Festival del Maíz

I've always been somewhat of a 'go with the flow' type guy. What I mean by that is that I can adapt pretty quickly to my surroundings. I wasn't particularly bothered when I switched from hot showers to pouring rainwater over my head with a plastic bucket to bathe. I don’t mind the heat. I actually prefer speaking in Spanish when I have the choice, not because it’s easier but because I always feel like I’m learning something new. I’m not homesick and I definitely don’t miss my job back home.

Now I don’t mean to say that I don’t miss my family or that I don’t linger in hot showers when I stay at hotels in the capital, but I tend to get along pretty well regardless of my surroundings. All I really need is a decent night of sleep, the company of people I like, and some way to keep myself busy.

I’ve been here a few days short of 7 months and now that I have found some ways to work in my community I am spending significantly less time in my hammock and at cyber cafes. I spend a lot more of my free time hanging out at the bus stop on the road that passes through our village, where a bunch of guys spend their afternoons just hanging out. Rarely do any of them actually get on a bus. Yesterday evening I stopped to chat after getting done teaching at the school. There were 6 of us hanging out. Three of us, myself included, could speak English and Spanish (myself lacking a bit in Spanish still and the other two vice versa). I couldn’t tell you exactly what we talked about, but the conversation switched back and forth between languages and among topics.

I walk a lot around my village, visiting people all over and wearing down the soles of my shoes on the cobblestone paths.

I go to the market in the city a couple times a week to buy anything from fruit to clothes to illegally burned dvd’s. It takes a little longer to buy things in the market, but bargaining over prices and having vendors court you is a lot more enojoyable than standing in the never ending lines at the supermarket.

This past weekend I went to a Festival de Maize in the pueblo just down the road from my village. The festival was put on by the catholic church and the mayor’s office to celebrate the corn harvest and just give everyone a reason to have a good time. About every food possible was made from corn, and a few beverages too. A former Peace Corps volunteer was back in town visiting the pueblo and brought along a British guy backpacking through Central America whom she had met in a hostel in the capital. The three of us were unmistakable, a trio of tall blondes in a country of tiny people with universally brown hair. Some moderately famous singer who is originally from the pueblo performed in hilariously tight spandex pants with openings on the sides. There was also a museum of ceramics and other artifacts from hundreds of years ago that have been discovered over time.

The British guy has a comically low level of Spanish. It is a bit terrifying to hear what I must have sounded like 7 months ago, although I was never quite as bad as he is. To his credit, he gives it a shot at least instead of just keeping quiet.

We were willingly tricked into drinking some fermented maize drink. Betsy, the former volunteer back visiting, asked a couple times if it had alcohol, and after the response, ¨No, they don’t put any alcohol in, it just ferments,¨ we said what the hell and drank it.

On a side note, alchol use here is all or nothing. Only at big festivals like that does anyone drink socially in rural areas. Either you are an alcoholic or you don’t drink. A lot of things are like that here. Either you believe in God or you are a devil worshipper. All Americans are rich and all Mexicans are evil. Women wash dishes and men absolutely do not. People tend to believe generalizations and extremes.

Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for today. I can tell my vocabularly in English is shrinking. Multiple times today I had a word on the tip of my tongue (or fingertips, to be literal) and just couldn’t find the right one. I guess that is inevitable when I spend at least 90% of my time speaking (or at least trying to) in Spanish.