Week 2

We started our language classes this week at UNIVERSAL, I am taking a class called Contemporary Latin American Women: Texts and Voices. There are four other students in my class and we have two teachers - Flor and Mahua. We have class monday through thursday from 8 AM to 10:50 AM for four weeks. The amount of time we spend in the class in four weeks is equal to what we would do in a whole 16 week semester.

We left Thursday to go to Hacienda Santa Cruz and Xochicalco, another ancient ruins site.

We spent Thursday night at the Hacienda after going to Xochicalco.

Xochicalco is amazing. It is very high up and you can see the land and mountains all around at the top of it. These ruins were created by three different groups of Mesoamerican peoples who came together to create one calendar. On the side of one of the biggest pyramids there is actually a carving showing how the three different calendars of three different peoples came together to create one calendar. This is represented by a hand pulling in one calendar, another hand pushing another away and certain numbers represented by bars and circles pushed off to the side and below. I am including this as the first picture because it is a little confusing to explain.

We drove to the Hacienda after this. I didn't really know what kind of place this hacienda thing was going to be. We were driving along a highway when I saw a very old looking building with a wall surrounding it and towers sticking up behind the walls. I made a comment to the peple around me saying how beautiful that was and as I said this our car turned right towards a set of huge wooden doors. We were going in! The doors opened for our car and I was completely caught off guard. There was bougainvilla everywhere and colonial style buildings with fountains, mosaic benches and pristine pools. One of my professors, Antonio, his partner who happens to be the great great great grandson of Benito Juarez owns part of this hacienda which used to be a sugar cane plantation.

We ate dinner in an outside room with a view of the valley and fields beyond. Dinner in Mexico is not at all like dinner in the United States. It is really just a snack. We were served agua pina or pineapple water which is made by blending water, pineapple, and sugar. It is very refreshing. Then they served us things that look like quesadillas but are called synchronizadas. There were ones with ham and oaxaca cheese and I ate the vegetarian ones with I believe manchego cheese and some lemony tasting herb. I ate this with salsa verde. Then they brought out pan dulce and coffee and I ate a lot of pan dulce. We had a bonfire after that and had s'mores! The graham crackers here are very different and so is Hershey's chocolate. But I loved how it was different. The graham crackers weren't as sweet but had more of a nutty flavor.

I went to be early after that because I was tired but me and a few other people decided to get up to walk up a hill to a church to see the sun rise. I woke up around 6 AM and we started to walk up a steep hill across the street from the Hacienda. That was kind of disappointing because the sun didn't rise in front of us above the toy house looking hacienda but behind us halfway hidden by a hill. But it was still beautiful in its own way. Then we met Antonio for a run. He took us to a dirt path that led to a plant nursery. I think we ran about five miles in a valley surrounded by moutains. A man was herding some goats while we were running and we ran with the goats!

The breakfasts that I have been served in Mexico are very different compared with the United States. There are a lot more savory items and vew few sweet items. A very popular dish is chilaquiles which is pretty much a way to use up stale corn tortillas. The corn tortillas are refried and layered in a pot with salsa and cream and cooked till soft. We also had some sort of scrambled eggs with tomatoes as well as beans! I love beans, I eat them at least twice a day here. There was also papaya and cantaloupe as well as yogurt and granola. And I can't forget the fresh squeezed orange juice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahhhh I get a little too excited about food sometimes.

We had a day of discussions of readings and "bonding" in small groups. We discussed some articles such as Peggy McIntosh's Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack: White Privilege and some other ones about identity and power as well as the uses of Tu and Usted in Mexican Spanish.

We had a snack of cucumber and jicama in lemon juice with chili powder on top, so good!

For lunch/comida at 1:30 we were served a lentil soup with plantains in it. Then we had a plate of beans, rice, and grilled cactus with tomatoes and onions. I really like cactus. The Spanish word for cactus is nopal. They served us dessert too that was a gelatin made of a fruit. I am having a hard time here with the desserts because they pretty much consist of gelatins and puddings that are very light. I am seriously craving something heavy and decadent like chococolate cake with ganache and vanilla ice cream! I can't really find that here. I did buy something really good from the bakery though called La Piedra, or rock. It was not airy and light like most pan dulce but dense, which was exactly what I wanted. And it was covered in sugar. I ate it with tea, it was so good!!!!!!!!!!

We had time to just relax at the hacienda and some people went in the pool. They set up hammocks for us and I sat by the pool and read and took a nap. We left at 6 PM and arrived in Cuernavaca around 7:30 where Don Victor had dinner waiting for us! He is a great cook.