Week 48: Monday, July 15, 2024 – Sunday, July 21, 2024

July 22, 2024

Hello everyone!!

I wasn't sure I was going to get around to writing to you, but I felt a jolt of inspiration, so I thought I might write to you after all.

On Monday, I finally made it back to Neblinas after having been in Tilaco for four nights. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy spending time in Tilaco, but I knew it was time to get back to reality and readjust to my life in the community.

The readjustment wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Things felt familiar — I have lived here for almost 9 months after all — and I was welcomed back into the house and into the family like no time had passed at all. It does surprise me how quickly one can revert back to the way of life that they know. Two weeks back in San Diego, and I already sensed quite a difference in the way I act and interact. And of course, that's because I have lived in San Diego for the vast majority of my life, but I do sense a sizable change in myself when comparing my San Diego self to my Neblinas self.

But in any case, this week, I got myself back into my routine of drinking my coffee in the morning with Doña Margarita and going for walks in search of cool bugs and interesting plants and exercising in the afternoons and slowing getting back into my work. My application for my cistern project is so close to being done! Today, I finished the last touches (well, what I hope, at least, are the last touches) to my application and sent it off to the Peace Corps grants manager. I called various hardware shops to make sure I had the best prices possible for the materials I am going to need, and I updated my budget and all the other sections accordingly. I am hopeful that by the end of August I will have the funds I need to start implementing this project and making a difference for the community.

It was a good week. After a pretty relaxing first few days back in the community, on Friday I went to and participated in the graduation ceremony of the high schoolers I worked with these last few months. I was even asked to be the madrina (sort of a godmother) of one of the graduating high schoolers, Wendy, whom I grew to be good friends with this year. The role of madrina, as I learned, is one that is not taken lightly in Mexico. While it holds more significance to be the madrina or padrino of someone for their first communion or baptism or confirmation, here in rural Mexico it is still of importance to be someone's madrina for their graduation. And the other madrinas and padrinos came dressed up in beautiful gowns and dress clothing — something I did not know about before the graduation, but that I know about for next year.

So I got to be Wendy's madrina.

And then on Saturday, Rayanne and I had planned to host a movie night to raise some money for Rayanne to be able to buy supplies for the garden beds she hopes to build in the elementary and middle school, but, due to a number of factors, we ended up not being able to show a movie after all. First of all, no one actually showed up (I blame the weather and the lack of publicity), and second, there wasn't even electricity in the casa de cultura where movie nights are usually hosted! And that was quite strange because generally there is electricity flowing and it wasn't out in the rest of the community. In any case, I suppose it was lucky that people didn't show up, because, technical difficulties and all, we wouldn't have been able to show a movie, and I think that it would have been a bigger disappointment to the kids to not be able to watch a movie had they shown up.

That brings us up to yesterday (Sunday) when I took yet another trip down to the beautiful Tanquilin river with my friends Tito and Jair. After weeks of rain, the river has grown significantly. When comparing the river to how it was even just five weeks ago, there was an exponential increase in water flowing — especially considering that when we went down five weeks ago the water was barely flowing.

I'm not going to lie, I had a bit of apprehension going to the river yesterday. I'm not sure what it was exactly. Likely a fear of the conditions of the path going down being bad because of all the rain and mudslides that there have been in the last few weeks, or perhaps being worried after having seen pictures of the river directly after it rained a few weeks ago and thinking the water looked dangerous. But the path ended up being in pretty decent condition and the river didn't have the kind of rapids I thought it would have.

We even crossed the river a couple of times to be able to get to the other side to explore. We crossed with the water about waist deep in a part of the river that had a rather weak current, and I can honestly say that after my initial hesitation, I enjoyed being adventurous and pushing myself to face my fears.

We saw a number of different species of mushroom and varieties of millipede and butterflies and, well, you could say it was great entertainment for a nature nerd like me. And I'm grateful that Tito and Jair are nerdy like me, because that means that I can spend as long as I like taking pictures of cool organisms or shrieking for joy when I stumble upon something new and interesting that I haven't seen before.