beach. A few dozen meters in front of them was a medium-sized sea turtle digging a nest for her eggs. Leti and I hurriedly finished getting ready and dashed for the beach with camera in hand. When I arrived, a young woman was laying in the sand taking photos with her flash so I asked that she turn her flash off so as to not scare the turtle. When I was questioned I mentioned that I was a biologist and was promptly informed that so too was the young lady. Just as I was saying that she should know better, the turtle quit its nest digging and moved further up the beach closer to our condo. In probable embarrassment, the young woman and her group left the scene but Leti and I returned to the patio of our condo and continued to take (non-flash) photos from our elevated vantage point.

Afterward, we headed to Carlos’n Charlies for a margarita and then later on to a club located on a huge deck on the beach (no building though). We danced and drank for a few hours before heading back to the condo for a moonlit walk on the beach and then retiring for the evening (about 7AM). We had planned on getting up early Sunday to either go parasailing or ride the skyrocket (pendulum swing thingy) but the sister wanted to leave so we enjoyed one final, long breakfast on the balcony overlooking the beach and the bay instead.

We were making considerably better time on the trip back until we stopped to use the restrooms after one of the toll booths. Upon entering the car again, it would not start. A roadside mechanic hovering around the rest stop like a vulture was immediately upon us asking if we needed help. We knew there was a loose screw on one of the spark plug mounts so we asked for a screwdriver to which he responded $50 pesos. After asking around with the other motorists we had no choice but to pay the man for his tool as he sat and watched us work. Unfortunately, we could not get it to tighten well enough for the engine to crank so he had to “help” and, after another hour, the eventual replacement of the screw all for which he wanted to charge us $300 pesos. In the end, we were able to talk him down to $250 but he knew he had us in a tough spot.

So we eventually continued on our way home, stopping off in Mexico City for dinner at Leti’s aunt and uncle’s house. That of course meant another two hours of driving around Mexico City asking for directions before actually getting to the house at 8PM. Luckily, her uncle took pity on us and after dinner escorted us through the city and the infamous roundabout to get us on our way home. I love Mexico City but I swear it is the black hole of urban areas; it just sucks you in and doesn’t let you escape. When all was said and done, it was about 1AM when I was walking into my house… Monday was definitely a tough day at work, but so worth it.

Check out the link to my photo album below for the pics.

Acapulco Weekend

2008-07-29T21:12:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

A Long Weekend

2008-07-14T18:33:00.002-05:00

Not much terribly exciting happened this week. Friday night I went out with the guys from the office to celebrate the finishing of a thesis and exam for one of the biologists. Not long after I arrived at the bar he was passing out in his own vomit at our table (and I'm pretty sure he puked on my coat as well). By the end of the night (4AM), another coworker was joining him in the puke-fest - though he denies it (but I have pics).

Saturday, Leti and I went to Real de Monte - a colonial silver mining town still enjoying some wealth from an active mine - for the annual Fiesta de la Plata (Silver Festival). I think I say all the silver earrings, necklaces, rings and crucifixes I need to see for one lifetime. I did end up buying a bracelet, knit gloves and a scarf (it got really cold up on that mountain at night). There was live music from Paraguay, which was surprising beautiful and melodic, a lot like Irish music. Afterward, Leti, her sister, a friend and I returned to Pachuca and started drinking tequila, playng cards and talking at the friend's house until 6AM. So yesterday was pretty much a wash and I'm still trying to get my body back on to a normal sleeping schedule after this weekend.

Pics are linked below if your interested.

Annual Fiesta de la Plata in Real de Monte

2008-07-14T18:30:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

Running from the Cold...

2008-07-09T15:13:00.003-05:00

In my attempt to escape the cold and the rain of Pachuca for the 4th of July, I took a 13 hour bus ride out to San Blas, Nayarit to visit a fellow volunteer. Unfortunately, Estrella Blanca is the only bus that goes that way so I was subjected to 13 hours of crammed seating, bad black & white Mexican westerns and questionable bathrooms. I did, however, arrive after traveling all night in time to enjoy a day at the beach before the rains came in full force for the rest of the trip.

Compared to the other beach towns I know in Mexico (Cancun and Veracruz), I have to say San Blas is by far the best. It has all the offerings of a tourist trap such as beautiful and clean beaches, nearby activities, restaurants and bars, and shopping... but without all the tourists. It's basically a quiet little fishing village settled by friendly mexicans and a handful of low-key Americans. You may not find everything you want for life on the beach, but you will definitely find everything that you need.

A local family that lives next door to my friend helped to make me feel very welcomed in San Blas. They provided much conversation, played tour guide and even fed on us a couple of times. The grandmother was especially colorful, a witty old lady with one of those crazy melodic Spanish voices that almost makes you wonder if she is joking with you or casting a hex on you. Unfortunately, the only sight (other than the beach) I got to see was Tovara, which is a swimming hole deep in the mangrove estuary - only accessible by a half hour boat ride through dense mangrove forest and open tall grass fields past large turtles and waterfowl and, supposedly (for I did not see any) North American crocodiles.

It rained on us for the remainder of the trip, cancelling our plans to hike around some coffee plantations outside of town and to take a boat across the inlet to visit an indegenous village relatively left untouched by the surrounding modern civilization. I was also not able to visit Isla Isabel, the national protected area in San Blas due to bad timing; but I was extended a warm and (hopefully) sincere invitation to return in November/December when the climate is better suited for these activities.

My apparent luck of luck with Mexican buses continued this time around as well. First there was the attempt to leave for one of the nearby towns for a day hike. We were told the bus leaves in half an hour. After waiting 45 minutes and still no bus, I asked the ticket counter lady what gives and was told "Oh, there is no bus today." I laughed and asked why she did not tell us that before but she only replied with "I didn't know before." I guess she felt no need to save us from waiting a lone in the old, run-down, open-aired (hence un-airconditioned) bus station all day. Then, when it came time to go back to Pachuca, the outgoing bus to Tepic was an hour late.

Once in Tepic, the saleswoman did not want to sell me a ticket for a first class bus to Mexico City because they only passed through Tepic and did not originate there. I told her that did not bother me, what bothered me was that Estrella Blanca's economy buses are old, dirty, not well maintained, have no bathrooms and make frequent stops. She assured me that the bus was large and nice and gave me a ticket for the economy route despite my insistance otherwise while telling me to come back and exchange it if I am not happy. Well by the time you see the inside of the bus it is ready to leave and an exchange is next to impossible. The bus was, thankfully, clean but most of the seats were broken, water leaked in from from the ceiling while it rained and the bathroom was horrendous. On top of it all, I still arrived in Mexico City almost two hours late due to the bus leaving late, stopping frequently in the middle of nowhere and even (as predicted) breaking down on the side of the road.

Still, I had a great time catching up with a friend, relaxing at the beach and meeting new people. I would definitely recommend San Blas to anyone looking for a real Mexican beach experience, except I don't want you all spoiling what makes this place so great. So you'll just have to settle for my photo album linked below.

4th of July in San Blas, Nayarit

2008-07-09T15:12:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

Afternoon in Huasca

2008-07-01T13:14:00.000-05:00

As the weather gets colder and rainer here in Pachuca, Leti and I have made a pact to spend more time out of the city. We started with an afternoon in Huasca, Hidalgo. It lies about 45 minutes by combi from Pachuca. It's a neat little pueblo filled with artesan shops and (of course) a really old church.

We didn't spend much time in the downtown area because Leti had wanted to spend the afternoon in the Bosque de Truchas. I have to say that I probably would not recommend nor return to this "ecological" park. It was pretty much an oversized, landscaped park that resembled a forest. The truchas did not swim happily in lakes, but were farmed in a set of lock and dam type tanks, perfectly captive for the onslaught of visitors paying for the easy catch. They also had 4-wheelers for rent, which is contradictory to the idea of an "ecological" park.

We did opt for one of the two least offensive recreational activities; horse rentals (the other being boat rentals). For whatever reason, they only rented us one horse and the owner led us for most of the ride despite the both of us being experienced riders. I think we spent most of our time having lunch (and beers) and talking, which I will say the park provided a nice backdrop for this. In the end, I guess it was just all about spending some QT together.

We do have plans to go back to Huasca in a couple of weeks (I'll be out of town this weekend, visiting a friend/fellow volunteer in San Blas). There are two ex-haciendas, the downtown artesan shops and Balsatic prisms up there, which we both want to check out. So it looks like it will be a two-stage exploration of this area (at least). For now, I've posted some of our pics in the album linked below. I'll update the album after stage two.

Sunday in Huasca

2008-07-01T13:12:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

Dave's Grad Party

2008-06-15T21:30:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

Spending Time with the [Quasi] Family

2008-06-15T21:24:00.000-05:00

Not a lot of exciting news from Mexico, more of the usual this past week. A week ago Friday we had 40 campesinos (country folk) come to the park for a day-long conference on eco-tourism. I had to give a (thankfully) short presentation of about 10-15 minutes on the topic. I always feel emberassed after being introduced to groups of people as having a Master's in Science since my Spanish level is probably on par with that of a 1st grader (in my oppinion at least). I'm sure everyone is scratching their head saying "this guy is an expert!?" Anyways, we took them to a valley on the far side of the park for a BBQ after the presentations where three of the campesinos gifted me a bottle of tequila (not a bad day at the office). The pics are included in the "Day with Campesinos" album linked below.

The past couple of weekends have been packed with parties. The past weekend was spent with Leti and her family hitting three different birthday parties. This weekend we had a graduation party for a friend of Leti's who just completed with bachelor's program. The ceremony was quite different than those in the states... it started with a Catholic mass (snore... especially in Spanish) then a two hour break before a catered 4-course meal at 10PM (they're late people here). Pics are posted in the "Dave's Grad Party" album linked below.

There was, of course, plenty of tequila and Leti's sisters and parents were also in attendance. Her dad is always instigating me to drink with him against the better judgement of his wife and Leti, pretty much ever since we first met. Hope that means he likes me and not that he can only tolerate me when I'm drunk.

Dinner was serenaded by a mariachi band, which was cool; but a regular band played afterwards which meant more Mexican country music which I hate more than American country music... and dancing to it is even worse (and more confusing).
They did play the timeless American country classic Achy Breaky Heart, in Spanish nonetheless, which managed to pack the dance floor with Mexicans trying to 2-step. In case you're wondering, the song is just as cheesy in Spanish as it is in English.

Still, I have to say it was a fun couple of weekends getting to put in some quality time with the family. Hopefully next weekend I'll make it out of Pachuca for a day and have some more interesting pics and stories to share.

Day with Campesinos

2008-06-15T21:21:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

Day Hike with Leti in the Park

2008-06-07T22:42:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

Feria de la Familia 2008

2008-05-31T23:48:00.000-05:00

Well the big event in my life this week was the first annual Feria de la Familia here in Pachuca. It was a three day event in the style of a county fair, but without the rides. There were, however, plenty of cool activities like boxing, archery, inflatable games and what not. All the major players in the city had stands at the fair... various city departments and services, major companies, the science museum, restaurants, and all the the state and federal departments which included several parks and reserves around the state of Hidalgo.

As much as I like working in a beautiful park and playing in the woods, it felt good to finally be doing something in the community; especially after insisting for months that we need to increase our presence outside of the park. Of course, it also felt good to be teaching again, although this time I had to do a lot of improvising since my students ranged from groups of Kindergardeners through high school students. I focused my talks on the conservation efforts of the park, the problems we face and actions the students can take to help conserve biodiversity; but we also had live and stuffed animals with which I also helped the park biologists show and explain to the students.

Overall, I think I did pretty well teaching in Spanish. For the most part, the students all paid attention and interacted. The only real exception being a group of snot-nozed kindergardeners that only wanted to touch my head, stare at my blue eyes and ask me about my nationality. The high school kids at least waited until I was done to ask those questions. In the end, however, it was a lot of fun but a lot of work. After three days of talking in front of groups for 9.5 hours I was definitely ready for the weekend (and a beer).

We quickly gained the reputation of being the creepy crawly stand, which some lesser informed adults made a point to complain about as it "was not safe or wise to put the students in contact" with these animals. Our live animals included tarantulas, 4 Mexican spiny lizards, 1 lizer (kind of a skink type thing) and 1 rat snake. We stood firm on our belief that it was important for the students to learn that just because an animal isn't cute and fuzzy, that doesn't mean it is not important. They were allowed to handle the snake and the spiders in order to show them that not all animals with a bad reputation deserve it.

The opening ceremonies for the fair were presided over by the first lady of Mexico. After her speach, Mrs. Calderon took a guided tour of the fair, followed closely by swarms of reporters and camera men. It was hard to see her for any significant length of time, much less talk to her. I can say that the First Lady touched my snake. Unfortunately, there's no scandal there; I mean it literally. As she passed by our exhibition I was holding the rat snake, she stopped, turned around and walked back to pet my snake and ask me about it.

In general, it was a great networking opportunity. I also got to talk with the Secretary of Tourism for the state as well as a few directors for another national park, the Mexican versions of state's Department of Agriculture and the Gaming Commission. Plans were discussed about a possible coalition between our organizations for future projects.

So that's the big news from Mexico for this week. Check out my newly posted photo album to see some pics from the fair.

Photos from the Feria

2008-05-31T23:47:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album

A Busy Week

2008-05-25T20:04:00.000-05:00

Monday afternoon Leti showed up at my door with the “surprise” that she had been talking about all weekend. As it turns out, she found a stray kitten in Mineral del Chico near her office and decided that it would make a good gift to me. It was a sweet gesture, she knows that I love animals and especially cats; but I really do not know what she thinks I will be able to do with it in two years. I guess maybe I should take this as a sign that she is planning on me sticking around indefinitely (which I have made clear has always been an option).

I tried insisting that I could not have a pet; that the landlords will not allow it. I also pleaded my case with examples of all the out-of-town Peace Corps events that I have throughout the year not to mention my planned tours of other parts of Mexico. I even told her that my roommate hates cats. At the end of the evening she left my house to catch her bus back to Benito Juarez… without the kitten.

So, about $150 pesos in supplies and another $100 in vet bills (with another $180 coming up in two weeks for vaccinations), I now have a 1 ½ month old black and white kitten named Diabla Chica (see link to photo album in entry below). Her name means little devil in Spanish, which fits her perfectly in two ways. One, she is a little devil; always getting into power cords, trash cans, and whatever else she can sink her teeth and claws into (including myself, usually while I am sleeping). Two, she has a white head with a black spot that covers the top of her head and her eyes like a mask (reminds me of those Halloween devil masks). Luckily, a while back I befriended a veterinarian who has been providing his services to me at a discount.

In other events, things are still the same at work. I have been trudging along diligently on the interpretative trails. I went out for a hike Wednesday and discovered another trail that I had not known about (every time I think I have seen them all, I learn just how wrong I am). Unfortunately, my GPS was not working to great that day and I was not able to map the first half of the trail. Looks like I will just have to hike it again, these are the “problems” I face at the office. I have mapped and designed the signs for the three primary trails, however. As for the rest, I have been told they are lower priority; which probably means they need more money to put signs up on those so I will probably just map them for now and put short descriptions of them on the trail map I am creating.

I have also been pretty busy coordinating next week’s first annual Feria de la Familia. It is a three day event at a local park with all the local environmental agencies. Our audience will probably be mostly school kids. They are predicting 4,000 visitors per day. This means I finally got the park to create the portable exhibition that I wanted for community events. They did a fairly good job with it too. Although it is only vinyl over lightweight plastic, the graphics turned out pretty good. It is a tri-panel, foldable display with about a dozen photos (all mine of course) describing various environmental services provided by the national park, the problems facing the park and what we and the students can do to help mitigate these issues. My coworkers have created a couple of children’s games with environmental themes and a couple of live and stuffed animal exhibits. I am pretty excited for this. It is a first for the park and a good environmental education opportunity for both us and the city.

That's all for this week.

The New Addition to the Household

2008-05-25T20:03:00.001-05:00

Photobucket Album