Ilana in the Cloud Forest

Good evening, friends and family, Happy Easter, happy end of Passover. I hope you all enjoyed a beautiful spring day wherever you are in the world. Today, I returned to the Sierra Gorda after spending the week with a group of Peace Corps volunteers in a cabin close to the town of Carrizal, Querétaro.  Thanks to my friends Jordan and Ben, who organized the trip for us, a group of 12 volunteers, mostly serving in Querétaro but also serving in Tlaxcala and Hidalgo, got together to hike, relax, and disconnect for a few days in the beautiful hills of the Querétaro semidesert.  I cannot express enough how exciting and wonderful it was to spend time with my fellow volunteers in nature and have a few days to disconnect from the rest of the world and be present in the moments we shared. So here's how the week went:  On Tuesday morning, I left Neblinas and got a ride to Jalpan, where I met up with my friends Miryam and George, who live in a town right outside of Jalpan, as well as ...

Good morning, everyone, I hope you've all had a wonderful start to your week.  Apologies for not writing to you sooner. The month of March was a busy one. While it started out like any other month, activities soon ramped up as I had a site visit from my Peace Corps program manager and institutional counterparts, went on vacation to the U.S., celebrated my 25th birthday, presented about my work at two universities, went to New Orleans for 24 hours, and then returned back to Mexico and immediately jumped back into work and various other activities. This week, with spring beginning and the month of March ending, we are entering the hot season, and almost everywhere in Mexico is experiencing a heat wave. Temperatures as high as 45ºC (113ºF) are going to be experienced in parts of the south of the country, and here in the center of the country, we'll be facing temperatures as high as 37ºC (98ºF). Not exactly something I'm looking forward to, but I'm hopeful that after this w...