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!

Hopefully no bridges were burned…

So that was just 2 days. What have I been doing for the rest of the month? That is a great question.
I've painted an amaranth-themed bulletin board, learned the best place in the city to print photos, mastered the photocopier (single and double-sided printing), befriended the vegetable stand family at the nearby market, designed a nutrition education poster, led an exercise session and played street vendor at a food festival. Want to incorporate amaranth into your daily diet? Seeds, cereal, flour or leaves? I can tell you how (although secretly, it doesn't taste all that great. Not bad, just mostly like plain popcorn). Want to grow your own amaranth garden? I can tell you about that too. I could also tell you about the nutritional advantages of amaranth and its history with the pinche Spaniards.
If most of these tasks seem random to you, that's probably because they are. They're usually assigned in a "oh good morning Olivia, you're here…hmm. Well, how do you feel about painting?" or "whoops we forgot to tell you that there was an outing this morning and everyone left. Could you go pick up a few things at the market?" Don't get me wrong, everyone at Puente is very friendly. They just don't seem to have anything for me to do and I end up feeling like a small child hanging around, in need of entertainment. Like my mother, I love to have a plan, preferably on a calendar. For the first week there was very vague talk of my using my "medical student experience" to advocate the importance of good nutrition and generally enlighten people with my knowledge. The second week, I briefly saw a partial calendar of activities, which has since disappeared. The third week, after several explanations of the difference between medicina and pre-medicina, it finally became obvious that I am just a science student with high hopes and my practical medical knowledge is approaching mostly non-existent. It turns out that the general idea was to have me flex some MedStudent muscles at Puente meetings to make their points more legit, plus help develop some workshops specific to at-risk groups, such as pregnant & nursing women or young children. The main troubles with this gameplan being that I have no MedStudent muscles and my knowledge of all things nutrition come from the food pyramid, which is now outdated and heavily criticized, and Professor Hager's lecture on Digestion and Absorption, which was patchy at best. If you will.
What I'm really trying to say without actually saying it is that this internship was not all I had dreamed it would be. This is not to say that I didn't learn a lot or that I didn't meet some very nice people. I did. But I didn't feel like I was able to do what was, due to early miscommunication, expected of me nor did I feel that these expectations were every made very clear. Sure, some things are lost in translation, but some things, like that evasive calendar, were just never communicated at all. I don't want to turn this into a blame game and I will take 50%. I came in with little idea of what I wanted to do with Puente or anything resembling a goal. The best I had was "an interest in public health initiatives, specifically concerning women and children", but translated into choppy, clumsy Spanish. As a Mexican-Russian project supervisor with a hipster mullet, I wouldn't have known what to do with me either. I have not been the most self-directed volunteer there ever was. However, I have also not been the most self-centered volunteer there ever was. Puente is vaguely working with a group of students with Amigos de las Americas, the high schooler equivalent of ProWorld. Last Friday featured a meeting with the Amigos to plan their next few weeks in the Oaxacan mountains. Although I might be slightly biased due to my jealousy of their day-by-day calendar, their coordinator was just the worst. This is not an unnecessary superlative, it's just true. She marched in, interrupted nearly everyone with her highly specific demands and idealistic sweeping statements, shot down suggestions from every direction, and generally acted like she owned the place. Especially when she un-invited me from the lunch that Puente provided. For everyone. So this may be a case of pointing fingers to make myself feel better, but at least I am not that kind of volunteer.
Where is this going? Long story short, I'm moving to a clinic for my 2^nd month. I hate to quit things or make extra work for other people, but I'm also really excited to get myself into a white labcoat. I learned a lot about the inner workings of an NGO, how not to be a volunteer, and all the best ways to eat amaranth. I saw firsthand how frustrating NGO work can be due to a lack of resources, audience or trust. You can't just roll into town, distribute little seeds of knowledge and leave. You have to introduce yourself, gauge interest, develop a group within the community, find out what they need or want, and know when you're not welcome somewhere. It's not easy, because I guess if it was, someone would have done it already.

Tlahuiwhaaa?

Ok, let's talk internships. This post is a long time coming and might have to happen in 2 parts. Hold on to your hats!Like I said, I've been working with Puente a la Salud Comunitaria, which "contributes to food sovereignty and advances the health and well-being of rural communities in Mexico by promoting the cultivation, consumption and commercialization of amaranth" (this is straight off the website). Although the headquarters are in the city of Oaxaca, most of the real work is done in 3 mountain regions surrounding the central valley: the Mixe, the Mixteca and the Sierra Zapoteca (I'm about 80% sure that I got these right). I've spent most of my time with the Familias Salubables division, which works mainly with women and children, although there is an agricultural side as well. A while ago I mentioned that my 2^nd day on the job involved an overnight trip to the mountains, but I didn't really explain. This is mostly because it terrified me, although I didn't want to admit it at the time.
Under vague instruction from Team Puente, I took a colectivo to Tlahuitoltepec, which is about 3 hours away in the Mixe region. A colectivo is a taxi that operates on a set route like a bus, but charges by distance traveled like a normal taxi. Unlike a normal taxi, you don't know the other riders and 5 passengers is the norm, with the extra person (me) snuggling the stickshift. For 3 hours. Between 2 Mexican men. It turned out that the taxi driver had recently returned to Oaxaca after 20 years in the States and literally talked the entire way to Tlahui. It was nice that he spoke English but it's also a lot harder to evade personal questions from a stranger when they speak your language.

Anyways, he helped me find the bakery where I was supposed to meet Vicky, the Puente promoter from Tlahui. The evening's plan was a cooking workshop, at which my main task was to take pictures. This took all of about 10 minutes because there were only 5 women there and you can only take so many pictures of people cutting up vegetables (especially with my photography skillz). It was hard to get involved or even know what was going on because most of the workshop was conducted in Mixe, the local language, so I bonded with the little kids who thought I was the world's best photographer.

At about 8pm it started to get dark and it was announced that I would be dropped off at a guest house for the night with plans to meet up at 9am for another workshop. The guest house ended up being a cabin building hidden in the trees. The señora in charge was convinced that I was both mute and incapable, refusing to talk to me. So I hung the extra sheets across the bare windows as curtains and settled in for 12 hours of…
Like I said, I was terrified. This was probably not the greatest start that an internship ever had. Luckily, the loud group of male voices wandering by at 11pm was just some boys, the crash at 5am was just a mango on the roof and I was not kidnapped while walking from my room to the bathroom with only my TelCel flashlight function to guide me. After a confusing conversation in which the señora's daughter with Down's Syndrome insisted that I only pay $7.50 for the night (about 60 cents), I headed off for another cooking workshop. This one went a little better despite the fact that I still didn't understand Mixe and was still bad at taking pictures through cooking fire smoke. I can't say that I was disappointed to finally be dropped off by Chedraui at the end of the day.

Although my cabin-staying self would have vehemently denied it, this was perhaps one of the most significant experiences I've had this summer. I still wouldn't use the words best, favorite, enjoyable, or easy to explain the 24 hours that I spent in Tlahuitoltepec, but it was significant. I've never felt like such an outsider before. Every single head turned as I walked through the city square on the way to breakfast and more than a few people stopped to ask why I was there. Like the güera comments in Oaxaca, the attention was mostly curious and not really malicious or unwelcoming. Nevertheless, I was really wishing that I could be invisible. I was acutely aware of myself standing next to the local women wearing traditional skirts and sandals with babies slung across their backs in scarf contraptions. Talking about "working in rural impoverished communities" sounds so heroically simple until you're there, surrounded by wood smoke, muddy trails scattered with stray dogs and their excrement, houses made of scrap metal and ancient people hauling their produce in a box slung around their forehead. But this is just as much the real Oaxaca as the bustling zócalo or the charmingly colorful streets full of hamburger stands and handicraft vendors. Reading about Oaxaca's relatively low standard of living and rural poverty could not have prepared me for this excursion and I didn't know what to do with myself. And that is why it has taken me 3 weeks to finally write about it; because I was overwhelmed, scared, and a little embarrassed by my naivety. In the end though, this was just a life lesson in disguise and whether it's a formal lecture or a taxi ride to a remote village with a crazy name, we have to admit that we don't know everything before we can learn anything.

No te preocupes.

I feel like I hear this a lot. When I ask for details of plans that don't yet exist, when something is late, really whenever something seems to be going wrong, the answer is often no te preocupes. This No Worries attitude is the topic of many a classy country songs about losing your load, leaving your mind behind and forgetting to come back. On the contrary, however, there are so many things to worry about in Mexico. It's a terrifying place! Here's why:

1. Water. Speaking of classy country songs, that one about not drinking the water is not an exaggeration. You really shouldn't drink it here. REALLY.
2. Fruits and vegetables. Even if they're washed (see #1) they aren't actually clean. Because again, you can't drink the water.
3. Dogs. They're hungry and they're everywhere. And probably have at least 3 types of parasites plus mange. The good news is, they are not cute and therefore aren't very tempting to pet.
4. Cats. Like dogs, cats run about as they please, dragging their inevitable parasites with them. Even the clean cats are dirty.
5. Pork. Mexico loves pork. This is debatably the single most popular thing that was introduced by the Spaniards and there are at least 4 words in Spanish for the live animal alone, not including the plethora of food products that can be made from literally any pig part, head to tail.
6. Street food. It's so bad but it's soooo good. Stopping at a street vendor for esquites or a cup of nieve is always a risk assessment exercise. It usually works out alright, but when it doesn't go well it REALLY doesn't go well.
7. Milk. It's still a mystery how the milk can be stored on a shelf until it's opened. In general, quite a bit of food that seems to need refrigeration gets to sit out on the counter here. Alternate universe? Or maybe it just explains some of the fear behind #6.
8. Germs. See #1-7. And probably a good part of #8-23. They're all up in everything.
9. Buses. $5.50MX for a heaping serving of citywide adventure, whiplash, loud music and bus exhaust. What. a. deal.
10. Bus-taxis (colectivos) All the fun of the bus system condensed into a lovely maroon vehicle. And the intimate touches from your seat neighbors are free of charge.
11. Taxis. There's no practical driving test to get a Mexican license. Enough said.
12. Mototaxis. All the fun of the taxi system condensed into a doorless, 3-wheeled rickshaw.
13. Taxi-buses. Now you and your 17 friends can all enjoy a taxi ride together! To the beach perhaps?
14. Traveling alone via any of the above mentioned vehicles.
    
15. Crossing the street. All the rules that your mom and kindergarten teacher taught you about street safety probably revolve around the ideal of the pedestrian right-of-way. Pedestrian be warned, trucks, bicycles, buses, private vehicles and especially taxis will not hesitate to accelerate in your direction as soon as you step off the curb.
16. Too much fun, too little sleep. So goes traveling, no?
17. Dirt. Although the previous weeks' dusty coating has been washed off every surface by the recent rainy season, it's now collected in impressively muddy globs. Best leave your pretty heels at home.
18. Poverty. Whether it's in the form of an entire family asking for pesitos in the zócalo or a house built out of rusting scrap metal or statistics on malnourished toddlers, poverty is a terrifying thing to encounter because it makes us reconsider our cushy seat in life. And this is just a glimpse from which we can easily walk away; imagine if that was your everyday reality.
19. Mosquitoes. While Idahoan mosquitoes are pretty harmless and will, at worst, leave you with some itchy welts in awkward places, international mosquitoes can be another story. Dengue fever, malaria, West Nile Virus, the list goes on. Quién dice yo? Who wants some?
20. Rain. Plans just don't work out well when the streets become rivers and it's dark at 6:30. Also, see #16 & #15 & probably #1.
21. Insects. Oaxacans have a unique appreciate for the nutritional value of insects that many of us would find appalling. As nutritional as it may be, a handful of dried crickets somehow seems less appealing than a chicken nugget. Hot weather also has a way of producing extremely large (and thankfully, less edible) bugs.
22. Sweating. It doesn't matter if you're lolling in bed after lunch or walking home from work or snuggling with some strangers in a colectivo (see #9). This is Mexico. You will sweat.
23. Spicy food. It's always a good idea to sample salsa before slathering it all over your plate. Chances are, it's going to pica mucho. But to be fair, anyone would eventually add chile to everything if the alternative was beans and tortillas cada día.
    
24. Beans. Like insects, beans are a great source of non-meat protein. I don't know the biological back story to the "beans give you gas" wive's tale, but I'm skeptical. And they're in or on just about everything so as Dulce María says, it's inevitable. You're going to eat some beans (she just sings the inevitable bit, nothing about beans).
    
25. Unknown. I'm sure there are other things to be afraid of that just haven't been discovered yet. And this, perhaps, is the scariest thing of all. The Unknown. But as appealing as it may seem, hiding in a closet (after checking it for spiders and cockroaches) with a life's supply of bottled water and saltine crackers is only going to expand the Fears List. The only way to know the unknown is to, as my mom would say, put on your big girl panties and go introduce yourself.

Buenos días, scary, marvelous world. Me llamo Olivia. Mucho gusto.

And yes, the tú form is a must because we're going to be best buds. Some might even use the term "biffles."