A normal Thanksgiving

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving. As my third favorite day of the year approached, I was worried this day would bring a wave of nostalgia and sadness along with it. Surprisingly, it didn´t. Maybe it was because my day was filled with an activisty march and mass, a trip to the market, lunch with coworkers, a Skype conversation with my parents and an evening in downtown San Cristóbal with a new friend. Or maybe it was because I had been mentally steeling myself for this day since Halloween. October 31 had left me longing to be in the U.S., celebrating a holiday that began for me at the age of two, dressed as a blue crayon at my family´s old house on Rock St. I thus resolved to not feel the same anguish on a day that really should have been more anguish-filled. Whatever the reason, I quite enjoyed myself on Thanksgiving even though the day wasn´t "normal."

I did make several small tributes to the holiday. On Thursday I baked a pumpkin pie and shared it with Liliana, Gabriel, Eduardo, Rick, Jacquie, Ezra and Hillary on Friday. I also decided to make a list of things I´m thankful for this year...ironically, something I never did in the U.S. on Thanksgiving. Here are six of the things on the list.

1) My house´s boiler. Temperatures dropped to four degrees celcius last night and living in a house without heat would make showering sans warm water quite unpleasant. My shower water usually takes about 15 minutes to heat in the morning. This gives me time to putz around my room before jumping in the toasty water (which remains toasty for the duration only if I whiz through my washing). More often than not, Liliana will also stop by my room during these 15 minutes (usually announcing her presence by whispering "boo"). I really enjoy these early-morning chats.
2) Hugs. INESIN has a culture of hugging and I think being away from most of my close relations in the U.S. makes me long for connection...both emotional and physical. These warm daily hugs do my soul good.
3) MCC. Every day I remind myself how lucky I am to be able to being living in Mexico this year...even though this experience presents tough situations too. I feel even more lucky to have the support of an organization that enables people from all walks of life to live out thier dream for a more just world. I highly admire many of the MCCers I´ve met in my journey this far and feel both supported and challenged by the MCC vision and community.
4) Internet. Though I´ve complained to many of you about feeling too tied to the internet, in the end it is enabling me to keep in touch with many people who I love dearly. Though I haven´t seen any of your since August 18, the many emails I receive remind me how incredibly loved and supported I am. 
5) San Cristóbal´s walkability. I love that I walk almost everywhere.  Not only is it good for the environment, it gives me good thinking time, good people-watching time and some exercise too. Of course, walking has its downside. I feel like Frogger most days as I attempt not to slip on uneven sidewalks (yes, I´ve wiped out and gravely injured my pinky finger...ok, semi-gravely), weave in and out of traffic and pick up my pace as I walk under the roofs which are homes to menacing dogs. But being outside, greeting Issac, the man who monitors the comings-and-goings on my street and slowly getting to know the people I pass on my daily walk to work makes the adventure worthwhile.
6) The stars. I feel close to God when I look at the stars. I went to the Pacific coast this weekend. We stayed on a peninsula only reachable by boat and the only time I´ve seen more stars was hiking in the Atlas mountains of Morocco. As I layed in the sand inventing stories for each of the stars with three friends, two shooting stars streaked through the sky. We invited the cabaña-owner´s daughter (probaby 4 years old) to make a wish for us. She wished that one day we would all become stars in the night sky. It was a magical moment and I hope her wish comes true.   

The reasons I´m thankful are uncountable. So even though my Thanksgiving wasn´t filled with turkey and sweet potatoes, the first Christmas songs or the Macy´s parade, maybe taking the time to reflect on what I´m thankful for, the big things and the little, means that I had a very "normal" Thanksgiving.

Five days. Eight hundred people. One ton of corn.

For the past week I've been in Bachajón, a town in the Chiapanecan jungle about five hours from San Cristóbal.  I made the trip with several coworkers and my embarrassingly over-sized backpacking backpack to attend a regional theological retreat of the Indigenous Mayan population in southern Mexico and Guatemala. I was both excited and nervous for this adventure...excited for the chance to interact with the indigenous population of Mexico, especially in the context of their spirituality...nervous because I had no idea what to expect.  And I like to know what to expect.

The week was incredibly rich, challenging and highly worthwhile. Much of what I experienced was a feast for the senses, so I thought I would provide ten images, sounds, smells and experiences from my latest adventure.

1) Waking up every morning at 5:15 am, crawling out of my sleeping bag that rested on a wooden bed sans mattress and walking outside to be greeted by brightly colored hammocks strung and inhabited by families from the Yucatan peninsula.

2) Eating hand-made tortillas for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The outdoor cooking area was also located right outside of my room and was always filled with around 40 women from local communities. They used over a ton (yes, this is a literal statistic) of corn to feed the almost 800 of us over the week and arose at 2:30 every morning to begin food preparation for the day. They cooked beans, corn, coffee and beef over wood fires in tubs big enough to bathe in. Incredible.

3) Participating in the morning and evening prayers intoned by elders in any number of indigenous languages.  Smelling the incense. Dancing to the sacred music. Click here to listen to the song I probably heard the most during our time of prayer. It's not the best quality but it is a group from the same community (Rincón Chamula) that seranaded us every morning and evening.

4) Waking up to a flooded room the first morning. It might have been my fault.The toilet didn't have a flusher handle (there has to be a technical term for that, right?) and as I started fiddling with the tank on the first afternoon water started gushing out of the hole where the aptly-named flusher handle should have been. Multiple men spent several hours trying to fix the problem, but to no avail. The next morning a plumber came and remedied the situation.

5) Giving a brief testimony based on Luke 2:41-51 and Jeremiah 1:4-8 in our final worship service. Our theme for the week focused on young adults and as the token non-Catholic young adult, I was asked to give a short reflection. Here are my words from that evening:

Muy buenas noches hermanas y hermanos. Les pido permiso hablar. Me llamo Kelly. Tengo 22 años y soy de la iglesia Menonita, una religión protestante.

Mi pidieron que diera una breve reflexión sobre las dos lecturas de la Biblia que acabamos de escuchar. Como Jesús cuando fue a Jerusalén para dialogar con los principales, estoy en un camino, un viaje. Estoy buscando y este viaje es literal. Vengo de los EE.UU. y ahorita estoy muy lejos de mi familia y mi comunidad. Pero mi camino también se relaciona con mi vida de fé. Tengo muchas preguntas, dudas e inquietudes de lo que es la religión, la fé y Mamá/Papá Dios. 

Mi camino me ha llevaldo a lugares nuevos como Bachajón para este encuentro. Y estoy bien contenta estar con Uds. porque este espacio ecuménico me está permitiendo seguir en mi camino de fé. Por ejemplo, les comparto una de mis preguntas: ¿dónde puedo encontrar a Mamá/Papá Dios? Uds. me acordaron que Dios está en todo: en la lluvia que cayó anoche, en el maiz, en mi misma y en cada uno de Uds. 

También estoy tomando en cuenta la sabiduría de mi religión menonita. Hay una familia menonita en San Cristóbal, donde estoy viviendo. Me reúno con la señora de esta familia cada mes para platicar sobre nuestra fé. Comparto mis pensamientos, dudas y preguntas. También ella comparte sus experiencias y me pide mis opiniones. Nos acompañamos en el camino.

A veces, porque soy jóven, siento como Jeramías, muy pequeña. Pero sé que Dios me acompaña en esta vida y como jesús en el templo, necesito seguir en el camino, en búsquda porque el proceso de buscar da sabiduría, fortaleza y me permite tomar mi lugar en nuestro mundo diverso y en el pueblo de creyentes, aunque soy jóven.

6) Kneeling in the dirt under a starlit sky for over a half hour listening to prayers by the principales (spiritual religious elders) in nine different indigenous languages. I didn't understand a thing but it was a good chance to build my empathy for the many people around the world who don't speak dominant languages.

7) Dancing to live marimba music at our celebration on Friday night with everyond ranging from a baby sleeping in her mother´s arms to a nun from the Dominican Republic to a wrinkled principal who was at least 80 years old.

8) Wading through incredible amounts of mud after a supremely rainy Thursday. Upon returning home I scrubbed my feet in the shower (which I never do), trimmed my toenails, scrubbed my feet again and then attempted to chip off the still caked-on dirt with my pocket knife. My toes still show remnants of my muddy experience.

9) Drinking pozol (thick, fermented corn dough dissolved in water) at noon every day. It's quite an energizing drink and apparently is great for the digestive system. Pozol is the traditional drink of southern Mexico and is often carried by Mexican farmers to the field and consumed as a mid-day snack.   

10) Staring off into the jungly mountains when my mind wandered from presentations at hand. The countryside was beautiful and it was a welcome relief to escape from urban life for a week. It also brought back fond memories of the six weeks I spent in the Peruvian jungle almost two years ago.

So there you have my week in a ten-point nutshell! In all seriousness, I am extremely thankful to have lived this experience. I left feeling much more connected to a different demographic of the Mexican population and am also so honored that as a foreigner from a different religious tradition I was allowed to participate in religious ceremonies and the daily life of these beautiful people.

I'll leave you with a quote from the Popol Vul that struck me this week:

Dios, que seamos uno   God, that we would be one

A pictorial journey through my first three months in Mexico

I left off my pictoral journey in Cuernavaca when my camera´s memory card broke. I resume it here. First, I present my host chihuahua during language study. She could often be found lounging on her bed pictured here. The juxtaposition killed me!

Sara Vences, my host mom, wonderful cook and pre-school teacher in Cuernavaca. On a more self-centered note, this picture makes me realize how much my hair has grown in the past threeish months.

Host brother, Carlos (third from left)

Week 2 Spanish teacher at Universal, Rosalba

Crazy friend Lidio on our adventure to Tepotzlán. He loaned me the very offical vest I´m sporting

Slug slime lotion! Regenerate skin! Eliminate wrinkles, scars and discoloration!

Elote!

And then I left Cuernavaca and returned to the big city.
Palacio de Bellas Artes

Diego Rivera mural in the Palacio Nacional

Because I kind of have an obsession with cacti. In fact, I´ve started eating a cactus paddle every morning for breakfast. Ok, I actually just started this tradition today...but I´m planning on keeping it up

And my entire journey was leading me up to this point: my arrival in San Cristóbal de las Casas.

A glimpse of San Cristóbal's colonial architecture
Iglesia de Santo Domingo

The main cathedral

With the fam

My bro-face, Eduardo (aka Lalo, Lalito, Eduardito, hermano, hermanito...).  Being the typical six year old that he is, he challenge me to a round of Skip Bo two days ago at breakfast.  He said this game would determine who farts more. Luckily I had to go to work, a good way to avoid this competition.

The view upon entering my house: 1 Indigenistas, Barrio 14 de septiembre.
Past the dining room table and to the left is our kitchen. The first door on the right (before the wood paneling) is Gabriel and Liliana's room.  The next door on the right is Eduardo and Abuelita Betty's room.  Straight back is my bedroom and the bathroom is in front of my room and to the left.

My b-room. My bath towel is hanging in the patio behind my room.  It's the orange one (just in case you were wondering) :)

Kitchen. We've yet to use the oven as it serves as more of a storage space than anything else. The frying pan is used to heat our tortillas (you can see two sitting on the right left burner) and the giant green mug-looking-thing is what I use to heat my water for tea every morning and evening. I'm getting kind of sick of chamomile as Liliana bought a box of 100.

Sweet bread.  A daily staple.

This is our pet bunny. Its name is Rabbis (I think) and has been confined to a cage made of spare pieces of wood.  Rabbis still finds ingenious ways to escape and we often find our trashcan overturned in the morning.

INESIN (minus Elena and Lucy)

But here's Elena!
We made pizza together one night to welcome a Costa Rican theologan.

Dario is a volunteer from Switzerland who came to INESIN just a few days before me and will be here until just before I finish up my SALT term.  He's quickly becoming a good friend. Sandra is my neighbor and I have her to thank for setting me up with my wonderful host family.

just because I thought it was funny.

And the transition from INESIN to MCC photos.
This is Rick, a three year MCCer from Canada working at INESIN. He's posing in INESIN's garden, for which he is primarily responsible.

And Jacquie! She works at a school called Pinguinos.  We've gone out for coffee several times and I'm really appreciating forming a relationship with her.

Ezra (center) is Rick and Jacquie's oldest child. As I was working on this blog at the Block's house, Ezra kept scampering around, informing me that it was raining inside and then pretending to steal my imaginary umbrella.

Hilary is their second child. She is super athletic and can often been found scampering around on her tiptoes.

Ricardo is one of our country reps.  He's from Colombia and is pictured here  with his youngest daughter, Sofia.

Isabel is the oldest daughter of our country reps. She's fluent in both Spanish and English and speaks English in a South African accent.

Sofia is Isabel's little sister.

And the whole team. 
Our other country rep, Marion from South Africa, is seated in the foreground (blonde hair). Also pictured are the two other members of our team (Adrienne from Canada and Arturo from Chile).

The famous fire

Escaping the cold at Lagos de Colon

A Mexican lunch at the lake: mojarra, tortillas, salsa, guacamole and veggies.

Quintessential Mennonite boys

Making pumpkin pie to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with my granddaddy's famous pie crust recipe.

Looking across the border to Guatemala. A mere two hour drive.

A paper-making cooperative in Sancris.

Dario and Lucy

bringing the potluck to Mexico...

Zinancatan, an indigenous flower-growing community near Sancris

The cathedral

my traveling companions

An artisan who treated us to hand-made tortillas, beans and pox in her home.

Life in the midst of death

and speaking of death...Day of the Dead

Day of the dead altar.  Take special note of the chayotes which I wrote about in a previous post.

A resident of San Juan Chamula, the most-visited indigenous community in the world. Yes, tourism is alive and kicking in Chiapas and like it or not, I'm a part of it too.

Cemetery in San Juan Chamula on the day of the dead. The orange marigolds are the holiday's designated flower.

How are you supposed to rest in peace without your bottle of Coke?!

Canon de Sumidero

And the journey continues...