Uniforms Everywhere

This was the first week of school for the kids in Guanajuato. It was quite an event. Over the last couple of weeks, everyone has been buying school supplies, backpacks, and uniforms. And Monday morning, everyone was out in the street walking their kids to school. It's made for a more interesting walk to class for me. Here are some observations that I think are interesting about the schools and the students:

1. All the schools here require their kids to wear uniforms. All of them, public and private. Each school has a different plaid or central color. As I walk to school I try to figure out where each different uniform group is going. No one seems to mind wearing the same clothes as everyone else and they all look really sharp.

2. The amount of clothes the kids wear while walking to school is incredible. I think their parents are afraid they will catch their deaths of cold. For example, the little girls wear wool skirts, long-sleeve button-up shirts, sweaters, knee socks, and often a wool coat (like a peacoat) with a scarf and mittens. For me, this is an outfit for mid-January, but here it is barely chilly in the mornings, so I don't really understand it.

3. The setup of the school buildings. The classrooms are located around an open courtyard in the middle of the building. Because there is no real place to have recess, the kids take their break in this courtyard. As a result, it is always very loud. I can't imagine being a teacher and having to talk over the recess noise that is happening two feet away from your classroom door. Talk about a distraction for the students.

4. Many of the schools have two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning session begins at 8:00 and ends around 2:00, and the afternoon session is from 2:00 until about 8:00 at night. As a result, there are children in uniforms all day long. I'm not sure how lunch time goes because the main meal is eaten around 3:00 by most families, so I don't know if the kids eat at school or not.

5. There are a number of kids who wear face masks to school. I'm assuming that this is to prevent the spread of Influenza A (H1N1) or the swine flu. At the entrance to each school there is a person with the biggest container of hand santitizer that I have ever seen, and each child gets some as they go into school.

All in all, I think it would be an interesting experience to go to school here. Obviously most of my observations have been from outside the school walls, but it would be really neat to be able to compare the classes and the classroom settings with those in the US. Another interesting aspect would be the mindset of the students, that is, whether they are excited about school or if the attitude is one of "just get me out of here." I'll have to ask someone someday.

*The photo is one of the secondary schools here in GTO. You can see that there is a courtyard under the metal room and the classrooms are around the courtyard.

The Day of Many Hats

This past weekend I went to Zacatecas with the CIEE group. It was a fun weekend and we saw a lot of things, but one thing that stuck out for me about this trip were the number of hats I wore. Those of you who know me know that I never wear hats, so this was a new experience.

Hat #1 The Straw Hat
I wore this hat as we toured La Quemada, a prehispanic site outside of the city of Zacatecas. The purpose of the hat was to prevent sunburn, and it did save my face, but not my shoulders. La Quemada was really neat. It is an ancient city built on a mountain. The pyramids at Teotihuacan made me want to go back in time, La Quemada made me feel like I went back in time. The mountain was so quiet and it was so much fun to wander around through the old city. Not to mention the scenery from the top of the mountain was fantastic. Zacatecas is a beautiful state and there is a lot of agriculture so everything is very green.

Hat #2 The Hard Hat

It was very unfortunate that we had to wear this combination of hard hat and hair net. We had to wear these when we went down into the Mina El Eden. Zacatecas is a large mining center in Mexico and this particular mine has silver and other precious gems. The mine was lit with colored lights and there were figures of the indigenous workers who used to work there. It showed the dangerous conditions that the workers were forced to work under.

Hat #3 The Jaguar

We went to a mask museum that had over 5000 masks and they had some to try on. Just kidding that isn't me, but it is a picture of someone wearing one of the masks. There were a gazillion masks though. There were masks from the prehispanic era and masks from the colonial era when the Spanish would host masquerade parties. We learned that if the masks were painted red, it was in reference to devils and especially the "infidels" or the Muslim enemies of Spain. Many of the prehispanic masks were death masks used in burials so that the gods would not recognize the dead once they reached the afterworld. I've never seen so many masks in my entire life. It was a really interesting way to look at the old traditions of Mexico.
Zacatecas was a fun trip. I think my favorite photo from the trip was my picture of the cathedral lit up at night. It was really beautiful! Apparently there is a competition between Guanajuato and Zacatecas for the most beautiful city in Mexico. In my personal opinion, I like Guanajuato better.

Drogas

Today I saw the first sign of the impact of the drug wars that I've seen so far. We were driving to Zacatecas which is about three hours north of Guanajuato and at the border of every state was a military checkpoint. These checkpoints had sandbag walls, a guard tower, drug dogs (German shepherds), and a group of soldiers in camo. We were stopped on the border of Jalisco and Aguascalientes. I had no idea what was going on, and nothing really happened. The soldier asked our driver where he was going, where he had come from, and to see identification. Once he had confirmed that our driver was the guy on his ID, we were allowed to pass on through. We asked Lalo, the CIEE assistant director, what was going on and he told us that it was part of the increased security due to the drug violence that peaked earlier this year. Later, as we were driving we saw a caravan of military transport trucks driving groups of soldiers down the road. I don't know where they were going, but they looked important. The car in front of the caravan was a jeep and it had a machine gun on the roof. It was quite a sight.

It was a strange thing because I had almost completely forgotten that that had even been a problem. There are no roving bands of soldiers wandering around Guanajuato or even military checkpoints stopping cars to check for smuggled drugs or guns. CIEE has told us that we are not allowed to travel in the neighboring state of Michoacan because of reported drug violence, but that is the extent of its impact on us. We were safe in Zacatecas, but it was an interesting reminder that Mexico has been fighting an internal war against the powerful drug cartels.

PDA and Piropos

There are some aspects of the culture in Guanajuato that I just can't get used to but are perfectly normal here. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, they are just very different from what is considered normal in the United States.

1) PDA (Public Displays of Affection): In Mexico it is completely normal to turn a corner and almost run into a couple making out in the street. Nobody thinks twice about it, but it is a little uncomfortable to have to squeeze by these people to pass them on the sidewalk or to go up a flight of stairs.
2) Fireworks: Almost everyday is a saint's day here in GTO. As a result, somebody is always celebrating which usually means fireworks. It is not uncommon to be walking through town and to hear booming and banging coming from the next street over. Of course, all this is in broad daylight. The first few weeks we were here, everyone jumped at every boom while the people around us didn't even flinch. Now, we look like the locals and laugh at those in-experienced tourists who react like their lives are in jeopardy.
3) Beggars: The beggars on the street will always be something that I don't like. It is so sad to see them sitting with their outstretched hands hoping that someone will have compassion on them. The hardest to handle are the ones with children or babies. It is a very common thing to be sitting at an outdoor cafe and have kids come up to you and ask you to buy gum from them. They always have the most pitiful voices and are usually wearing dirty clothes. I don't like it one bit.
4) Clothes: People's fashion sense here is entertaining, to say the least. I am no fashion police, but I do know that is isn't a good idea to wear a see-through light colored shirts with a black or red bra. But everyone does it here. Also, none of the women wear sneakers. The majority of them wear high heels all the time. My feet get tired from all the walking and the hills, and I wear tennis shoes. I have no idea how these women do this without killing their backs and feet. T-shirts are a constant source of entertainment because they often have English sayings on them and you can just tell the people have no idea what they are wearing. For example, I saw a boy wearing a shirt that said "I'm the big sister." oops.
5) Eating Times: Meal times are very different from meal times in the US. For example, on a normal day, I eat breakfast at 7:00 am before I leave for class, I eat lunch at 3:30 pm, and I eat dinner at 9:00 pm. By the time lunch rolls around I am absolutely starving and then when dinner comes, it's about the same story. Lunch is the big meal, so our dinners usually consist of cereal or a small sandwich, so of course by breakfast, I'm hungry again. The food is delicious and their is plenty of it, but I feel like I'm hungry all the time.
6) Los Piropos: Los Piropos are the comments that the men make when a woman walks down the street, especially a white woman. I've been called "guera," "gringa," "blanca," and "preciosa" to name a few. While they are harmless and not gross or preverted, it is somewhat embarassing. I've gotten good at ignoring them and not giving them a reaction, but I haven't gotten used to it yet. The construction workers are the worst. Everytime there is construction going on, I know that someone is going to say something. It is just a reminder that my blond hair will always make me stand out here.

So basically, there are definite cultural differences here that I am still getting used to. None of these things that I can't deal with, and I'm sure that I will eventually not even notice. Emersing yourself into a new culture is always an adventure.

Los Antiguos

Some of the most interesting people to watch here in Guanajuato are the old people. Most of the old people here have either lived here for their whole lives or the majority of their lives. They seem to have a set routine that they follow every day. For example, the man who sells vegetables on the street corner is there every morning when I walk by carefully laying out his bags of green beans and the round, green fruit that I don't know the name of. He is so deliberate and precise as he lays them out. He sits their all day, and it makes me happy to see that when I pass by later in the day, he has sold some of his wares.

Life in Guanajuato must be hard on the body. There is a lady that I see walking at least once a week that is bent in half - literally at a right angle - from her waist. Maybe it is just because I worked at a chiropractor's office this summer, but it looks like an painful and difficult way to go about life. She walks with a cane and moves incredibly slowly. Many of the elderly people here are bent or twisted from a long life of carrying heavy loads and walking everywhere, but this woman is the worst. Sometimes I see the older people leaning on the arm of a relative, but mostly they just go about their business at their own pace. Once somebody asked how the old people maneuver the steep callejones and the response was that they simply move slowly and steadily until they reach their destination.

Quite a few of the beggars in town are elderly. They sit patiently on the sidewalks holding out their hand or a plastic cup for people to put the money into. Most of them wear more traditional clothing - for the women, this means, skirts, aprons, and headscarves - and a few even wear the indigenous garb. The man in the picture above is one of the beggars I see every day. He slowly makes his way up the main street in town throughout the day. Sometimes he stops to rest by leaning against a corner or sitting on the doorstep of a building. He walks with a cane and always wears the same clothes. Sometimes people give him loaves of bread or something else to eat instead of coins. Someday I would like to hear his life story.

On the other end of the spectrum are the wealthy old people. These people live in the ex-haciendas and have huge families and no financial worries. They have lived in Guanajuato for their whole lives and are familiar with the quirks and characteristics of the city. Many of them have made their money by working for the government or large businesses, and others have money because their family has always been wealthy. They are free to lavish gifts and huge meals on their grandchildren. My host dad's parents are people like this. They live in a large home with an indoor courtyard and they clearly do not lack for anything. They dress stylishly and are less likely to be bent over from having to do manual labor.

One thing that can be said about the elderly is that they are very devout, especially the women. They come from a generation where religion was not just being baptized into catholicism, but rather something that involved everyday devotion. Not only are the old women often seen in the churches praying, but they worry about their family's lack of devotion. My host family is catholic, but they do not attend mass on a regular basis and their lives do not revolve around the church. My host dad's mother is concerned about this. I know this because I was in the room during an argument between the mother and her sons. When we left her house, she specifically blessed each of her sons and prayed that they would not disregard the religion she taught them.

I like to watch the old people as I walk around Guanajuato. They have so many things in common and yet all have their own stories. This blog is purely observations that I have made by people watching. Someday I will get up the courage to ask the questions that will allow me a glimpse of what their lives have been like and what Guanajuato used to be like when they were young.

La Universidad de Guanajuato

As of today, I have had all of my classes. Granted, we just went over the syllabus and talked about the general plan for the class, but I think that they will all be very interesting. I am taking four classes this semester. One is directly through the University of Guanajuato and is taught at the Literature and History School. The other three are through CIEE, but are taught by University of Guanajuato professors. They are all in Spanish.

Historia de Mexico
This is my one UG class. The class has about 20 people in it and is taught by Lic. Eduardo Vidaurri. We will be covering the time of pre-Columbian Mexico until the Porfiriato era. As the teacher put it, the dates we will be working between are 50,000 a.p. to 1867 (a.p. means antes presente or before present, so basically the BC period). The professor seems pretty laid back and he is willing to take questions and even joke around in class. The Mexican students seem eager to learn and there were a few that introduced themselves and seemed interested in us American kids. There are two other CIEE students in the class.

Migration, Politics, and Current Social Issues in Mexico
I think this will be my most interesting class. We will be reading about and discussing migration and many topics surrounding migration. We are going to do a brief overview of historical migration and then dive into 20th century issues. The class will finish with a discussion of the effects of migration in Guanajuato specifically. The professor for this class is really nice. He talks slowly and enunciates well which will make lectures easier and more interesting. He is a historian and is very interested in this topic. He told us that he doesn't believe that migration is motivated by economics, but rather that it is a right of passage for Mexican men to go to the US or to migrate from the country to a city. I'm really excited about the chance to view migration through the eyes of the Mexicans.

Spanish for the Professions
This class will probably prove to be the most useful. It is designed to increase our vocabularies, improve our speaking and reading comprehension, and to provide us with the ability to communicate in the professional world. We are covering topics like health, law, education, art, community and social work, and business and economics. We will be reading articles from both local and national newspapers and magazines, practicing by role playing, and writing responses to the things we read. I hope that my grammar is refined and my vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds.

Reading and Writing Revolution
In this class, we are going to be reading literature of the revolution. We will cover the majority of the revolutions in Mexico since the 1910 revolution, including the 1968 Massacre, the sexual and personal revolution, and the Zapatista movements of the most recent decades. By the end of the class we will have read a 300 page book in Spanish. The professor for this class is named Flor and she is really excited and passionate about literature. She told us about how fewer and fewer people are choosing literature as a major because it takes a lot longer to make money with a degree in literature. She told us about her friends who wanted to be doctors and now have a house and a car and belongings and all she has is a small house with books, books, and more books. She talks clearly and is relatively easy to understand, but I walked away from the class feeling like I had gotten a lot of information thrown at me all at once.
There are similarities and differences between the Mexican university and the way things are done at American universities. For example, professors here don't go by Dr. or Professor. You call them by their first name. More of the work is written outside of class. At least in the classes I am taking, I will not have many in-class exams. Most of the graded work is essays that I will write outside of class. Grades are done on a 1-10 scale with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Being on time is not exactly a requirement. The professor showed up 20 minutes late to my History of Mexico class and no one left or freaked out. When he arrived, he informed us that class would start at 10:20 instead of 10:00. Go figure. The classes are very small. While this is normal for Wofford, a university in the US that has 20,000 students would have classes with 100 or more people in it. At UG, the classes are no bigger than 20 and once you get into the more advanced, elective classes, 6-10 is a more likely number. Textbooks and college bookstores are non-existent. Instead, professors assign a reading from a book and the students are responsible for going to the library and making the necessary photocopies. And, to top it all off, the Mexican students pay $150 per semester to attend the University of Guanajuato. Slightly different from the $38,000 to attend Wofford, but many students can barely afford it and live in tiny apartments and have to save money to eat well. I'm excited about all the interesting things I'm going to learn this semester. I think that I will be exposed to many new perspectives in all different areas of study.

*The first picture is of the main university building. Unfortunately, I have no classes there. All of my classes are at the Escuela de Idiomas and the Philosophy School in Valenciana. The two other photos are from the Escuela de Idiomas - the courtyard/patio area and the coffee stand respectively.

A Photographer's Heaven

I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week in a town that is about an hour and a half from Guanajuato called San Miguel de Allende. And I'm not kidding when I say that this town was a photographer's heaven. It was absolutely beautiful! I almost took more pictures in 24 hours there than I did in three days in Mexico City. Choosing which pictures to post with this blog was a challenge, so I decided to make this blog post mostly photos with some description. I hope you enjoy!

This church is located on the main plaza or Jardin and is called the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel. It completely dominates the scene and is as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside.
This is another beautiful church tower in San Miguel de Allende. I thought the bright colors were stunning against the blue sky.

Here is a photo of one of the beautiful streets in San Miguel. The houses are all so colorful that my friend and I wandered around for 3 hours without getting bored or seeing the same street twice.
This is the view from inside the Bellas Artes which is currently a school of the arts. It was originally part of a group of church buildings and functioned as a monastery.

Every doorway, every alleyway, even every doorknob is worth stopping to take a photo. Flowers cover many of the houses while others have indoor open courtyards or terraces. The city is truly a fun place to visit.
San Miguel is an interesting city because is the home of many retired Americans. It is definitely a little strange to see so many elderly Americans walking the streets. Real Estate is a huge thing in San Miguel and many of the old haciendas are up for sale. There are a lot of artisan shops in San Miguel that sell everything from embroidered blouses to leather to pottery. I hope to return to San Miguel so that I can better explore the artisan market.
My friend Jessica and I watched the sun set over the city from a restaurant terrace. It was absolutely stunning. The sky was lit up with oranges and yellows and the buildings were cast into silhouettes. The photo above shows the moment when there were sun rays shining through the clouds. Gradually the city lit up as street lights and flood lights illuminated the main buildings. The churches on the Jardin were incredibly beautiful.

A Wedding at Church and El Mercado Hidalgo

I went to church today. I found a protestant church called Iglesia de Cristo that is in the downtown area of Guanajuato. I was very excited about the opportunity to meet some more people and spend time worshiping God. Everyone was very friendly, and they all greeted me. A couple of people asked me why I was in Guanajuato, and the man sitting next to me showed me a postcard he had received from a friend in Egypt. The service was great...all 2 hours of it. Granted, we started about 30 minutes late, but still, those wooden pews are not forgiving. There was the normal time of singing, preaching, the offering, and the celebration of communion. The church was celebrating 26 years in Guanajuato, and I guess they had asked the congregation to volunteer to speak about how the church had impacted their lives. I'm pretty sure everyone wanted to say something. Some people also sang a song that had meant a lot to them. The strangest thing though was that the pastor performed a wedding in the middle of the service. That was a new one for me. The husband and wife and their families went up to the front of the church and sat on chairs facing the pastor. He performed the ceremony and that was it. There was no white dress, no bridesmaids, no father giving the bride away. It took me a minute to realize that it was a wedding because there was no warning at all. And while it didn't seem to fit into the church routine, it was obviously a special moment for those involved. Never a dull moment for sure.

After church I went to the Mercado Hidalgo which is the large, indoor market here in Guanajuato. I expected to see a market where people were selling handmade blankets, toys, clothes, and pots. Instead, I walked in the door and was immediately faced with stand after stand of people selling food. You could buy anything from tacos to freshly-squeezed fruit juices to french fries to pork rinds. As I walked past these vendors, I came to the part of the market where they sold fruits, vegetables, bread, candy, and spices.


I soon realized that there was an upstairs where the vendors were selling more souvenir-type things. I wandered up there and walked through the rows of Guanajuato t-shirts, handmade baskets, embroidered blouses, and painted pots and bowls. There was a lot to see and take in, but I got the impression that most of the non-food items were geared more towards tourists. When I got home, I asked my host mom where she bought the fruits and vegetables that we eat. She told me she buys them from a mini supermarket and from the street vendors in the Plaza de Baratillo. She wanted to know where we bought our produce in the US. I wish we had more of an outdoor-market system in the US. The fruits and vegetables are so fresh and delicious when they come from the street vendors.

As I was walking through the market I heard this voice behind me ask "so are you at the university?" In English. Of course I turned around and for a confused second, I stared at the Mexican guy standing there. When he repeated the question, I realized that I wasn't imagining things and we started talking. He apparently studied in England for two years, thus the ability to speak English. He was a Visual Arts major and had recently moved to Guanajuato hoping to find a job. I'm not sure how old he was, probably 23 to 25 years old. He was headed in the same direction I was so we walked for a while and chatted about Guanajuato.

Basically all this is to say that I've started making friends here, or acquaintances at least. People here are very friendly and want to know about your life. And they remember you too. If I see someone on the street that I've met, they wave and say hi with the traditional handshake/kiss on the cheek. Guanajuato is a city where no one has secrets. Everyone know everything about everybody. I guess is the beauty and the curse of living in a bowl-shaped city.