Week 8: Monday, October 16 – Sunday, October 22, 2023

Good afternoon, friends and family,

I’m writing to you on this lazy Sunday afternoon, after what has been another incredibly jam- packed week. I can hardly believe it, but we’re about to reach the 2-month mark since I left the U.S.! On top of that, we only have 2.5 weeks of training left before heading to our sites. Time is flying by so quickly.

This week was excellent. We got real earthy this week, spending our days learning about pollinator gardens, composting, and farming, and doing activities related to these themes.

On Monday, a biologist from an organization called Ecosistémica came to the Peace Corps office to give a workshop about pollinators, their significance, and how to build a pollinator garden to attract more of them. When you think of pollinators, you probably immediately think of honeybees and butterflies. But did you know that there are thousands of other species of bees, wasps, beetles, hummingbirds, and even bats that are vital to pollination? Well, there are. And sadly, many of their populations are in decline due to habitat loss, an excess use of insecticides and pesticides, and climate change. Without pollinators, we would not have 80% of the foods that we enjoy today, including most of our fruits and veggies. That’s why the theme of pollinator gardens is so important. By planting brightly colored, native plants in our gardens, we can provide food for all those wonderful pollinators in our ecosystems. After all, if we help them, they will continue to help us.

*Fun fact, did you know that hummingbirds are only native to the Americas? This was certainly news to me.

Tuesday and Thursday brought us to an agroecology center called Xata (pronounced shata). Xata is a family-owned farm and educational center that promotes sustainable farming practices and provides opportunities for groups like ours to learn more about topics like composting, gardening, and food security.

Tuesday focused on composting. We learned about the proper mix of carbon-based (browns) and nitrogen-based (greens) organic materials that are needed in a compost; we learned how to tell if your compost is healthy (by testing temperature and pH levels); and we learned about the general importance of why we should all be composting. In a world where we are constantly accumulating trash, composting organic matter is a small way that we can make a difference in both reducing the volume of trash that is collecting in our landfills and minimizing the amount of methane gas being released into the atmosphere. If you haven’t already considered composting, maybe now is the time you start one. Or find out if your municipality offers a composting service. While we may not individually be able to make a huge impact on climate change, reducing food waste and composting are effective ways to help reduce the methane being released into the atmosphere, which happens to be a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. If you want to learn more about methane in the atmosphere, I highly recommend listening to the methane episode of the TILclimate podcast — the podcast I assistant produced for 2.5 years.

This week was also quite a social week for me. On Wednesday, a few of the current Peace Corps Volunteers who started their service last year invited any of the trainees who wanted to join them out to drinks at a bar in El Centro. We chatted about their first year of service and got a bit more of an inside scoop on how service can go after one year. The consensus was that service is challenging and it’s up to each volunteer to shape the way their service goes. After training, it seems that the Peace Corps staff really take a step back and let the volunteers go out on their own with the tools they’ve been given. Kind of a sink or swim, but I’m up to the challenge.

Thursday, we watched Coco at the office and ate pizza — a very appropriate choice of movie with Día de Muertos coming up. If you haven’t seen Coco yet, I highly recommend doing so. Not only does it make me cry (happy tears) every time I watch it, but it is also a highly accurate representation of Mexican culture and the town is a pretty close reflection of the town in which I will be living in just a few short weeks. (Tip: for a more authentic experience, watch the movie in Spanish).

Friday, my friend Adrienne (Adri) and I went dancing after training ended for the day. Cerveceria Hercules (a super cool Cerveceria in Querétaro which I highly recommend if any of you come to Querétaro) hosts weekly cumbia and salsa dance lessons every Friday evening. Several people from my group had gone to the classes over the course of the last few weeks, and I went once, but I did not arrive in time to take the full class and properly learn the steps. Well, this Friday, I was able to attend both the cumbia and the salsa dance lessons, and wow, was it fun. I wish I had taken advantage of these classes sooner, both because it is so enjoyable to learn new dance moves and be spun around, and because it is a place to meet the local people from the city — and there are certainly regulars who attend this class on a weekly basis. In any case, I had a wonderful time, and I will try to get there at least once more before I leave Querétaro for Neblinas.

Saturday morning, I woke up early and met my friends Adri, Sam, and Cooper at the bus station to catch a bus to Peña de Bernal, a town about an hour away from Querétaro with one of the world’s largest monoliths, which we hiked up. Well, we hiked up the part that we could hike up. Once you reach a certain part, you need to be an expert rock climber and seriously not be afraid of heights. The hike was challenging but manageable, and we reached the top in good time. After our descent, we ate gorditas at a small restaurant, bought a few trinkets, and headed back to Querétaro.

But the day didn’t end there.

After arriving in Querétaro, I went home to shower and change and headed to a party which was being hosted in honor of two volunteers — Jesse (40) and Grace (24) — who celebrated their birthdays this past Friday. The older, more sophisticated crowd sat in the front drinking their wine and beer and eating hors d’oeuvres. The younger, recently graduated from college crowd, spent their time in the back playing drinking games and consuming jungle juice (a beverage consisting of lots of alcohol and fruit juice). I spent the beginning of the party floating between the two areas, but eventually settled in back with the younger crowd. A fun time was had all around, and it was a wonderful way to spend time with the cohort outside of training.

Thanks for reading. As always, feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, concerns.

Love you all lots! 

Ilana