Week 16: Monday, December 11 – Sunday, December 17, 2023

Dear beautiful friends and family,

Apologies for sending this later than usual. Yesterday, I went for a beautiful hike down to the river just below the community of Neblinas, and between being out all day and being super tired when I got back and not having electricity all day, I couldn’t get around to sending my update, but here we are now. Hope you enjoy!

The countdown to the end of the year has begun. And in my community, the countdown to Christmas has begun, with posadas every night and festivities to honor this special time of year. Last night, I went to a posada, which I thought was just a party, but turned out to be a lay-led service with songs and prayers. Not what I expected, but an interesting cultural experience, nonetheless.

As I mentioned above, yesterday, I finally got the chance to go to the beautiful Rio Tancuilin! With a few of our ecochavo friends (members of the youth-led environmental group Neblinas Vivio), we hiked down to the river and spent time admiring the natural beauty and disfrutando our time with good company and good food. (Pictures below for you to admire the beauty for yourselves). It was a tiring hike (especially on the way up), but I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to go, and I’m lucky to know that such a beautiful ecosystem exists just below where I am living.

Sunday and Monday of last week, we were here in the community. Sunday, we went to visit some new friends of ours — Sonia and Theodora — who have been super generous in lending us their time and their opinion about how we should approach our work and how we can make the most progress in the community.

Monday, I don’t think we did very much, but I did learn how to make tamales!!

Tuesday through Thursday we were outside of the community, first in Tilaco, and after in Arroyo Seco and Jalpan. The reason for our trip was to go to the Feria de Maiz (corn festival) in Arroyo Seco, hosted by CONANP. But up until Monday, we didn’t know if we were actually going, at least not until Henry Miller (more on him later) invited us to stay with him and his wife Carmen in their beautiful eco-friendly home in Tilaco (another town in the Sierra on the way to Jalpan).

A paragraph about Henry Miller: Henry is an American who has lived in the Sierra for more than 20 years. After living here for a long time, he is now accepted by the people as a true Serrano (what they call a person from the Sierra). Henry and Carmen run an organization called El Maiz más Pequeño which focuses on water conservation and sustainable agriculture practices. It just so happens that Henry and his organization were in Neblinas last year to work with the people and assess the needs of the community regarding water resources. Lucky for us, the work they did in the community resulted in a 100+ page diagnostic report of Neblinas that Henry shared

with us and is proving to be a very valuable resource for getting to know more about the community.

Okay, so after staying the night in Tilaco with Henry and Carmen and our friends Cole and Sean (the other volunteers who live in the Sierra), Henry, Carmen, Cole, Sean, Rayanne, and I went to Arroyo Seco (don’t try to do the math — 6 people in one car — totally legal here I promise) and spent the day at the Feria de Maiz. From what I heard from Cole, who has been a Peace Corps Volunteer for a year more than we have, the festival wasn’t as big this year as it was last year, but it was still a nice event to participate in, and I’m glad we went.

After the event, my friends and I decided to spend the night in Jalpan — a chance to sleep each of us in our own beds (we had to share beds the night before) and a chance to relax a bit and catch up with good friends.

Thursday, Rayanne and I returned to Neblinas and spent the rest of the week here. Friday, I went to visit another one of my host’s daughters — Belen — to give a guitar lesson. What’s funny is, I only play a little bit of guitar, but Belen was insistent on me giving her a lesson. But what I learned once we were playing together is that Belen is far more advanced at guitar than I am, and it was almost as if she was teaching me! I’m okay with that, though. I think it could be fun to get better at guitar and it’s an enjoyable instrument to learn.

Friday night and Saturday, I spent a lot of time with the kids (Melanie, Santiago, Julian, and Juliette) whose new obsession is playing UNO with the cards I acquired for them.

Saturday night, Neblinas Vivo hosted a noche de peli (movie night), which Rayanne and I helped set up.

And that leads us back to Sunday, which you already read about at the top of this letter.

Tomorrow, we’re off to Jalpan again to celebrate the end of the year with our counterparts at CONANP!

I’ll be sure to write again next week.

Wishing you all a wonderful start to your week!

Love, 

Ilana









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