01/25/2020 – A birthday like no other

On Saturday morning, we were out the door by 7:30 am, making our way along the sinuous and beautiful road to Alto Lucero, a real “city upon a hill” (or upon “un cerro”). On the way, we stopped at a panaderia in Coscomatepec, grabbed some chips de malanga at a farm stand, and tried some yummy jamoncillo, which was almost like fudge but made of things like peanuts, coconut, or guava.

It was in this lovely, smaller city called Alto Lucero that the wedding was held, which started with a mass at 1 pm. The groom was the cousin of Javier, Miss Sonia’s husband, and his family was as welcoming as they were large in quantity. The mass was in a very open church, which, like many churches here, had large models of saints in glass boxes, and what surprised me most compared to American Catholic churches was the kind-looking God figure at the center of the room, as opposed to the usual Jesus on a cross. The priest’s speech centered around the ideas that marriage is like a “telephone” to God and the blessing of seeing the love between the two, as it is a reflection of the love of God. As they said their vows, despite them being in Spanish and me literally never meeting them, I somehow got kind of emotional! The priest’s and friends’ speeches were punctuated by a lively band, and the bride and groom were accompanied by a Mariachi band when they traveled.

After the mass and extensive pictures with the family, we headed over to the party venue, which appeared to be a small, old building on the outside that opened up to a huge room that comfortably housed ~600 people on the inside. The big space was easily filled, however, by chatting, laughing, and singing. The band’s bass boomed, and like the noise filled the room, the food began to fill our table. We started with some totopos with mole to dip, and then we had chile relleno, barbacoa, rice, tamales rancheros and with some other meats. We met some younger cousins including Heydie, Emily, and others, who were very kind. We exchanged Spanish and English, and as we talked, people began to get up to dance, but as that went on we also had some cake, bombons, and coffee candies. The bride and groom had their special dance, and then we participated in a dance where the bride and groom stand on chairs and their bridesmaids/groomsmen have to hold them up as a line of women and men run under the veil that the bride and groom hold between them. As the lines run under the veil, they try and knock into the bride and groom to make them fall from their chairs. That was very fun and we danced/ran so fast – and people were doing it in heels!

More and more people started to dance after that tradition was over. At first, we watched as some of our friends were asked to dance by their cousins or friends or whoever, but later on one of the cousins, Isaic, began to show me how to dance, and Heydie showed Meriah. It was really fun to learn some of the moves of la cumbia, and although it was hard, it was super fun. I could understand why the parties would go on like that all night! Next we danced with some slightly weirder men, including one of the uncles who was a good dancer but pretty odd and VERY sweaty; Meriah mouthed “save me” when he had asked her. But the worst of it was this older man, around 65-70, who had seen me dancing when we were all just dancing solo in a circle, who asked me to dance with him. He was from the bride’s side of the family, and at first it seemed he was trying to be nice, but then he started complimenting my dancing a lot and my dress, and it was pretty odd. He had thought that I was from Mexico, and he asked if I wanted to go on a run with him in the morning, but I politely thanked him for the dance and skrted out of there back to my table. Other than that, dancing and enjoying the music and ambiance was so much fun but so tiring, and by the time we returned to the hotel (which was beautiful!) we went right to sleep.

01/22/2020 – 01/24/2020 Pushing through some sick days and taking time to enjoy

On Wednesday and Thursday, my slight traveler’s sickness from the weekend picked up a bit. That made Wednesday and Thursday not too fun, especially when teaching, but when it wasn’t a time close to eating or food, they were some very nice in between days. We got to chat more with our friend Osmar, who’s a 16 year old with wisdom much greater than his age. He’s super funny too, and we talked honestly about the school and opinions on politics among other things. One very surprising thing I learned about the school in particular was that the students get to choose which class sections they are in, and they seem to separate essentially based on income-class (Osmar’s friend group calls themselves the “proletariats” and the other group the “bourgeoisie”). Aside from some of the more serious talk, we did some very important relaxing and hammocking and eating – eating in which I would pretend my sickness didn’t exist only to be reminded soon afterwards.

On Friday, we were intending to go to Orizaba to see “the other city”, but most of our plans were outdoors, and it was raining all night. So, Meriah and I had a little night in before we left for the wedding the next day. With Juan’s (security guard) help, we ordered some food from a local restaurant, which was delicious and a perfect treat since we didn’t have much to do. We shared some of our fried plaintain dessert to thank him for helping us, and shortly after he sweetly came back with coffee bombons for us. The people here have shown so much care and compassion for us and our experience.

01/21/2020 – Tuesday in the town

Tuesday we only had one class to teach, and in the evening we were off to the town center with a whole group of friends – Danna, Maried (who wants to apply to Harvard, MIT, and the like, which we got to chat with her about!), Camila, Osmar, Arantza, and Vania. They wanted to bring us around Cordoba, especially to things we hadn’t seen before, and we did just that!

We got tacos de ropa vieja (beef cooked with tomato – a specialty of the area) at Dona Guicha, and then headed into a tour of the Coffee Museum in Cordoba (after tasting a tortilla at Osmar’s family’s tortilleria! It was pretty cool to learn about the origins of coffee in the area, the legends associated with it, and the fact that there is a support program for small growers of coffee in the area in which a larger brand essentially gives them their own brand by packaging and selling their coffee with the grower’s name. At the end of the tour, there was a presentation of the making of coffee (there are more than 40 ways to do it!) in which we got to see for ourselves the difference that alternate brewing methods made. It was surprisingly quite noticeable between la olla and a filter paper method.

Afterwards, we stopped at a specialty coffee-based treat store where I picked up some goodies for some unnamed family and friends 😉 and then headed to San Jose, where we went with Andrea as well. San Jose has a lot of really good food and another, slightly smaller park. It also is home to the sacred place that bestowed upon us our first tamales. We tried pineapple, ranchero, and strawberry, and they were so delicious, although one might not expect a simple corn meal type food to be. They were so soft and comforting but yet so tasty, and we just couldn’t get enough despite the fact that we were thoroughly full AND I still had lurkings of some traveler’s sickness too. That concluded the trip, and as it started to rain we headed home. They were just such a sweet group that was so eager to show us their home, and we’re very grateful for the night.

01/20/2020 – Monday Market in Coscomatepec!

Monday was amazing. We started it off at 7am with two Materia y Sostenibilidad classes, in which we got to introduce organic chemistry and do a really fun activity with the kids involving diaper powder (sodium polyacrylate) and water that seemed to make the water “disappear”. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun with it and told us how much they enjoyed it, so I was super happy by 9am to know that they were excited, at least, and hopefully a bit about organic chemistry.

After that, we skipped our classes and were off to Coscomatepec for “breakfast” (basically the only meal I needed during the day) with Miss Isa, a teacher we are supporting and her very sweet daughter, Andrea. In Coscomatepec we went straight for el Centro, which hosted the traditional courtyard surrounded by a church, government building, and restaurants to the side. In the middle, however, was something very special. On Mondays, there’s an outdoor market there all covered up by temporary tents. Under the tents is a bustling world – women frying empanadas, tortillas, gorditas, etc in these huge plates with oil in the middle which were surrounded by food that you can pick up on its edges, people sitting at bench tables eating and chatting. Pieces of lamb (el borrego) hung for sale, which was soooo delicious in some blue corn tortilla tacos. I also had some (not to be dramatic but) life changing mole tacos. The flavor was sweet + 100 more tastes. When we had thoroughly filled ourselves with lamb based things, some soup, fried tepejilote, and mole, we set off. We walked through the fruit and other vendors, stopping to try some crickets on the way (salty and not too bad). Finally, we walked past where they had animals like chickens, lambs, and very cute puppies to buy in order to feed at home and eventually eat (well, hopefully not the puppies!). Here instead of people just looking at us strangely like at the supermarket or other, many of the vendors seemed to be calling us gueras, o madres or something of the sort, which Andrea told us was in a type of way a compliment, but it felt quite strange.

Our next stop was the panaderia, where we had been encouraged to go by all the kids who heard we were going to Coscomatepec. And they were absolutely right. We got to go down to the kitchen, which involved a huge fired oven that a man happened to be placing conchas into at that time, and many men working the dough. There were so many breads to taste, most of them relatively sweet and semi-firm. Unfortunately, we ate them too fast for me to get a picture of them 😦 On the way back we chatted with Andrea a lot and enjoyed the ride home once again, which was a beautiful route through los cerros of Veracruz, passing through Monte Blanco y Fortin de los Flores, which was named for its wonderful ability to grow flowers.

Afterwards, we hung out with Andrea a bit and walked around town while she told us about some legends of Cordoba – how the town was founded by men who turned into pigeons, how la mulata de Cordoba was a woman who was half African and half native american who was envied for her beauty. She ended up being jailed for being a witch, but she painted her escape via a boat on her jail cell wall. She also told us about some others that were a bit creepier and did not end so well… We then ran into some of her friends at a cafe, so we met some of them and had smoothies and chatted. Finally, we returned to the residences where they stayed and chatted for a little while and then headed out. A marvelous Monday.

01/17/2020-1/19/2020 – Experiencing the center of Cordoba and Veracruz

Friday was a different kind of day with only one somewhat impromptu class and no planning to do. We had a quick meeting, I got to do yoga and workout, and then in the evening our friend Hannia’s mom and Hannia, with her friend Carmina, invited us to go see the town center and get some dinner. They so kindly wanted us to get to do more than just hang out on campus, since we’re not really supposed to leave by ourselves. We saw the classical colonial church there, which was beautiful both in the light and when it turned dark, with deep details. The town center was bustling; people keep describing it as a “small town/city”, but it felt decently big and busy while we were there! Hannia’s family happens to own one of the hotels in the center, so we got to go up to the roof of the hotel to get an unparalleled view of the plaza, and the cars and people moving about below. We walked through the building where the Treaty of Cordoba was signed, giving Mexico its independence from Spain, which included a beautiful indoor courtyard area. We also got to see some different types of coffee plants outside the coffee museum there, and we ended our trip by picking up some tacos al Pastor and enjoying them in Hannia’s home, which they so quickly welcomed us into and emphasized that it was our home too.

On Saturday, Hannia, her mom, Caramina, and their other friend Arantza picked us up again to head to Veracruz for the day. They were very determined to not have us be stuck on campus, which was very sweet. First stop was the Acuario de Veracruz, where we saw really amazing fish and animals, including the cutest penguins that kept following the presenter around in the enclosure, and some very entertaining dolphins. It was great to see that there was a conservation focus in many parts of the aquarium, an aquarium which seems to be quite widely visited across Mexico. Next, since we were at the beach of course, searched for some yummy seafood at a large, open restaurant called Villa Rica which spilled out to the beach. I got delicious shrimp in a garlic-butter ish sauce, with carrots, cauliflower, and chayote, and rice on the side. We spent a bit of time on the beach there, which was quite clean and wonderfully warm, and then finally visited Guero Guero, the ice cream shop, once again to enjoy some helado by the beach. Language was sometimes hard, and I felt awkward at times, wishing I could be a bit more involved with the banter or chatting that was going on. But overall, it was a day undeniably well spent in beautiful Veracruz with such generous people!

The feeling of insufficiency of my Spanish peaked on Sunday, however. On Sunday, we ran out of water we were able to drink, toilet paper, and had little food left. The place where we normally got water was locked, and we needed to go to Walmart although we were not supposed to go off campus by ourselves. Due to the situation however, and due to a family emergency of Ms. Sonia’s, we decided we didn’t want to bother her more and decided to venture out to Walmart by ourselves. Walmart was going all well except for some not so nice cashier people who, after I had asked one of them to repeat something she said, and she took a look at Meriah and I, decided to make fun of us and what we were buying. This didn’t feel great, after already feeling deficient about my Spanish skills, but we called a taxi and headed home shortly afterwards, where we were able to enjoy the fruits of our Walmart run, which was also much needed for our fun activity for Monday’s organic chemistry class…

1/15/2020 – 1/16/2020 Wednesday and Thursday teaching

On Wednesday we taught 6 (!) classes – Materia y Sostenibilidad (2), Matematicas para la Toma de Decisiones (2), and two English classes. They all went pretty well I thought (except one math class which went quite poorly :[ ), and it felt pretty strange giving them an introduction to sustainability. I felt like I didn’t deserve to be attempting to impart on them the importance of quite possibly the biggest topic of our time: climate change and responsibility. But I think that they at least walked out of the room with some different emotions than they came in, and that’s all I can hope for. The one math class that went poorly seemed to show the difference between a slightly less confident delivery and a slightly more confident one, of which the slightly less confident delivery caused much more confusion than the other, although we ended up saying almost exactly the same things. The other thing was we quickly saw the common conflict between what the teacher expects of the kids and what they are able to grasp at that moment, as we had to abandon the worksheet we made for the second round of the math class (oops). We made some more friends on Wednesday, a group of girls who offered to take us to the town on Friday! We’re super excited to do that (and also to learn their names)! We chatted with one girl named Natalia for a while, who was super nice, and I thought her thoughts on British English vs American English were funny; she felt like American English is more fluent, and British English feels more enunciated and perhaps harder to say sometimes. Of course, they learn British English through textbooks here, but they all tend to speak in more of an American accent if anything.

On Thursday we didn’t have much because our trip to Orizaba with the college students was cancelled, so we got some planning done and listened in on two Trig classes (taught in complete Spanish of which I would say I understood a good majority of !).

The food of course of the days (including my first pambazos, which are native only to el estado de Veracruz and are made apparently to look like the Pico de Orizaba with its snow cap:

1/14/2020 – the first Tuesday (“planning day” for us “teachers”)

Today was a less full day, but we seemed to fill the time up anyways. We only had one class, but we spent a lot of time preparing for other classes and meeting with teachers. We also were interviewed by a very kind student named Luca on the beautiful pavilion, where we spent lots of time sitting outside and working. It felt a bit cooler after a bout of rain at night, so it was really nice to spend time in the fresh air and get some sun. We introduced ourselves to our two neighbors in the female dorm, but it was a bit of an awkward experience because of the fact that they seemed to have very little English, and my lack of Spanish combined with the fact that it seemed they felt very uncomfortable with the situation caused us to quickly part ways. In general, I really want to try to be more outgoing because well, there’s nothing to lose I suppose! …And we’d like to make some more friends and meet some more people. Perhaps tomorrow will be our day…

The food of the day of course:

01/11/2020 – 01/13/2020 – the first weekend + first day of school!

It was our first two sleeps and mornings here in Cordoba this weekend, and it’s been very restful, partly for lack of things to do. On Saturday we met Sra Olga, who is one of the security guards, and she kindly offered to take us on a tour of the campus, which was helpful getting to know our way around, although it is a pretty small campus. Otherwise we didn’t do much but sort of meander around and get some good thinking in, especially about how anxious we were to get to meet some new friends, start classes, and eat something other than our microwave broccoli, beans, or peanut butter.

Our first day of school was as much of a surprise as most other things we’ve experienced this trip – but most definitely a good one. Walking up to the Prep building at 7 am, I was amazed to hear so many warm sounds echoing through the multi-story courtyard, with kids laughing and chatting and greeting old teachers and friends. The teachers and students seem to have a much closer relationship than in the US. They joked and hugged when they saw each other, but this also meant that the students didn’t tend to quiet down as much when the teacher was talking, and of course the same for when we were talking. Most classes were manageable, but one class was soo noisy (imagine 31 students conversing all at once for 50 minutes straight) which was a pretty big surprise compared to my high school. Nevertheless, some of them still seemed to enjoy and get things out of the activities that we did with them, which was exciting. The English classes got to interrogate us, so of course they asked us all the important questions: do we like Shawn Mendes, do we like “all that feminist stuff” (in the best way possible), and what do we think about Trump and Iran.

And OF COURSE I can’t forget the fact that we got to eat our first real meals since Friday – I had a perfect trifecta – empanadas for breakfast, my first torta for lunch (w/ surprise coconut milk), and tacos al Pastor (a treat from our very kind neighbors Elias, Marc, Oscar, and ?). Interested to see what the rest of the week brings! We’ll be headed to Puebla this Thursday or Friday, and also to Veracruz and Sonia’s family party on Saturday.

Friday, 1/10/2020 – Arrival

The flight in was beautiful; starting with fluffy, white clouds that turned into beautiful, hazy blue rolling hills that ended in an aerial view of Mexico City, it was a perfect way to start off this adventure.

Mexico City looked wonderfully bright and colorful from above, with continuity in some of its light buildings with red roofs. It had mostly low-rise buildings, with a corridor of high-rise buildings. Meriah and I arrived finally in Veracruz where we were greeted by a smiling Miss Sonia, who immediately became like our mom from Mexico. She and Mr. Delfino took us around the center of Veracruz where we got to try the classic “Guero guero” helado (I got mamay and maracuya – passionfruit!) and enjoy it by the light and dark blue ocean of the port of Veracruz. Driving around in the state was about as wild as one might guess, which can also be translated to the sentiments felt when crossing the street (yikes!). Our drive brought us to Cordoba, but along the way, we saw billowing clouds of smoke coming from the fields beside the road – Sonia explained that these were a result of farmers burning the top, itchy leaves from the sugar cane in order to make them easier to process. Undoubtedly this leads to some of the air quality issues in the area, in addition to the small roadside fires that occur as a result of the dryness and a simple cigarette spark. We got our first glimpse of the school, Prepa Tec, and I accidentally told one of the professors there that I didn’t know if I liked the school – my Spanish skills have been put to the test, and they have not done well :/. In general I have been able to understand most things spoken to me, sometimes with clarifications, but speaking myself has proven quite the challenge. To close the day up, we went to Walmart for some sustenance, and were treated to a classic Mexican/Cordoba restaurant (La Parroquia de Veracruz) with delicious coffee, salsa macha with my enfrijoladas de pollo, and treats like conchas. Besides the wonderful food, we got to see dancers performing La Bamba y La Bruja!