Saying Goodbye

                              29 de mayo

I'm in the airport again, but this time its to come home from a life changing journey.
I know I haven't fully finished all the posts I wanted to make about my time here in Mexico, but you can be sure I will be retroactively posting (as I have been for basically this entire blog, unfortunately).

Sebastian came to the airport with me and I have just left him on the other side of security. I cried so much my eyes are stinging and I'm crying again writing about it.

It feels really weird to be leaving Mexico, it really and truly has become a second home to me and it is immensely painful to leave it behind.

I don't even think I have the words I need to describe this experience yet, and the leaving part is, right now, too hard and painful to fully process.

So I'm leaving this post short and bittersweet, and I will try and do a nice and full reflection post when I've caught up on everything else.

Maybe You Need a Little Guatemala

The Thrilling Saga

Snapchat: the wonderful little social media platform where you and your friends exchange pictures. Sometimes they're helpful and provide something called a "geofilter." Perhaps You Need a Little Guatemala is one of those.

And the moment when I caught Syd making the weirdest face goes perfectly with it.

And shout out to Sasha for the screenshot and text filter on part 2.

Here's to many more shenanigans

Catcalling

[Today's Date Here]

Latin America is a place of machismo, or masculine pride, and Mexico is no different. It is pervasive and has affected many aspects of my life while living in Puebla.
Machismo comes from the desire to protect, from the patriarchal idea that it is a man's job to protect the women in his life. Men will open doors for you, will pay for your meals, will give up seats for you on the bus. I've had hosts offer me rides to ensure that I get home safely. These may seem harmless, and they are, but there are some major downsides to machismo as well.
Like cat-calling.

Cat-Calling

to make a whistle, shout, or comment of a sexual nature to a woman passing by

i.e.

to comment on the physicality of a female-presenting human being

this can be verbal, or an action like licking your lips, moving your whole head as you scan her body

This is something I have dealt with since puberty, since my hips started to fill out and my breasts started to grow. Men have been objectifying me and commenting on me for years. At first it was just glances, but then it turned into comments. Men were commenting and objectifying the body of a girl, of a minor.
When I was younger, I thought it was a complement. I waited for when I was catcalled, appreciating that the nice men took the time out of their day to call me beautiful or pretty. I believed this because I had been taught by society that my appearance was important, if not the most important, thing about me. I was taught to appreciate that men noticed me.

And but then as I got older the comments became more objectifying, more threatening. I became hyper-aware of who was around me, who was watching me, how people were responding to me as I went about my daily life. As I grew, I realized that cat-calling is not a compliment, and it never was.

Cat-calling is not for my benefit. It is not aimed for me to feel better about myself. I already know that I look beautiful, I don't need someone else telling me. I do not require an outside validation to appreciate my own appearance, even if it was the goal of the action.
But it's not.

Cat-calling is for the benefit of the man who commits it, and for his friends and the others around him. It has nothing to do with me. I get cat-called in jeans and a sweater, I get hollered at in dresses. I could be wearing a parka and men would comment on my appearance.

I'm sick  of being oogled because I'm a woman. I'm tired of being told I'm "overreacting" or that I should "take it as a compliment." It's exhausting. It's exhausting having to constantly monitor my surroundings because I never know when a look or comment will turn into a touch or worse. I come home every day and collapse onto my bed, finally free from the prying eyes of strangers who scour my body and turn me into an object for their enjoyment, an object that exists solely for them.

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.

Guatemala Part 3: Panajachel

15 a 17 de Marzo

After we left Antigua, we went to Panajachel, a small little fishermen's town on the edge of Lake Atitlan, a stunning freshwater lake surrounded by towering mountains.

Photo above is our view from our hotel room. On our last morning we were up with the sun, so we were able to see all of the fishermen coming in from their morning work. With fresh fish coming in every morning, the seafood in Panajachel was absolutely phenomenal. 

The easiest way to get around was to take a tuk-tuk, which is basically a 3 wheeled low-power scooter with a roof, between the hotel and the town for $1 USD and some spare change.

The roads were so bumpy, I felt like my body was going to vibrate so much I'd just dissolve into a puddle of glue. Since it was so hilly, you could only safely fit 2 people into each of them because if you tried to go uphill the motor would sound like it was dying. We tried to fit 4 people into one when we were coming back from dinner. Not only did it feel like we were going to fall out the sides of the thing, but I'm pretty sure walking would have been significantly faster.

We spent a lot of time exploring the markets, getting souvenirs for ourselves, friends and family, but we also took a private boat ride across the lake to San Pedro, an adorable little town nestled into the mountainside. 
San Pedro had the distinct feel of a home, but the exact feeling is a little hard to explain. Looking at the shoreline as we pulled away in our little lancha made me miss San Juan Island in Washington. 

It was a really quick, brief, relaxing trip and I was so sad to say goodbye to this lovely, lovely, place. If any of you want to go to Guatemala, make sure to stop in at one of the towns on the shores of Lake Atitlan, it's well worth the trek out. Those views alone were worth every cent I spent on this trip.

I mean, just look at the one we had.

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.