And so it is.

After spending the majority of my past year here in Mexico, I'm headed home without clear plans of returning. A friend recently asked me if I'm still American or if so much time here has made me Mexican. Can I answer, "los dos"? As thrilled as I am to go home to see my family and friends,I'm sad to be leaving.

I'm going to miss the Tamale Man.

I'm going to miss the kiss-on-the-cheek greetings.

I'm going to miss the bwooop sound that taxi horns make.

I'm going to miss the people, especially my host moms. Gracias Mercedes and Olivia!

I'm going to miss the language, ND Spanish classes promise to be dreary.

I'm going to miss street vendors, buses, the carefree attitude, afternoons in the zocalo, real tortillas, being called "guera" in the market.

I'm going to miss Mexico.

Yesterday as I "viaje-ed seguro" with ADO from Oaxaca to Puebla, I thought about how much growing up I've done in the past year. Sure, there were the days where I wished that I had just stayed home and worked, comfortable in my own house, drinking tap water and speaking English. The full impact of this summer still won't sink in for a few months but I'm glad I did it. Coming full circle and visiting Mama Olivia's family as I head north has been a lovely end to my trip; I am so blessed to have met such open and caring people during my time here in Mexico.

Now it's off to the shower, bus depot, and airport for the final leg of my journey home. Nos vemos Mexico!

The Big G and other Oaxacan Adventures

Where to even begin?

I’m currently sitting in bed, regretting eating whatever street food or unwashed fruit it was that made me feel so sick. I guess it was only a matter of time before “throwing caution to the wind” came back to get me, but that doesn’t make it less unpleasant. Nevertheless, I managed to have a stellar four day weekend which temporarily cured me of the “I wanna go home” blues.

On Friday we had an Impact Project with ProWorld and we all met early at the office instead of going to our respective internships. We went to FOE, a non-profit equine therapy organization run by a retired physical therapist. After working for thirty years in Oaxaca’s public hospital, Carolina started FOE to help local kids with Downs Syndrome, Autism, MS, and other mental and physical disabilities. She now has nearly 60 students who come weekly for occupational and physical therapy. The parents pay on a sliding scale and the majority of the funding comes from the many side projects that Carolina has also started in her small Oaxacan suburb. There’s a community bakery that employs local women and sells bread at a discounted price, a plastic bottle drive which feeds funds back into the bakery and horse therapy, a small horse manure/fertilizer business, and an orchestra of 60+ kids. Carolina also mentioned several other projects that she’s been starting up in her “free time”, although I can’t imagine that she has a whole lot of that lying around. We split into teams to bag manure, paint the corral, revive old folding chairs, make teaching materials, and paint a logo on the front of the building. This was one of the most organized and dedicated non-profits that I’ve ever come across and Carolina is a truly amazing woman.

On Saturday, some of the ProWorld staff invited us to go to some nearby pools. After a long and slightly confusing trip involving a bus and multiply colectivo taxis, we arrived at Vista Hermosa. The past few weeks have been gloomy and rainy but the weather decided to clean up its act just in time for the holiday weekend. We lounged in the sun, tried out the water slides, and splashed around in the pool until dark rain clouds showed up mid-afternoon. After hurrying back home for a quick shower and change of close, we headed downtown for the calenda parade that marked the beginning of the 2 weeklong Guelaguetza festival. I was greatful for all of my 5’4” as we pushed our way towards the front of the crowd to catch a glimpse of the intricately costumed dancers and marching bands; I’m pretty tall for a Mexican! After the parade, it was off to the Mezcal Fair, one of Oaxaca’s greatest brainchildren. An admission fee of $35MX (three dollars) gains you entrance to the park containing more than 20 mezcal vendors, all eagerly offering samples.

After “dar-ing la vuelta” a few times, we had all become mezcal experts and were in a pretty good place, but hadn’t really eaten real food all day. Clearly the best solution to this is to buy street hamburgers. These are a little pricier than most streetfood, but they aren’t your Dollar Menu cheeseburgers either. It’s hard to find the pattie amidst the cheese, ham, pineapple, tomato, jalenpeno and magic that goes into these tinfoil-wrapped pieces of heaven. We visited a couple of our favorite bars and danced for a while, but everyone was exhausted from the busy day and we were all home and in bed before 1am. And the weekend was only halfway over!
Julie and I have been talking about going to mass in Oaxaca’s biggest and oldest church, Santo Domingo, for the past 2 months and this weekend was our last chance. After visiting so many Mexican churches over the past year it’s easy to lose enthusiasm for them, but Santo is truly beautiful, especially with all the lights on and the gold leaf shining. Afterwards we got one last Sunday coffee at the Italian Coffee Company and loitered around in the shade, admiring the passersby with their babies and dogs in tow, and turned down a friendly kitchen knife vendor. We took it easy on Sunday night in preparation for Monday’s big event: the Guelaguetza!

This is Oaxaca’s biggest event of the year. Each of the state’s 8 regions sends at least one delegation of dancers and musicians to perform in the parades and at the Guelaguetza stadium. Each region has it’s own traditional costumes and style of dance, accompanied by a tireless brass band and enthusiastic fans. We had purchased tickets for Monday’s Guelaguetza right after they went on sale and had fantastic seats in the 8th row, front and center. Although I was skeptical at first, I enjoyed all 3.5 hours of the traditional dancing and was almost sad for it to be over. The pictures really don't do it justice and fail to capture the general sense of excitement and pride.

Although nothing can quite make up for Fourth of July at home, this week has had a similar feel to it and I'll take what I can get. Plus, our strategically located seats put us right in line to receive the free food and trinkets that each group threw into the crowd at the end of each section. After a quick trip home for lunch, we headed back out into the streets; it was Shopping Time! Julie and I are now expert mezcal tasters and hagglers and we walked home quite satisfied with our purchases for the day.
I’m off to kick this stomach bug and enjoy my last few days in Mexico before I fly home!
Love and miss you all, kudos if you made it through that marathon of a post!

Fourth Tier road for sure, there's a river down the middle!

I'm sorry that I've been such a slacker with the blogging lately, but I feel like I have a legitimate excuse. You see, the motherboard of my laptop is about as useful as a Frisbee. It might actually be less useful, it´s definitely less fun. After several treks crisscrossing town following vague directions and a sub-par description on my part of the computer´s issues, I left my misbehaving machine in the (hopefully) reputable hands of a repairman. When I returned a few days later, I was informed that both the motherboard and the video card were toast, very burned toast. Luckily all of this happened during the second half of my stay here and not during the first couple weeks. Unfortunately, all of this happened exactly when medical school secondary applications, many with "we recommend returning your application essays within two weeks" warnings, started arriving in my inbox. I never thought that I´d wish for a typewriter, but I´ve found myself lusting after the clinic doctor´s motherboard-less typing machine the past few weeks. (Please ignore the fact that I´m currently writing a blog post instead of an application essay. This is so much more fun than "How do you imagine your personal and professional lives intersecting in 10 years?" Hell if I know.)

But I digress, enough whining about my slight discomfort and technology withdrawals. This is about adventure!
Since arriving, we´ve frequently been attacked in the zócalo by guides offering trips to a nearby waterfall called Hierve el agua, or the water boils. This weekend six of us from ProWorld decided to venture out on our own. Armed with bug spray, some pesos, umbrellas and directions from our host moms, we hopped on a bus to Mitla. We soon realized two things. One, no one had brought enough small change for this impromptu adventure. We all had large bills (large being the equivalent of $20), but most transportation services, restaurants and vendors don´t accept anything larger than a $50 pesos (i.e. life runs on $1 and $5 bills). Two, as the rain began to splatter on the bus` windshield, we realized that we were in for a wet day. The rainy season has been so much rainier than I ever imagined possible and Saturday was ark-worthy. Arriving in Mitla, our obvious guero-ness paid off and we were immediately offered a ride in a camioneta to Hierve. Camioneta is a confusing word because it can be applied to anything from 18 passenger vans to 2 passenger pickup trucks. We were directed to the bed of a little pickup that had been transformed into a 12+ passenger vehicle by the addition of bench seats and a tarped roof in the back. We felt very much like we should be illegally crossing a border but as the driver said, "the back is more fun".
Without going into laborious detail I will summarize the 45-minute drive into the mountains by thanking God that I no longer get carsick and that I don´t suffer from chronic back pain, as both would have ended badly. Seeing as these weren´t a concern, I had a great time watching the scenery and joking about the progressively deteriorating road with my fellow passengers. The road became progressively less road-like until we were driving through streams and potholes large enough to drown in. The bright side to the bad roads and the persistent rain, however, is that we had the site to ourselves when we finally arrived.
It turns out that Hierve el Agua is not a waterfall at all, but rather a hot springs that looks like a waterfall from a distance because of the mineral deposits on the cliff, left behind by hundreds of years of sulfur water. Due to the rain and the fog (we were literally in a cloud), the "waterfall" itself was hard to seen, but we were plenty distracted by the other rock formations and several deep pools. We had come prepared with swimsuits and took advantage of the "lukewarm" pools, ignoring the questionable fogginess of the water and incredulous looks from other visitors. After several cannonball competitions and plenty of photos, we dried off as best we could and got back in the truck. The return trip was quicker but also much bumpier, being downhill.
We found a nice little restaurant in Mitla where we filled our bellies with warm coffee and traditional Oaxacan food before venturing off to the market for some last minute souvenir shopping. We were definitely a tired, more subdued group of gueros on the busride home and nearly missed our stop because everyone was so exhausted. The only bummer of the whole day was that we didn't go on a similar adventure sooner. It seems like I'm just getting to know some of the other ProWorld interns and now it's nearly time to go! I'll be leaving Oaxaca in 10 days, spending the night with my Puebla host family, and finally making the long trip home. Idaho IDAHO!

Todo para la salud

The past week or so has been especially crazy and blogging got shuffled to the bottom of the list. Stressful things that have happened include:

1. my computer crashing: maybe hard drive, maybe a mega virus? if only i had computer skills!
2. switching internships: this is crazy in a good way and the main point of this blog update
3. the arrival of med school secondary applications: there are 5 sitting in my inbox. thanks for crashing this week, computerfriend
4. realizing that I have less than 3 weeks left here in Oaxaca and only a month before I'm back at ND: this is also a good type of stress. It's encouraged me to jump on those activities that I keep putting off until another weekend. It's also great because I'm getting around to missing my family and my house and my pets and my lake and my friends. This whole not having a computer is really getting to me, although I feel like I should be above that. Oh the struggles of a middle class American!

But as the title suggests, this is not about silly stressful things. It is all about the health. I just finished my first week at not-Puente. Thanks to Agustin's connections (the man knows everyone!) and Susannah's patience, I moved to a health clinic in the Colonia America, a 15-minute busride from our neighborhood. The Mexican public health system is arranged into primary, secondary and tertiary care. Tertiary care involves specialists and serious surgeries, hospitals are considered secondary care, and clinics or health centers fulfill the role of primary contact. This reduces the demand on the hospitals for everyday attention such as prenatal care, immunizations, and low-risk procedures while allowing patients to develop a closer relationship with their assigned doctor in the local health center.

Since my health center is very centrally located, most of the "sexy" medical cases bipass it in favor of the nearby hospital, but this doesn't mean that it's a boring place. I showed up with the expectation of just observing and figuring out how things went for the first few days. In addition to the nurses and doctors, each health clinic has promotores who are officially in charge of public health initiatives and unofficially in charge of fun. What luck that they're in charge of me!

My first week at the clinic consisted of a nice mixture of time with doctors and promotores alike. I gave a small talk in the waiting room on dengue fever (no one really listened but that was alright), learned to use the scale and helped with check-ups for school registration (number practice!), made a poster about all the scary shit that's in cigarettes, attended an exercise class, and spend some quality time with Dr. Francisco (I'm convinced that his stethoscope is a fake). Most of the action at the clinic happens between 8am and 11am, after which "no hay nada", there isn't much happening. After a second breakfast, I usually hang out with Tere and Esdras, the promotores and we have a great time. Whether we are hiking across the neighborhood for an appointment, only to find that the person took the day off or making a mess on the desk with poster glue or sampling a local beverage called tejate, Tere and Esdras have a great explanation for the activity. With a smile and a joke that I usually don't understand, they cheerfully explain that we're doing "todo para la salud". Everything we do is for health. While this is probably not exactly true, it makes everything seem very important and exciting. 

While there is definitely a lot of downtime at the clinic and I am not spending as many hours interning as I really want to, I'm overall much happier at the clinic than I was at Puente. The next few weeks are going to fly by and be gone before I know it! In the meantime, I'm going to fill my time with food adventures, market wanderings, and a potential salsa dancing date.

Love and miss you all!