District Conference

I stayed home from school on Thursday, slept in, packt, and left in an ADO bus for Tuxtepec. This weekend was the rescheduled date of the Rotary District Conference, which was supposed to take place the first weekend of May, but was canceled due to hype about swine flu. They played Christmas with the Kranks on the way there. We arrived around 6 in the evening, and my host dad for the weekend came to pick me up. He was a short, younger man with braces, a lawyer. He lives with his mother and operates his law practice out of his house; in the waiting room, he has four framed reproductions of parts of the roof of the Sistine Chapel.

That night, I spent a few hours in my room, reading Borges' Ficciones in Spanish and writing down some varied thoughts, which turned out to be some rather interesting ones comparatively. Around 10, my host dad finally got back from some ambiguous errand, and we went out to dinner at a nice restaurant called La Casona. I got some delicious gooey green lasagna. There was some rather tacky but talented live music.

The next morning we didn't begin until 11, so I had a relaxed morning eating a delicious fruit feast and reading Borges. There was one overripe mango that kind of disgusted me, though. We went in taxi (the family has no car) to the Casa de Cultura, where the conference was held. The morning was full of opening ceremony bullshit, the presentation of the flag (with the requisite mediocre military band and group of girls who march liked fascists), etc. We were given free time to look at artesan booths; I made for the library, which is also a part of the Casa de Cultura.

Libraries in Mexico in my experience feel old, but not very old; they are from the 50s or so, I imagine, all skeletal metal shelves and carts. They also have a better selection than Cass City's library, perhaps. I feel like there was a small, highly cultured group of people at some point in or perhaps throughout the history of Mexico, who had very ambitious ideas about education, art, and things like libraries, and used their political influence to try to get these things installed in society as a whole. I feel like they failed entirely, but that there are numerous relics of their ambition evident in school textbooks, libraries, and in the sort of "enlightened" attitude in which some people here understand the world.

We were reunited after a long while to take a group picture. They made us wear the blazers, in the hot noonday sun. The Hottest? We were then bussed to a big hall at a hotel for lunch. I got a lackluster plate of steamed vegetables. After food, the adults left for Bigger and Better Business, and we stayed to learn a rather simple dance (swaying, and later walking in a line, and later holding hands and moving in and out) to Mexico en la Piel (the Mexican version of "American the Beauty," except that it is actually good). I stubbed my toe on a Thai girl's shoe and broke off the right half of my big toenail. It didn't actually break off, however, and every once in a while it would catch on something and that Great Pain. I have by now excised that nail bit entirely.

From there, we were bussed to a park and left there essentially alone for about an hour. At that point the adults arrived and planted a tree and took a lot of pictures of it and shook each others' hands a lot. They didn't involve us in this. We were then walked around the park to the stage, where we saw some speeches and the traditional Oaxacan "Flor de Piña" dance. They then bussed us back to the hotel to dine and have a sort of "kitschy middle-class adult" talent night. Imagine something white people would like. We did our dance, and then there was a surprise dance that Yana sang a song and we all ended up in the dance area pretending to dance salsa. That was pretty cool I suppose.

Saturday, the morning's fruit feast was an improvement on the previous day's, and I read more Borges. I think that the adult Rotarians didn't want to wake up early either; exchange students are of course notoriously lazy and slow and late-to-rise, but no one ever seems to adjust for that. In spite of Tuxtepec's too hot, those were very nice mornings. The morning was more conference bullshit, but the speakers were more interesting, inspirational people with good messages (seize the day, your attitude determines your happiness, help other people, give money kill polio, etc).

We headed to buses again to go to the Lienso Charro, which is where rodeo-esque events called Charreria are performed. An extremely busy young waiter served our table. When we finished eating, we went to see the event. My current host family lives in the same building as my host mom's brother, who works as a horse therapist. His daughter is a member of a Escaramuza team here, and I had went with them the previous weekend to Veracruz but the event got rained out. Thus, I already knew some of the team, but had never seen the event performed. Note that the wikipedia article claims the first 9 events are for men only, but I believe this isn't true; I think the women do all of the men's events as well as the escaramuza. They also ride side-saddle, which is really weird, isn't it? What is the logic behind that, anyway?


We were released to go spend the afternoon resting with our host families at that point. My host dad was at a VIPS eating with some friends, so I was taken there. They talked to me a bit about Rotary politics (apparently the current district governor, Carlos Vera Vidal, is irresponsibly mixing Rotary and politics and religion; he is a Priista and there were several almost explicitly Catholic events listed in the program, though I didn't end up seeing any of them). Then we went and took a walk downtown, and went to the market. He bought me some natural Oaxacan chocolate (for making hot chocolate) and a little wooden rabbit. I also bought some secret gifts for unknown people. We went home and rested for a few hours, and then went to a formal dinner dance in the same hotel hall.

We were served food on mirrors, which effectively doubled the quantities of everything. I ended up with some lackluster cooked vegetables. There was some business about choosing district queens. There were three of them: a district queen, chosen among the queens of each club; a Rotaract queen, and an exchange student queen. All were chosen by chance. Our queen was Beth, an Australian girl. Dinner came after the coronation ceremony, and there was this great group, a keyboard, violin, and accordion trio, who played some classic Eastern European music. I talked briefly with this great violinist afterwards, and headed him in the direction of A Hawk and a Hacksaw. He gave me his email address. The most productive exchange of the weekend, certainly.


A dance followed, and I, for some reason, I guess was tired of something or other, or expected we would be waiting less, went outside with some other kids and just sorta waited for the next three hours or so until we went home. I enjoy the fact that that sort of thing should never happen to me again now, now that I am free.

Sunday, we had closing ceremonies, all in the auditorium, and rather brief. The power kept going out. There was a parade of exchange students, which was kind of lackluster too. Amanda, our president exchange student (a joke) from Brazil, spoke a speech she had written and showed a sappy powerpoint, and some people started crying. I didn't really feel anything. Am hartless basterd?

We waited around for a while there, said goodbyes, and then I went home. I used the internest for a while, watched this cool new Hawk and a Hacksaw video, and slept a bit. Then the bus rides home; they played Life is Beautiful, which of course ranks among the best sad, powerful, beautiful movies, and also fumny, and then Perfect Stranger, plus an episode of "American Chopper." The Moon while we were leaving Tuxtepec was gorgeous, glowing an effusively golden orange. Is it possible to take pictures of the Moon with a digital camera and 4x optical zoom? How?

A Little Opera Recital

We didn't have school on Friday. Perhaps no one had school on Friday? It was Teachers' Day.

In the evening, I went with my new (now 3rd, if you have lost track) host family, whom I had just moved in with the night before to an opera recital in the SIMAC (an engineers' club). The concert was given by a 19 year old girl (I believe) who had graduated from the school I am attending now, and is studying opera in the state capital of Jalapa. I don't really know anything about opera or singing, but to my ears, she seemed very good. She sang a few songs I didn't know by composers like Gounod and Puccini, and Gershwin's Summertime. There was just one of her (with her accompanist, of course), so the recital was short. Afterwards, everyone started talking and eating baked goods. I met a bunch of friends from school and we went outside to play on the playground.

When my family was getting ready to leave, Javier decided we were going to go out for coffee. I went got permission, and we piled too many people into Javier's car: Javier and Carla Alejandra in front, and me, Jonathan, Jonathan's brother, Laserre, and I in the back. We went to Italian Coffee, which is the standard meeting place for people our age to do things like this. They are a big chain and there are franchises all over the place. It's probably no good to support them, but it's a thing exchange students do here. Not that that means I do it, to be clear.

We went home around 11:30 PM.

San Pedro Soteapan

Yesterday (May 3) we went to spend the day at a waterfall near San Pedro Soteapan. We were me and my host parents, Claire and her host family (her host mother is also our Counselor) and another family who had previously hosted Marlene, the Ahumada family.

The big waterfall sits at the head of a steep valley, such that one must descend a lengthy set of steep stairs to get to the valley floor. There are a number of small palapas (little thatched umbrellas, essentially, with benches and a small table of unfinished boards) on both sides of the river, and we got one for ourselves. After spending a few hours talking and eating the mountain of food we had carried down, Claire and Karina and I decided to go explore and swim.





Paty, my host mother, Doctor Guicho, Claire's host father, and Doctor Erasto, my host father drink some beers.Claire and Paty stand under a waterfall.

Paty, Paula (my Counselor), me, Karina, and Claire, after climbing halfway up a waterfall.


One of 5 stepped pools made to catch falling water; this is the one we went swimming in first. The water is ice cold, and the waterfall that fills the pool creates a natural massaging effect. From here we went to the main waterfall pool and swam across to the rocks beneath the outcropping visible in the photos above. The land there is composed of giant rocks that have fallen from the roof of the outcropping. From underneath that outcropping, the rim around the valley is extremely grandiose and impressive.
After swimming, we went back to the palapa for a while, then Claire and I went around taking pictures and climbing on rocks and such. Finally, Karina came looking for us and we set out to climb all the way back up to the parking area. The men (area natives who help tourists for money) in the parking lot, incidentally, were speaking Sierra Popoluca.

Claire has changed her ticket and will be going home on Thursday. I will be changing houses again sometime this week, and Claire and I are both supposedly going to give our presentations this week as well.

House-Family

I should expand this post later.

El Tajin and Tuxpan

This past weekend (24-26 of April), we had an obligatory meeting for all the exchange students in the district in Tuxpan, Veracruz. Tuxpan is some 11 hours from Mina, so we left at 4 AM and didn't arrive until 2 PM the next day. We (the exchange students from Mina and Coatza) were the first to arrive, and so we got some extra time in the pool before the others arrived. That was all we did that first afternoon, sit around the pool at a hotel, eating and talking. Around 8 that night, we were given shirts and sent out with our host families for the weekend.

The four of us were assigned to stay with some Rotarians from Tuxpan, who have sent both of their children on exchange to Brazil. The younger, a girl, is still there now. I am on the left, Oliver (Wu Pin-Han) from Taiwan, Denis from Belgium, and Lukas from Brazil is on the right.
The first night, we went out for dinner to a meat roastery, where they gave me a big salad covered in hot melted cheese, and plenty of (Queso Fundido? - cheese, melted or something) with guacamole and tortillas. They also had delicious deserts.






Saturday we were bussed out to the ruins at El Tajin. They are Totonaco ruins. Tajin is the god of rain and thunder, equivalent to the Mayan Chaac or Nahuatl Tlaloc. Instead of writing down what the excellent guide told us (most of which is in the wikipedia article) I am going to talk about the romantic ideas I get from these places. I suppose the whole "European explorer stumbling into a vast, overgrown ancient city" thing is fairly stereotypical, but it is still striking. I also wonder how a city like this is abandoned, and after that, how it is percieved by the descendents of its inhabitants and the inhabitants of other Totonaco cities that survived it for hundreds of years. I can't think of any contemporary example that compares. It seems rather post-apocalyptic.









After a short tour of the ruins (these sort of events are always hurried and brief, because exchange students are typically somewhat apathetic to them, and always move slowly and tire quickly), we went outside the site proper into the impromptu trinket market outside. There is a small amphitheatre with a huge pole, use for the Voladores de Papantla ceremony. Incidentally, the marketpeople all sold vanilla and coffee, which are grown there. I had tried to get the whole dance on video, but apparently didn't actually press the shoot button. So you can find something on youtube, I'm sure. It is very impressive, as the pole is extremely high and sort of sways a bit with all their moving around. One of the dancers actually dancers and plays his little flute/drum while standing on top of the pole (imagine doing this on top of a telephone pole, but with a much taller pole).

We were returned to our host families then, and stayed with them a few hours to rest and bathe, and then were delivered to a disco on the river in downtown Tuxpan. Stupid discos. It seems like practically all the exchange students smoke now (though probably only 75% do) and the music is bad and too loud to carry on a conversation. I sat with the son of a Tuxpan Rotarian and shouted the whole night about politics and videogames.



The next morning we were brought to a Naval Base, the center of communications for the Mexican Navy in the Gulf. They showed us some propaganda videos and gave us tours of some rather unimpressive frigates. They also gave us some pastries and agua de jamaica at the end though, so it was cool.

After that, we walked to a hotel and ate and talked until it was time for our buses to leave. We were also sent on a completely boring and non-plussing boat tour while we waited for our food. The food was delicious, though; green chili peppers (not spicy ones), onions, and corn cooked in some sort of white sauce, to be eaten in tortillas.

Winston from Taiwan.

They handed out white surgical masks for us to wear on the bus ride home, to protect us from the swine influenza. I guess I don't need to explain that because it is a big deal in the news? They have canceled the Ruta Colonial, the second of the two big trips we take, and no permissions will be given to travel at all. School is canceled until May 6, too. Probably more. I have little to do.

Scuba Diving in Veracruz

Easter weekend, we went to Veracruz to to stay with my older host brother, Erastito, who is going to college there. We didn't really do anything at all the whole weekend, except that on Saturday, I went scuba diving. I went with a company called Veracruz Adventures. We left around 9:30 AM, after waiting for all the people who got there late (practically everyone). There were about 14 of us; two instructors, two lithe young boys who took care of the equipment on the boat, and all the customers. We drove out into the Caribbean for maybe twenty minutes and arrived at a buoy where a boat from another company was anchored (or whatever they do to stay in place; I think they just attach to a line there that is attached to a sort of permanent anchor on the bottom, but I am not sure).

By this time me and an older woman who reminded me of my mom were rather seasick, and they told me to jump into the water right away, and then the two boys handed me down all my equipment in the water. I am an idiot and got hit in the leg with my air tank, and had to work that out for a little while. It is a good thing our training included putting on and taking off equipment in the water, because that is what I had to do for this first dive.

Backing up a little bit, I went to a beginning Scuba diving course this summer to take advantage of any opportunities I might have to go diving in the Gulf. It turned out I had to make those opportunities myself, but that is for the best. There is also some question that this is against Rotary rules, but no one said anything about it before I went, and so I guess if it is and you are a Rotarian, yell at me? I hope to do it again, anyway.

After everyone finally got suited up and in the water, we partnered off. I ended up with one of the instructors, mostly since all the other people came in pairs; either married couples or father-son. We got lost from the group on the first dive, as visibility was quite poor and we hadn't followed the line down with the rest, and had to come back up and ask for directions from the deck boys (I assume there is some other, much more appropriate term for them?). We did finally arrive, at an incredibly impressive coral-covered sunken ship, rife with big tropical fishes. I am no-good writer at this point, and these experiences are really difficult to communicate, and I apologize for that.

We had to come up soon after arriving, because my air ran out frighteningly quickly. Incidentally, we were 80 ft underwater, which means the air is used up faster. This is because the pressure is higher at that depth, and more air has to come out to fill the same volume. My certification only allows me to go to 60 ft, so don't tell my instructor, please. :)

After coming up, I stayed in the water as long as I could to avoid getting seasick again, but finally I did get into the boat. I took a drink of cold water, and then immediately and quite unexpectedly threw up off the side of the boat. No one seemed to pay much heed. The other woman who had gotten seasick had also already thrown up, and from that point we both felt much better.

We continued out into the Caribbean, towards a big black object visible on the horizon. It was really unclear what it was, even when we got close to it. Apparently, a ship had sunk out there, or just broken down, and I guess the land must be high there, such that now, the upper parts of the ship are visible above the water. It is rather impressive. I was afraid to lose or damage my camera, so I didn't bring it, but I would have taken pictures. It was a cargo ship, one of those that has a giant metal rectangle visible above the deck, and that is what you could see above the horizon.

That wasn't why were there, however. For this second dive, for some reason I never figured out, we divided into two groups, and I decided that I would wait for the second group, as I was tired. I am sometimes a very foolish and oblivious person, so I got cold in the shade and laid down for a nap in the sun. I didn't think anything of this at the time, but my wetsuit was shorter than I had expected and didn't cover my legs (I had put on sunscreen on my face and arms, but I had expected the wetsuit to cover my legs). They are still red now, after a week, and stung horribly for the next few days. Certainly the worst sunburn I have had in my life. Everyone else had proper length wetsuits, and it was cold enough in the water to warrant them, especially at depth, though I was down there I didnt notice it as much as when I was hanging on the line waiting to dive. I am getting ahead of myself, though.

The first group came back, and by this time I felt much better, well-rested and no longer nauseous. I got my equipment on in the boat and did the entry where you fall backwards into the water, from a position seated on the edge of the boat. I actually don't remember practicing this ever, though maybe we did? Nor do I remember what it is called.

After I was suited up and in the water, I waited as the rest of the group got ready, hanging on the line on which we were to guide ourselves down to the reef. The water was rather chilly at this point, especially without sleeves on my wetsuit. We did finally go down, and with the activity and the distracting beauty of the reef, the feeling went away. I went around following the owner and main guide, along with my partner. The owner was filming with an underwater video camera, and knew to find the most interesting things. We saw all sorts of typical tropical fish, the little blue glowy kind, angel fish, that sort of thing, as well as a fish that camouflaged itself with the sand on the bottom and three gigantic moray eels, hiding down in there holes and snapping at us languidly. I mention these things to give some idea of the cool things we see, but the really impressive thing was the reef itself as a whole. It is excessively exquisite, and I cannot given even the slightest sense of it at all. The beauty, diversity, and seeming creativity of the natural world can't be expressed anywhere as clearly and higly concentrated as they are in a coral reef.

My air also ran out quite quickly this time, though I was down a bit longer than before. I was completely loath to go up, and my partner surfaced with me but sent me swimming back to the ship and went down. The ship was by now rather far away, as we had of course been swimming away from it, and so I was stuck with what is easily the worst part of scuba diving (except perhaps seasickness?): a surface swim. I don't really know why, but swimming at the surface seems infinitely more tiring than doing the same distance at the bottom.

If this entry is noticeably more thorough (tedious) than the previous ones, it is only because the event is more recent and I remember more of it.

Incidentally, I slept more in school today than I ever have in my life, or even thought was possible: 6 straight hours. I was awake for only 40 minutes the whole day.

Catemaco

The 29th of April the Capitan Pablo Rios drove me and my host family to Catemaco for a Rotary convention. Memo and I did not enter the convention itself; instead, we went to eat, he took a nap in the car while I read Frankenstein, and then we took a boat tour of the lagoon there, which is a tourist destination for the area.

The day was exceedingly gloomy and dreary, a mood perhaps heightened by reading Frankenstein (which takes place partly in the north of Scotland, also apparently a very dreary place, and is a very good book, incidentally).


The major sight to see in the lagoon is the Isla de Monos, or Island of Monkeys. Everyone threw peanuts at them and they came down to us. Some of them even got into the boat.

This is another island, a bird perch. There are hundreds of birds there, shitting and raising children. The smaller black birds are extremely common here, even more so than pigeons, and seem to be some sort of raven. The larger black and white birds are herons, as are the even larger bluish grey birds.