3 more weeks....

My apologies to any of you who are still reading this - I haven't posted for quite a bit! These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of things, and these last few days in Mérida before my group leaves on December 3 for a 2 week trip around Southern Mexico will be especially busy.

These past 2 weekends our Calvin group had 2 different excursions to archaeological sites and other points of interest. The first weekend we went to ruins at Ek' Balam and a Cenote called Ik-Kil, the next we we to ruins at Uxmal and Mayapán and the caves at Lol-tun. These ruins were a little more fun to visit than Chichén Itzá because visitors are permitted to climb them. There are many archaeological sites in Yucatán, and the government gives varying levels of support and maintenance to different sites. Sites like Chichén Itzá and Uxmal receive more funding and visitors and are better maintained, while sites like Mayapán receive less (but are still very fun to visit!).

On Thanksgiving Day we still had class, as Mexico does not the same holiday, but that night we all went to my Calvin professor's house for dinner. We had turkey and stuffing and other side dishes and it was a lot of fun. One of the things that I will miss about this semester is always being with the group of Calvin students here - we always have a lot of fun together.

Last night our group put together a thank you program/social/party for our families here in Mérida. Saying goodbye at the end of the semester is going to be difficult! All of our families have been great blessings to us during our stay here. It will also be sad to say goodbye to the friends we have made at la Modelo, as many of them in our classes have been very welcoming and helpful. Today I started listening to Christmas music...which was probably a bad idea, as it makes me homesick when I should be focusing on my time here, but I am excited to see all of my family and friends in the USA in a few weeks!

Remnants of cave paintings at Lol-tun: try and spot the black handprint

Pyramid at Uxmal

View from the top of the "Acropolis" at Ek' Balam


Figures on the "Acropolis" of Ek' Balam


My host sister, niece, mom, and I at the party for our host families


Thanksgiving Dinner - probably the first time I have eaten it off of a disposable plate, but it was delicious!


Mayapán


View of Mayapán from pyramid

My host mom and I in huipiles, the traditional dress of the women in Yucatan and other states in Southern Mexico

Christmas??

Stores here have started putting out Christmas merchandise for sale...as I am sure they have back in the USA too. The fact that the seasons don't really change here makes it hard for me to believe that Christmas is only a month and a half away. I have never lived in a place where the seasons don't change, so perhaps my perception of time is a little off.

Fútbol, Día de los Muertos, and Celestún

This past week has been a whirlwind - I have a feeling that the closer I get to the end of the semester, the faster time will go. At the end of October we went to a soccer (fútbol) game, which was fun but ended in a disappointing tie, Mérida 0, Veracruz 0. The weekend of October 31-November 2 was Hanal pixan/ Day of the Dead here in Mexico, which meant that there were Day of the Dead altars set up in the city center and that we ate a lot of pib (a dish cooked in banana leaves almost like a casserole with chicken, beans, and tortillas) and pan de muerto (bread of the dead). The protestant Christians here do not officially celebrate el Día de los Muertos, but we still ate pib and pan de muerto.

The end of this past week has been very rainy in Yucatán, perhaps because of tropcal storm or hurricane Ida. I don't mind a little bit of rain...but unfortunately many of Mérida's streets flood with murky water if the rain lasts all day.

This past Friday Janelle and I left to spend the weekend in Celestún, a port town on the western coast of Yucatán. Everyone in our group spent a weekend in a small town (un pueblo) in Yucatan or Campeche (the state to the south of Yucatan) except for Janelle and I the weekend that we stayed in Mérida for the anniversary of El Divino Salvador, so we went to Celestún this weekend instead. We stayed with one family and ate with a different family for every meal while we were there. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming, and it was kind of nice to take a break from Mérida and relax in a much smaller town. On Saturday the rest of our group came to Celestún, and we all went to see wildlife (especially flamingos) in the river and coastline of Celestún. We saw flamingos, herons, sandpipers, and osprey, and we also went through a mangrove forest (which was inhabited by lots of hungry mosquitos). After the wildlife tour we spent a bit of time at the beach and eating at La Palapa, a restaurant that serves mostly seafood. Maria orded "pescado frito" (fried fish) and was dismayed to find that the WHOLE fish (including the fins and head) was fried and served on the plate.

After the rest of our group left to return to Mérida (most of our group went to stay in small towns or "pueblos" the weekend that Janelle and I stayed in Mérida for our church's anniversary celebration), Janelle and I went back to the house where we were staying for a bit before having dinner with another family. On Sunday we had breakfast with yet another family before going to church. I had a bit of trouble following the sermon after awhile partly because the sermon was long and partly because there were a fair number of distractions happening during the sermon, but it was still an enjoyable service. After the service most of the church members (a lot of them are related) gathered to eat lunch together. Janelle and I were sad to leave on Sunday afternoon - we didn't stay in Celestún for very long, but the people were very kind and it was a fun weekend overall, despite the copious amounts of rain we received each night and the number of mosquitos that tried to eat us alive.

The church member who was "in charge" of us during our weekend was the church's young pastor, Gilberto, who recently graduated from Seminario San Pablo in Mérida. "Gil" (pronounced almost like "Heel") was very kind and insisted that Janelle and I would not spend any money during our time with the church, even though we were sent with money to cover at least the cost of our food during our stay with church members. At the end of the weekend we ended up giving him the money as an offering, but not reimbursement for the hospitality we had received. Gil told us that a church in the United States gave him a scholarship that covered his years of study at the seminary in Mérida and that he was from Chiapas, a state to the south of the Yucatán Peninsula. He also told us that he was far from fluent in Spanish when he came to the seminary a few years ago, as his first language is a dialect of maya that is spoken in Chiapas. Gil was another reminder of the diversity in Mexico that is hidden from outsiders like me - before I came to Mexico, I figured that most Mexicans were about the same culturally and ethnically and that all of them spoke Spanish. While all of Mexico was once ruled by Spain, the cultures and languages of the different people groups who inhabited Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish continue to influence their respective regions of the country.

Sunday morning church

Pastor Gil with one of the babies of the congregation

In front of the church that hosted Janelle and I

The mamá of the house where we stayed in Celestún, doña Yamile, and her son Jornadab

Doña Maria Magdalena with some of her pet turtles (she is doña Yamile's sister-in-law and served us breakfast Sunday morning)

The beach at Celestún

Mangroves at Celestún - the red mangrove trees tint the water a brownish-red color

Flamingos!

Rainy weather at La Modelo

Pan de Muerto (Bread of the Dead)

Soccer game

La Vida Cotidiana

Now that our time in Mérida is more than half over, I feel like we are starting to appreciate more the things that we will miss when we leave, like our host families, the students we have met at La Universidad Modelo, the food (most of it), and the frequent opportunities to speak or hear Spanish.

This past week our group visited a clinic called Clinica Esperanza. The clinic was founded in the 1960s by 2 young doctors from the United States to provide health care for people in need. The once 2-room clinic has grown considerably in size to a large clinic that cares for expectant mothers and their babies. The clinic was founded as a Christian ministry, and the majority of the doctors and nurses who work at the clinic are Christians. Patients do have to pay to use the clinic, but the cost of the services are very low and the quality of the care is often quicker and better than that provided by the government health system.

Today at La Modelo there was a mixed Day of the Dead and Halloween party on the 2nd floor. There were Day of the Dead altars set up along with what looked like a "haunted classroom". Halloween isn't celebrated by everyone here, as it isn't really a Mexican holiday, but there were some students who dressed up in costumes. These next few days I should get a chance to see how Yucatecans observe Day of the Dead...so, more on that in the future.

Tomorrow night our group is going to a soccer game at Mérida's stadium, which is actually only a few blocks away my house. Supposedly tomorrow night is a "ladies night", so the 19 girls in our group should get in for free. I don't think I've ever gone to a professional soccer game in the USA, so I'm curious as to how things will go. Hopefully the home team wins and everyone can go home happy, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The front of La Catedral

This bus company reminds you to "respect the ladies" (also not to spit on the floor, not to leave trash on the bus, to pay the fare in smaller bills or coins, to pay upon boarding...etc)

Downtown in front of the Cathedral - an easy to remember meeting spot

Studying? (OK...this was posed)

Restaurant at Progreso - if you order drinks there, you get free botanas (snacks)

El Aniversario and Mamma Mia

This weekend was the celebration of the 123rd anniversary of the founding of El Divino Salvador, the church that I attend here in Mérida. On Friday night there was a concert where all of the church choirs and the choir from a local seminary performed. On Saturday, I woke up early because I was told by my family that we would be leaving the house at 7:00 AM to drive to a retreat site in Porvenir, a town on the coast. However...I figured that we wouldn't be leaving until later when at 7:00 I was still the only one awake in the house. We ended up leaving at 8:30 for Porvenir. When we arrived, there was a group meeting with singing and a message from the guest speaker, then time for games, swimming, and then lunch. I really enjoyed the day. I got a chance to talk to quite a few people who I had been seeing at church for the past two months and to enjoy the cooler weather on the coast.

This past Thursday some students from Calvin went with some of our Universidad Modelo classmates to another university's production of Mamma Mia. All of the songs were sung in Spanish, which sounded kind of weird at times, but it was fun. To me, telenovelas (soap operas), the news, movies, and plays in Mexico are sometimes a little more "dramatic" than their counterparts in the United States, and Mamma Mia seemed a little exaggerated at some points but still fun.

About 90% of the population of Mexico is "Mestizo", meaning a descendant of both indigenous American people (like the Maya in the Yucatan) and Spaniards (0r other Europeans). However, there are times when the 10% of the population that is creole/criollo (completely of European descent) is very visible. For example, the audience and the cast of Mamma Mia was overwhelmingly European-looking. Once I left the theater and walked about 4 blocks to my bus stop, nearly all of the people walking on the street were Mestizo (well...except for me). Anyway, just something I've been noticing about life here - that different cultural groups are somewhat segregated like the are in the United States.

The beach at Porvenir

Waiting for Mamma Mia to start

Church retreat meeting room

Only 2 months left...

Yesterday marked the halfway mark in my time in Mexico, so I thought I would think about some of the unique things about life here that I have gotten used to:

1. Greetings between friends often include a kiss on the cheek, and people are much more likely to walk into a room and say "Good day" or "Good afternoon" to whoever is already there

2. Tortillas are very important. My family almost always has a stack of them sitting somewhere, and they are served with most meals (unless we are eating hot dogs or a sandwich). People use tortillas almost like forks, taking pieces of meat into the tortilla and eating part of the tortilla with the meat. I occasionally eat my food this way, but usually I prefer a fork so that I can taste my food better (and not add a lot of extra calories from carbs)

3. There are a lot of "Oxxos" all over Mérida. I pass by at least 3 on the walk between the bus stop for my house and the bus stop to go to the university...which is about a 4 block walk. An Oxxo is a convenience store kind of like 7-11, and they can be very useful if you want to buy a snack and break a large bill into smaller bills or coins. Riding the bus and shopping at small stores is much easier if you have smaller bills or exact change.

4. University classes often start late, sometimes even 20 minutes late. There is often a lot of chatting amongst students during class. I haven't really gotten used to these aspects of life here...but at least they don't surprise me anymore.

5. Whenever I or members of our group are walking near the center of town we are frequently asked if we want to buy hamacas/hammocks. I sometimes wonder if the hammock vendors think that all foreign-looking people come to Mérida simply to buy hammocks. I guess that since most people who live here already have one...they may as well ask us if we want one too.

6. When one side of the street has shade...the sidewalk is never wide enough for all of the people who want to walk on the shady side.

7. When it gets below 85 degrees, the Mérida natives often wear a light jacket.

8. If a whole chicken is bought, the whole chicken is cooked. A few days ago I opened up the pot that had the chicken and vegetable stew for lunch, and I almost dropped the lid right back onto the pot because there was a chicken foot in there! I asked my host sister if anyone in the family if anyone liked eating the feet, and she said no, so perhaps the chicken foot was fed to the dog...I'm not really sure.

9. The ants here are ferocious. The garbage in the kitchen has to be taken out 2 or 3 times per day to keep the ants from swarming it. I had the misfortune of leaving a candy wrapper in a shopping bag in my room once...let's just say that I haven't repeated that mistake.

10. There are some random things that are written in English. Lots of t-shirts have words or phrases in English, I have seen a sign for a "Car Wash", the restaurant I went to today had a menu that seemed to be a mixture of Spanish and English, etc.

This past weekend I attended a 45th wedding anniversary party for the host parents of my friend Maria. There was a church service that was almost like a second wedding with dinner and cake afterwards. It was a lot of fun! This coming weekend is the celebration of the 123rd anniversary of my church's founding, so more to come on that later.

At a Mexican "Hobby Lobby"

McDonald's in Mexico serves jalepeños instead of ketchup?

I had my hair done for the party just for fun - at the cost of less than $11.50 USD

Maria, Megan and I at the anniversary party

Church sanctuary decorated for the anniversary service

Cold(?) Weather has arrived

Last night the low was 75 degrees and everyone (including me) kept on remarking on how cool it was. Today in church there was quite a breeze coming in the windows and the temperature was about 80....and again, everyone was remarking on how cool it is. It's pretty amazing how having the daytime temperature at 97 with high humidity makes 82 and sunny feel...cold. I hope that I survive coming back to the Midwest in the middle of December! Never fear, the temperature here will be going right back to where it was before this little "cold snap", but I look forward to having a few more "cool days" in the future.

Playa del Carmen and other stuff

This past weekend, 16 out of our group of 23 spent the weekend at Playa del Carmen. Playa is a 4 hour plus drive from Mérida, but it was nice to have a break.

Other than going to the beach, things have pretty much settled into a routine here. I get up pretty early on most weekdays to go to class or the secondary school where I observe one day per week. I usually come back to my house for lunch by 2 in the afternoon, then I usually work on homework or take a nap, then some days I go back to the center of Merida for class with the Calvin group or to tag along with my host sister when she goes shopping or to a church meeting or other activity.

Here are a few pictures from the past few weeks:

The bus ride to Playa del Carmen...when you have more than 4 hours to kill, looking at the clouds becomes fun again

Playa del Carmen

Maria and I at the beach

Drying clothes on the line is fun...especially when it doesn't rain!

This is the second large bag of grapefruit like this that my family has bought since I got here - I'm really glad that I like grapefruit.

One Month in Mérida

Yesterday marked the end of my first month in Mérida. I know it's cliche to say this...but time is flying. I feel like my Spanish has gotten better, but I feel like I still have a lot to learn before December 18th (the day we fly home).

This morning I finally went and found a place where I can run. Last week I had gone to the little neighborhood park and walked laps around it, but it was pretty small and the people there aren't accustomed to seeing tall gringas walking around in circles. This time I went to a larger outdoor sports park called Unidad Deportiva y Recreativa Kukulcán that has a nice path around the park where people can run. It felt great to run again, even if the temperature was about 90º F/32º C.

Below are some random pictures from life in Mérida:

Looking to the left on Calle 28 (the street where I live) - note one of the many city buses on the left. It looks a little hazy in this picture because the chicken shop nearby is probably grilling chicken

The view looking to the right on Calle 28

View of La Universidad Modelo from the bus stop

Panucho - A tortilla with chicken, avacado, onion, and tomato

A stew with banana, beef, red beans, carrot, squash, potato, and onion

Dzibilchaltún and Chichén Itzá

This past week or so has been pretty busy here in Mérida.

September 16th was Independence Day here, so we went to church the night of the 15th and there was no class on the 16th. I now know how the Mexican national anthem goes, and when I see red, green, and white (colors of the Mexican flag) together my mind doesn't automatically think of Christmas. Independence Day here made me feel quite homesick for the United States, as being a foreigner at the celebration of another Country makes one feel a little out of place.

This past week was exam week at La Universidad Modelo, which meant that I was (for the first time since coming here) very busy with homework. Writing 3 exam papers and studying for 3 in-class exams in less than a week was a bit of a challenge, but it feels good to be done with everything for now.

On Monday the Calvin group went to two different Mayan ruin sites, Dzibilchaltún and Chichén Itzá. Monday was the day before the autumnal equinox, and both sites have different phenomena that show up on the days surrounding the equinox. We did get to see the sun shine through the door of the temple at Dzibilchaltún, which required required waking up very early (about 3 AM) so that we could be at the site in time for sunrise. Unfortunately, the cloudy sky at Chichén Itzá prevented us from seeing the shadow of Kukulkan (the serpent god of the Maya) descending the stairs of the pyramid, but we did have fun exploring the ruins.

I finally saw a tarantula when we went to Dzibilchaltún. Our bus driver told me that I shouldn't be afraid of them, that the are soft and fuzzy like "un gatito" (a kitten), but I decided against finding out for myself. It was really cool to see Chichén Itzá after reading about it and seeing pictures of it in history and travel books. There were a lot of vendors selling trinkets, jewelry, and t-shirts at Chichén, and I did end up buying a small "Chac Mool" statue that is shaped like some of the ruins there.

Me at Chichén Itzá

The ball court at Chichén Itzá


Mini Chac Mools

Dzibilchaltún - Here comes the sun!

It's kind of hard to see what happened in a photo...

The sanctuary at El Divino Salvador before a Sunday service

Another Blog

Here is a link to the blog that our group is doing together about our time in Mérida:

http://www.calvin.edu/go/mexico

Mi Cumpleaños :)

Today was my birthday and my host sister-in-law's birthday, so my host family went out to a "steakhouse" restaurant that has a buffet. Sandy (my host sister-in-law) and I were born one hour apart on the same day of the same year...it's a pretty funny coincidence. The food was pretty good, and best of all, the birthday girls got to eat for free (with an ID that had our date of birth). It seemed like nearly every table had someone with a birthday at it; the restaurant workers were very busy singing "Feliz Cumpleaños" the entire time we were there. Here are a few pictures from the day so far:

Luis, doña Flory, don David, Luisa Fernanda, and I


Sara Cristina (Sandy's daughter) and I

There are a lot of old Volkswagens around here

Sandy and I

My host parents, doña Flory and don David

My first plate at the Buffet - a little piece of home

"Sirloin Stockade" isn't the most appealing name...but the food was good

Lyndsey and I celebrating our 21st birthdays with the Calvin group a few days ago