La Preciosita

This weekend's adventure was a little off the beaten trail, figuratively and literally. We were lucky enough to connect with a few students from another university in Puebla to go on a rural Mexican adventure. After a bumpy ride and a complex 9-point turn on a narrow mountain road, our bus arrived at a trucha farm. We went trout fishing! If I translated correctly, this fish farm has been around since the '60s and stocks their "lake" and also supplies other places with trout. I did not actually manage to catch a fish, but someone had to leave enough for everyone else right? Also, the fish were vicious.

After we caught all the fish in the lake we were treated to a fantastic lunch and a tour of the farm before we loaded onto the bus again. We then went to a small community called La Preciosita which is made up of about 1000 inhabitants, mostly women. Approximately 70% of the men have left the community to work in either the US or Canada and the women are definitely running the show. We brought some piñatas along to share with the local kids but never could have imagined the chaos that Dora the Explorer and Woody the Cowboy piñatas would cause. The idea was that the smallest kids get to go first and each kid gets to swing at the piñata until the end of a cute little song that I no longer remember. It was a good thing that this activity went down in the church basement because it was only through divine intervention that no one was smacked in the head with a broomstick.

We all were assigned host mamas and they fed us, taught us how to make food (which we had to sample as part of the process, of course), then we later ate the final product. Keep in mind that we had just eaten a huuuuuge lunch about 3 hours before. We were all feeling stuffed to the point of being sick by the time we laid down for bed. I can´t speak for everyone, but I personally woke up still feeling full. That, however, did not stop me from eating breakfast. We had leftover tamales and a regional specialty that is similar to a gordita (corn dough around refried beans) plus homemade salsa, fresh cheese, herbal tea and atole, which is a hot beverage made out of cinnamon, milk, some untranslated mystery ingredients and corn of course).

Later in the afternoon some local artisans came over and taught us to weave baskets using pine needles and thread. We were all very successful and pleased with our finished products. Well, most of us...some of the boys were not enthusiastic about spending the morning sewing pine needles.
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Featured on this week´s agenda are- the first Physics test, the first hospital rotation and the FIRST ND FOOTBALL GAME of the semester. So it should be busybusybusy. Additionally, as of tomorrow I will have been in Mexico for an entire month! I can´t decide how I feel about that. I´ve been so busy that it doesn´t seem like it´s been that long. Then I think about everything I´ve done, seen, learned and all the great people I´ve met in the last month and it seems impossible that it´s only been 30 tiny days. But now I´ve blabbered on quite enough and it´s time to study for that looming Physics test!