Cancun

17 a 19 de marzo

Like any true college students, we hit Cancun for spring break. While some drinking did occur, we mostly just spent our one free day chilling on a beach and avoiding being in our... I don't even know what to call it.... hostel?

Honestly, we were all very uncomfortable in this airbnb. We felt the photos lied to us and everything just felt so dirty and half-assed. It probably didn't help that we arrived after dark and we were all sweaty, tired and overwhelmed. I ended up calling mom crying about how freaked out I was.

BUT we lived, and we enjoyed our time in the turquoise waters immensely. Even Sasha swam in her shorts and t-shirt. 

We started the day with some tacos-for-brunch and a couple cocktails. I found my favorite drink, Miami Vice, for the first time since leaving the resort in Mazatlan, but let me say that this one was so much better.

The tacos were delicious and light enough that I didn't feel like dying in the intense heat. The restaurant was on a sort of board walk that also had some lounge chairs they let us use since we'd eaten there. 

So we had a wonderful view of the water, there were lockers for our valuables, drinks close by, and reserved seats just for us.

Only downside was that it was also right by the bungee jumping, so the guy who was announcing kept telling us how much fun bungee jumping would be. He also teased us when we started to fall asleep. 

But on the upside, we got to see a whole bunch of people go bungee jumping.

The water was amazing. I mean, just look at that color. It was also really warm, and there weren't intense waves so it was super calming and relaxing.

The same guys who were hosting bungee jumping also had some snorkeling equipment, so Syd and I got to see some little schools of fish. The dark patches in the photo are clumps of seaweed and rocks and there were so many cute little fish that swam right past me (as in, within inches). There were fish of so many different colors and sizes, and it was absolutely magical.

Going back to the hostel while it was still light out made it a little bit more comodo, but I can safely say that checking out the next morning was such a relief. It was a sobering airbnb experience; it made me realize that while airbnbs are mostly really amazing finds, sometimes you get a dud. 

Although, it did have a really, really nice view once the sun started going down.

Popocatépetl

18 de abril

When I woke up this morning it felt colder than normal and the light quality was different.

It wasn't until I was sitting at breakfast and my phone vibrated thanks to a classmate's post to the group facebook page: the volcano is spewing ash and we should wear masks to school.

This being the first volcanic eruption I've experienced in my lifetime, I was both excited and kind of freaked out.  Popocatépetl [popokaˈtepetɬ]is about 30 miles from Puebla, which also just happens to be directly downwind from the active volcano. This is a video of the eruption from twitter:

La fase más intensa de la erupción del #Popocatépetl esta madrugada entre 2:52 am y 3:03 am. Impresionante pic.twitter.com/csHrSt4vUX

— Webcams de México (@webcamsdemexico) April 18, 2016

Syd didn't believe me that there was ash in the air. She thought it was just fog, but then we saw the footprints outside our home. La ceniza [ash] looks like a lovely light dusting of snow. That is, until a car drives by or a light gust of wind wooshes through, throws it into your face and you start coughing up a lung.

We were woefully unprepared to have to deal with an eruption so we had to improvise a method of protecting our lungs from the ash. The university was handing out free masks so we didn't have to improvise for long. I started singing Bastille's Pompeii shortly after the photo on the right was taken which prompted a lovely ¡cállete! [Shut up!] from Sydney. Ah, true friendship.

I've been making Pompeii jokes all day, even though this eruption is no where near that big of a deal. The most damage we're going to get is to engines and the lungs in people that are silly enough not to wear masks (I'm looking at you Sasha).

The only real affect this has had on me is severely dusty shoes, an overly sweaty lower face, and a mild cough. Well, and the fact that this song has been stuck in my head for the last 12 hours. 

The sunset tonight was absolutely stunning since there is a whole bunch of particles in the air. It was a brilliant glowing orange, and I could just make out the outline of the volcano through the haze.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture because there were too many trees in the way. 

There's periodic distant booming right now, but I'm not sure if that's actually Popocatépetl or something else.


Latino Fox News and Inverse both have articles up with more information about what happened this morning if you want more details. There's another video of the eruption below, in color, if  you want to watch it again in slow motion.

How It's Made: Coffee

14 de Marzo

On our last full day in Antigua, Guatemala my friends and I took a tour of a coffee farm in a near by pueblo with the company De La Gente, a wonderful cooperative that works with Guatemalan farmers to grow coffee sustainably, reach larger markets, and teach visitors about the coffee making progress.

Our host's husband, Rafael, was kind enough to give us a ride into the town, and the view on the way in was absolutely stunning. Quaint street between brightly colored buildings, with a view straight to one of the mildly active volcanoes surrounding the valley. We waited outside a cute church for the farmer, a translator (which we didn't really need, shout out to developing language skills) and the rest of a tour group which were some other university students on a spring break trip. They were doing some sort of volunteering and planning with developing grass roots companies. I bonded with the other fair skinned red head in the group as we both walked in whatever shade we could find.

The views on our way up through the farm were stunning. We kept seeing the mountain sides and the rest of the valley through gaps in the trees. We got a lovely view of the church next to our airbnb, the streets where the major festival had just occurred the day before, and we could see the rowed trees of coffee farms on the distant mountainsides.  Even though I was loving every second of the view I was a little disappointed that we were there during a foggy period. I can't even imagine what these views would have been like on clear day.

The first coffee plant we saw was just a baby, which we were told would be ripe with beans some time in October. The farmers keep the fields rotating so that they have constant production throughout the year.

We saw our first beans, which are actually more like a berry on the plant, a little farther up the path, in the shade of a type of austrian tree with very thin leaves and tiny yellow flowers that are used to decorate the streets with the designs in my last post. Our farmer, Daniel, grows a few different types of coffee. The beans to the left are from a tree that can produce for 100 years. However, they tend to cut and replant at around 75 because the beans start to decline in quality. Other varieties grow for different amounts of time and have different bean qualities.

We kept moving. We hiked up the side of the volcano towards Daniel's fields, which he'd inherited from his father, just as his seven sons would inherit it from him (he also has two daughters, and he's given plots away to his two sons that are already married).

When we made it to the field we'd be working in, a shady grove of coffee plants and austrian trees covered in volcanic ash and bugs (it was beautiful), Daniel taught us the tricks of harvesting: only harvest from the middle of the branch because the berries are biggest there, pinch and pull to seperate the berry from the branch, etc. He also showed us the easiest way to strip the red skin from the berry and how the gel-like coating on the beans inside tasted sweet. Then he set us to work.


To the right you can see the fruits of my labor, ft. the basket tied around my waist (really tightly) with rope and my ash covered hands. Coffee berries are really sticky, so the ash clung to me like it was glue. I also had it smeared all over my face because I kept brushing my hair out of the way. My feet were filthy too because I was silly and wore sandals for a hike up a dusty ash-covered mountain. My feet also got mildly sunburned and had a terrible tevas-like tan line for days (its still kind of there, but you didn't hear that from me). 
I successfully picked 2lbs of coffee berries, all on my own on the side of an active volcano in Antigua, Guatemala. With six of us working, we managed to pick about 14lbs of raw coffee berries, which probably wasn't actually that helpful since most of the beans we picked were unusable. See the more orange-ish one in my hand? Yeah, unusable. 1 bad bean can ruin the flavor of 20 good beans.
I have a new found respect for the coffee I drink. We were picking for about 30 minutes and most of our work couldn't even be used. And this is only the beginning of the process.

We returned to Daniel's house where he and his family handle the rest of the production in the courtyard of their home. The outer skin of the beans is stripped from them on this bicycle-like contraption. The skins are then used as fertilizer for the plants in the fields. We managed to work through our 14-ish pounds in a couple of minutes, taking turns on the bicycle. 

Then he showed us through the process of how they float the beans in water to remove the empty ones, dry them out, then strip off the additional inner skin surrounding the beans.
Everything that is taken out before the beans are roasted is used to fertilize the living coffee plants in the fields. The farmers are really good about what they do and have it down to a science, nothing is wasted. Any coffee that doesn't turn out quite right is what they drink with their meals (I feel kind of bad, because this means they're probably drinking our poorly harvested coffee...). 

We then roasted the beans in a metal pan over a wood burning fire in the family's kitchen. We requested a medium-dark roast and each took a turn stirring the beans around the pan to keep them from burning.
Disclaimer: these are not the same beans we picked. The drying process takes over a week, so this is a different small bowl-full of beans that had been picked much earlier.

After we all took a turn at the burner, Daniel's wife finished off the roasting process, let the beans cool, then started grinding the beans on a stone tablet with a wooden rod. Roasting took about 10 min and grinding about 8. Daniel's wife is a real pro. The whole grinding process probably would have been a lot faster if the group of gringas (us) had actually known what they were doing. The grinding process smelled the best. The whole room filled with the smell of warm coffee. It was like heaven.

The grounds then went into the olla, or pot (the dark blue one in the photo to the right). We then sat around talking, asking questions of Daniel and his family, and just bonding in a room filled with one of the greatest smells on earth.

The coffee, after the whole process, was absolutely amazing. It was full bodied, strong, and not too bitter. I ended up using a lot of sugar anyway because I love my coffee sweet, but I ended up buying an extra bag (we got one for free with the tour). Also, can we just take a moment to admire that adorable little mug? It's so cute, I wanted to keep it. Unfortunately, no such luck. But I brought the amazing coffee home and that's what matters.

The morning finished off with an amazing home cooked meal in Daniel's home. It was delicious chicken, fresh vegetables bought that morning in the local market, rice, and strawberry juice. Never in my life had I considered strawberry juice a thing, but let me tell you I had as many glasses of that stuff as I possibly could. It was fresh pressed minutes before and was absolutely stupendous. 


After a delicious lunch, we left Daniel and his family with a thousand thanks and walked back to the center, where we were picked up by our host's husband, Rafael, and driven back to the house to wash our feet, change clothes and prepare ourselves for the next adventure, a personalized tour to the pueblitos surrounding Antigua led by Rafael, who runs a tour business in Antigua. But I'll talk about that adventure later.

Antigua Guatemala

12 a 15 de Marzo

Antigua Guatemala- a city filled with churches, beautiful architecture and wonderful people. Surrounded by mountains, volcanoes and tiny pueblos. It's so rich with culture that the four days I spent there were not nearly enough.

The ride into Antigua was absolutely stunning (See picture at right). Everything was decorated for Pascua [Easter] with purple banners and other violet decorations. 

La ciudad pequeña [the small city] really lives up to its name, which means "ancient" in Spanish. All of the houses looked old, and had a definite colonial vibe to them. They were absolutely stunning.

The best part architecture-wise was how these old buildings were crammed in together, and occasionally there'd be a completely run down building squashed between two that were still in use. There were abandoned churches a block from one that was in use. There were crumbling cement walls, tree roots re-covering floors, and walls heavy with ivy. It was absolutely beautiful.

Our host family was super kind. The airbnb is owned by a woman named Violeta and her husband, who run a little shop/restaurant out of their front room which looked like it might have been a garage at some point. Three of their four sons still live with them and help out, and the rest of the bedrooms are rented out to travelers. While we were there we made friends with a French couple, a few students on a leap year or spring break adventures, a woman from Barcelona (pronounced barth-eh-loh-nah) and a man from England. There was also another woman from First Hill. It was really fun getting to know other travelers and get advice for places to go in the town.

Antigua really gets into their Easter Celebrations. Our Airbnb host says that thousands of people come to see the festivities every year, and I believe it. It's one of, if not the, largest Easter celebration in the world (thanks google). When we went out to breakfast our first morning in Antigua, we walked past families and neighbors making beautiful artwork in the streets using wood chips, pollen, flower petals, and other brightly colored natural materials. The photo at left is one of these in progress. They marked the path of the procession that was performed twice in one day- more on that later.

Many men and boys were wearing purple hooded robes made out of what appeared to be a heavy polyester, thus also adding a lovely sheen of sweat since it was hot. I was burning up (literally, since I forgot sunscreen) so I couldn't even imagine what these men and children were going through. 

As we wove our way through the streets, trying to find the elusive Blue Sky Cafe, which TripAdvisor had recommended for its stunning views of the city, I could sense the somberness of the occasion. The procession and purple clothes are supposed to replicate, remember, and honor the journey of Jesus into Jerusalem and the process of carrying the cross so everyone was pretty somber and pensive, although there was still the vendors and the amount of people proper for a classic parade and festival. 

The view from Blue Sky cafe didn't disappoint. Unfortunately, we were in Guatemala during the middle of a foggy period, so the volcanoes and mountains weren't as prominent as they normally would be. But we could still see almost the entire city (photos at right)

The food wasn't the best as it was definitely geared towards international visitors (read as: menu consisted mostly of american food) and there weren't many gluten free options. The best part of breakfast was the coffee, which came with a cute little jar of fresh milk.

After breakfast, we explored the city and the markets. We got swarmed with people, my chest, face and feet started to burn (#beefsteaktomato). I found a blanket I feel in love with (surprise) and we decided that before we explored anymore we needed to get back to the house to rest and budget.

Little did we know- since our airbnb was right in front of a church, the procession passed right in front of our house. We made it to the end of the block when we were stopped by some sacerdotes [priests] in white robes and were told we needed to stay behind a line made by more men in purple. We slowly tried to wind our way through the crowd, but got trapped about 6 houses down from our own. 

It was pretty amazing. We watched as men carried a giant wooden platform with the figures of Jesus carrying the cross and what I assume are other significant scenes from the bible and his crucifixion. There had to have been over 50 men carrying the platform, and each and every one had this look of extreme pain on his face, but also a peaceful reverence. I have no doubt that this was a deeply important moment for them, mimicking Christ's suffering like they were.

After about 30 minutes of being stuck as this procession made its way down our street, I started to get lightheaded from a combination of heat, dehydration and incense, so as soon as the platform was past I had to start moving.

Sasha and I started making our way through the crowd. We finally made it outside the house, but had just about given up ever making it inside past the  group of people 5 rows deep standing in front of us when a man pushed past us and started pushing his way inside. We followed close behind and, after 40+ minutes stuck outside in the blaring sun, we finally collapsed onto our beds under the protective roof of our airbnb.

[Photo to the left is an aerial view of the parade that I took during dinner, where we'd ducked inside to avoid getting stuck in the throng for the second time in one day. You can see more of the flower art and some of the hooded men who were leading the procession, cleansing the path with incense.]

I was so sunburned by the time we got in, but only on my face and chest since I'd been smart enough to bring a light summer jacket with me that kept the sun off my shoulders and arms. I've got tan lines now, y'all. I still look pale af, but I definitely have tan lines.

Semana Primera

3 a 15 de enero

La semana primera en Puebla estaba muy divertido, y me encanta la ciudad y mi familia.

The first week in Puebla was very fun and I love the city and my family.

My family is very loving and kind towards me, mi mamá is an amazing cook. (left: chicken with onions, spinach and nutmeg. right: chilaquiles)

        

Our host sister has two little ones: a five year old boy and an 18 month old girl. Both are very sweet. I keep making faces at the little girl hoping for a smile and a laugh, (finally on Wednesday I achieved the former). The little boy always wants to play, but he's really only here right in the middle of prime nap and homework time.

One of the first days we were here, he wanted to hang out with us in our room, but Syd and I said we needed to rest and change. Knowing he'd be persistent, we closed and locked the door. This is where it gets good: he kept trying to turn the handle, we kept responding "¡no puebes entrar!" (you can't come in!). There was a moment of quiet, and we thought he finally understood. Nope. The little monster punched the door open. While I was in the middle of changing.

Well, now he knows that if the door is closed, he can't come in. Lesson learned the hard way I guess.

Our house is super cute too. There's no central heating, which was really only a problem the last few days when it felt like Seattle had followed us south. It was cold, rainy and windy, and I deeply regretted only packing one sweater. Our shower is a pipe that sprouts out of the wall, and we try to collect the water in a bucket to reuse it to water plants and stuff. It's actually a pretty nice use of recycling, even if it did take a little getting used too.

This is our room on our first day. It's pretty much the same, except syd's clothes are actually here now and the table has turned into a depository/makeup table. Out the window is a view of a super cute backyard where geckos like to climb on the walls (I definitely have tried to catch some a couple of times). Over the back wall is a river, and sometimes if the wind is just right you can catch a lovely wiff of I don't know what. The walk to school crosses it, and if you look down there's a bunch of white foam and it's recommended that you try to avoid breathing because it smells pretty terrible. There's lot's of pretty trees around it though, so at least it looks pretty.

We went out to some bars last Friday, and the first one had the most amazing piña coladas and a live band that performed classic rock. It was amazing. We bar hopped around a bit after that, but the night sort of fell after that. 

Saturday we went to a discotec and danced the night away. I lost track of time and before I knew it, it was 3am and Syd was like "okay, it's time to go home." It just felt so good to dance, and I felt so present in my body it was amazing. I got a few guys' numbers, and have been talking with one pretty consistently since then. We keep explaining different colloquial phrases and laughing at each other's confusion. He speaks almost solely Spanish, which is really amazing for my practice, but he can communicate well enough in English that if I say "wait, I really have no idea what you're saying"  he can help me out.

Two pretty negative things happened in the last week though.

On Friday, on their way to meet us at the Zocalo, two of my classmates were on a bus and got robbed at gunpoint. One of them lost everything they had, and the other somehow managed to only give up his money. Beyond being scared and freaked out, no one on the bus was hurt. I want to emphasize that point, no. one. was. hurt.

It's served as a good lesson to us though: don't bus at night, remember to only carry the absolute essentials, and make sure you have people knowing where you are, where you're going, and who you are helping to keep track of you. Also, if we're in public we need to speak only spanish, because our american english sticks out like a sore thumb. 

I still feel very safe here, I'm just even more alert than I was before.

The other negative thing was a loss in my family. As some of you know (because I excitedly texted you in all caps) my family had a Yorkie puppy named Pinchi. He was the most energetic, playful ball of a pup ever. 

Wednesday night, he slipped out the front door and ran into the street where he was hit by a car. Unfortunately, he didn't make it, and it was really hard to understand the rapid-fire spanish about what happened, but I did catch that his death was almost instant, so at least he didn't suffer. It threw the whole family off for the last few days, as it should. It's been hard trying to walk the thin line between wanting to support them, and not trying to over-help.

I've been mourning him too. Yorkies have always been one of my favorite dogs, and I love animals in general, so I was pretty attached to him from the get go. 

On the bright side, the family's laughter and smiles are starting to come back, my spanish is improving constantly (even if there's still the moments of "wait, how the HECK DO YOU SAY THIS" followed by frantically searching the divine website wordreference.com) and I'm starting to feel myself settling in.

There's still a part of me that feels like I'm on vacation, and so there's another part of me that's waiting in nervous anticipating for the other shoe too drop.

Photo of a side street near the Zocalo, el centro del Puebla

P.S. I have now been lost 3 times in Puebla.

1. Syd and I took the bus home without knowing that they dropped us off on another street and ended up outside of Puebla. We were on the bus for about an hour and a half, and just sort of rode around until we saw something familiar.
2. First time walking to la Ibero (our university), we made a slightly wrong term cause google maps mislead us and we ended up walking for over an hour instead of the promised 40 minutes. Now that we know what we're doing, though, the walk is actually nice and I'm going to try to take it as many mornings as possible.
3. Today, me and 8 other of my classmates (just under half the class) took the wrong bus to school. Before we got on, we asked if it went to la ibero, and the driver said yes. After about 20 minutes he told us that we were at our stop, we hopped off, only to find we were over 30 minutes walking distance from the Ibero. Then we tried to take a shortcut and that backfired. We all lived, but it was an adventure.

Cacaxtla & la ciudad de México

26 de diciembre a 2 de Enero

I spent my second week in Mexico staying with an amazing family in the neighborhood where Diegro Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived. The mother, Yvonne, graduated high school with my mom and was kind enough to host me for the week. I had such an amazing time.

The two older boys, 14 and 8, were very sweet, and we went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens in theaters together (viewing #3). We discussed nerd culture, language, the city, everything. Unfortunately, it was most;y in English so my Spanish really didn't improve much that week. 

There were also two younger children, a 5 1/2 year old boy and a 2 year old girl (both spoke better Spanish than me). 

My second day there they took me to see Cacaxtla, one of the largest archaeological sites in México. It's believed to be a city built by the Olmecas-Xicallanca people (I will abbreviate to Olmecs).

It was absolutely amazing. The site is outside the ring of mountains surrounding la Ciudad de México, but the volcano in this picture (which constantly experiences minor eruptions that mostly consist of puffs of smoke/vapor/ash) is visible from both the city and Cacaxtla.

I was absolutely blown away by the pristine colors, and the visibility. You can see the pollution that's everywhere here and sinks down between buildings to settle close to the ground. It was so warm though. I don't think I've been cold since I got here. #blessed

The view here is from atop the largest uncovered pyramid at the site, the pyramid you can see is a minor temple that's still in pretty good shape. If you look carefully, just across the visible path from that pyramid is a triangular-ish shaped hill with some small trees on it. Specialists suspect that it's another pyramid, but they haven't received enough money to finish excavating the whole site yet.

The view all around the main central pyramid is littered with these small suspected-pyramids (you can see 3 more in the picture above), leading scientists to believe that Cacaxtla is one of the biggest sites they've found.

This is a panorama of the large pyramid as you approach from the path. All of the different step-like layers were built during a different "era." At the end of each era, a child was selected as a sacrifice, and then their body was entombed in the walls being built for the next era. The child was selected based off of number of birthmarks or patches of differently colored hair. If you had two or more, you were a prime candidate for ringing in the new era. 

The priests who did the sacrificing lived at the top, and were the only men who didn't have to fight in the wars with other tribes.

All of the paint here is original. Nothing has been restored. Nothing. I still can't get over that. This mural is almost 100% in tact, and depicts the Olmecs conquering the Maya, which represented the earth "conquering" the rain, i.e. absorbing it. It's a mural of the necessary sacrifice of celestial water to the earth for the sake of live. The Maya are the ones in feathers (sky--> rain --> water) and the Olmecs are in the leopard skin (leopard --> land animal --> earth). 

Fun fact, the first archaeologist  was a dude who analyzed this mirror thought it was just depicting the olmecs beating the mayans in a bloody battle. It was a female archaeologist who came back and said "wait, hold up, that doesn't make sense, try this instead." Of course.

We also went to el Museo Dolores Olmedo, who was really close friends with Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. She had a personal collection of their artwork that, when she died, she donated to the city to be kept as a museum to honor their work.

As you entered the museum you were greeted by these giant agave plants. These guys were massive, to the point where you can really tell that they're straight out of the prehistoric era. Agave is everywhere, and they're right at the tale end of what I can only assume is their pollination  (do they even pollinate? I have no idea how these massive plants reproduce) season, because some of them have these giant stalks that tower over even some of the trees.

See? What even are these things. I love them. They're fascinating.

Also, just for reference, that hedge next to it? Yeah, that came up to my hip. 

The museum was also absolutely swarming with peacocks. I mean, they were everywhere. 

Look at this beautiful sleepy peacock.

They also keep a pack of a breed of dogs unique to Mexico, se llaman Xoloitzcuintle (zoh-loh-eets-kweent-lee). try saying that 5 times fast. They're simultaneously the ugliest and the cutest dogs I've ever seen. They're hairless, except some of them have a little tuft of white/grey hair on the top of their head. 

This is one laying down next to a statue in their enclosure.

I want 20 of them. They're endangered, so I'll call it a reserve and I will help to keep this hideously adorable breed of pups in existence #lifegoals