Bbbbbirthday Extravaganza!

So this year was possibly the best bday of my very few years of life. (Sorry wonderful friends and Mom, who have thrown me fabulous parties in the past. This year beat those parties out of the park.) I thought I should quickly capture the birthday events through blogging, and I will add pictures later when I can steal them from other people’s facebook and picasa accounts.

Calendario de eventos

Wednesday, October 5^th, 2011: My English students in Mineral del Chico sang to me “las mañanitas” and we cut some delicious pastel. They each said a birthday wish to me, like “I hope you have many more birthdays and keep teaching us English.”

Thursday, October 6^th, 2011: My adult English class threw a little party for me. They made American cold salads: potatoe salad, pasta salad, and tuna salad and what they call “pastel imposibile,” which is piña colada cake on the bottom and flan on top. A-mazing. They brought me beautiful flowers and little gifts, and we just hung out because I didn’t really feel like teaching English.

Friday, October 7^th, 2011 – my actual birthday: I woke up to clean house and paint my toe nails, said hello to my host family for my bday hugs, and headed to the bus station with camping gear on back. After a somewhat long day of waiting for public transportation, tardy volunteers, and a ride from a friend we finally made it Rancho Santa Elena. We set up camp and began to mentally prepare ourselves for the next day’s events. And I turned 25!

Saturday, October 8^th, 2011: http://q50ultras.com/contenidos.php?lng=_ing&idc=93 The q50 Ultra Marathon in our beautiful state of Hidalgo at Rancho Santa Elena. I ran the first half of the 80k, and my friend Sarah ran the 2^nd half. The first half included about 4000 meters of uphill trails and Sarah ran the last 40k in the pouring rain. Needless to say, it was a challenging and awesome race. The best part is that we won! I didn’t find out until a few days later, because we just left after the race, but we won for the 1^st place women’s team. That night we headed back to Lindsay and my communities to get ready for Sunday’s fiesta.

Sunday, October 9^th, 2011: Party Day! My host family decorated their house of course with globos galore, put the tunes on, and heated up the pozole. We ate and ate and ate all day and then danced and sang all night. My host brother, Alvaro, insisted it was my quince años, so I had to be crowned and dance with each gentleman at the party, including my host dad, Angel. It was amazing food and cake, a few beers and wine, wonderful company, and altogether a great birthday celebration.

A total of 40 kilometers, 3 birthday cakes, 4 bottles of wine, 1 bottle of tequila, 2 birthday dinners, and 7 PC friends to share it with! I feel super loved and grateful and happy to be alive. Here’s to year #2 in Mexico! Thank you to everyone who came out and/or sent bday wishes. 

A Time to Plant and a Time to Uproot

There is “a time to plant and a time to uproot.” (Ecclesiastes 3:2)

So in between those times, there is a time to wait for the harvest and a time to pick the crop. We are in waiting. Waiting for school to start again, waiting for money to be raised, and also waiting for the rain to stop. Summer in Mexico is like winter in Oregon. It rains a lot. It’s beautiful, but not much work gets done. Rain is another excuse not to show up to appointments, classes, or work. Campaigning for local candidates also made it impossible to get any work done if we needed to speak to anyone in authority. It’s a season of waiting with a cup of hot cocoa listening to the rain on my tin roof. I am not complaining.

In this waiting season, I have learned to make tamales, got a new kitty, read several good books, had Rachel and Katie come to visit, improved at rock climbing, and have lost a few pounds in marathon training. Is this even work? I’m not sure, but according to Peace Corps goals, I am super succeeding goals 2 and 3, which deal with integration, and good representation of the US and Mexico. My visitors have learned new things about Mexico and greatly improved their perspectives while leaving good examples of hard working Americans. I’m totally integrated in my community, even though all they think I do is have visitors and travel. Some people think I’ve already been here for years because they are so used the “guera.”

Lindsay and I did some traveling to avoid the cold rainy weather and to aprovechar our waiting time. We went to Oaxaca city for 3 days and were complete tourists. Oaxaca is so far my favorite place in Mexico. We happened to be there for the Mezcal Feria and the annual Guelaguetza Festival (a style of dance) so the city was crowded and filled with fun festivities. One day we did the tourist thing and went on a guided tour of 5 local attractions: Tule (the world's widest tree), Teotitlan (where they make beautiful hand woven rugs), Mitla (ruins of an ancient civilization around 800 A.D.), el Hierve Agua (a beautiful place with mineral springs and petrified waterfall formations), and a Mezcal factory. We also went to Monte Alban to see the amazing ancient city. The food was absolutely amazing. Black mole is now my favorite. We ate and drank like kings for 3 days straight and never wanted to come back to rainy and gray Pachuca. 

But we're back and things are good. Mineral del Chico will be receiving the title of Pueblo Mágico this week and that's super exciting! Now, we have even more to write about in our awesome guide book...

I don’t really have much else to report, so here are some pics to recap some of my time here: 

Barra de Navidad 

Barra de Navidad

My oh so precious students...

this is my life: always on the combi

climbing

dancing

Katie and Me in Querétaro

Oh yeah, I got a cat. His name is Salchicha

Snow in Mexico... in July...

Tamales! 

Chocolate in Oaxaca

Iglesia Santo Domingo

La Guelaguetza

El Tule

Teotitlan. Me getting my hand dyed by bugs. 

Teotitlan

El Hierve Agua

El Hierve Agua

Last hot chocolate in Oaxaca

A Picture Blog...

Comida Corrida in Carboneras - DONATE!!!

This is a current Peace Corps project that I am working on with my host family. Susana, my host mom is an amazing cook, and people around our community ask about her food all the time. 


Naturally, with my Hotel/ Restaurant background this was an obvious opportunity for small business development. It's been her dream for as long as she can remember to open up her own restaurant, 


so now is her chance... with your help. 


Here is where you can find more information, and be a part of a dream come true! https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=510-015

update on community meeting

Last night, we had another community meeting to officially form the committee for the recycling project and it went really well. The committee signed up and we're now advanzando. I'll let you know how the project turns out.

Meetings, Meetings & Rock Climbing

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

I guess I’m just in the mood to write tonight. I’m definitely not writing for any of your reading pleasure, since I’m pretty sure no one is reading this silly blog because no one sent me any brown sugar. But whatever

Anyway, it’s 7:40pm and I am pooped. I only wish it was later so I wouldn’t seem like a total Grandma going to bed so early, but it’s not later, and I am tired, so here I am settling in for the evening. Did my daily yoga routine, got my movie picked out (Office Space), and did some reading (Little Women), brushed my teeth and put my pjs on, and I am sitting in my bed, typing this and soon to be falling asleep to the movie of the night.

But let me tell you, why on this lovely Wednesday evening I am so tired. Where should I begin? I guess let’s begin on last Friday, when Lindsay, Mindy and I traveled to Tlaxcala for a regional meeting of Peace Corps Volunteers. We spent the weekend there discussing Peace Corpsy things and on Sunday we got to go shopping for blankets and rugs – beautiful!! Got back late Sunday night, and to the office Monday morning. (We usually just go to the office on Mondays and maybe one other time during the week, since our work is mostly focused in our communities). After that, we went to Pachuca to fit in some internet time, and I had an impromptu Spanish tutoring hour. Peace Corps is giving us a little money to take more Spanish lessons, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. I’m starting to think it is for sure going to hurt. I love this country and I love Spanish but after like 10 years of classes and study abroad and more classes, I am sick of learning it. Tuesday, I woke up early and went back to Pachuca to meet the local YWAM staff (if you don’t know what YWAM is, look it up.) which was great, and I don’t know how much I’ll be able to help there with PC faith sharing regulations and such, but I am beyond excited that there is a base here! Yay! People that believe what I believe! Sweet Jesus! And then I rushed back to Carboneras to teach English, and then rushed home to prepare for a community meeting that I led about our recycling center project. Yeah… I thought it would be a nice cute meeting about how we were going to clean up the community and have some kids collect bottles and paint a nice little building to collect the recyclable trash… I was wrong. Only about 12 people showed up, and even among those 12, there was unbelievable division. They want to make this a business. As a PC Small Business Volunteer, believe me – I understand this completely. But are you serious?! You want to make a business from something that will pay like 1 peso (like 8 US cents) for a whole kilo of plastic bottles?? Unfortunately I couldn’t defend myself or the project well with my limited Spanish and apparently I even told a guy that I agree with him, when I definitely do not. It seemed to end okay though. We agreed to let everyone think about it for a few days and to have another meeting on Friday, where we hopefully will get people committed enough to take responsibility of the project and not just voice their opinions. I like this recycling project idea and I am excited about it, but the Park gave us this project; it wasn’t our original plan. During the meeting I felt like the guy from “Clerks” – “I’m not even supposed to be here today.” So that was Tuesday. Today, I was able to blow off some steam rock climbing. It was awesome. There are moments when I’m hugging the rock 100 feet in the air wondering why the hell I put myself through this, and then I climb up, repel down, and I want to do it all over again. I’m obsessed. And now, I’m tired.

I don’t think I’ve really filled you in on my work projects. So here’s a quick update:

1. I am teaching English to 12-15 year olds on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Secondary school in Carboneras (like middle school). It’s wonderfully challenging and keeps me thinking and planning all the time. And I was asked yesterday to teach in another nearby town as well, so might do that too.

2. Recycling center: The goal of this is to gather enough interested people in the community to raise support from the park office to build and manage a small recycling center. I’ll be contacting different companies to come and collect all the trash, and some companies do pay for the recycled goods so the community will have a tiny financial benefit as well as a clean community.

3. Guide book: this is still in the brainstorming phase, but Lindsay and I plan on putting together a comprehensive guide book of the entire municipality and the park including campgrounds, hotels, restaurants, and tourist activities.

4. Susana’s restaurant: Susana is my host mom and I really want to help her build and run her own little restaurant. It’s always been her dream and right up my alley so I really hope I can figure this one out.

If you are reading this and you have any advise about any of my projects, please email me. I’ll take all the wisdom I can get.

That’s all for now. Life is good in Mexico and getting busier everyday, which is great. Come visit and see this beautiful country. And let’s go climbing!!

First person to send me brown sugar wins!!!

So we FINALLY got a P.O. box. Mail doesn't exactly come very easily to Carboneras, because you might have to write on the package "her host mother is Susana, it's the blue house behind the mercado" or something like that. So instead, Lindsay and I are sharing a box in Pachuca and you can send us mail until your heart's content. Yay mail!

Here's the address:

Rebecca Borough
Admon Num. 1 - PJ #144
Av Juarez Num. 401
Col. Centro, Pachuca, Hidalgo 42000
Mexico

So yes, the first person to send me a bag of BROWN SUGAR will win a Mexican prize of my choosing.

Mailing rules are the same. Posted on the left hand side of this blog.

LOVE YOU!

December. In. Mexico.

Horse back riding with the Presidente, Zack Visiting, fireworks for Guadalupe, fireworks for Jesus, fireworks just because and fireworks to bring in the New Year, tamales and ponche, piñatas, posadas, birthday parties, other volunteers visiting (Jill and Arpan, and Wanda), going to visit other volunteers and friends (Paola in Mexico City and Andrew and Brittney in Tlaxcala), homesickness and complete happiness, hiking, rock climbing, and kayaking, a new haircut, food, family, and friends. To sum up December.

 December was a crazy month to start out our Peace Corps experience, and I mean crazy in a good way. Although most of the parties have come to an end, we still have 3 Kings day later this week and the Calendaria in February to go. So today I’ll be shopping for little gifts for the kids (since in Mexico, kids get gifts from the 3 kings AND from Santa) and hoping that I don’t pull the little Jesus doll out of the cake on Thursday, because if I do I have to make tamales for the event in Feb.

New Year’s was low-key but one of the best New Years I’ve had. Lindsay and I went to a party thrown by my host dad’s family in our local mercado. It was about 6 or 7 long tables set up to make 1 really big long table, and the food never stopped coming. In fact we went back yesterday to eat some more! There was music, piñatas, and a gift exchange. And what impressed me the most was my grandma (Mami Luz, mother of 12) was up and about the whole night, warming tortillas, serving ponche, and all with a smile. That lady has still got it. It really was the perfect way to bring in 2011 and I was so glad to have the people I love with me, Lindsay and my Mexican family.

    

So it’s now 2011, and I have never been more excited to start working. Not that it’s been a total breeze since August, but if I can be honest I can’t exactly call it “work” either. I’ve learned a ton, met a lot of amazing people, and now I’m ready to start serving them. I know as I’ve heard from many volunteers and staff members to be prepared that it will be a slow start. But it’s a start. And we have so many potential projects from helping fund greenhouses, to teaching English, to helping support local tiendas and restaurants, to ecotourism, and any other small business or tourism venture.

I guess what I’m saying is BRING IT ON!!!