Mariposas Monarcas and Nevado Toluca

This weekend we went to see the monarch butterflies of Michoacan at a national park and the next day we were going to hike the 4th highest volcano in Mexico, Nevado Toluca.

It took 4 hours to drive to the butterfly reserve from Cuernavaca. I tried to sleep on the way but it was impossible because the road was so windy and bumpy. I think about 3 people were throwing up on the way because they got so carsick. Kate, you would have been very very sick.

We had the option of riding a horse or walking the 3 kilometers to where the butterflies currently were. I chose to walk and we walked with a guide up hill through trails in the woods. It was very beautiful and reminded me of Colorado. We finally got to the place where thousands and thousands of butterflies rest. It was pretty amazing to see because you could just look at a tree and not see the tree because it was orange due to the fact that so many butterflies were covering it! There were also a lot of dead butterfly wings and dead butterflies on the ground and supposedly this is how the butterflies tell where to stop the next year due to the presence of these wings.

After seeing the butterflies for a while we walked back down but I pretty much ran because I had to pee so badly. We ate lunch after that the cooks here had made for us and we brought. It was a lunch of three different kinds of empanadas! One of them was spinach and cheese, another of poblano peppers and corn and the other of champinones or mushrooms. My favorite was definitely the poblano peppers one.

So I have figured out that my new favorite food is poblano pepper.

Don Victor, the cook who makes dinner for us here makes the most delicious, rico thing ever which is cooked poblano peppers in cream. I asked him how he prepared it and he told me that you just sautee some onions and garlic in butter, add some cream and the fresh sliced poblanos and simmer/cook them for while. We have had this dish twice and the first time was with chicken it as well, which was also quite divine.

Only 9 of us were going on from the butterfly reserve to the volcano so we left in a different car. There were 14 of us and we were pretty squished. We drove to Toluca, the capital city of the state of Mexico. We were trying to hurry to get there before 6 PM because we wanted to visit the largest stained glass piece of art in the middle of Toluca. We arrived at 5:40 and ran through the rain to the building. It is so beautiful and made of all stained glass artwork that portrays a fight between darkness and light, good and evil. Inside of it is a botanical garden.

Then we went to our hotel called Hotel Colonial right in downtown Toluca. After putting our things away we went to look for a place to eat breakfast the next morning before our hike up the volcano. We found a place listed in my guidebook and decided that it would be good to eat there the next morning. Then we all wanted something sweet, specifically chocolate. So we found a cafe where we sat down around 8 PM. I ordered a hot chocolate which was the traditional Mexican hot chocolate with chile and cinnamon. It was so so so good! They also brought us pan dulce. One of the people I was with, Sarah ordered flaming strawberries and the other ordered cheesecake. The flaming strawberries were quite the spectacle of the restaurant. We couldn't stop laughing the whole time while our very attractive waiter prepared them hahahha.

The next morning we went to the restaurant we scoped out the night before for breakfast, however they were not open when they said they were going to be and we were on a schedule so we decided to go to the only place open which is called Vips. It is pretty much a Mexican Dennys. I thought it was going to be disappointing but it was not. I ordered some eggs and other things, not really knowing what I was going to get. I got an egg over easy on top of a cactus leaf with salsa, queso fresco, poblanos, corn and bread. It was so good! I also got canteloupe. I was satisfied.

We left for the volcano around 9:30 and arrived at 11 AM.

We were a lot closer to the top of the volcano than I wanted because I wanted to hike for a while but we ended up hiking for 3 hours total. The volcano is over 15,000 feet tall, the fourth largest in Mexico. At the top of the volcano are two lakes separated by a large hill. Me and my friend Rebecca walked to the top and then around both lakes and then up to the top of a ridge. It was incredibly and breathtaking and quite cold, which I wans't used to after Cuernavaca being so warm all the time. We left the volcano around 4 PM and returned at 7 PM.

The next day was Valentine's day and I bought a Ghiradelli brownie mix from the Superama and borrowed an egg and oil from the cooks here. I shared them with everyone here and saved some for myself for dessert after dinner. Then I went with Rebecca and Sarah to an abarrote, or convenience store and bought Oreo ice cream. When I got back I ate my brownie with the ice cream. A brownie had never tasted so good. The desserts here just aren't the same.

Palacio Cortes, Diego Rivera Mural

Last week we went to Palacio Cortes which, as you can probably tell by its name, was Hernan Cortes's palace which he built here in Cuernavaca over an indigenous ceremonial site. I dislike Cortes almost more than Ronald Reagan by the way.

It is located on the central square in Cuernavaca called the Zocalo.

It is now a museum which houses a Diego Rivera mural.

The mural is called "A History of Morelos: Conquest and Revolution." The conquest of course refers to when Cortes came in 1519 and the revolution is that which occurred in 1910 with Emiliano Zapata. The mural is really more about the conquest though with just a few references to the revolution thrown in. The bigger portrayal of the conquest is purposeful in that it shows how much of an impact that conquest had on the lives of people today in Mexico.

The mural is amazing and stretches the length of a hallway. It starts on the right end and works its way to the left. It portrays fighting among indigenous peoples and the conquistadores. It portrays sacrifices by the Aztecs, destruction of nature, torturing of indigenous, the Spanish taking gold, jewels, and food from the natives. It shows the Spanish forcing the natives to labor to build Catholic churches upon their ceremonial centers. It shows the horror of the conquest.

I really like Diego River's art.

There are a few representations of Zapata and the Revolution of 1910 which you can see in one of the pictures of the man and the woman opposite each other on one of the beams in the hallway.

Week 3, Part 1: Las Grutas and Amatlan

It just seems like we are doing one thing after another here!

It makes the days fly by.

Las Grutas

On Saturday, about half our group took a side trip to Taxco, a town famous for its abundance of silver and silver mines. Me and two of my companeras went to Las Grutas, which are huge caves located in a national park an hour and a half away from Cuernavaca. We took a bus for 47 pesos to Las Grutas that left at 8 AM. We arrived around 9:30 AM. We bought our tickets for 63 pesos and waited in line until the caves opened at 10. We were part of a big group of people. The caves are huge! We walked 2 km into the cave which took about an hour because we stopped frequently so the guide, speaking only in Spanish could tell us about the stalagmites and stalagtites. After the caves we went down to el Rio de las Bocas which is located under the caves. No one was down there and it was very peaceful and serene with some huge magestic trees. I kind of felt like I was in Avatar! hahahah, that's for you Steve Heinz! Getting back was pretty difficult though. We thought we were going to be able to buy a bus ticket to return at Las Grutas but we were wrong. We probably spoke with 5 people asking them how to get back to Cuernavaca. Most of them told us that the bus might stop at Las Grutas on its way back towards Cuernavaca or it might not. Then we had some pushy taxi drivers try to get us in their taxis, telling us that they could take us for 100 pesos to the nearest bus station where we could buy a ticket back to Cuernavaca. I was getting a little frustrated at the entire situation and didn't know what to do so we took a moment to decide and we decided to take a taxi for 100 pesos or 33 pesos each to the bus stop. This worked out fine and the bus ticket back to Cuernavaca was 30 pesos.

Okay so skipping Sunday which was a relaxing day in which me and two of my other companeras watched Grey's Anatomy! I felt like I was with Sahara and Kate! It was awesome. I also washed my clothes by hand which I actually really like doing it is relaxing and monotonous, although I know I have the privilege of doing just my own laundry and not anyone else's.

Monday - Amatlan

We left as a group of 24 students to Amatlan, a small town located an hour from Cuernavaca at 9 AM. This is where one of our professors and her partner live.

We arrived at the home where, Nacho, the partner of our professor, Lisanne, was born. We sat outside in a circle and Nacho began to speak. Nacho is indigenous, Nahuatl. He grew up very poor but worked his way through university in Mexico city to become a veterinarian. The history of the conquest is extremely important in Mexico, particularly to indigenous peoples, as it should be. The conquest forever changed their lives in a detrimental, extremely negative way. Culturicide and genocide were committed by the Spaniards who attempted to Christianize the indigenous who were seen as less than human. As Juan de Sepulveda of Spain said in 1530, "They are as inferior to Spaniards as children to adults, women to men, the cruel and inhuman to the gentle, . . . finally, I might almost say, as monkey to human beings." Indigenous peoples were tortured and burned alive. They were forced to build churches and palaces on top of ancient ceremonial centers. They were forced to give up everything that they valued and mattered to them. These things such as nature and duality of the gods and life meant nothing to the Spaniards who only wanted their gold and labor.

So, many times when an indigenous speaker gives a talk, they start with ancient times because this is where it all started, where things changed for the worst. One cannot start from 50 or so years ago because it does not make sense without understanding the conquest. Most schools in Mexico only teach history from the conquest on, pretending as if there were no indigenous peoples and cultures prior to Spain "discovering" the new world. This is like learning that Christopher Columbus was a benevolent explorer when really he came to the new world to Christianize "barbarous indians."

A big fight still being fought today is over the land of Mexico. This is what the revolution of 1910 was about in which Emiliano Zapata led peasant farmers in a revolt against the government. Cuernavaca is the birthplaces of Emiliano Zapata and is therefore called the cradle of the revolution. There are two phrases of the revolution and one is "Land and Liberty" the other is "the land belongs to those who work it with their own hands."

So, obviously the Spanish took away the land of the Indigenous people, even though Indigenous peoples do not believe in land ownership. The revolution of 1910 ended in the constitution which in Article 27 declared that ejido land would be returned to the peasant farmers, mostly mestizos, but the true owners for they were to work the land with their own hands. This was a great victory for the people although not everyone benefited from it.

Then, with the presidency of Carlos Salinas in the 1990s and the initiation of NAFTA, parts of Article 27 of the constitution were changed so that ejido land, land that could not be bought or sold, could now be privatized. At first I was confused at what this meant and why it was bad that it would be privatized. But here it is: when ejido land could not be bought or sold but solely worked by the people, even if there was a bad crop season or drought, they would not feel like they needed to sell their land, it would always be there. However, now peasant farmers feel that they must sell their land when there are economic downturns or droughts or similar things. Then they sell their land which is bought by multinational corporations who then use the peasant farmers for cheap labor.

So Nacho spoke about this and the effect that it has had on the people of Mexico. It combined with many other factors including colonialization and the conquest have created so much poverty in Mexico.

So then Nacho took us on a walk to a sacred ceremonial site in the woods. We were going to do an introduction to a traditional Nahuatl ceremony. I did not know what to expect at all.

We walked for about 20 minutes and then arrived at a place where two huge rocks/boulders met, forming a narrow passage between them. It was an area of dirt and trees and rocks. These rocks are sacred rocks, they are in the North, the direction of the dead. On one of the rocks were some pictographs dating back to over 5000 years ago approximately (there are varying dates). The pictograph we could see was a human/animal looking head with a stick body, stick arms and stick legs. The feet were equilateral crosses, signifying something much different from the crucifix in Christianity. The equilateral cross signified the four directions, signifies duality and balance.

We created a circle of about 40 people because some other people who were also with an Indigenous guide came as well. Nacho and the other indigenous guide led the ceremony. We placed offerings in the middle of the circle as well. I placed the journal that Sahara made for me for Christmas which I have been using every day and has become something very special to me. I placed the journal there because it reminds me of Sahara, and it is the only journal that I have ever actually wanted, desired to write in of my own volition. And when I have had a journal I tend to write superficial musings but in this journal I am real. So after we placed our offerings we held up our hands into the middle of the circle and shook them to create good energy and open our hearts. We then faced North, only turning in a clockwise direction to get there. We raised our hands up again and shook them. Nacho blew on a caracola, or conch shell and after he stopped blowing, the sound resonated for a few seconds and were were left in silence with out hands and arms still raised. We repeated this with all 4 directions, N, S, E, W.

After this we sat down on the ground and Nacho began to speak. He spoke about a lot of things such as race and how it has been constructed as a tool by those in power to divide the people, to keep them from demanding what is right. He also spoke about corn. I never understood the importance of corn in Mexico or indigenous life. Even when I went to the grocery store on Sunday the longest line was at the tortilleria. Corn is more than food, it is life. Corn here is red, white, black, and yellow. These colors represent the four directions. Nacho placed corn in the middle of the circle as an offering and the corn needed to have 40 kernels in each line and 10 lines total for a grand total of 400 kernels; this in line with an ancient myth.

While Nacho spoke I was able to be in the moment, something I have tremendous trouble with. I am always thinking about the next step, the next day. I am never still or at peace in my mind and I know it may sound hokey but I was at peace while he spoke. I never thought of myself as Latina, always as white. I had a conversation with one of my professors and I think I do consider myself Latina. I am not only white and I think to deny my Latina side is to deny a past of not only my family but of my indigenous past too, of the fact that I do come from a group of people who endured. I must acknowledge my privilege but also my condemned past and these can coexist. It is not either or. It is not just the way I am perceived by others in the now, as a guerra, a white girl. So in this moment that lasted quite a while I thought about things painful to me such as my father. I have to think about it to break the silence that has surrounded him for so long. Because if I do not I remain silent, I am oppressed. I internalize this silence and turn it against myself through anxious obsessive behaviors that do not allow me to fully live.

So yeah, I never thought I would be saying this stuff but I am and I glad for it and I am very thankful for Nacho.

At the end of the ceremony we each hugged every other person in the circle. I had never hugged so many people in my life!!!! I really liked it actually, it made me smile.

We went back to Nacho's childhood house and had lunch. Two wonderful women cooks made us sopes which are fried corn tortillas with cheese. Then you put various toppings on them such as salsa verde, salsa roja, frijoles, and cebollas or onions. We were also served agua de jamaica or hibiscus water. It was excellent!

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.

Teotihuacan

I went to Teotihuacan last Sunday with the art professor from UNIVERSAL, the language school that I go to. He was our tour guide.

Teotihuacan is the first ancient ceremonial site in Mesoamerica that was used by various groups of Pre Hispanic peoples.

The major parts of Teotihuacan are the two temples, the temple of the moon and the temple of the sun. There is a very long road over 4 miles long connecting a series of smaller temple after smaller temple and the two bigger temples. It is estimated that only 25 percent of Teotihuacan has been excavated. As you walk among the ruins you see huge hills where ruins are hiding but have not been dug up yet. Maybe a job for Eric! hahaha. I climbed up both pyramids and a lot in between. There are not a lot of trees and foliage around, it is mostly dirt and you can see a lot of mountains all around in the distance.

All of the temples and buldings at Teotihuacan were orignally frescoed, or in other words, covered with plaster and adobe to create a smooth finish. Today however all that can be seen are the rocks that encompassed the original buildings without the stucco on top of it. There are a few places where rebuilding was necessary and a few other places where the orignal stucco can still be seen.

It is not known exactly what group of people built this ceremonial center. It is a site of debate but most people just say that the Teotihuacan people built it; easy enough.

Teotihuacan is a two and a half hour bus ride from Cuernavaca. After visiting the ruins we went to a building where this guy dressed in a poncho and sombrero showed us only a few of the hundred or so uses for a special type of cactus from Mexico that is called like maga or something like that. It was the original parchment paper. You could use the milk from the center of it supposedly as an aphrodisiac. The crazy poncho guy made us try the milk from it by the way. It is also what the fibers of the poncho and blankets they were selling were made of. The end of one of the leaves could be used as a needle and thread. There were a ton of uses. Then the guy gathered us around in a circle, all the while making stereotypical Mexican jokes that I really didn't think were funny at all even though some people were laughing. This is when we tried the nectar of the cactus and also he made us all try some type of tequila that had something special about it. I was pretty confused because he kept calling all of us baby and talking really fast.

Friday and Saturday

On Friday a couple of fun and interesting things happened.

Artesans from the Artesan cooperative came to CEMAL (the house where we live) and set up their wares in the front yard. Many of the artesans are known personally by the CGE (center for global education) staff. We were introduced to each of the artesans and they shared a little about themselves and their history. The prices of their goods are non-negotiable because they have set them at what they think are a fair price for their work. I bought a pair of earrings for 50 pesos and a present for Rick, my stepdad, but I won't say what it is here in case he reads this!

After this I went to the pool at Universal, the language school where we begin classes on Monday.

Then, that night we went to La Comuna, a liberal community activist cafe about a 15 minute walk away from our house on H. Preciado in Colonia San Anton. The cafe is a wonderful wonderful place. The man who gave the talk to us on Mexico the other day is one of the main workers of La Comuna. We arrived before dark at about 6:40 and waited for everyone from our group to arrive. The purpose of this was an intercambio or a get together of people. So, Mexican students that CGE staff knew were invited to come to La Comuna. A guy named Jesus showed up but sat at a different table from me. We were served jamaica, or hibiscus water, which is a pure red/pink color. Then, another guy came and sat down at our table. He introduced himself and everyone at our table began conversing while we waited for our dinner. David, the name of the guy who came to sit down with us is a 26 year old musician getting his master's degree here in Cuernavaca in psychology. He came to La Comuna to play some music for us but he ate dinner with us before he played. We had tortas, or sandwiches. I chose a chicken sandwich. I am not quite sure what was on the sandwich but I know it had sprouts, chicken, avocado, and a lot of other things. I also put some kindly provided hot peppers on my sandwich.

At about 8:30 David sat down in the middle of the restaurant to play his guitar and sing for us. He sang about 10 or more songs from 8:30to 9:30. Anita, one of my professors told us afterwards that he sang a lot of traditional protest songs that were just new when she was in college. He had an incredible voice and was excellent at the guitar, I was enrapture for the whole hour trying to figure out what the words he was singing meant.

We returned a little late because we had to wait for a taxi to get home.

Today, Saturday.

My friends Lisa, Rebecca, Sarah, and I went to the Robert Brady Museum that I mentioned in my last post. I will post some pictures so everyone can see the crazy eclecticness of the museum. This museum used to be the house of Robert Brady, an American art collector and artist from Iowa. When he died he asked that his house be made into a museum. The house and arrangement of art is exactly how he left it. There is art from everywhere around the world in this house. Every surface is covered, some times more often than not bordering on cluttered. I think the bathrooms and the dining room/kitchen were my favorite rooms.

Then then went to eat lunch at a place at La Maga. This is a restaurant that has a buffet for lunch for 82 pesos. The buffet was amazing!!!!!!!!!!! I have never seen a bigger and more complete salad bar in my life. There were three different types of greens, guava, orange, papaya, plantains, sesame seeds, granola, carrots, jicama, radishes, carrots, beets, sprouts, cilantro, peppers, cabbage, everything you can imagine!

Then there was also other food besides salad. There were black beans, two different kinds of chicken in green and red sauces, rice, fried plantains, flautas, chimichangas, potato salad, pasta, two different types of soup, apple salad, cooked cactus, steamed cauliflower, steamed green beans, so so much!!!!!!

After that we went to a book fair/artesan market in a pedestrian walkway that operates every Saturday. Sarah and I had a good conversation with a man named Jesus who made ornate journals out of recycled wood which is chiseled and painted.

Then we started walking back to H. Preciado and on our way stopped at La Bodega, a popular supermarket.

Tonight I am not doing much but maybe babysitting a boy named Coltin who is the son of a woman in my program. One of the pictures I added is of him and me last night.

Then tomorrow we are leaving at 8:30 AM to Teotihuacan!

The Rest of Week 1

Everything is going great here!

Tuesday night was the Latin dance class.
The dance instructor came to the house, her name is Karla Vargas.
We started off with some stuff that was pretty much like Zumba! It was a lot of fun and a good workout.
On Wednesday my group of 9 students went to the house of a couple named Serafin and Lydia.
They were host parents to a girl who is now one of the interns for the Social Work program that is going on at the same time as my program.
We drove to their house and it took about 40 minutes because there was so much traffic.
They lived down the side of a ravine. We had to walk about 400 meters down the side of the ravine to get to their house. The weather was beautiful, about 86 degrees fahrenheit and we sat outside in their backyard.
In Mexico, when you go to visit someone or are listening to a speaker manners and thank yous are much more important than in the United States. One of us had to do an introduction which thanked them for having us and letting us into their home. But this cannot be just a one or two sentence introduction, it must be quite thorough. I volunteered to do the introduction and although I could have done it in English and had it translated, I did it in Spanish. It went a lot better than I thought and I was pretty proud of myself hahaha.

We then asked them questions and told them about our interests. They told us about what it was like moving to Cuernavaca from Guerrero because there were no jobs in Guerrero. They could not find jobs in Cuernavaca either. They have been married for 42 years and have three children. Their son migrated to the United States to find a job in Los Angeles but returned after 6 months because he could not find a job. They told us of the difficulties of poverty and having to work for wealthy families and live in the wealthy family's homes. In one home, Serafin was not allowed to have Lydia there so she would hide in the bathroom all day so that she would not be found out. They are now part of an artesan cooperative here in Cuernavaca that we are visiting tomorrow night for dinner and an intercambio with Mexican university students. Serafin learned how to make things out of silver because he was an apprentice from age 10 in Taxco, a great silver town in Guerrero.

Today, Thursday, we had a talk by a member of the Human Right Commission here in Cuernavaca named Jose. He is a member of the coop that Lydia and Serafin are part of. He spoke a lot about what has happened and what is going on in the country including governmental fraud in the elections and governmental violence against resistors. It was quite informative.

On Saturday we have a free day and some of us are going to the Robert Brady Museum which used to be this man, Robert Brady's house. He was an art collector so there is a lot of famous art in his house include Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. And then on Sunday we are going to Teotihuacan, which are ancient ruins.

So long for now!