some recent photos

The girls catching some sun in Manzanillo, Lucha Libre, Me at Lucha Libre, the crew in Guzman, my mexicano mates Hector and Gibert

long time no post... almost up to date now

June 18, 2008

Two more boys ran away over the weekend: Cristian Chico and Manuel. I’m sad to see Cristian Chico go because it really scares me where he will end up, and it breaks my heart to see Manuel go. He was definitely one of my favourites. He really loved to learn English so I had taught him how to say “How are you?” and “I’m good”. Then he wanted to impress some girls so I taught him to say “How are you, beautiful?” and then he got all confused so every time I would ask him “How are you?” he would say “Beautiful!” It was absolutely adorable. I miss him so much.

I learned Luis’ story today from one of the psychologists at the centre. It turns out that his mom is in jail for drug trafficking and his dad has died from alcoholism and his sister who is the only one left to take care of him is about 19 years old and has three kids of her own to take care of. So Luis was just living on the streets taking care of himself and getting into a lot of trouble in the meantime. Luis is my favourite boy at the centre. He has bleached his hair blonde so we are “Güeros Unidos” (blondes united) and he always says that he is Canadian and asks me if I will take him to Canada with me when I go home. He is always smiling and joking around (minus the times he’s getting into fights and whatnot) despite all the crap he’s gone through in his life. He is a great inspiration for me… all of the kids are.

This week the boys have discovered the joy of huge tickle wars. They basically involve me chasing them around for hours trying to tickle them till they cry. It’s absolutely exhausting but soooo fun. These boys have a never-ending reserve of energy. They never get tired. We will play soccer in the morning, then eat breakfast and have a lesson for half an hour or so and then play more soccer and then have tickle wars until it’s time for me to go home. I don’t understand how they don’t get tired. I’m also envious of the afternoon/evening staff who get the boys after I have spent all day trying tire them out. But I’m getting lots of exercise which is good.

In other news, I’m thinking I might be coming home about a month earlier than I had originally planned. I have been here two months already and while my Spanish has improved a lot I’m not anywhere near where I would need to be as an advanced student and thus receive credit for my courses here. I’m quite certain that another four weeks here will still not quite get me there. So anyway, it would be a big waste of money to take the classes and not get credit for them. Yes, my Spanish would improve but I have a lot more reasons to come home than to stay. And the entire motivation to come down here and take the classes in the first place was for fear that I would have a schedule conflict next year and not be able to graduate. But, the course schedule is up and even with the extra two Spanish classes everything will work out. There is one linguistics course I want to take that is not offered next year but I can still graduate without it and then just take it for fun later on. So I might be seeing you all around the 23^rd of July instead of the 23^rd of August. Thinking that I may have only five more weeks left here is a strange thought. It’s exciting but at the same time quite sad because I’m not ready to leave quite yet. But I figure that five weeks from now I will be more than ready to come home.

June 20, 2008

This week at work has been pretty crazy. I have been teaching thirteen-year-old Jorge to read and write. It makes me so sad to think that this boy barely knows the alphabet and doesn’t know how to write his own name but when I was thirteen I was reading novels and writing poetry and short stories (not good ones but I could still do it). Everyday these boys remind me of how blessed I have been in my life. It is so rewarding helping Jorge read and write. Every time he reads a word and every time he finishes an exercise he is just beaming with pride. It makes me so happy that I’m able to help put that smile on his face.

I was talking to one of the psychologists the other day about life at the centre and he was telling me that the boys are very much driven by the need to feel. This is why they are addicted to drugs and alcohol, and why they always want to hug and kiss everyone and why they love the tickle wars. But he also told me that the boys frequently try to rape each other. I wasn’t particularly shocked by this but the way he said it, like it was totally normal and there wasn’t anything to be done about it… well… that shocked me a lot. The youngest boy there, Chuy, is such a little sweetie but he never wants to play with the other boys and the others often take out their aggression on him. It terrifies me what is happening to this boy when none of the staff is around. Now I understand why the boys run away.

We got two new boys today. One of them is 14 or 15 years old and is called Choco. He has been at the centre before and finished his treatment but he relapsed and so he’s back now. The other one arrived just before we left for the day and I didn’t catch his name. He’s about 13 or 14, I think. I’m glad to have new boys. The place had been feeling pretty empty with just the remaining six. I can’t wait to get to know the new boys. I’m sad I’ll have only three weeks to do it before my time at the centre is up.

June 25, 2008

I just spent the weekend in the most delightful little mountain town called Tapalpa. It’s quite touristy and I can see why. This town is so beautiful. I fell in love immediately. I went with Brittany (an American girl who works at the centre with me) and my roommate Jess. We got there around 4pm and spent a little time walking around thoroughly enjoying the culture of the town: men riding their horses down the streets, children playing with firecrackers, amazing artisan markets and sweet shops. We found a lovely little hotel with a beautiful room for the three of us and guess how much it cost: 400 pesos! That’s less than $40!!! It was amazing. We spent the evening shopping and I bought a whole bunch of really beautiful stuff. Then we had some food and went and sat in the street and had some drinks (you’re allowed to drink in the streets in lots of places in Mexico). We decided that we should holler rude phrases at men walking past (give them a taste of their own medicine) and in the process met a really nice group of four guys who offered to take us waterskiing and wake boarding the next day. We jumped on that opportunity. They are all quite well-travelled and one of them had actually been to Saskatoon! It blew my mind! Usually when I tell Mexicans where I’m from they look at me like I’m crazy and there can’t possibly exist a place with a name like that. A couple of them spoke really nice French and they all spoke really good English. We had a great time with them.

The next day they picked us up and drove us out to the beautiful mansion of a country home that one of their uncles own to pick up the boat. After driving around for an eternity trying to find a suitable location to launch the boat, we ended up taking down a section of barbed wire fence and taking the boat down the steep slope to the water. It was hilarious but successful without too much drama. We were all very hungover so we never got in the water (I also didn’t have a bathing suit with me) but the guys had a good time wakeboarding and it was fun to watch. After a couple hours the storm clouds started to roll in so we headed back to the house to drop off the boat and then the guys took us out for lunch before putting us on the bus back to Guzmán. They were such genuinely nice guys. It was so refreshing to meet nice Mexican guys rather than the standard creepy ones whistling and hooting at us. This weekend we are going to Guadalajara to visit them and let them show us the sights. It should be a really awesome time.

June 13, 2008

I went to work this Monday and found out that Uriel had run away over the weekend. Tuesday night, Toribio ran away too. The centre is not the same without them. I miss them terribly and hate to think where they might end up. On Thursday the stress of the week really caught up with me. I felt like a little kid. I was so incredibly exhausted, I got home from work and just started crying for no reason, and then I had a three hour siesta. All week at work they cancelled the daily lesson and just watched movies. The rainy season started on the weekend and the boys had been getting really restless and aggressive; fighting a lot and what-not. So, to calm them down, they put on a least one movie each day.

I got a new roommate on Monday. Her name is Jess, she’s 23 and from England. I’m so happy to have a roommate again. I was so bored and lonely without one. Jess is great. I couldn’t have asked for a better roomie. Her placement with Projects Abroad is at a nursery/daycare sort of place for a couple of months.

Other than that not a whole lot have been going on. There are three other volunteers who came on Monday also. They are from Scotland doing a paediatric nursing placement at a nursery in a town about 20 minutes from Guzmán. They will only be in Guzmán for three weeks and then they go to Guadalajara for another three. Kristen and Tyler left today which makes me a little sad. It really sucks staying here for so long because everyone keeps leaving. It seems the standard placement length in one month. In the time that I am here in Guzmán I will see five volunteers come and go. But, I only have four more weeks at my placement before I’m off to Guadalajara. It seems so crazy that I have been here seven weeks already and I will be home in ten more. I count my time in weeks now; ten weeks feels a lot shorter than two and a half months.

I can’t wait to come home. As much as I love it here, and as much as I love my work, I miss home so much. Way more than I thought I would. I think I’m actually getting quite tired of travelling on my own. I so badly want to share all this with someone. I’m also getting really tired of using internet cafes all the time. I just want to be able to turn on my computer and have internet. I have discovered that I can take my laptop down to the town centre and have free wireless internet there. But, that still means I have to walk all the way down to the town centre. Yes, I’m lazy, I know. Through all my travels in the last year or so, I am really starting to appreciate Canada (and even Saskatoon) for all that it is. You don’t realize what a great place Canada really is until you’ve lived anywhere else, I think. And I’m not saying that just because I can get internet in my room… I mean everything: healthcare, education, social programs, standard of living… the list goes on.

Oh the sweet sweet smell of rain!!!!

June 8, 2008

Tut tut, it looks like rain!!! It rained for the very first time today. In fact it is pouring rain right now. Well there have been a few nights that it has rained a bit but that doesn’t count. Now the rainy season has officially started!!! I am sooooo happy! Wow there was just some lightning that was so close I heard it. Not just the booming thunder that followed but the zap of the lightning. I don’t think I’ve ever heard lightning before. I think I will be investing in an umbrella today. I never thought that I would say it but I actually think I prefer freezing cold to horrible heat. At least when it is cold you can go inside and be warm. There is no escape from the heat here. It’s no different from winters back home in the sense that you still can’t go outside and do anything. It’s just too hot. Thankfully in the city where I live it gets cool at night. The heat is so bad here that our turtle died on Monday and on Wednesday Jous’ dog died. Hooray for the rainy season. What a glorious day!

Well all week I didn’t really do much. I suffered some severe dehydration on Monday and Tuesday and missed both days of work. This made me really sad because I never got to say good bye to Marcos who is now gone to Guadalajara. There is a new volunteer from LA named Brittany who came on Tuesday and is now working at the centre with me. Jous went to the centre with her on Tuesday to introduce her to everyone and discovered I hadn’t been at work all week. He came to the house took one look at me and asked if I had been drinking any water. My skin was all dry and my lips were cracked and I was dizzy and exhausted. He wanted to take me to the hospital but I opted to just drink as much water as physically possible over the next 48 hours. I felt fine later that day. Since then I’ve been making sure I drink lots and lots of water. We got two more new boys at the centre bringing the grand total to ten. Another one named Marcos who is about 15 or 16 years old and the little, chubby 12-year-old Chui (I don’t know how he spells it… pronounced Chewy). They are both real sweethearts. Very quiet and not at all trouble-makers like most of the other boys. Chui will always just come sit next to me and usually not even say a word; just smile his innocent little smile. Marcos is really into reading my Spanish-English dictionary and learning new words.

This weekend has been, well, interesting. On Friday I was feeling very sad because for a number of reasons I couldn’t get through to call Alexis for his birthday so Brittany and I went out for ice-cream to make ourselves feel better (I think she’s been a bit homesick too) and sat on a park bench chatting until it started pouring rain on us. The streets were like rivers and the thunder was deafening so we rolled up our pants and ran for it to our respective houses. I liked that walk home because usually you need to watch for cockroaches at night (I hate cockroaches) but they were all in hiding in the rain. On Saturday a bunch of the Canadians and us volunteers went to the pool. After some lunch at a health food restaurant (brilliant find!) and after getting terribly lost, we finally found the pool just in time for the clouds to roll in and take away our sun. That night we went to Lucha Libre!!!! It was brilliant! If you aren’t familiar with Lucha Libre, it is Mexican wrestling very much reminiscent of WWE. It literally translates as Free Fighting aka no rules. It was soooo hilarious! Everyone sits in the stands screaming random profanities at the wrestlers while the wrestlers pretend to fight each other. It’s all very dramatic with the wrestlers wearing masks and lots of spandex. It was a really good time.

Afterwards we went to a club called Plush that I will not be going back to. I have discovered that it wasn’t only the bar in Manzanillo where the guys are super-creepy and horribly insistent. This bar was just like it. I couldn’t be alone for three seconds without being hassled. I would escape from one guy and immediately be accosted by another. I would be dancing with a group of my girlfriends and every two seconds someone would come up behind us and start grinding on us or grabbing our butts. I think my clubbing days in Mexico are over. I can’t deal with this harassment.

Manzanillo

June 2, 2008

This weekend Kristen, Tyler, Mieke, Carla (Canadian girl here taking some courses along with 25 other Canadians) and I went down to Manzanillo. Manzanillo is more or less a little resort town on the coast. We stayed at an all-inclusive resort that cost us a whopping $140 each for a huge mansion of a room for two nights and all the food and booze we could stuff into our bodies. This was the first time I had ever stayed at an all-inclusive resort. I actually quite enjoyed it. We were the only white people there so everyone got to know us pretty fast. There was this one waiter named Jaime who seemed to work wherever we went. He was so funny. The first night we watched the “show” Hairspray. Basically they bought the movie soundtrack and made up dances to all the songs… there was no dialog whatsoever. It was so hilarious… all these Mexicans acting as white and black people from the sixties. You really couldn’t tell which ones were supposed to be the black characters and who were the white ones. I have never laughed so hard. After the show we went to the disco where we first met our favourite waiter. It was a good night full of drinking and dancing. The next day we spent at the beach/pool and work on our tans. The waves were huge and the water was so warm so, we grabbed some boogie boards and spent some time on the waves intermittently getting rocked by the waves and filling our sinuses with salt water. That night we went to the fancy Italian restaurant at the resort where we had a four-course meal accompanied by wine followed by a Mexican coffee served in a goblet and then our waiter poured flaming brandy and tequila over it. It was so amazing. We stayed there until they closed and then walked down to the disco with Jaime where he would continue working. We gave him a giant tip.

That night, however, we found out how creepy drunk, Mexican guys can be. At the beginning of the night we were dancing up a storm but it got so unbearably hot in that building. So we really just wanted to sit down and relax. These guys just didn’t get it and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I think I told at least three guys in very clear Spanish that no I didn’t want to dance, no I didn’t want that drink, no I didn’t even want to talk to them and no I didn’t like them and please go away right now. At one point there were three of us girls sitting at our table and at least seven guys standing around us trying to get us to dance. Tyler was getting quite a kick out of the spectacle. We ended up leaving before midnight to get away from all these guys. It was so ridiculous.

The next day we had to check out at noon and then took the bus back to Guzmán. I saw my very first mango tree on the ride. They are the craziest plants. The fruit grows way out at the end of the branches and hangs from a little vine-like thing. It looks so funny to see this big heavy fruit hanging from and skinny little vine on an ity-bitty branch. I also saw my first real hibiscus flowers at the resort and have decided that banana trees are awesome. I also saw the plant they make tequila from that I don’t remember the name of and palm oil plantations and a whole bunch of cactus… I really feel like I’m in Mexico when I see wild cactus all over the place. They actually eat cactus here too. It’s really nice and apparently really good for you… full of anti-oxidants and what-not. We drove through a little forest fire on the way back. The heat was unbelievable! It was already like 30 degrees outside… add fire to that and wow. Today it was so hot here. It was 35 degrees in the shade! Where are you rainy season?!?!