Some catching up

Hi everyone. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here; I apologize. It’s hard to find time in the city to write something and then take the time to post it.
Anyways, things here in Mexico are still going well. We’re working on preparing some of our students to take a test sometime the second week of November. The way the program works that we teach with is that a student will get different ‘modulos’, or sort of sections, that come with their own books, and then to pass off that ‘modulo’, they have to finish the work in the book and take a test on it. So, a few of our students are going to be ready, so we’re working on making sure they are. There aren’t going to be any BYU students here come winter semester, which means there won’t be any one here until May to continue teaching our students.

It’s really exciting getting to know the Mexican culture here. On my mission, I never really got the chance to be as involved in the culture as I am here. Here are a few pictures from the past few weeks to show what I’ve been up to:

One day I went to visit Rosendo and Josefina, a couple I met my first day in the ranchos, and Josefina was making cheese. She gets the milk from her daughter, Ana, whose family has goats, then Josefina makes the cheese for her and Ana goes to sell it in the city (Irapuato). I thought it was really fun to watch Josefina form the cheese into these sort of disk-like shapes, then place them on this suspended board to dry a little. The disk hanging on the top of the rope is to keep the rats from getting at the cheese.

Here is Emily painting. (Hopefully she doesn’t mind me putting her picture here. She takes plenty of pictures of me and puts them on her blog, so I figure I’m safe.) A couple weeks ago, Emily and I went to paint the ceiling on Nacha’s new house. Nacha is one of our students that we teach. It was kind of difficult to paint since it the ceiling is made of cement (like the rest of the house) and it was kind of just thrown on like stucco. But it was fun to help anyways.

This is Daniel working on his new house. Daniel is Martin and Martina’s son-in-law. (I’m staying in Martin and Martina’s house. Daniel lives there, too.) I’ve helped Daniel a little bit when he’s been working on their house. Mostly, I just pass him tools he needs or mix cement for him. There are these little houses going up all over the villages. They are from the government, from a program called DIF (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, or Integral Development of the Family, in English). The DIF gives all the materials for free to people who have houses made out of rocks and who signed up, then the people have to put forth the labor, which could be by themselves or if they have enough money they can hire someone to build it. All the houses have to be made with the same floor plan, so they all look the same. The DIF also gives paint with the other materials, but so far everyone I’ve seen has gotten the same colors (pink and crème), and they are required at least to put the pink on the front of the house. I think it’s in about two weeks that the DIF is coming to inaugurate all the houses, so then I’ll have some pictures of how some of the houses look.

The other day, while Emily and I were teaching Ramona, her grandson (I can’t remember his name) was kind of bothering Ramona and not letting her study. So I went and picked up some kid’s history book that was lying there and was showing the pictures to this little boy so Emily could teach and Ramona could learn. Somehow, without me knowing it at all, Emily took two pictures of me while she was teaching. She’s really good at sneaking pictures without people noticing. Anyways, this little boy is like two, maybe. It was a lot of fun; I’d point to things in the pictures and tell him what they were called, then when we came across them in other pictures, I’d ask him where that object was and he’d point to it. Or I’d point to the object and ask him what it was and he would remember the name and tell me. It was amazing. (The girl in the picture is another granddaughter that showed up just when Emily took the picture.)

This is the first scorpion I found in my room. This was actually like a month ago or more. The scorpions here are really small, and from what we’ve been told their sting doesn’t do much, it just hurts for a little bit, but then goes away. This picture is right before I killed it.

This is just to show those of you who know me well how much Mexico has changed me: yes, I’m wearing flip-flops and jeans. Crazy! I actually don’t wear flip-flops too much, but jeans are definitely a daily part of the ensemble.