Week 3: Monday, September 11 – Sunday, September 17, 2023

January 01, 2024

Buenas tardes,

I’m back with another weekly recap, this time, with a date marker that accurately reflects the month we are in. (Apologies to anyone who was confused by last week’s “August 4” error).

Today marks the end of another full week of training and festivities and exploration in Querétaro. This week focused heavily on our language and culture classes, with a couple of trips to the center of the city to practice our language skills and get to know the city better.

On Monday, our task was to learn how to navigate the Querétaro bus system, to get from the Peace Corps offices to the center of the city. We successfully accomplished this task with enough time to spare to grab an agua de sabor and walk back to PC offices. My agua de horchata was quite tasty and hit the spot on what was an unusally warm morning.

Wednesday brought us to the city center yet again, but this time to practice introducing ourselves to people in the community and to gather survey data on people’s knowledge of climate change and the impact it’s having on Querétaro and Mexico. I spoke with four willing individuals, each of whom had different perspectives on climate change. The first person I spoke with said he had very little knowledge of climate change but that the temperature in Querétaro had significantly increased over the last few years, to a noticeable degree. The second person I spoke with told me that while the temperature might be warmer than it used to be, climate change is completely natural, and we just have to live with it. My third conversation was with an older man who was quite knowledgeable about climate change and who expressed to me that he was not sure what we were going to do to combat and/or adapt to the cascading effects that climate change brings with it. The last person I spoke with was a woman who also expressed that she did not know much about climate change or global warming but that the increased regional temperature and apparent lack of rainfall were causing problems that had not existed previously. I found this exercise to be quite eye opening. All four individuals I spoke with seemed to experience similar things: an increasing temperature, a stark decline in precipitation, but each one had a unique idea about why this was the case. Not only was this exercise an excellent way to practice my Spanish speaking skills, but it also gave me a better perspective on what people (at least the four people I spoke to) are experiencing regionally as the whole world faces the increasing effects of climate change.

Not unrelated, this week also centered on our programmatic areas, with the climate change cohort preparing for our first field-based training (FBT) activity which will take place next week. Next Thursday, we will be spending a day with a community about a 40-minute drive outside the city of Querétaro where we will understand the needs of the community and identify some ways in which we can help solve various challenges related to water scarcity, loss of agricultural land, and erosion.

Outside of training this week, the city of Querétaro was bustling with people from here, there, and everywhere, as people congregated in the city center to partake in Día de Independencia festivities, which started Tuesday night and continued through Saturday. On Wednesday, I went out to La Plaza del Templo De La Cruz to witness the festivities and understand how Mexican people celebrate their independence and their culture. Hundreds if not thousands of people were dancing through the streets dressed in traditional indigenous attire, dancing to the beat of a very loud drum as thousands of onlookers feasted upon the sights and sounds and smells of the evening. Street vendors selling esquites (cut corn with mayonnaise, cheese, lime, and hot sauce), tamales, guajolotes, enchiladas, frutas, dulces, and more lined the streets of the plaza. I personally partook in the esquites and tamales which were both delicious. Afterwards, my group of friends and I enjoyed milkshakes and play a few rounds of Jenga at a nearby cafe.

Friday rounded out the week with our own mini fiesta at the Peace Corps offices. Our language and culture facilitators organized activities such as Pin the Bow on the Lele, Memoría, “marriage ceremonies,” and “cooking” competitions where we had to guess what ingredients go into traditional Mexican dishes. Our round of the competition had us making mole, which I have since learned has many more ingredients than I previously imagined — multiple types of chiles, chocolate, onion, garlic, tomato, nuts — you name it, it’s probably found in mole sauce. The afternoon concluded with a karaoke and salsa dance session and, finally, esquites, our reward for completing various activities and a treat for the Día de Independencia.

Saturday was a lazy day, but I finally motivated myself to leave the house for dinner with a group of volunteers who gathered to bid farewell to our friend Carl who will be returning to DC on Monday morning for surgery to repair his nose which he broke earlier this week. Crossing our fingers that he gets the chance to return and complete his service.

Another week in the books. I’ll keep you posted about the next.

Ilana