Typical.

Today was the first day of my internship. I might have briefly explained it earlier but I can't remember and don't feel like going back to look so I'll tell you again. Puente a la Salud Comunitaria (Bridge to Community Health) is an NGO that focuses on nutrition education and works towards food autonomy (this is a vague translation) in rural communities. Puente kills two birds with one very small stone, amaranth. It is not only native to Mexico and relatively easy to grow and process, but also balances the typical rural diet that is based on corn and beans. I heard something today that sums up their mission really nicely: siembra amaranto, cosecha alegría. Translation: sow amaranth, harvest happiness. Some of the meaning is lost in translation because alegría means both amaranth and happiness. For those of you who are curious: More on amaranth

  
Anyways, it's still unclear exactly what my role will be with Puente, but for the first bit I'm just figuring out what exactly they do. Today we went to a town outside Oaxaca for a meeting that involved a "amaranth popper" machine (If you're imagining an industrial sized popcorn air-popper, good) and a lady from the Ford Foundation. I spent most of the afternoon with some super friendly little girls, playing kitchen. I swear the little first grader knows her way around a kitchen, either for realreal or for playplay, better than I do!

While the morning bus ride was a piece of cake, the ride back was a bit of a struggle. By a bit, I mean an hour-long detour. I got dropped off somewhere besides the Puente office and was directed to the main road that circles the city. I wasn't sure exactly where I was, but the Puente people assured me that if I got on the bus, I would eventually end up at the Chedraui store right by my house. The detail that either a) they forgot to include or b) I missed in translation, was that I needed to cross the 4 lane road to catch this great bus. So I happily hoped on a bus (not THE bus) and settled in, waiting to see something familiar. After a while, places did become familiar, not because there was a SuperChe in sight, but because the bus was headed back the way I had just come from the mountains. Slightly concerned, I asked the bus driver if the route would make a loop (specifically, I asked if it would dar la vuelta). He assured me that it would, so I decided not to worry.

It turns out, however, that this vuelta was at the top of some godforsaken mountain overlooking the city. And the vuelta was actually the end of the line, requiring me to get off, wait 10 minutes, get on another bus, and ride the whole route over again. It turns out that I was originally only about 10 minutes away from my neighborhood. While I was never in any real danger of being truly misplaced or permanently lost, it was not an ideal way to spend my afternoon. In retrospect, the best thing would have been to bail when I first suspected it was the wrong bus, swallow my pride and take a taxi home. But then what would I have blogged about? And who takes a 10-minute taxi when you can spend an hour on a bus?

This was just a warm-up adventure for tomorrow's adventure however. I'm off to a village that's even farther away with a name that I have no hope of remembering or pronouncing correctly to help with a women's workshop. As I understand it, we're staying the night, maybe two. Again, I don't know what I'll end up doing but I'm sure I'll learn something along the way. Wish me luck!