the dream

This is an amazing ´62 Beetle, in amazing condition, that I found at a used car dealership in Irapuato. The car is amazing. The radio is original, and they told me the motor is as well. It was great to sit in the car and dream about driving it down the streets of Provo. The people at the dealership were going to give it to me for 7500 dollars. But the tires are shot, so I´m not sure if it´s worth it. Anyways, it was a nice dream.

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.

dia de independencia

i know this entry is late, but last saturday night, the 15th, the four of us went to the Mexican independence day festivities downtown with the young single adults from our stake from the Church. it was a lot of fun, and way exciting. it was packed. there were tons of food vendors and people selling noise maker toys that were colored with the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white, and green, and there were also people selling some spray foam in cans. after a while, everyone gathered in the plaza near ´la presidencia´, which is the capital building, where supposedly at midnight the president of Irapuato was supposed to come out and do the ´grito´. the grito consisted of him yelling ¡viva miguel hidalgo! and then everyone else yelling ¡viva!, and then him yelling the same for some other person in Mexican history and the crowd doing the same. then at the end, he yells ¡viva Mexico! and everyone yells ¡viva!. it was hard to hear the president at all, so we just kept yelling ¡viva! with everyone else. it was a lot of fun.

so while we´re all waiting in this crowd for like two hours for the grito, people would start shooting off this canned foam, and once one person started, everyone in the crowd started, and so we all got foamed, then it would dry off pretty quick. it was like snow covering everyone.

the four of us gringos left right after the grito, and as we were making our way through the crowd we came to a big opening right in front of the church on the other side of the plaza. we thought it was strange that no one was standing there. then, before we knew it, fireworks and firecrackers exploded off the front of the church. there were no barriers or anything, someone people just knew not to stand there, everyone except for the four gringos there. there were huge fireworks shooting out of the top of the bell tower of this church and exploding right over us. it was crazy, but way exciting. finally, we gave up watching them and went back to the hotel.

here are some pictures from the festivities:

first, the four gringos: from left to right, emily, angela, matt, brandon. we were trying to show off our faces that are painted with colors of the Mexican flag. second is angela and matt after being foamed, then brandon and emily after being foamed. the last one is just a picture of the crowd and all the flags and things people had. good times.

some pics...finally

hey everyone,

well, i´ve made it through my first full week at the ranchos. everything´s going well still. we started teaching our students this week, though a lot of them weren´t there when we showed up. it´s understandable, since they have other things they have to do, you know?

the internet at the hotel hasn´t been working for the past week, so i´m not going to write a lot right now here at the internet cafe. but i wanted to post a few pictures of rancho life.

this first one is how i had to get in my room all last week: through the window. it´s a long story, but it ends up the key got lost to the door, emily had one made, but it only fit the inside, so we had to climb in the window to get in the room. thankfully one of the window´s doesn´t have glass in it.

the next few pictures are of my room. my bed sinks in the middle like a bowl. the first night brandon and i were both sleeping in the bed, and we ended up pretty much on top of each other. since then he´s at another house in another rancho. i ended up taking off one of the mattresses so that it´s not so curved.

later, there´s a picture of my room from the outside. it´s just that door in the middle and the window to the left of it.

next is a picture of nopales, which are cactus. we eat them fairly often (the green part). they cut off the needles, cut up the nopal, and cook them. also, the red parts on top are called tunas. they´re a fruit that you eat also. you cut of the outside, like you peel them, then eat the inside. there´s lots of seeds, though, which is kind of annoying.

lastly, there´s a picture of El Encino, one of the ranchos, from up on a hill called La Santa Cruz (there´s a cross on the top of the hill). it´s really pretty out here. the stars are amazing. last night it was a clear night of stars, then on the horizon almost all around there was lighting. it was pretty cool.

bienvenido a mexico

Well, I got to Mexico on Saturday. My trip was good, except for waiting for the girl from our program that I was supposed to meet in the airport in Mexico City, who I ended up waiting for for two hours, then finally found out that she had the flu and had changed her flight to Monday. Then two hours later I was able to get to the bus station to take the four hour bus ride to Irapuato. I ended up getting in a little after 1:00 in the morning. Thankfully, Angela, the girl I was supposed to meet, came in yesterday without any problems.
Now all four of us are here. We're having a great time together, laughing a lot and enjoying being here. Today we're finally going out to the villages for the first time to meet our host families and our students. Our job this week is to find out who is still going to be a student and if any of them need to take tests. Then we'll be back here in the city sometime Friday night, probably to leave at 2:00 am on Saturday to take a trip to Guadalajara to attend the temple there with other members of the Church from here in Irapuato.
Good news: the hotel we're staying at here in the city has wireless internet. The other three people I'm with all brought their computers. It appears that I'm the only one that was too scared to bring mine. Oh well. Thankfully they're letting me use their computers.
Being here in Mexico reminds me a whole lot of my mission in Venezuela. A lot of things are similar. And so I keep saying that such and such is just like in Venezuela, or it's a little different than things in Venezuela. No one has complained yet that I'm getting too nostalgic, though it's kind of getting on my nerves that I keep recalling my mission. Not that that's bad at all, but I'm not a missionary here and I want to enjoy Mexico for Mexico, not for being like Venezuela. Does that make sense?

Almost Gone

My bags are now packed and I was able to get everything into one small suitcase, a backpack, and one small bag. My suitcase is definitely under 50 pounds, so we should be good there. Now I just need to finish up a few more things and I'm already to leave tomorrow morning at 7:30 am. I'm excited, a little nervous because I'm not sure what to expect, but still I'm excited and I think I'm ready. The bad part is that it looks like it's going to be raining in Irapuato for the next week.