Glad to be home

Things for which I am grateful for and far less picky about as of late:

Beds and sofas
My kitchen
Running water
My dog
My car
AC
Exterminators
Lentil Curry
Harry Potter books
Pavement
Drainage systems
Grass
Cell phones

to name a few.

Really, there's not much that could make me less than content with my environment at the moment. As a matter of fact, the first night we were home, the AC was out (and we are not exactly having cool weather at the moment). I was so glad to be in my bed, sleeping inside, that I didn't realize it was on the fritz until well into the next day! Really, I haven't gotten much to complain about, which is usual and refreshing for one like me who is generally such a whiner.

I have decided the difference between a vacation and an adventure is that a vacation is generally just a good time, and an adventure is a good time, but is also very difficult.

David has had two birthday parties since arriving to the States. One in Houston at P.F.Chang’s, and a small gathering here at the apartment. During his Norman party we discovered David’s freakish limbo abilities. He beat out Aubrey (though with far less style), who is a dancer at OU. And here is the strangest picture I've ever seen:



Though about 3/4 of our pictures from our trip are lost on missing memory cards or trapped in the broken computer, here are a few I have salvaged from the journey:


View of Taxco, advertised as the most romantic city in Mexico!


The lovely church in the Taxco town square.


Church in San Francisco. Bodies upon bodies are buried here because of the cholera epidemic around 1847. There was another cholera epidemic about 20 years ago in many of the villages, Oapan included. When it had passed, a doctor was sent by the government to examine. He concluded there had been a "stomach flu." Cholera is easily treatable.


Oapan lies on the banks of the Balsas River (though not at this particular point).


David with a "wei" cactus (sorry it is sideways-computer troubles).


Storm blowing into Oapan.


Of course, when we it's time to leave, an enormous bus gets stuck in front of us.


This sign in the Oapan clinic should be explanation enough.


Walking to class each day was always as adventure, one that did not usually stray too far from what you might catch on National Geographic. I am told by my classmates that this is the most mild pig picture mating picture of the bunch since Clips apparently captured a pile of four.

A post from this morning

U.S.A., land and of the free and home of high speed wireless internet. We are so excited to return!

We said our tearful goodbyes to our host family early yesterday morning, though not before they loaded us up with semi-perishable Nahuatl food, that which they would normally take when tekipanowah (they work the fields). They gave us some spicy corn digestive biscuits because when you eat them supposedly xtonxixas (you can’t poop), and they were very worried because they were not sure if planes had bathrooms. They half jokingly asked us if they threw the waste off the plane.

We are here in Mexico City for one last day. We planned to go to Xochimilco, but have decided to simply “hang out” and perhaps go to the artisan market and the Templo Mayor, which is near by. Frankly, I am just thrilled to have a shower and sleep inside on a bed. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed all of the lifestyle differences, and I don’t think the Nahuatl way is in any way less civilized, but I have preferences based on what I am accustomed to.

I think the most difficult part of our trip (and I’m sure Mark and Laura know what I am talking about) was going from being someone who is educated and well respected at home, to someone who can communicate and partake in daily Nahuatl life at a level somewhere near that six year old. It is definitely a humbling experience.

We will post some pictures when we get home, though after I finish the new Harry Potter book, of course :o!

Pray for a safe trip home!

Cultural Differences

I don’t think I fully understood the cultural differences between us and our host family until this weekend. We have taken Jaunita to Taxco with us. We are having a great time, but I think she is experiencing cultural overload. She didn’t want to buy a swimsuit because she has never seen or been in a pool before. At home, they swim in the river in their clothes. She asked David if there are this many cars everywhere. She is mesmerized by the tiny T.V. in our room with 20 color channels. She has never used a shower or a bathtub, though I tried to teach her this morning it my broken Nahuatl/Spansih. It is just so crazy to me that seemingly every experience I grew up with as “normal” is so foreign to her. For instance, she didn’t grow up getting raisin fingers in the bath tub! Of course, she had her own experiences that I know nothing about. No wonder they laugh at us so much in the village, if we are as out of place there as she is here! This is what I mean when I talk about the difference in moving to another big city in a different culture, and moving to a village. The former is unarguably a huge shock, but living to a village, albeit only for 6 weeks—I don’t even know what to call it!

I will try to post a picture of Taxco later today if I can. It is a really beautiful city.

Home in about a week :)!

A little update

Things in Oapan are grand! We are both feeling better, and David’s birthday is tomorrow! Our host family is so excited about the American cake!

I have discovered that I can no longer read, write or speak Nahuatl, Spanish or English. Nahuatl spelling in generally phonetic and I just tried to write the above “cake” as “kak.”

I have decided that most of the difficulties in learning Nahuatl draw on one language feature, that of agglutination. I think the main difference is that they don’t use prepositions. You have prepositional phrases in English, the romance languages, etc, etc. In Nahuatl, instead of saying, “I am going to the store” you would have to inflect the verb. In other word, you would have to add prefixes of suffixes (or both) to indicate you are going away from where you are to somewhere else and when (like “before leaving”). In addition you also have to mark the verb for person (and if it is transitive or ditransitive for objects, primary and secondary). The line up of these prefixes and suffixes next to one another often cause sound change, so that complicates things as well. Basically, you end up with some fairly massive words that carry a lot of meaning.

There are some things that I do here that make me chuckle to myself. One of these things is feeding eggs to chickens. If I don’t finish my meal, the leftovers go to the pigs or to the chickens. Occasionally, I have leftover eggs, and I toss them to the chickens. They all go crazy fighting over it. It makes me feel a little guilty, then it makes me laugh, and then I think, “How strange.”

David and I are planning to go to Xalita this weekend to look at some amatl (amate), since no one in Oapan paints them anymore. Then we will go to Taxco, known as one of the most romantic cities in Mexico. They are also supposed to have a lot nice silver there. We will head back to the village for one final week. Our final exam is on Thursday and we will have a going away party on Friday. We are so excited to see Okie Doke and sleep in our own bed, but we are going to miss our new friends! I can’t believe we have made it this far!

On an unrelated note, if you liked the book Kite Runner, I recommend A Thousand Splendid Suns. I read it last weekend, and I thought it was fantastic!

Pray for rain and clouds. It has rained the past two nights and been overcast during the day and it is glorious (because the temperature drops about fifteen degrees)! And pray that David and I do well on our final exam and phonetics project that we are working on! I will try to post some pictures this weekend.

Quick update!

We are heading back to Oapan after a nice long weekend in Pie de la Cuesta. It is about half and hour from Acapulco.

We are going to try to go to Taxco this coming weekend. This next week should be killer. But, David is having a birthday, and I am cooking spaghetti and birthday cake (I know, strange, but it was the easiest thing to bring back to the village).

The computer is about to die. Hope everyone is having a great summer. We can't wait to get home!

Dengue Fever

It’s official, I have dengue fever!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue

I guess I could say that I had it. Technically, you have the virus your whole life, but my symptoms have subsided and I am doing fine now. I think David may have had it as well. You would think that if I were going to contract a tropical mosquito borne virus that I would at least be in the tropics! The doctor came by the house and gave our family some solution to treat the water with, so hopefully that will take care of it!

Keep us in your prayers. We are about halfway through the course. We leave for Acapulco tomorrow and can be reached on David’s cell :)!

Pray for my grade in this class! It took me 5 hours to take my test today!