Finishing Up

So the semester is finally winding down.  After a busy last few weeks, I am finally done with all of my classes.  It's exciting to be done, but also sad to know that I'll be heading home.  At this point, Puebla is like my home away from home, and I'm not excited to have to leave.  That being said, I'm very excited to come home and see all my family and friends again.
I actually only have 2 and a half days left here in Puebla.  We have all day tomorrow, and then on Friday, a few of my friends and I are leaving for a "road trip" of the Yucatan peninsula in southern Mexico.  We'll be there for 6 days, seeing different Mayan ruins and spending the last couple days on the beach near Cancun.  We'll get back around noon on Thursday, we'll have all day Friday, and then we'll be leaving early Saturday morning.

The time has really flown by recently, but I've been making the most of my last month here in Mexico.  A couple weeks ago, Mom, Dad, and Adam came to visit for the annual Puebla Thanksgiving party, to which all the students' parents are invited.  We had a really great time; I loved getting to show them this city I've come to love this semester.  Some highlights were running the "Outta Town Dash Around" of the Indy Drumstick Dash on Thanksgiving morning, eating dinner with my host family and the family of my friend Sam (we share the same host mom), climbing the ancient pyramid in Cholula (town outside of Puebla), and exploring all the markets in the historic center of Puebla.

One of the many markets we explored

View of Puebla from the pyramid

  

After the "drumstick dash"

Since they left, I've also had a great time celebrating my 21st birthday with a big party at my host family's house, complete with piñatas and lots of great Mexican food.  The next day, I also celebrated by getting up early to climb the nearby mountain Malinche with a group of exchange students from UPAEP.  The hike was difficult, but it was SOOO much fun.  It was an awesome experience, and I was super greatful to be able to go (after being too sick to go the first time all the ND kids went to climb it). 

Showing off the birthday pinata

Our pinata had fruit, peanuts, jicamas, and even a little bit of candy!

Climbing up above the clouds on Malinche

Most of our group decided to climb a tree during a short break

The view from near the top

towards the end, we were hiking in the middle of the clouds.  It was cold

So even though I haven't been blogging a lot lately, it's not because I haven't been doing anything. Actually quite the opposite.  I'm super excited for our end of the semester trip.  I'm sure that I will take a lot of pictures.  Hopefully I'll make one last blog post for the semester.  I'll include those pictures, and maybe say a little bit about what I learned this semester.  

Thanks for keeping up with my blogs even when there's a lot of space in between them!

A Much-Needed November Update

Hello again! Sorry it's been so long since my last blog.  I've been pretty busy here in Mexico.  At the end of October/start of November, we were busy celebrating  El Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) here in Mexico.  After that, I started out the month with a round of exams (I think I did pretty well on all of them) and then I spent a couple of weeks trying to get over some sort of cold/flu-type sickness.  And after that, I spent a week in the state of Chiapas with our Notre Dame group.  I'm just now getting completely caught up with everything, and now I'm starting to have to put things together for our Thanksgiving party (complete with visits from most of our families) and register for classes next semester.  Needless to say, it's been hard to find time to blog, but I've been having a great time.  I'll try to fill you in on what's been going on the past month.

Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead)

Really a multiple day celebration, Day of the Dead took place Nov. 1st and 2nd.  I learned that this holiday is much bigger and more important in the smaller, more rural towns of Mexico, where people follow Mexican traditions more closely.  Even though I didn't get to see this celebration in its fullest, I still got a taste, and it was a lot of fun.  At UPAEP, students built their own ofrendas (shrines or altars) to honor the dead, often with themes that mirrored their field of interest (e.g. an altar for deceased children for students interested in pediatrics).  Also, my host mom made an ofrenda for her family at our house on top of a counter that was in her family's old store for multiple generations.  On the 1st, we had all of the ND group over to see the altar and share some great food (lots of tamales). 

ofrenda at UPAEP

another UPAEP ofrenda

Our ofrenda at home

Trip to Chiapas

Two weeks ago, we left for a week-long trip to Chiapas, part of our ND program here in Puebla.  I'm very fortunate to be here in this program.  As far as I know, no other study abroad program has university-sponsored trips like we do, and these trips have provided some of the highlights of my time here.  This trip was especially great.  Chiapas is the southernmost state in Mexico, bordering Guatemala.  It's covered in mountains and rainforest, and is largely known in Mexico for its natural beauty.  Unfortunately, the region's terrain (combined with other historical issues) has made development there difficult, and for this reason around 75% of the population lives in poverty.  Our trip to Chiapas served two purposes: 1) to see the beauty of the region, and 2) to meet up with the Chiapas branch of Partners in Health, known here as Compañeros en Salud.  

One of the Puebla program's alums currently has an internship with CES, so we were able to meet up with him and spend a lot of time with the program.  We met up with them in Jaltenango, where their region headquarters is.  There, we spent a day listening to presentations from different people in the organization who talked about what they were doing.  Matt, the ND alum, talked about the acompañante program he is coordinating.  This program trains women in rural communities to be acompañantes, people who communicate with doctors in local clinics and accompany patients through their treatments.  They make frequent home visits, making sure that treatments are being followed and that the patient is doing well.  This allows for more consistent and personal medical care in a region where most doctors are only there for one year periods before they leave to work elsewhere.  One day, we got to visit the town Plan de Libertad and spend the day with acompañantes, getting a feel for life in these communities and seeing the work they do.  It was a really special experience, and I feel like I learned a lot about what Mexican life is like for people living in other parts of the country.

View from on top of our hotel in Jaltenango, where CES has its offices

Inside the truck we took to get up to Plan de Libertad, the small pueblo where we shadowed the 

acompañantes

Walking down the street in Plan

Riding on top of the truck as we left Plan

The rest of our time in Chiapas was spent admiring how beautiful the area is.  Hopefully you enjoy the pictures!

Our first activity of the trip, visiting the Mayan ruins in Palenque

More Palenque

Our hotel near Palenque was near this beautiful waterfall.

We got to hike up the top of the waterfall and peer over the top!

The waterfall also housed a small cave that we got to explore and swim in (we were a little to rambunctious for the bats)

Swimming under the waterfall was fun

The next day we went on a boat tour of the Cañyon de Sumidero

Baby crocodile next to the river

The canyon was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been

Somehow our guide spotted this iguana from the boat

The "Christmas tree" water fall

under the falls

market in the city of Tuxtla, one of the larger cities in Chiapas

In Jaltenango, we visited a co-op which collected a sold coffee beans directly from local farmers.  They taught us how to correctly smell and taste coffee samples

From the roof of the co-op

From the top of the truck on the way back from the rural pueblo of Plan de Libertad

 San Cristóbal, the last city we visited, was incredibly pretty

Interview video

Remember when I w tricked into signing up for a radio interview?  Well, it tuns out that the video interview that the made me do beforehand has been published online, and it now has its own designated spot on the Puebla program website (here).  I still look somewhat uncomfortable, even though they took out all of the really long uuuuuummmmmmmm's and the parts where I stared helplessly at them before announcing that I had no idea what they said.  Hopefully you'll enjoy it, or at least hear what my Spanish sounded like three weeks in.

Living Less Like a Tourist

Hello again.  It seems like I'm getting worse and worse about keeping this blog up to date as I keep forgetting to update how things are going here in Puebla.  Maybe it's because I'm starting to sort of get into the routine of living and going to school here.  The first couple months, especially the first couple weeks, everything here was new.  I did a lot of sight seeing, learned a lot about Puebla and Mexico, and I wanted to share all these cool new experiences with everybody.  Now, we've been going on less trips, everything seems more ordinary, and I feel like there is less "stuff" to blog about.

Honestly, I think I like this part of the experience just as much.  Although I loved traveling all over and seeing all kinds of new things, it got exhausting travelling somewhere almost every weekend.   This past weekend was super nice:  I got to stay in and actually get some homework done, I went out with most of our group to celebrate our friend's 21st birthday, we watched ND beat USC, and I got to listen to the Colts game on Sunday.  So I didn't do anything crazy, but I was able to get caught up on some things and also have some good quality time with my friends and host family.  I'll be staying here in Puebla again next weekend.  Now that I'm caught up on things, I'm looking forward to being able to just spend some time hanging out in Puebla, exploring el centro again.  

As things are beginning to settle down a bit, the little interactions I have with people don't stress me out quite as much as they did before.  I went to go get a haircut without really thinking much about it in advance or frantically trying to memorize how to describe the cut I want in Spanish.  I finally got up the courage to talk to the UPAEP tennis coach and find a time when I could come for lessons (embarrassingly, I've been signed up for a time slot I can't attend for at least a month, and I just now talked to the coach to change the day of my clinic).  Overall, I just feel like I'm more confident and willing to go do things on my own without the other ND students there to help out in case I can't understand somebody or forget an important word.  That being said, I'm still far from fluent and I have a lot to learn still, but I think these things are positive signs that I am making improvements little by little.  

There will be a couple more big trips later on in the semester, but for now I'm more than happy to relax and try to experience Mexico less like a tourist and more like someone who could live here for an extended period of time.

What would a blog be without pictures?  Here are some from my ND group trip to Mexico City 2 weekends ago:

One of the new places we went, a museum of the famous painters Frida Kahlo (and Diego Rivera), built in the house in which they lived together

I took my phone to the Palacio Nacional the second time around so I could get a panoramic photo of this enormous Diego Rivera masterpiece

Group pic at the Palacio

Back to the amazing Museum of Anthropology and History

Palacio de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Palace) where we saw some great ballet folklorico

Some of us went to watch the ND vs Navy game with the ND Club of Mexico

Back to the Basilica de Guadalupe, but with even bigger crowds this time

We had more time to explore the ruins at Teotihuacan

Halfway Update

Sorry for the long delay.  It's been a busy last couple weeks with my first round of exams and multiple trips.  Luckily, everything seems to have gone well class-wise, but I didn't really have any time to be working on the blog, especially since I was gone all of last week for a week-long trip.  A lot has happened since the last post, so I'll try to do a quick summary of what's been going on:

Two trips to Mexico City
Three weekends ago, after returning from Oaxaca and Puerto Escondido, our group went to Mexico City to see El Rey León (The Lion King) the musical, visit an art museum, and watch the ND football game with the Notre Dame club of Mexico.  Only about 8 of us went to see the musical, but everybody else spent a lot of time in 2 nearby art museums before heading to an Irish pub to watch the game.  The musical, which was in spanish, was incredible and watching the game with ND alum was really fun.

We had great seats for the musical

Outside the art museum and theatre

Our group outside the pub after an Irish victory

The next weekend we were back to see a soccer game between Club America y Chivas, two rival Mexican soccer teams.  Evidently, these two teams have a huge rivalry, and we had high expectations for the game.  It didn't disappoint.  It was a really great game, and the fans kept the noise going the whole time.  There wasn't a lot of sitting and clapping going on.  Everybody was yelling, chanting, and singing songs.  The atmosphere was a lot more emotional and exciting than any sporting event I've been to in the U.S.  We had a ton of fun.

Outside the stadium

Week long trip to Cuetzalan and Zacapoaxtla

We were off  of our typical classes all of last week for a scheduled trip part of our ND program here.  Both of these towns are in northern part of the state of Puebla, a couple hours by car from the city of Puebla where we're living.  This area contains a lot of small pueblos (towns or villages) with largely indigenous populations.  The purpose of our trip was to experience some of the more traditional medicine practiced in these areas as well as more modern medicine practiced in more rural settings.

This was a very interesting experience, as what we saw was vastly different from what we've been seeing in our hospital rotations in Puebla.  The first day I got to talk extensively with a doctor who runs a rural medical clinic in a small pueblo about an hour outside Zacapoaxtla.  It was interesting to learn about which issues were most pressing there and also about the struggles (and rewards) of running a small medical clinic in Mexico.  What she talked about reminded me a lot of my time working with the Outreach division of Mount Carmel hospital in Columbus this past summer.  Oftentimes, treatment plans have to be altered due to frequent poverty and lack of education in the population.  This adds an entirely new dimensional to one's practice which is very interesting and important to learn about.

The next few days were spent shadowing curanderas (traditional healers), hueseros (sort of a traditional chiropractor), and parteras(like midwives).  Most of these people whom we met worked in modules attached to public hospitals.  It was interesting to see how both traditional and modern medicine worked together in these settings.  For example, one of the hueseros we talked to talked about how he will do his traditional massages and other therapies for all of his patients, but he will often refer his patients to doctors in the hospital if they have a serious injury such as a broken bone.  I think this sort of setup is great, especially in the more rural settings we saw, because most of the people there respect and trust the more traditional healers.  In addition, the healers provide very holistic care which treats spiritual, social, and emotional healing as well.  They might rub oils on a patient in the sign of the cross or recite the names of saints while performing treatment.  They might also mention negative emotions such as jealousy or impatience in a diagnosis.  Furthermore, most of the healers live outside of the city in more rural settings and speak indigenous languages such as Nahuatl, allowing them to be a very positive presence in their communities.

I walked away from the experience very impressed with the work of the traditional healers.  Although some of it could be dismissed as superstition (for instance, I got the chance to receive a limpieza (cleaning) from a curera which involved rubbing me with an egg, cracking it into a glass of water, and then interpreting its appearance), I felt that the majority of their therapies could indeed improve the health of their patients.  Furthermore, their focus on holistic care and strong relationships with their patients created a very positive and beneficial environment for their own work and that of the doctors working there.

View from Zacapoaxtla

View from clinic in the pueblo outside Zacapoaxtla

Central plaza of Cuetzalan

Following a partera to her house outside of Cuetzalan

In other news, I had a good week of hospital rotations this week, I got to see two births and shadow a couple surgeries.  I'm incredibly fortunate for the opportunity to frequently have these kinds of experiences every week while I'm here.  To think that I'm only a little over halfway though the semester is extremely exciting.  I'm sure to have many more memorable experiences.
Up next is yet another (and maybe my last) trip to Mexico City.  This trip is part of our ND study abroad program and most of it will be spent seeing and learning about different historical and cultural sites in the city.  It should be a good time.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Hasta luego