I don't consider myself to be very religious, but I'm culturally Episcopalian. My favorite time of the year in church is, oddly enough, not Christmas or Easter, but Ash Wednesday and Lent. The gospel for the Ash Wednesday service inspires me: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." I think these words are beautiful, about treasuring things that are more important than material objects.
Lent for me has always been a time for discipline: a cleansing, introspective process. Since I was 14, I've seriously committed to giving things up for Lent. At age 14, I gave up meat, which prompted me to become a vegetarian that summer. I usually impose strict rules upon myself: no sweets, junk food, chocolates, or soda of any kind, deactivation of Facebook. But here I sit in my room, late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning, pondering what to forgo.
List:
-Go back to being a vegetarian after becoming a degenerate vegetarian while trying loads of meat in Spain and Mexico.
-Give up sweets, chocolate, etc. (This will not start until after I leave Oaxaca, as I must enjoy the delicious hot chocolate while I'm still here!)
-Check Facebook only once every week. Well, maybe every other day. Not checking it will start tomorrow...no, the day after tomorrow! Maybe limit to checking it once a day? Man, do I have an addiction.
Last year at Brent House, the Episcopal Ministry at the University of Chicago, I heard someone say that, instead of giving something up for Lent, he makes sure that he writes every day. Following these lines, I could:
-Write in my diary daily. When I was a little, I kept a diary religiously, from the time I was in kindergarten until my first year of senior high school. I'd like to start writing again.
-Read the New York Times every day, along with El País to keep up with my Spanish.
-Go out of my way every day, even if I do something very small, to make someone else happier and his/her life a little more beautiful.
I think that, in the past, I've been way too masochistic about Lent; at any rate, I think it's much harder/more beneficial to learn how to moderately indulge in temptations, be it bars of dark chocolate or celebrity articles on Jezebel, than to completely deprive yourself of them. Furthermore, I think the idea of Lent is not deprivation but personal growth and introspection. This past year has already been a huge growing experience for me, working in Chicago on my own over the summer, immersing myself in Spanish in Spain, and continuing to learn and expand my horizons in Mexico. As I prepare to leave Mexico this weekend, we'll see where Lent takes me into the next chapter of my exciting third year of college.
09 March 2011
03 March 2011
Things I Did Tonight Instead of Reading
I'm behind in my discussion questions for the week. (Tell me something new!) In fact, I was so stressed today, that when I talked to nuestra profesora about the final project with the other members of my group, she told me not to look so sad and scared about the final, and I started crying. I cried when I got home because I was stressed, sick, overwhelmed, and sad about leaving all of the people I've grown to love in Oaxaca. Tonight, I made progress in The Underdogs (original Spanish title: Los de abajo) while sipping on a chai latte in a cafe, but here are some of the things I did instead of staying cooped up in my room reading:
-Met a 102 year-old woman named Teresa (her 103rd birthday is this month!). Her cheeks are still rosy, but her eyes were tinted blue, and she's not aware of her surroundings, so I suppose it's a bit of a stretch to say that I "met" her; I more just sat across the table from her and stared intently while chatting in Spanish with the nurse taking care of her. Her skin was like white paper stretched over her face, and it looked very soft, almost like a fragile white butterfly wing.
-Went to a restaurant that was on the second floor of a building, with white scarves draped over the windows and a light that cast shadows like crescent moons over the walls.
-In said restaurant, I met an incredibly friendly hairless Mexican dog (Xoloitzcuintle) named Haiku. She even had her own little embroidered shirt!
-Ate some kind of delicious dish: chicken, rice, black sauce, corn. Scrumptious! And mezcal...to kill all these germs I have from being sick, of course!
-Danced salsa for two hours with my friend Juan and his hermano mexicano Saul, an incredible dancer who gave us our own private lessons! I had fun laughing and being twirled around by Saul and Juan.
And nobody gets to tell me that my night would have been better spent reading—not nobody, not no how!
-Met a 102 year-old woman named Teresa (her 103rd birthday is this month!). Her cheeks are still rosy, but her eyes were tinted blue, and she's not aware of her surroundings, so I suppose it's a bit of a stretch to say that I "met" her; I more just sat across the table from her and stared intently while chatting in Spanish with the nurse taking care of her. Her skin was like white paper stretched over her face, and it looked very soft, almost like a fragile white butterfly wing.
-Went to a restaurant that was on the second floor of a building, with white scarves draped over the windows and a light that cast shadows like crescent moons over the walls.
-In said restaurant, I met an incredibly friendly hairless Mexican dog (Xoloitzcuintle) named Haiku. She even had her own little embroidered shirt!
-Ate some kind of delicious dish: chicken, rice, black sauce, corn. Scrumptious! And mezcal...to kill all these germs I have from being sick, of course!
-Danced salsa for two hours with my friend Juan and his hermano mexicano Saul, an incredible dancer who gave us our own private lessons! I had fun laughing and being twirled around by Saul and Juan.
And nobody gets to tell me that my night would have been better spent reading—not nobody, not no how!
12 February 2011
Oaxaca se despierta
Last night, I received the Facebook message from my mother: "You haven't updated your blog in a while. We'd like to know what you're doing in Oaxaca."
So, perhaps the last thing my mom wants to hear is that I stayed out terribly late drinking and talking with friends at various bars last night. I got about three hours of sleep, and woke up to climb a massive hill with a cross on top with two of my friends.
I tend to be a bit of a masochist (what University of Chicago student isn't?), so I was determined to run with my friends after my late night out. Somehow, I felt energized, buzzed on my lack of sleep and eager anticipation for my early-morning adventure. I left the house around seven in the morning, and I walked by my favorite tree in all of Oaxaca: a big tree with flowers like bluebells that fall down and carpet the road with perrywinkle buds. The dawn tinted the sky a pinkish gray, and clouds hung over the mountains in the distance.
I met Ben and Madeleine at a street corner to run together. We jogged up a street with a steep incline, the cross at the top of the hill beckoning us. Once we reached a certain point, it was too rocky to keep running, so we climbed up the dry, dusty hill, careful not to slip on the crumbling rocks. It reminded me of climbing up a hill in Spain with my friend Paige to see the windmills that inspired Cervantes's famous scene in Don Quixote. (I wonder if there's something innate in human beings that make us want to climb up tall hills and mountains? And construct buildings and monuments there?) At one point, we had to duck between barbed wires in a fence running around the hill, and we passed a small, decrepit house with a beautiful porch. (If ever I become a rich person, I will renovate this house and live there so that I can see the lights of the city twinkle at the night, and the sun bathe the streets with light each morning.)
Everything felt glorious once we (finally) reached the cross at the very top; we paused to look out at the city waking up below us. Roosters crowed, dogs barked, car horns blared, and a sound like a trumpet or some kind of brass instrument kept blasting out at random intervals. The colorful houses managed to peek out brightly from the gray blur of smog that hung over the city, all framed and enclosed by mountains. Ben broke our reverent, awe-struck silence to comment, "Well, here's Oaxaca, in all of its dingy glory." For me, the city is more glorious than dingy; I'm going to miss these dusty roads and barking stray dogs and colorful streets and blossoming trees.
So, perhaps the last thing my mom wants to hear is that I stayed out terribly late drinking and talking with friends at various bars last night. I got about three hours of sleep, and woke up to climb a massive hill with a cross on top with two of my friends.
I tend to be a bit of a masochist (what University of Chicago student isn't?), so I was determined to run with my friends after my late night out. Somehow, I felt energized, buzzed on my lack of sleep and eager anticipation for my early-morning adventure. I left the house around seven in the morning, and I walked by my favorite tree in all of Oaxaca: a big tree with flowers like bluebells that fall down and carpet the road with perrywinkle buds. The dawn tinted the sky a pinkish gray, and clouds hung over the mountains in the distance.
I met Ben and Madeleine at a street corner to run together. We jogged up a street with a steep incline, the cross at the top of the hill beckoning us. Once we reached a certain point, it was too rocky to keep running, so we climbed up the dry, dusty hill, careful not to slip on the crumbling rocks. It reminded me of climbing up a hill in Spain with my friend Paige to see the windmills that inspired Cervantes's famous scene in Don Quixote. (I wonder if there's something innate in human beings that make us want to climb up tall hills and mountains? And construct buildings and monuments there?) At one point, we had to duck between barbed wires in a fence running around the hill, and we passed a small, decrepit house with a beautiful porch. (If ever I become a rich person, I will renovate this house and live there so that I can see the lights of the city twinkle at the night, and the sun bathe the streets with light each morning.)
Everything felt glorious once we (finally) reached the cross at the very top; we paused to look out at the city waking up below us. Roosters crowed, dogs barked, car horns blared, and a sound like a trumpet or some kind of brass instrument kept blasting out at random intervals. The colorful houses managed to peek out brightly from the gray blur of smog that hung over the city, all framed and enclosed by mountains. Ben broke our reverent, awe-struck silence to comment, "Well, here's Oaxaca, in all of its dingy glory." For me, the city is more glorious than dingy; I'm going to miss these dusty roads and barking stray dogs and colorful streets and blossoming trees.
02 January 2011
Grasshoppers for Lunch
Hola amigos,
Today, I ate grasshoppers for lunch! My host mom called them "chapulines," and in Spain they are "saltamontes" (but not food), as in the verb saltar, to jump. (Another cool Spanish language fun-fact to think about: "paragua" is the word for umbrella, literally translating into "for water;" whereas a "parasol" means "for sun." Sorry, these things excite me.) Mis padres mexicanos and I went to their house in the countryside, and afterwards we met up with two señores (who were their friends, but I'm not sure what was the connection? Hard to hear over the live music, y todavía no estoy acustombrada al accento mexicano) in an open-air, buffet-style restaurant with loads of colorful decorations and waitresses dressed in brightly-colored, traditional garb.
I. Ate. So. Much. Food. My first plate consisted of my little insect friends (one of the men commented on how great it was that I was trying the insects! Yay for being an adventurous American! Anna the Awesome, Amazing, Adventurous American...new blog title anyone? No? Mmmkay);
Today, I ate grasshoppers for lunch! My host mom called them "chapulines," and in Spain they are "saltamontes" (but not food), as in the verb saltar, to jump. (Another cool Spanish language fun-fact to think about: "paragua" is the word for umbrella, literally translating into "for water;" whereas a "parasol" means "for sun." Sorry, these things excite me.) Mis padres mexicanos and I went to their house in the countryside, and afterwards we met up with two señores (who were their friends, but I'm not sure what was the connection? Hard to hear over the live music, y todavía no estoy acustombrada al accento mexicano) in an open-air, buffet-style restaurant with loads of colorful decorations and waitresses dressed in brightly-colored, traditional garb.
I. Ate. So. Much. Food. My first plate consisted of my little insect friends (one of the men commented on how great it was that I was trying the insects! Yay for being an adventurous American! Anna the Awesome, Amazing, Adventurous American...new blog title anyone? No? Mmmkay);
01 January 2011
First Impressions of Oaxaca
Hola amigos,
Sooooo I failed royally at blogging in Spain. I still intend on posting stories from Spain in my blog at some point, but now to talk about OAXACA!
I got on a plane in Raleigh, NC, at 7 in the morning, to catch a plane to Charlotte, to catch a plane to Mexico City, to catch a plane to Oaxaca. Phew! Mexico City is the biggest, most sprawled-out city I've ever seen; it was quite an impressive sight from up in the air. I caught up with some students from my program (who I love!...I'm excited to get to know everyone better while I'm here!) on my flight to Oaxaca. On my plane, I sat beside a woman named Louise. When she spoke to me in perfect American English, I asked her where she was from, and she replied, "I've lived in Mexico for 10 years now, so I'm now a Mexican citizen, but before that, I lived in New York," which created in my mind all sorts of hilarious images (especially given the recent snowstorm) of a disgruntled New Yorker waking up one day and saying, "Hang it all!" (only, of course, in the more colorful, blunt language of New York City) and moving to Mexico. Best of all, when I told her that I go to the University of Chicago, she goes, "Oh, I graduated from there." What are the chances I would sit beside a UChicago alum on my plane to Oaxaca? I hope to catch up with her while she's vacationing in Oaxaca.
Oaxaca from the air is gorgeous. The clouds were in all sorts of wonderful and bizarre shapes (one that looked like a judge with a white wig reaching out his hands from his billowing gown [I made such a fuss about the clouds that Louise commented, "You know, the mountains are something, too!"), and the light through the clouds made everything seem so mystical. The ripples in the mountains reminded me of crinkles in bedsheets, which created (for me) the image of giants sleeping inside the earth.
In the airport, I was expecting my host mother and 19 year-old host sister to pick me up, but what I found was my host brother (who I hadn't known existed!) and his friend, both 20-something year-olds who talked about how much they partied last night on New Year's Eve and who honked at women on the streets (then apologized to me for their behavior, only to do it again at the next corner). I was grinning the whole time in the carride; their energy was infecitious, and their antics made me laugh. It was hard to follow thier fast-paced Spanish as they joked together and cursed at slow drivers. My host family has so far talked to me mostly in English, but I'm going to insist on speaking Spanish to them while I'm here. They've hosted two students each year for about 10 years, so living here is a much different feel from my host family in Spain, where they had never hosted a student (and had never had a 20 year-old girl living under their roof) and were thus very hands-on with me, but I already like my Mexican host family!
After eating dinner, I've been in my room unpacking, e-mailing to let everyone know I've arrived, and getting ready for bed, as I've had quite the tiring day in airports. From my brief glimpse of Oaxaca, I already love it. There's so much life in the air (and actually, I can hear from my window that at this very moment, there are fireworks in the air), and I loved all the sights from my carride through the city: a man pulling along a snack cart on his bicycle, the colorful buildings in yellows and corals, the old couples dressed up, the children playing in the streets, the colorful decorations hanging from buildings and criss-crossing above the roads, the palm trees...I can't wait until tomorrow morning when my host mother María shows me around! Today has been a great start to my next adventure abroad, as well as to the new year.
¡Feliz Año Nuevo!
Besos,
Anna
Sooooo I failed royally at blogging in Spain. I still intend on posting stories from Spain in my blog at some point, but now to talk about OAXACA!
I got on a plane in Raleigh, NC, at 7 in the morning, to catch a plane to Charlotte, to catch a plane to Mexico City, to catch a plane to Oaxaca. Phew! Mexico City is the biggest, most sprawled-out city I've ever seen; it was quite an impressive sight from up in the air. I caught up with some students from my program (who I love!...I'm excited to get to know everyone better while I'm here!) on my flight to Oaxaca. On my plane, I sat beside a woman named Louise. When she spoke to me in perfect American English, I asked her where she was from, and she replied, "I've lived in Mexico for 10 years now, so I'm now a Mexican citizen, but before that, I lived in New York," which created in my mind all sorts of hilarious images (especially given the recent snowstorm) of a disgruntled New Yorker waking up one day and saying, "Hang it all!" (only, of course, in the more colorful, blunt language of New York City) and moving to Mexico. Best of all, when I told her that I go to the University of Chicago, she goes, "Oh, I graduated from there." What are the chances I would sit beside a UChicago alum on my plane to Oaxaca? I hope to catch up with her while she's vacationing in Oaxaca.
Oaxaca from the air is gorgeous. The clouds were in all sorts of wonderful and bizarre shapes (one that looked like a judge with a white wig reaching out his hands from his billowing gown [I made such a fuss about the clouds that Louise commented, "You know, the mountains are something, too!"), and the light through the clouds made everything seem so mystical. The ripples in the mountains reminded me of crinkles in bedsheets, which created (for me) the image of giants sleeping inside the earth.
In the airport, I was expecting my host mother and 19 year-old host sister to pick me up, but what I found was my host brother (who I hadn't known existed!) and his friend, both 20-something year-olds who talked about how much they partied last night on New Year's Eve and who honked at women on the streets (then apologized to me for their behavior, only to do it again at the next corner). I was grinning the whole time in the carride; their energy was infecitious, and their antics made me laugh. It was hard to follow thier fast-paced Spanish as they joked together and cursed at slow drivers. My host family has so far talked to me mostly in English, but I'm going to insist on speaking Spanish to them while I'm here. They've hosted two students each year for about 10 years, so living here is a much different feel from my host family in Spain, where they had never hosted a student (and had never had a 20 year-old girl living under their roof) and were thus very hands-on with me, but I already like my Mexican host family!
After eating dinner, I've been in my room unpacking, e-mailing to let everyone know I've arrived, and getting ready for bed, as I've had quite the tiring day in airports. From my brief glimpse of Oaxaca, I already love it. There's so much life in the air (and actually, I can hear from my window that at this very moment, there are fireworks in the air), and I loved all the sights from my carride through the city: a man pulling along a snack cart on his bicycle, the colorful buildings in yellows and corals, the old couples dressed up, the children playing in the streets, the colorful decorations hanging from buildings and criss-crossing above the roads, the palm trees...I can't wait until tomorrow morning when my host mother María shows me around! Today has been a great start to my next adventure abroad, as well as to the new year.
¡Feliz Año Nuevo!
Besos,
Anna
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