Augie Globalog

Now that we’ve spent a couple of weeks here in Mexico, I would like to give a small taste of my experience so far.

Top 5 things I think of when I think of Mexico:

1.  Cat Calls

            If you are in Mexico and you are a woman, there is no doubt that you will get a minimum of 5 cat calls a day, especially if you are a foreigner.  I think I have yet to travel anywhere in Mexico without either hearing a whistle, Mexican-accented “Hello,” or having a car literally slow down to make remarks.  It doesn’t matter what time of day it is, or how bad one looks, it continuously happens.  As a result of this, I have started this little game with myself to see who exactly it is who is getting all of this attention.  I thought that I was receiving a lot of this action; however, Christina F. Brennan is clearly the winner.  I’m pretty sure that she has at least 17 cat calls minimum directed her way every day.  It must be those husky eyes of hers.  I’m also pretty sure that Gianna Leonetti has yet to obtain one.

2.  Spicy Salsas

            About a year or so ago, I decided to expand the variety of my chip consumption.  I had always been wary of salsa, seeing as I don’t like vegetables, but I hesitantly tried the spicy salsa at Chipotle and instantly fell in love.  I had been seriously craving some of this salsa picante since day one of this trip, and I found my solace salsa here in Mexico.  During one of our first homestay meals, a couple of salsas were brought out, and Rachel decided to try one.  About three seconds in, her face turned completely red and she looked like she was going to cry.  Laughing hysterically, my roommates and I tried to suggest drinking water and such, but Mama was the one who came to the rescue, insisting that she eat pure salt and that her solution was the one and only.  I, however, have come to love the spiciness of these salsas and have become quite accustomed to my mouth being on fire to the point that I am convinced I am a dragon.

3.  Bad Grades

            For some reason, there are many people who have yet to obtain a decent grade (I being one of them) on papers.  We are very busy here and time is limited, yet I have been doing my best to put a good deal of focus into my classes.  To my dismay, these 300-level classes require much more than that.  Let’s hope that my participation grade can be changed from 25% of my grade to 95%, and I will ace this last paper and my finals.

4.  Cerveza

            The above mentioned commonality (#3) has led many of us to the drink.  After spending days working on a paper only to get an unsatisfactory grade, it’s nice to be able to sit down to a beer and simply try to relax and figure out how to improve.  The strange aspect of cerveza in Mexico is that they often like to put a significant amount of lime juice in it and dip the edge of the glass in a very chunky variety of salt.  I never thought of having salt with beer before this trip, and I have to say I’m not a fan.  I am a fan, however, of the liter of corona for only 30 pesos.

5.  Heat

            I’m sure that by now if the reader has spoken with anyone on this trip, it has been mentioned that we have a pool at Cemenahuac (our school).  I do enjoy swimming, and many of the students like to lay out and tan.  The problem is that it is extremely hot out, yet the pool feels like arctic waters.  I’m not sure how the sun does not warm it up, but it is definitely not happening.  This leaves me with the option of laying out to tan, an activity that I enjoy because it’s very relaxing and social, but I think I may just be one of the most pale people on this trip.  I’m simply really bad at tanning.  My skin does not take to the sun, and when it does, the color leaves me in about two days.  However, we’re not allowed to wear shorts above our knees, flip-flops, or shirts that don’t cover basically all of our skin (t-shirts are a bit scandalous).  This means I always want to be in my swimsuit, leading me to “lay out” with everyone, but leave puzzled at the extreme whiteness of my legs.

Despite the how different Mexico is from everywhere else I’ve been, I really do enjoy this country.  The people are kind and welcoming, and the atmosphere is really positive.  We always manage to find something fun to do, and my host mama is incredibly generous and a great cook.  Although my studies tend to take up a lot of time, I am having an amazing time.  Hopefully my effort in my classes will help to improve my grade and my performance, and in the meantime, I’ll spend my time trying to get to know more of Mexico with the incredible new friends I have made.  I can’t believe we only have a week left here – I feel like I have so much left to do and so much left to see.  Halloween and the Day of the Dead are coming up rapidly, and I’m pumped to see the turnout of costumes and to take part in the Mexican festivities.  This trip has been one of the best times of my life, and I owe that to the new cultural experiences I have had and all of the amazing new people I have met.  I can’t believe that nine weeks ago, I didn’t even know the majority of the people on this trip.  They will forever be in my heart.

Lately, we have been working on something called the Mexico Challenge (the Cuernavaca Covenant), which is designed to give us incentive to immerge ourselves in Mexican culture as much as possible.  Today is the last day of the Covenant, and I think I’ve faired pretty well.  I have been much more disconnected with home because of the lack of Facebook, and I believe I’ve lost about 50 lbs. starving because I can’t eat anything that comes from the States.  We’ve been trying to figure out what the reward for this starvation and deprivation, eh, I mean wonderfully designed cultural immersion challenge is, and we have found out a few clues about the prize.  We know it’s an outing to somewhere about an hour away from Cuernavaca, rain won’t heavily affect the plans, and we will need to wear helmets.  I’m thinking spelunking?  Perhaps skydiving or para-sailing?  I don’t know, but I’m sure it will be fun and maybe intense, judging by the helmets comment.  Any guesses?

Today Group A went on our last excursion to Mexico City.  I believe that we visited the National Museum of Anthropology and a castle on a hill.  We saw a lot of similar artifacts to what we have seen so far, but they were a lot larger this time.  We got to explore the castle on our own, and after looking around a bit, Rachel and I decided to seek out some authentic Mexican food (accordingly to the Covenant) to stave the hunger pains.  We were walking around with our authentically un-pasteurized ice cream and heard someone on a microphone and lots of cheering.  Naturally I was drawn to this excitement, and as we drew closer, we saw a clown entertaining an audience in a plaza.  He seemed very goofy, and when he saw us he asked us where we were from and such.  I obliged to answer him and he made fun of basically everything that I said (all in good fun), inducing much laughter from myself, the audience, and a confused Rachel.  He told us to come forward, and we tried to neglect at first, but when the audience started cheering and with his highly sexual jokes, I just couldn’t resist.  He brought up some Mexican boys about our age and a couple of little kids and proceeded to declare a dance-off between the gringas and the Mexicans.  The younger Mexican boy went first and proceeded to strip off his shirt and moon the entire crowd.  I think I screamed in shock several times at the audacity of this young boy’s actions, and partially in fear that I was supposed to follow suit.  Sure enough, the next boy who went was one of the ones around our age, and he stripped off his shirt and threw it to me.  Oh boy; my shirt was definitely staying on.  Just as the horny clown decided that it was my turn to dance, a few more students from Group A showed up confused but with cameras in full force.  Wow.  The music came on and I tried to show off my best moves while making full effort to not double over in laughter at the craziness of the situation I had gotten into, and I believeI did receive a few cheers and a bit of applause.  However, the little girl who went next showed me up exponentially, and her provocative dance moves were more than a bit concerning to me.  I think she might have been about six years old, yet she knew how to move her hips like Shakira.  The clown decided that Ben needed to come forward as well since Rachel had chickened out on the dancing, and he had him do a Michael Jackson impression.  We had to leave to catch the bus, but that clown was priceless.  I can’t wait to see what else Mexico has in store for us, and hopefully Group B will be subjected to the same amusingly embarrassing jokes of the clown tomorrow.

TL

Posted on October 29th, 2009 by taralee-morgan
Filed under: Latin America, Taralee Morgan | No Comments »

Armed with tickets to the ballet, I loaded the bus for Mexico City yesterday morning. For the General Admission price, I was able to get four tickets in a private balcony near the stage. I had talked to some friends beforehand about going, but when I talked to them again yesterday, they said “maybe”. It’s getting to be the end of our term and as of today, we only have seven days before we’re back in the States. As the day went on and I heard more about all the papers they had due within the next few days, the “maybe” slowly changed into a “no”. With only a few hours left before the curtain call, I was buzzing around trying to find someone who wasn’t bogged down with papers for the night. No luck. I tried asking my host family as soon as I got home, but they were already busy. A little discouraged, I made my way to the theater 15 minutes before the event was scheduled to begin and still had no idea what to do with the extra tickets.  I arrived with only a couple of minutes to spare and was looking around for someone to share my tickets with, but most people had already been seated.  Right at 8, just as the performance was starting, three women walked in and started talking to each other right outside of the taquilla. I seized my opportunity and asked them if they had already purchased tickets. It was the start of a night I’ll never forget.

I told them about how I had three extra tickets and if they would like them, I wouldn’t charge them anything… it would just be a shame to waste them. They reluctantly agreed at first, but when we sat down I could tell they were excited (and so was I!). During the intermission, we introduced ourselves and I told them that I was from Chicago and studying at one of the schools in town through my university. They were all teachers at secondary schools (high school) in town. Gabi taught Spanish, Olga taught History and Sara taught English. They asked me again about the tickets and I explained how my friends were interested, but because we only had a few days left in Mexico, our classes kept us very busy.  I am lucky enough to only be taking a History class while I’m here, so I only have one paper to write (as opposed to most people’s three or four) (ps, I’m almost done collecting research for my paper!). Before the lights dimmed to start the second half of the performance, they invited me to coffee.

After the ballet, I walked with the girls to a restaurant with loud music and people dancing in the street outside. Viva Salsa! We wove our way through the crowd and found a table. I started talking with them about different things such as what I do in school, what I’m doing here in Mexico and what I think of it so far. We talked a bit about the ballet (they knew one of the dancers!) and while Olga was off dancing, I talked with Sara about what she does as an English teacher.

Sara told me that she thought it was wonderful that I was putting myself out there and speaking Spanish and how she wished more people would try to understand a language other than their own. She said she thought it was terrible that the secondary schools only dedicated 3 hours a week to English classes and she wished that they would put a stronger emphasis on second languages. When I asked her about all of the bilingual schools I had seen in town, she clarified that those were private schools. The public schools were much less thorough. I explained how we had a similar situation in the US with public high schools (depending of course, on where you live). From what I can understand about the public school system, most foreign language practice starts in high school. As was the case at my small town school, only two languages were offered and we only had that class three days a week (albeit, for about an hour and twenty minutes). I personally have had a different experience with Spanish.

My mother’s side of the family is Puerto Rican and I always tell people that I heard it growing up, but I’ve never been able to speak it very well. I basically understood the commands (sit down, be quiet, listen, etc.) and not much beyond that. I’ve also moved several times and have attended at least three private schools that tried teaching us Spanish. The only problem with that is even though I started early (about second grade), every time I changed schools, the classes would start with the most basic knowledge and I never advanced far enough to truly understand the language beyond basic greetings and lower level vocab . This happened again when I attended public high school, so in essence, my knowledge and practice of the Spanish language (the slightly more advanced understanding of it anyway), came from what I learned in high school. Going into college, I realized I knew way less than I thought I did. You would think that someone with as much experience with Spanish as I did would test into a higher level, but here’s my confession of the day: I only tested into 103.

I took 200 level Spanish my freshman year because I knew I could handle it, but how had my previous schooling prepared me? It didn’t, at least, not really. There was never a big emphasis placed on foreign languages in my schooling and it wasn’t until I arrived in Ecuador that I truly felt the full force of that discrepancy. Some of you might remember my frustrated post a while back about my inability to communicate with my host family in Ecuador? Well I would like to proudly state that any previous mention of dialog in this post was a very close translation of my actual conversations IN SPANISH! (Yay!!). I completely owned the Spanish language last night. I used the Past Perfect Subjunctive (correctly) without a second thought and I had to pause in the middle of my speech to comprehend where it had come from and why it came so easily. Not only that, but I was able to completely understand their conversations (even over the loud music) and I could joke around with them. Liz finally came through.

Posted on October 28th, 2009 by elizabeth-hinds
Filed under: Elizabeth Hinds, Latin America | 1 Comment »

Yesterday morning, at 2am, the time in Mexico fell back an hour.  At 1am, 2am, 2am, 3:30am and on until about 6am, I was waking up and checking the time because I was paranoid that “maybe the time didn’t change today”.  My phone and laptop never switched (even when I power cycled my phone) which cause some great alarm on my part because yesterday we went on a trip to Mexico City. At what I thought was 7:45 am, I started running searches on my computer to see what time it really was. Time.gov said it was 7:45 am. I woke my roommate up and we got ready, but I was confused at how so many people could have been wrong about the time change. I Googled Daylight Savings Time and found a website that told me the US reverts to Standard Time on the first Sunday of November. “Great” I thought “it’s a week away…” I ran out the door to see my host dad typing away on the computer. Staring at the screen, I asked him, “Que hora tiene usted?” He looked a little confused so I tried clarifying “que hora es?” He tried answering a different question about the spreadsheet he was working on so I kept trying. Eventually, he understood and said “Oh! You’re talking about the time change!” It was my turn to looked confused… I just looked it up and I could have sworn that it was a week from today… then it hit me “Is the time change different in Mexico compared to the United States?”  He smiled and answered “Yes! It changed today” Turns out, I was only checking US sources. I now had an extra hour before I had to do anything so I changed my location to Mexico City on my laptop and phone (sure enough, hour behind).

That was only the start of my morning. We went to Mexico City yesterday for a city tour. When we arrived, the bus couldn’t make it to the Zocalo because there were demonstrators in support of the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) flooding the streets. About five blocks away from the center, we hopped out of the bus and our tour began. Our first stop was the ruins of Iztapalapa, which, despite it’s age and the fact that it had been mostly covered up by the city for hundreds of years, was in pretty good shape. The Aztecs were the first to realize that their city was sinking and had an interesting solution to their potentially devastating problem. Just rebuild….over what’s already there. The paved streets that remained were sloped like rolling hills and the buildings reminded me of a sinking sandcastle; but what was really cool to see was the layers of building and road that the Aztecs had built. There was a small chunk of road missing and our tour guide, Charlie, pointed out that you could see the progress of the nation and how it grew into a super empire, just from those streets. The original street used small slates of rock to pave the way, but as the empire grew and conquered other nations, its resources grew as big as the stones they were eventually using to pave over the old roads. It was really cool to see how thick the walls of the buildings were from adding so many layers of the same thing. Layers of steps, layers of angles… all to straighten it out again. Funny thing is, much like the leaning tower of Piza, the heavier it gets, the faster it sinks. In the little over 100 years during the rule of the Aztecs, the temple was redone no less than 11 times. Can you imagine?

On the other half of our city tour, we explored an art museum in which Deigo Rivera and other artists murals were displayed, The Government Palace (Diego really got around) and the Cathedral. At the Government Palace, we really dove into Rivera’s murals and explored the different figures tucked away where you wouldn’t notice them right away and saw a version of one of his famous murals, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, in which several of the figures were replaced with skeletons (for the upcoming Day of the Dead!). Yesterday, I feel like we walked around in circles, but it was all well worth it and I definitely slept much better last night.

Today I have class, but I might visit the market in the afternoon. Till tomorrow!

Posted on October 26th, 2009 by elizabeth-hinds
Filed under: Elizabeth Hinds, Latin America | No Comments »

So I realize it has been literally forever since my last blog and I have a ton of stories and experiences.  What I’m going to do is to write several smaller blog entries on the different experiences instead of just writing one giant blog.  I think this way I can get into more detail about the experiences themselves and everyone else will enjoy reading them more. 

On October 6, I woke up at 3:30 in the morning to begin the trek to the one place on this trip I have been waiting to go to more than anywhere else, Machu Picchu.  Everybody lazily woke up and dragged themselves to breakfast to get some energy for the hour long hike that lay ahead of us that morning.  As we prepared to hike up a mountain at an altitude of 2,400 meters, a rush of energy came into me as I realized that the day I had been so excited for had finally arrived. 

We started our hike at about 4 a.m. and it was one of the most exhausting things that I have ever done.  We hiked up a stairway that was built into the side of the mountain, and many of us took several breaks along the way to catch our breaths that seemed to never come back at that altitude.  When I finally arrived at the entrance to the city, I found myself not at a beautiful gateway, but at the end of a very, very long line to get in.  I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed that there were 200 some people in front of me who took buses up, but this did not take away from my excitement to get in and see Machu Picchu as the sun rose.

We waited for about a half an hour, and were finally let in when the gates opened at 6, and it was everything that I had hoped it would be.  The sunrise over the mountain hitting the city was absolutely beautiful, and I was struck by a true sense of awe at what I was finally able to see.  I thought that this was going to be my greatest sense of accomplishment of the trip, but there was even better things to come.  For about 2 hours, we toured the city, seeing all of the buildings and houses that were a part of it.  The one thing that I was disappointed to find out was that a large portion of the city was actually rebuilt recently and that the original city was not still in the state that it was originally found.  Even though this took a little away from my sense of awe of the great construction of the Incas, it was still an absolutely unbelievable feeling to be walking around this incredible city.

After the city tour was given, we walked around for 15 minutes until 9, when we had the opportunity to climb Huayna Picchu, a large mountain peak that overlooks the city of Macchu Picchu (it is the mountain peak often seen in the background of pictures of the city).  It was another 45 minute hike straight up to get to the top of the mountain, but after hiking up to the city itself, it took us over an hour.  When we got to the top, I was exhausted and pretty nervous about being that high up and walking on such narrow walkways, but when I looked at the city, I had my second great awe inspiring moment of the day.  Being able to look out over the valley and see the city on top of a mountain with roads and buildings thousands of feet below was the experience of a lifetime.  It was like looking down from an airplane, but with the satisfaction of knowing you got there yourself and it was absolutely incredible.  My biggest hope is that I will be able to return there someday (possibly as one of the 70 year old tourists with funny hats and vests that were everywhere) and experience that sense of awe and accomplishment again. 

I know that this is going to sound like a cliché, but that day was a life changing experience.  Standing on the top of Huayna Picchu and looking out on the world gave me a rush and a craving to go out and truly experience life and search out those experiences.  I know just coming to Latin America in general it seems like I’m searching out experiences, but seeing that truly opened my eyes to the world and makes me want to see more and truly experience life.  We are not here long enough to let things wait for tomorrow, and I now believe that letting amazing opportunities slip through your fingers is something I don’t want to let happen.  I’m not saying that there would definitely be regret for missing them, but what we can feel and learn from these experiences is knowledge that too many people take for granted.

Posted on October 25th, 2009 by gregory-maggio
Filed under: Gregory Maggio, Latin America | 2 Comments »

I think the best way to update these is the day after everything happens.

So Day One went pretty well.  I kind of failed at going to a Cultural site for an hour because I ended up waiting for my laundry for two and a half hours (I needed clean pants!). I did, however, visit Taxco and learn about the differences in the types of silver. There is alpaca, which is a cheaper replication, Silver plated (also cheaper, but not guaranteed to last) and then there’s .925 silver and above. This is Sterling Silver grade and the .925 stamp guarantees that it is at least 92.5% silver (the legal minimum). I wanted to buy out the stores, but I limited myself to a couple pairs of earrings, which I refused to buy until I purchased my gifts for other people first.

We got back to Cuernavaca at around 8pm and I thought I was done for the day… far from it! When I got back home, Mami asked us if we wanted to eat dinner. I had only had a torta for lunch several hours before, so I said yes thinking we would get quesadillas (our usual dinner this late at night).  We talked with our host-nietos (the grandkids of our host parents) and said hello to their new pet baby python (sweet!). A little while after, Mami comes out with tostadas for all of us. Tostadas are basically crunchy taco shells covered in refried beans, chicken, cheese and lettuce. They were delicious.

While we were eating, we talked some more with the grandchildren  while they colored pictures for Day of the Dead. They showed us a picture of La Catrina and taught us some Spanish trabalenguas (tounge twisters) which we completely messed up and tried to teach them some English tounge twisters (which we also messed up). I don’t remember all of the Spanish ones,(something about a triste tigre?) but Natalie wrote a few of them down.

Tonight I’m going to an orchestral concert at one of the theaters downtown! Tell you all about it tomorrow

Posted on October 24th, 2009 by elizabeth-hinds
Filed under: Elizabeth Hinds, Latin America | No Comments »