fotografiassss (improved)

This past Sunday we had a barbecue at Roy's house (the boyfriend of my host sister, Rebeca). This is the photographic evidence:


My host cousin, Alan, with Boris the golden retriever.



My host father, Enrique, on the left, and Martha on the right. We're cookin' now, baby!!



Look! Can I be officially Mexican now? I am, after all, heating tortillas on an open grill with my bare hands; any señora would be proud...



And then there was meat.



from left to right: Martha (my younger host sister), myself, Rebeca, and Roy. It was lots of fun!

el guanábana

Well, the unparalleled mango still holds the place of highest honor in my heart/mouth. That said, about five minutes ago I was introduced to a new tropical fruit competitor. The guanábana, or soursop in English (doesn't THAT just sound tasty...), is a fruit about the size of a grapefruit with a lightly sweet flesh that has a soft, creamy texture. While the leathery green skin sports spiky protrusions, the delicate flesh inside is studded with black seeds the size and shape of almonds. To be eaten, the fruit is cut in half and eaten with a spoon, scraping the guts lovingly away from the skin, much as with an avocado.

The guanábana, along with the following tropical fruits, have made my stay here in Mexico especially sweeeeet and should definitely be eaten if you have the chance:

mango
guayaba (a.k.a. guava)
zapote negro
oranges (classic, never boring)
tamarind
maracuya
tuna (tropical in the cancer sense)
pineapple
kiwi

actualización breve

So brief update:

Friday: Went to the city of Santa Ana in the state of Tlaxcala (a very VERY small state neighboring Puebla) with my friends. We basically wandered around, browsed local artesanías, ate a TON of food (more on that in a moment), looked at some churches, and started conversations with strangers. Favorite foods of the trip: muéganos (a typical sweet which consists of a sort of fried cookie covered in a very sticky coating of a honey-like cinnamon/brown sugar concoction) and ponche (basically home-made fruit punch, served hot with pieces of cooked fruit and sugar cane). Least favorite food: tortitas de camarón (patties consisting of dried shrimp powder mixed with egg and fried), which taste like rotten fish and have the consistency of sand. I made the mistake of ordering this distasteful little dish, and upon being unable to eat more than a single bite, I hit the street for some good ol' molotes de tinga (tortillas filled with a chicken/tomato mixture and deep-fried). Street food to the rescue once again!

Saturday: Went with the group to Cholula, a small city that runs together with Puebla. We were forced to spend several hours looking at and learning in great nuance about churches, and then were finally released to eat and wander around. My friend Joelle and I were both in a bad mood because of the rather tedious beginning to the trip, but we cheered up with some fried food and some freedom! Later that evening I went with my friend Roberto to see Avatar for a second time. Despite the bad social messages it apparently sends, it has to be the best movie I've seen in quite a while.

Sunday: I was awakened at 5 AM by a knock on my door and the family's housekeeper (Clemen, a girl about my age who I get along with really well) asking me if I wanted to come listen to "la serenata de Rebeca." In my half-asleep state and with no idea what was going on, I agreed. Turns out Rebeca's boyfriend, Roy, had arranged a serenata for her, a time-honored tradition in which the suitor hires a mariachi band to come sing outside the bedroom window of his beloved very early in the morning. We basically all piled into the kitchen and listened to a full hour of romantic music, then all retreated back to our beds for some more sleep!

Monday: Very full day of classes, from 8 AM to 6 PM. I have since changed my schedule to avoid that sort of madness. In the evening I went with my biology friends to the Lucha libre in Puebla. A friend has a friend who works there, so we got in for free, then sat in the stands and yelled, cheered, winced, drank beer, and ate cemitas (served special at the luchas: the usual mixture of quesillo, avocado, fried meat, ham, chiles, and tomatoes is layered with fried potatoes) until we could manage no more.

Today: Awesome classes today, with awesome classmates. I think I have my final schedule figured out: Ethnomusicology, Ethnography of Mexico, Social Thought in Latin America, and Theory of Rituals. Awesome? Definitely. I'm excited because these are all classes in which I am sure I will actually learn, but I'm also scared that I will have a ton of work. Why? See the note about actually learning... :P

Subaruuuu

Big news: I saw my first Subaru in Mexico today. I had long ago come to the conclusion that this, my pet car manufacturer, was completely absent in this city dominated by Volkswagens of all shapes and sizes (but, you know, being VW they're mostly small, and being Mexico, they're mostly very old).

In other news, the cold abated slightly today, which was a nice surprise. After a morning full of classes I came home to a house full of about 15 family members and friends. Long live spontaneous Mexican get-togethers! After that I went with my friend from the university, Hugo, to wander around the Centro. We wound up deciding to check out the schedule of free public movie showings at the Casa de Cultura, and as it turned out we arrived just as a movie was starting. We entered (acting as though this fortuitous alignment of our schedules was completely pre-meditated) and spent the next two hours watching "Lost Highway," a psychological thriller which we both decided made absolutely no sense to either of us. We then went for a hot chocolate at my favorite cafe, and talked about movies (definitely our favorite discussion topic) until the place closed. Productive evening? Yesss.

So classes so far are good. I'm both worried and excited, because I seem to have managed a set of classes that are all intense but super interesting (note: this is in stark contrast with my classes last semester). We shall see. I have decided to definitely take Etnomusicologia, Etnografia de Mexico, and Pensamiento Social de America Latina. My fourth class is still up in the air, but there's a biology course in Agroecologia that sounds cool. The only set-back is that it still has not been scheduled yet. It appears in the course catalog as being 7 days a week from 11 to midnight. Luckily, one of my friends is officially enrolled in the course and will find out soon what the actual schedule is.

So life here continues at its usual relaxed pace, which suits me just fine!

malas noticias

Since arriving back in Mexico I have been going running every morning with my host sisters at Parque Juarez, a small park relatively close to my house. We leave the house at 8 AM, run until we're winded, then return to shower before our 11 o'clock classes. Today, however, I wanted to check out a class at 8 AM and had absolutely no urge to get up earlier and run before the sunrise. We decided, therefore, to skip running today.

My host sister Martha just came back from visiting a neighbor and gave me the following news: this morning in the park a woman apparently committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree. Morning joggers found her body, images of which have been pasted over the television all day. Had we arrived at our normal hour we would certainly have been among those to witness the gruesome scene.

I feel unusually overwhelmed by this news. I'm very full of two very distinct emotions: complete comfort that by the strange workings of the universe I avoided what would surely have been a traumatic experience, and also profound sadness for the woman and for those who discovered her body.

UNRELATED TO MEXICO

but still amazing:


There was an old lady called Wright
who could travel much faster than light.
She departed one day
in a relative way
and returned on the previous night.




Johnny was a chemist's son,
but Johnny is no more.
What Johnny thought was H2O
was H2SO4.


Thank you to Susy, upon whom I can always rely for nerdy poetry.

Back in Puebla

So not much new to share. Just hangin' with my family and friends here in Puebla.

It's very VERY cold. While the temperature may just be hovering between 35-45 degrees Fahrenheit (admittedly not very cold by New England standards) the houses here are made of stone, without insulation or heat, and most windows only nominally close. The result is that I and everyone else are all constantly cold and do everything with gloves, a scarf, and a hat. Well, except shower, but let me inform you that since the water here is only very rarely actually hot, if there were a graceful way to shower fully clothed I would be more than willing to take advantage of it.

My tentative class schedule includes ecology, ethnomusicology, Mexican anthropology, and an economics class called "agriculture and sustainability." I will also be auditing the folkloric dance class. Have only gone to the ethnomusicology class, and it was very abbreviated, but so far it seems really cool. We even have field trips!

el primer día (otra vez)

So I arrived back in the Mexico City airport yesterday afternoon, was processed through immigration and customs without any hang-ups, and arrived safely to the hotel, all by my own self! After my very independent, grown-up feeling morning I shaved my legs, ate a whole package of chocolate chip cookies, and fell asleep until dinner time. Classy? Totally.

It feels good to be back.

Today we woke up relatively early (especially by Mexican standards) and went to the Museo Nacional de Antropología. Since we had already been last semester, Joelle and I wandered around a part of the museum we hadn't seen before, then sat outside in the very pleasant 60° F. Once again we watched the voladores and bought overpriced bottled water, an unpleasant and omnipresent side-effect of being in touristy areas.


These amazing creations we found in the museum. They were carved from wood and then covered with intricate beadwork. So beautiful!






Later we went to Xochimilco, famous for its canal system which basically functions as a floating market. We rented a covered barge for the group (named "La Margarita"), one of many being steered around by men, young and old, with long wooden push poles. We then spent the next hour watching the other boaters, observing the many nurseries and florist shops along the banks, and getting hollered at by vendors selling flowers, foods, and any number of artesanias and knick-knacks from their tiny boats.


Religion is impossible to escape here, and even the most watery of roads has several of these seemingly obligatory shrines to the Virgen.



A party on a boat very similar to ours. The brightly colored fronts distinguish one from the other. Many of the boats have two names (note: everything here has way more names than is necessary), which our ferryman told us is the result of Capitalism; people want to rent boats with certain names, and having two names doubles the ferryman's chances of being hired. He also confessed that frequently the ferrymen keep several of these facades handy with different names so that if a client requests a boat named "Lupita" or "Elizabeth" or "Maria" or "Adelaida", the ferryman can oblige.