Here is a 2x annual report from Erika Klotz. She is a member of UAR National/International Advisory Council.
Hello all!!
I hope that you have all been well and enjoyed summer! here it went by incredibly quickly and it is hard to believe that our kids go back to school on Monday! Here for your reading enjoyment are the highlights and updates of my last four months here in Mexico!
The World Cup
I consider myself very lucky because, after becoming a futbol fan back in ‘04 when I first studied in Mexico, I have since been in Mexico for the last two world cups! When I lived in Miacatlan back when I was a volunteer, I quickly learned that I had to ally myself with a Mexican soccer team. For the kids, it was part of your identity and whether I used it to form bond with kids who were also fans of that team (in my case, Mexico City’s Cruz Azul) or create mock rivalries with kids who went for opposing teams, it was clear that soccer was a big deal. Everyone loves watching the world cup games because players from Mexican teams are picked to represent Mexico on a national level and come together to play as a whole. We ended up being allowed to watch all of the Mexico games during work over breakfast (chilaquiles, molletes) with coworkers (the high school kids watched the games at school, too!) or with the kids over lunch. The kids decked themselves out with face paint, employees worked on their quinielas (brackets), and we all had a lot of fun cheering.
Unfortunately, Mexico did just what it did 4 years ago; played great in Round 1, bombed in Round 2. Their loss to Argentina was nothing but painful to watch. But all in all, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed exchanging emails with contacts at our fundraising offices overseas and I decked myself out in Germany’s colors to go watch the Germany-Argentina game over breakfast with an Argentinian volunteer. I was there to watch them lose after how they treated Mexico. Also, a mere two days prior to the World Cup games, the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup! I was not going to miss that, and so I spent the night at a relatively empty sports betting bar where my friend Daniela and I were the only people there to watch hockey and I could yell at the TV as much as I wanted.
Graduation and summertime!
Graduation is always a fun time of year and we are so proud of our children’s accomplishments. I have attended the graduations for the past 5 years, so I know the routine pretty well. One of my favorite things is that each graduating class (from elementary and middle school) does graduation waltzes. By name alone what should be incredibly boring is actually a mesmerizing combination of waltzers slowly maneuvering across the basketball courts to create various formations and designs. The best part is the music. The teachers always pick some sort of 80’s song, usually “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and a wild card song or two. This year featured a techno remix version of Celine Dion’s “The Heart Will Go On” and Selena’s “Dreaming of You”. It is 20 minutes of pure bliss. It was also great to catch up with former volunteers who came down to show their support at the graduation.
This year I was very proud to watch the remainder of the girls that I cared for while volunteering graduate from middle school. They have since moved to Cuernavaca as they will begin high school on Monday. It is really nice to get to see them more frequently and watch them adjust to life at our high school home where they have more independence and really start to mature. The high school graduation was also really special, again, so proud. Two new volunteers arrived in July to work at our high school home and they have been really great with the kids. One of the new volunteers is all about traveling, so I have been getting out of Cuernavaca a little more, which has been nice. With overnight buses, I have traveled to Oaxaca, Guadalajara, and Querétaro on weekends which has been exhausting, but fun. Michocán and Guanajuato are on the horizon and I have not been to Mexico City in three months and it is calling me back. Overall, the summer passed quickly with summer activities in full swing and our kids took multiple excursions to water parks. It was nice to have the kids home during the day, eating with them at lunch, and having them pop into the office, peeking at my computer screen to see what I was working on, creating post-it note art. But, as usual, time passes quickly, and it is now time to get back into the school routine.
“Ya viene el aguita”
The rainy season toyed with us in terms of starting, but when it arrived mid-June, it was here to stay. When I lived in Miacatlan, which is at a lower altitude, the hot months (April & May, prior to the arrival of the rainy season) were HOT and you just took it for granted that you would be drenched in sweat 24 hours a day. In contrast, here in the highest part of Cuernavaca, I did not so much as need a fan! The hot months were warm, no doubt about it, but nothing compared to the inferno heat of lower altitudes. I did not miss the sleepless nights spent loathing the heat one bit. The other shocker of living in Cuernavaca is how much it rains! In Miacatlan, it usually rains only at night, not interfering much with daily life. This is not the case in Cuernavaca. Here the sky opens up and the rain beats down whenever it chooses to. Sometimes in the morning, often in the afternoon, always at night. We also got a lot of rain as a secondary effect from the hurricanes which caused so much flooding in northern Mexico. Due to the hilliness, the streets instantly turn into rivers, water flowing downhill as fast as it can. I immediately went on a futile quest for inexpensive rain boots and spent the month of June plodding through ankle deep water and keeping a stock of socks and a towel at work. Luckily, a former volunteer brought me some spiffy pink rain boots that immediately became the envy of all the girls in the house (they will make sure that when I leave, the rain boots stay) and strangers have stopped me to ask me about them, too. What can I say, I’m a pink booted fashionista. Now I take the rain boots and my giant umbrella with me where ever I go and they have saved me from getting completely drenched many a time. The best rain boot memory will always be carrying one high school girl piggyback across a flooded street, almost falling and lots of laughter.
The rainy season has other consequences, too. Since I am at work all day and often out and about on the weekends, doing laundry became quite difficult. With the ever present threat of rain, I did not want to leave clothes out to dry on the clotheslines because the rain could come and drench them again. I know that my landlady’s mother would take them in for me, but it would be a lot of work. My landlord hung up a clothesline under an overhang, but clothes that I hung there remained damp for days on end, shaded from the sun, the air never drying out enough for them to dry. After over a month of not being able to do laundry and having no more patience for damp towels, I buckled down and lugged 17 pounds of clothes and towels to the laundromat. Compared to the dampness of the air and everything around you, the laundromat, with its whirling dryers and enveloping dry heat and clean smells is like entering a greenhouse in the middle of winter. It was the best $8 I have ever spent
The rainy season has also brought a few other surprises. There is a little fuzzy bug that I call the moisture bug. It crawls along, not really doing anything, just being fuzzy. Whenever I sweep, there are always a few wriggling in the pile I sweep up, or when I come home I stomp a few out of existence while crossing the floor. The daddy long legs that I let live in the corner so it could kill things takes no interest in the moisture bugs. Also, the paint in my bathroom has taken to peeling, driven off the wall by an excess of moisture. But it’s not all bad, I really do enjoy the climate here. The upside of the rainy season is that everything is green and growing, the water is important for life, for farming, etc. The Aztec rain god Tlaloc would be proud.
New Vocab!
quemacocos – sunroof of a car
polinas – I began going to Zumba classes (LOVE it!) and the instructor broke out the polinas, ankle-weights!
duelo – grief, loss
gula – gluttony, one of those fun sounding words, especially if you are hungry “tengo gula!”
poliolio – modpodge, a great sounding word in either language!
sufrida – someone who suffers – i got called this by being slightly dramatic about a frustrating work situation
pleonasmo – being redundant. somewhere i picked up some incorrect, redundant Spanish, saying things like going up upstairs, or in inside. “voy a subir arriba” or “se metió adentro”. the kids often find this humorous and ask me to repeat how exactly I am going to do what I have just said. I am working on correcting this error, but a pleonasmo still gets by every once and again.
Photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2067754&id=40800206&l=53f33969dc
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075843&id=40800206&l=e2a335b830
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069727&id=40800206&l=af2232cf7a
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070365&id=40800206&l=6420ba84d8
That’s all folks!
I continue to enjoy my job and the volunteer who works with me on projects is a great help! I will put in mygoodshop.org one more time for a shameless plug as well as nph.org (How to help –> Projects)
Also, September 15th, Mexico turns 200! ¡Viva México!
Much love and hugs!
Erika