They're getting bigger...

Jenne's prediction was, of course, absolutely correct: we have about a million pictures of the cats now. And I finally got around to organizing them! I'll put up a Mexico album soon as well, but for now, you've got the cats!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/DyaniJohns/Cats

In other news, I quit my job! Hooray! I will now be even more sedentary, but I won't have to deal with my dumb boss's ambiguous emails and irritating policies any more. Woo! I'm planning to read all of the books on my shelves, get in shape for biking and do yoga and pilates on a regular basis. We'll see how that goes!

Official Names

We finally thought of a middle name for Milton, so now we have their official names:

Sir Darwin Sniffles Blake
Lord Milton Showboat Wallace

We want to get them sepia toned portraits in fancy picture frames with their names inscribed on little gold plates.... It would be ideal if they could be wearing spectacles, or possibly a monocle for Lord Milton...

Photos

Mexico 1 and 2:

http://skidmore.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033576&l=595f5&id=12203734

http://skidmore.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033578&l=234a6&id=12203734

Kittens:

http://skidmore.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033583&l=abef1&id=12203734

Kittens!!

I'm home now, so this will be my last post for this blog, unless I change the name.... The trip back was fine, but I missed my connection in LA and had to wait about 4 hours for the next flight. I was no big surprise that I missed the connection--I only had an hour to go through customs, get my bag, walk--or rather run--from terminal 3 to terminal 7 (at the opposite end of the airport, of course), go back through security and then find my gate... Not a chance. I wish that I had just decided that it wasn't possible, and not tried to make it because then I wouldn't have gotten so flustered and upset over missing it after literally sprinting the mile between terminals and arriving all sweaty... but oh well! When I re-booked I went to Starbucks and got a nice big cup of peppermint tea, and just sat to calm down for a while.

Conor had told me on the phone that there was a big surprise waiting for me at home, and though I had tried and tried to think of what it might be, I didn't have any inkling until we got to the door. Conor said, "Ok, you go in first, but be careful opening the door." At that point, I gasped, and when I opened the door, there were two adorable kittens waiting for me!!! We had talked about how great it would be to have pets (dogs or cats), but felt like we probably shouldn't get them because we're going to move again at the end of the year. We had seen the SPCA tent set up at the farmers market a week or two before going to Mexico, and the kittens were just so cute! So what a wonderful thing to come home to!! We haven't decided totally on names yet, but Conor was thinking of naming them Darwin and Wallace, which I like (especially for the cat we want to name Darwin), but can't help feeling is just to science-nerdy... SO then we decided that they should both have long official names, and that they can both have science-y names if they both get to have literature-nerd names too! So, what we have right now is Sir Darwin Sniffles Blake for the gray one and Sir Milton Wallace for the creamsicle colored one (we haven't come up with a good middle name for Milton Wallace yet--Sniffles is because Darwin sniffles a lot. He was the runt, and so he's got a lot more funny traits right now than Milton. I'm sure that eventually we'll think of something good as a middle name for Milton!). Here are some photos:


I'm going to put more pictures of my trip up soon, in flicker or on facebook, so I'll post a link when I've got it all set up!

Thoughts on Mormonism

Last night at cena my host father, Sergio, asked me if I had a religion. It’s a bit of a loaded question in this country… But I told him the truth (that I don’t have one…) and he didn’t seem to mind. I told him also that my parents were a little like Buddhists (I don’t quite have the words to explain the ashram in Spanish…) and he thought that was funny. Then he launched in to a story about how when he was young, his grandmother wanted him to be a Catholic priest. He attended the seminary for 13 (I think) years, and then, when he was 18 he decided to become a Mormon. He said that some of the priests were good men, but that a lot of them were “un poco más mal”—what I gather to be his way of saying that they were corrupt, and he said that he had a lot of doubts that the Catholic faith couldn’t answer for him. He was attracted to what life outside of the church could offer him, and so he decided to take another path.

The he told me all about how much work it is to be a Mormon—it sounded to me (though I didn’t catch everything) like he was an administrator in the church in some way, and possibly a missionary of some kind. He’s traveled extensively to all parts of Mexico, and has been to the US on church business something like 11 times. These trips have been over long weekends, and he said that at the peak he was doing this twice a month. He would go and have meetings—I suppose with other church administrators in other places—but also he said that he was involved in helping families in three ways: spiritually, mentally and physically. I assume that means that he helped them to understand how to apply the Mormon faith to their everyday lives. He said that it’s been a hard life—no alcohol, no caffeine etc, and other things, but it seems that he’s come through wonderfully. He said that it was always most important to him that relations within his family were good, because otherwise, how could he go and speak to other families and give them advice on how to live their lives? As far as I can tell, seeing only brief interactions with the extended family, he’s done a very good job of achieving that goal.

Sergio continues to be a very interesting man, with a great energy and sense of humor. I’ll miss our conversations…

It's almost time to come home! I'm ready and not ready... as per usual. I feel like I'm just getting the hang of conversation, but I'm also kinda tired of Mexico. I want to come back some time to visit!

Sniffly

I forgot to write about the visit to the orphanage last Thursday. I was anticipating that it was going to be depressing, or that I was going to hear about all kinds of things that would make me sad, but it was just the reverse! It's a great organization called Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos—it's mission is more about giving kids a home, a family and unconditional love than it is about getting them adopted or out to families. I think that people do adopt the children, but a lot of them stay at the orphanage until they graduate from high school (the orphanage has a whole school system, k-12, and if the kids make the grades, they help them go to university). After they graduate, they give two years of service back to the orphanage, working in the little sections as something like dorm mothers and fathers, role models for the younger kids, or nurses and teachers. It's like they're repaying what they were given when they were little. All the kids have clothes, they have a whole farm and orchard attached where they grow corn to feed their pigs and chickens and veggies in a green house to try and get the kids of a starch and meat only diet. I think the only thing that comes in from outside is milk and yogurt. The kids are taught how to farm, do crafts and trade and other skills so that they can get a job more easily when they graduate, if they don’t want to go on to the university. They survive on donations, and at some point a wealthy donor gave them the money for a swimming pool and a soccer/basketball/game court/area. The kids all seem pretty happy, and well fed. It's sooooooo wonderful to know that there's something like that going on in this country!

They also have 8 other "homes" (they call them houses or homes instead of orphanages, because they really are different than orphanages...) in Nicaragua, Guatemala.. and a whole bunch of other South American countries. The guy who gave our tour was an American who came to volunteer for a year and stayed for 3... Also, they have this program where you can be a sponsor for a kid--you give some amount, like $25 (or more) per month, and you write letters back and forth with them. And then there are visitor days where you can go visit the kid you sponsor. Our tour guide was saying that people always want to sponsor the littlest, cutest kids, but that they try to spread the sponsors around to all the kids because what they lack the most is personal, individual attention (for monetary purposes there's a pretty small staff). I think I’m going to do it!

My trips this weekend were really good, but I am exhausted and I have a cold. grr. On Saturday I went to Mexico City with a professor from St. Catherine's, a school that was doing a program at Cemenahuac, and with two girls from Trinidad and Tobago who arrived the same day as me. They're all really nice, and interesting, but man, I did not get the trip that I thought I was going to. Vivian, one of the Cemenahuac staff convinced me to go, even though I was feeling like I didn't want to--she told me that it wouldn't be that much driving and that it was totally worth it. This was not the case: I thought I would get to sleep in a bit, but we left from the bus station on the 9:30 bus (so I had to be there at 9, which means that I got up at 7 which is the time I've been getting up the whole time I've been here...), and then we were on the bus for an hour and a half. And then we spent 3 hours in the Saturday Bazar, which was cool, but not that great--just like other market places I've seen. There was some really beautiful art there; one piece which was kind of like a Japanese wave print, and SO beautiful... I wanted to buy it, but it was too big to transport, and I didn't even ask how much it was being sold for. I would have taken a picture, but we weren't allowed. Within that three hours we had lunch, and then we were supposed to go to Diego Rivera's house at 2:00, then Frida Kahlo's at 3:00. We didn't get to Rivera's house until at least 3:30 because the girls from T&T were shopping, and Pamela (the professor) is just about the slowest walker around. I was ready to leave the Bazar at about 1:30, but we didn't get in the cab until 3:30. Arg! I was sure that I'd get back to Cuernavaca by 6 or 6:30, but we didn't get back until 8:30! Awful! And I ONLY went because Vivian said it wouldn't be that involved, wouldn't be that much driving. Bullshit. I could have spent the whole day in Rivera's and Frida's houses, but instead we had to rush through so that we wouldn't be getting back too late. Ah well. I did see some beautiful things.

Then, on Sunday, I had to get up early again to go to Teotihuacan (the link is to a good site about the archaeology and history of the pyramids), which was incredible. It’s north of Mexico City, so it was even more driving than the Saturday Bazar, but it was all in a bus, and we had a great guide (the same guy I went to Xochicalco with last weekend). The major down fall of the trip was that we stopped at the cathedral of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the way back from the pyramids. We were all exhausted and happy after the adventures at the pyramids, and then Charlie (the guide) made us get off the bus in Mexico City at 6:30 pm and stand outside in the cold (not really cold, just cold because we weren't properly dressed) for half an hour while he talked about the history of the cathedral (all very interesting, but man, at that point, I just did not care AT ALL). Then we went inside and saw the relic--a cape of the Mayan (?) peasant, Juan Diego, who the virgin appeared to and made an image of herself on his cape. He was later sainted. etc. And we listened to Charlie talk for another half an hour. By that time my cold was really feeling horrible (from walking all day and then standing out in the cold), and when we got back on the bus, there was a window about three seats in front of me the didn't close all the way (or someone had it open), and so I was cold for the whole hour and a half ride back to Cuernavaca from Mexico City, with no dinner, and worried that I wouldn't get any that night. I didn't get back home until a little after 10! When I got there, Celia, my house mom, was waiting up for me, and she made me tortitas (hard taco shells with beans, cheese, lettuce and jalapenos) and a cup of hot chocolate. She's so great! It almost made up for the bad end of the trip, but not quite....=)

My teacher this week has a different teaching style, but she's making me talk more, which is great, because that's the thing I need the most help with. I can read and write just fine, and I really understand most of what people say at this point, but I still have a hard time speaking. It gets a little better each day.... I have to remind myself not to get flustered when I make a mistake. Sometimes I can go on for a while without tripping up, but other times I can still barely get a word out! It's a slow thing, and one more week, unfortunately, isn't going to get me there. Ah well. I'm definitely going to try to keep it up when I get home.

Things I never knew...

I can't believe it's already Friday! I only have a week left! We have an exam each Friday to see how you progressed through the week and luckily, mine didn't seem very hard, even though everyone was talking about how difficult their exams were... I guess I'm also not stressed about it because my score does not matter AT ALL. What a nice feeling!

I'll have a new teacher on Monday, which is a bit sad... I really like the one I have now, but we'll see. I hope my next teacher is as good as the one I had this week.

I keep finding out all kinds of things about Sally; she and her husband have traveled all around the world--they were in India and Afghanistan in the 60's and 70's, with US governmental aid organizations, and she says that looking back on it she realizes how much of the time the US government had agendas utterly apart from what they were supposedly doing to help people. When I first met Sally, I was pretty sure that she was a conservative Connecticut up-tight Tupperware party sort of person who liked to travel on package tours... The reality is quite different! She's very liberal, and has been to so many places...She's a bit awkward socially, but she has some very interesting opinions and stories to share if you get her talking. What a surprise! She, however, is leaving tomorrow. I guess that's the thing about a school that starts a new session every Monday.

Sergio, my homestay dad, also is full of surprises, aside from being Mormon... He loves to dance (and knows all of the discos in Cuernavaca), he loves the ocean, especially when the waves are big and rough. He loves roller-coasters and extreme sports, and racket ball. Mind you, he can't be any younger than 60 and may be significantly older than that.... And he's such a sweetheart! His wife cooks comida, but he makes desayuno (breakfast) and cena (dinner) for us each day, and I've talked with him quite a bit more than with his wife.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Saturday market in the south of Mexico City, and then to Diego River's house, and Frida Kahlo's house--it's kind of an art tour with one of the professors from the St. Catherine's College program, but there were only two other girls who wanted to go, so we get the art historian all to ourselves!

Sunday is Teotihuacan, the famous pyramids in Mexico. If you're interested, google it (there's a ton of info).