cositas – education pt. 2

1. There are three main types of universities in Mexico – private, public autonomous, and public government run. Private universities are like private universities in the US (more expensive too). Public autonomous universities are public, but have the autonomy to make their own decisions. Public government run (my university) are public and controlled by the government.
2. I work at a universidad tecnológica.  These universities are public, run by the government, and primarily exist in more isolated, less urban areas. They were implemented by the Mexican government to give educational opportunities for students in rural areas. We run on a trimester schedule, with 1-2 weeks of breaks between each trimester. Students have the option of doing two years to earn their TSU (kind of like an associate’s degree) and then staying for two more years to earn their licenciatura (bachelor’s). Carreras (majors) here are much more industry-focused, with many students training later entering the workforce in companies that surround the area.  Example majors include physical therapy, maintenance engineering, electrical engineering, business, and accounting.
3. Tuition at my university very, very cheap – around 1,500 pesos (75 dollars) a semester. A lot of students also get scholarships and aid to make that cost even lower!!!  As I’m preparing to take out loans for medical school, I’ve had a lot of conversations of people at my school at the difference in price between American and Mexican upper education.  Although Mexican upper education isn’t flawless, the price of American education, in many ways, is absolutely insane.
4. Technology is another big difference between American schools and Mexican schools.  At UTSOE (my college), there’s a lot less technology than what I’m used to. There’s no WiFi, projectors, and not many printers. I do a lot more writing on my board, and since students aren’t allowed to use computers in class, a lot of time is spent copying what’s on the board into your notebook.
5. A big cultural difference I’ve noticed between my UTSOE students and US college students is the level of independence in a college student’s life. In the US, I’d say we try to establish as much independence as possible once we move out to college, doing our best to avoid coming home even if we live in the same state. Here, many college students live at home if they’re from Valle. If they’re not from Valle, they rent apartments but still go home every weekend to spend time with their families. In general, the close-knit nature of Mexican families means children aren’t expected to move out quickly the way American children are – it’s completely normal if you don’t move out until you’re married, and it’s completely normal if you don’t move out after you’re married too! Of course, bigger universities in bigger cities may be different, but this is what I’ve noticed here.  This is also definitely influenced by the fact that we don’t have dorms on campus (which again, is a very American concept).

 

trilingual-ish

Rooftop plants in San Miguel de Allende

After studying abroad (when my Spanish was at its peak), some people who heard me speak Spanish would ask me if I was Latina.  I may or may not internally scream when I get this because this, of course, is the ultimate goal for a non-native Spanish learner. [Short segway: if you are surprised that an Asian could be latina, do me a favor and read about Japanese-Peruvians here and Korean-Argentianians here.  Latina Asians do exist!]

The funny thing – or not so funny thing – is that no one who hears me speaking Korean would assume I am from Korea.  My grammar and vocabulary are lacking, my sentences obviously American.  My parents both speak English very well, and so I didn’t practice Korean as much as I should have growing up.

Here is the struggle for me, a complicated set of feelings that I’ve thought a lot about here in Mexico: Korean is my mother’s tongue, but the truth is, I speak Spanish better.

In Spanish, I can talk about politics and how I feel about our government’s current administration. I can discuss the complexities of gun control, and the nuances of race relations in my hometown. My Korean, on the other hand, is what one would call “kitchen Korean.” It’s the Korean I use at home to ask my mother things in simple syllables, like if the soup needs stirring, if the onions need chopping, or if the noodles need boiling.  I am not eloquent in Korean; I am limited.

While learning Spanish, yes, I’ve felt guilt.  I’ve asked myself why I went to Spain and why I’m in Mexico when it’s my Korean that needs improvement. This guilt over my languages is two-pronged.  Sometimes I’m angry I’m made to feel guilty.  Being Asian-American in America means that America forever links you to the way you look. You have to prove your ethnicity in a way that white ethnic groups don’t have to. People of Polish ancestry and Italian ancestry aren’t judged for not speaking Polish or Italian.  But in America, non-white groups are forever marked as foreigners, and foreigners are expected to speak a different language.  I would never expect a blonde person to speak unaccented Swedish or German, but people are disappointed when I say that I can’t speak Korean perfectly.  There is an imposition of American expectations on the foreign body that occurs in the United States.

But much of my guilt lies within me as well.  My mother is intensely proud of me being in Mexico, but when I was applying to Fulbright, I remember her asking me whether I would consider applying to Korea.  I told her the truth – that if I had this one shot to apply, that I didn’t want to go to Korea.  I wanted to go to Mexico. I’m confident in my decision, but I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about that question since. Shouldn’t I, as a Korean-American, be putting my efforts into learning the language of my ancestors’, instead of the language of a continent that has nothing to do with mine?  I pour my time here into studying Spanish grammar structures and memorizing lists of Mexican vocabulary. I haven’t studied Korean in years. There are layers of loss and gain linked with the linguistic abilities of the children of immigrants that I want others to understand.

I wish that I could wrap up this essay with a neat paragraph that says something along the lines of whatever language I speak, it’s the human language that matters or I have confidence that I will speak all three of my languages fluently by the age of 25.  But that wouldn’t be fair to the complexity of the feelings that are tangled up inside of me.  I panic a little, because I’m 22 and I know that my capacity for language, according to linguists, is fast coming to an end, may have already come to an end.  I don’t know if I’ll ever speak Korean perfectly.  As I continue along in my English and Spanish speaking lives, I’m honestly afraid I’ll lose more of my Korean, and I’m afraid that I’ll never get it back.  Should I have chosen Korea instead of Mexico for my Fulbright?

But through talking to Rita, one of my dear Fulbright friends, I’ve realized a lot of things. She put it eloquently, saying that though we aren’t returning to a homeland where our parents and grandparents were born, we’re setting foot into a new part of the world we’ve never before seen. As a Korean-American, I live and understand the Asian-American experience – we have our own customs and secret languages and struggles and cultural idiosyncrasies that bond us. By coming to Mexico, I’ve learned from a culture that is not my own at all. I’ve spent time in a place that has both baffled and dazzled me, developed a palate for food I didn’t grow up eating, seen completely new ways of living that I’ve never seen before. Speaking to people who have gone to or have family in the U.S., I’ve gleaned insight into parts of the Mexican-American experience that are so different from the Asian-American one. I can’t regret learning Spanish because without it, I would have never been able to receive this grant, or have conversations with all of the people here who taught me what I know. And here in Mexico, as I’ve explained my Asian-American identity to my students and friends, I have reaffirmed who I am to myself.

Because in the end, can I be Korean without speaking Korean perfectly?  The answer is – yes.  Yes, I can.  I may listen to more banda and indie rock than I listen to Kpop, but Korean is the language of my birth.  It´s the language of my childhood.  There is something about it that runs in my blood, that is buried deep inside of my body.  When I need them, I remember words I didn’t know I knew, words that are still within me from when my family spoke them into me as a child.  The way my mother scoops rice into a bowl is Korean, and I learned to scoop my own rice from her. When someone judges the authenticity of my heritage or my pride in my family’s immigrant history based on my ability to speak Korean, they are missing so many parts of the picture.

If you have a hyphenated identity – Korean-American, Mexican-American, Nigerian-American – we are lost children, in a way.  There is Korea and there is America.  There is no country called Korea-America.  We have to forge our own worlds, our own cultural identities, where we can be both.  Maybe neither country will claim us as their own, but the important thing is that we claim ourselves. No, I don’t speak Korean perfectly. Yes, I am Korean-American.

 

cositas – education pt. 1

As a Fulbrighter working at a public university in Mexico, I’ve spent most of my days at my school, observing the education system around me.  Here are some things I’ve learned during period, split into a general overview of education and a more specific look at my university.

1. Education here in broken up into the following: kinder, primaria (primary), secundaria (secondary), y prepa (high school). Stages are similar to the US, but secundaria is one year longer, and prepa one year shorter.
2. The kids in my town wear uniforms to school. Many of the girls wear skirts and stockings, boys wear pants and sweaters, and all of the kids have some kind of cardigan or jackets.  Uniform colors changes depending on the school that you attend.
3. There are no school buses where I live. Children take public transportation in the morning, and some kids are walked to school by their parents. Interesting fact: the school bus system found in the US and Mexico is actually rarely found outside of these countries.  Most of the world does not use school buses the way we do.
4. In 2013, the Mexican government made K-12 mandatory for all school-aged children in Mexico.  However, just because it’s put into law doesn’t mean it takes place immediately.  It’s projected that this will be implemented by 2020, and even then due to lack of resources (teachers, buildings, rural areas etc) it may not be 100%.
5. There are two types of prepas (high schools) that you can attend: a preparatoria or a bachillerato.  A preparatoria provides mostly vocational training, providing students with some kind of direct skill that they can use to immediately enter the workforce (the equivalent of a technical high school in the US).  Students can study things like nursing, accounting, or welding.  Bachilleratos, on the other hand, are like general high schools that prepare students to take classes to continue at college.  I would say that preparatorias are much more common here in Mexico than in the US, as many less students here choose to continue onto higher education.

agradecida

(reflections on gratitude as my time here in Mexico comes to a close)

Leaving the United States 

There is this vast lostness that comes from being away from your home country.  To be in a place where you don’t completely understand the slang or the customs of the people flowing around you.  There are many things from home I can’t find in my Mexican town – my dog, Korean food, bagels, ginger ale.  Some days, another joke flies 8,000 feet above my head, or I fumble with simple grammar that I should have mastered by now.  On bad days I’ve wished for America, where I can navigate phone conversations without shouting “mande!*” every three seconds and where I’ve never had to kill a cockroach the size of a lemon.  This kind of lostness can be tough, and you can drown in it if it’s all you focus on.  But while living here, when these feelings have washed up to me, I’ve remembered that everyone in my family that came before me – my mother, my father, my grandmother, my great-uncles and great-aunts – that they went through the same.

I am the first generation of my family to be born in the United States.  The past two generations of my family were the ones to make the immigration.  Out here in Mexico, I have gained a deeper appreciation for what exactly they went through.  I’m here for nine months, I came through a well-established program, and when times were tough, I reminded myself I’d eventually return to the US come May.  But my family packed up their suitcases and left their home country without knowing where or if they would ever return.  They threw out yearbooks and diaries and photos to make room in their luggage for socks and coats and shoes.  They didn’t know what lay ahead of them except the chance at a better life than the one they had at home.  When they arrived, they missed things – they missed home, I know that now.  But while I’ve been preoccupied here in Mexico with carving out a life for myself, my family was focused on carving out a living to survive.  My grandmother worked in a sweatshop making aprons when she first arrived in Connecticut, my father learned English when he was dropped into an American high school at sixteen.  I don’t know how they did it, but they did it.  Their fight and their survival astound, humble, and bless me.  I am the child of champions.  

Sometimes, the immigrant story sounds like it is worn so thin.  My grandmother came to American without knowing anybody and without knowing English with one suitcase and worked eleven hours a day for nine years straight to build a business with her own hands that still bears her name. It sounds like just another immigrant’s story that we’ve heard about a thousand times, but the thing is, it’s true.  My grandmother did do this.  She did come to America without knowing English, and she did create her own small business that still stands with her name on Berlin Turnpike (see it on Google Maps here). The strength that it takes to do that is indecipherable.

(For those of you who would say “well, your family chose to move here, so they shouldn’t have been complaining anyways” – I have two things to say to you.  First off, you need to carefully reconsider your entire life and figure out where exactly you went wrong.  Second, Olympians choose to push their bodies to the limits and soldiers choose to serve their country, and their work is no less noble because of the choice they made to engage in it. Immigrants have lives that are just as extraordinary, but that are not awarded medals.)

I will never be able to understand what my family went through.  Especially because I still don’t know what many of these things are. Because do you know what’s funny about immigrant families? They talk about their Korean past, and they talk about their American future, but rarely about the transition between the two. Why?  Is it because they don’t want to relive the hardships? Is it because in their generation, it was better to be silent about these things?  When I talk to anyone in my family about the immigration, I have to coax stories out of them.  Each question has to be followed by a hundred more in order to get a semblance of an expressive answer.  Were you afraid of coming to America?  Not really.  Were you even a little nervous?  Maybe a little.  And only ten questions later does my father reveal that he was terrified of planes, and he thought that he would die on the flight over.

But now, as I have been here in Mexico, the conversations have changed.  When I first arrived and told my mother that I was lonely, she told me that she understood.  And I knew that when she said those words, that she truly, truly understood me.  And when she said those words, I got a glimpse into how lonely she was when she first arrived in America, and I understood, because I felt the same way.  Perhaps that’s why my mother talks to me more now about her loneliness when she first came to America than when I was a child, because now she knows I understand a fraction of it. Perhaps that’s why she never spoke to us about it before – because there’s no way to explain missing a country to someone who hasn’t missed a country before – but now, in Mexico, I have.

And I’m glad to be opening up the silence.  I’ve been feeling this urgency, lately, to write down their stories.  To record their memories.  I don’t want their sacrifices to be lost.  I want to learn about what they gave up.  As a US-born, English-speaking child with an American passport, I have been handed privilege that, to some extent, my parents still do not have today (both of my parents are citizens, but read here about the difficulties of having accented English in America).  As I enter medical school this coming year, I will be accomplishing dreams that they themselves couldn’t dream of, but that I could pursue, because of what they did for me.  I want to remember, so that I won’t forget.

It’s such a common story.  The immigrant story.  The hardworking parents who crossed oceans and deserts and gave up so much so their children could succeed. But perhaps that’s why it’s so extraordinary. I walk the streets of Mexico now and imagine never going home – and I can’t.  I will always make it back to my home country.  But my parents gave up theirs, and my grandmother hers, in order to seek a better life. Not even for themselves, necessarily, but for their children. For me.

In this way, in Mexico, in a country that seems so different from both my American and Korean roots, I have relearned my own history.  I speak to my parents and recognize the journeys they took as I echo their paths.  I take my own steps as an extranjera in a new world, and I am grateful, grateful for this chance to look back on my family’s past as I move towards making my own future.

Arriving in Mexico City

*mande – a Mexican word that literally means “command me,” but is used more like “what?” or “can you repeat that?”  Used very commonly here.

post-spring break update

How is it the sixth of April already?  I came back from my spring break trip last Sunday, had class this week, and it’s already the week!  El tiempo vuela.

Spring break was an amazing trip.  Every time I travel to a new part of Mexico, I’m reminded at how beautiful this country is.  It’s huge, to put it simply, with every corner of it having its own customs, foods, and languages.  Oaxaca and Chiapas, though they both may be in Mexico, are completely different from Valle de Santiago, Guanajuato.

I don’t feel like going too much into depth about my trip, but I’ll write a quick summary so I remember things about it later.  We flew from Mexico City to Villahermosa, Tabaso, took a combi to this jungle forest hostel thing called Panchan, and then went from there on a tour that took us through Palenque (ancient ruins), Misol Ha (a waterfall), and Agua Azul (more waterfalls).  Palenque was honestly, incredible, a bit jaw-dropping.  I liked it more than Tulum, and you could climb up and into all of the ruins!  Agua Azul was this set of beautiful cascading waterfalls, and as you followed the set path, you could climb up to the tallest one.  We spent some time in San Cristobal, one of the major cities in Chiapas, and our first morning there, walked through the heart of any Mexican city, its tianguis (market).

Walking through the market, there were some sights that I’m long used to – women selling fruits and vegetables and nopales on the sides of the street, people holding woven plastic grocery bags with small children clinging to their legs, hustling through the crowds, the packs of wild dogs that scavenge for leftovers in the drains.  But there were also so many things that I had never experienced before – the thick black skirts of llama fur that many of the women wore, with colorful belts around their waists and folded pieces of fabric balanced on their heads, the sounds of indigenous languages being shouted and murmured around me that I couldn’t understand.

And as I have spent this time in Mexico, it has never failed to amaze me, and I know it never will.  The dusty deserts of Valle, the sun blazing down on you mid-day, the cactuses growing crooked by the side of the road, the men in their plaid shirts and horses, this is Mexico.  But the mountains of Chiapas, painted black against a grey sky, the lush and endless forests, the way the streets flood when it rains, the small children in their colorfully embroidered skirts, this is also Mexico.  And so it goes, from Mexico City to Yucatan, from Chihuahua to Guerrero.  It’s a shame, that Americans stereotype Mexico so well, making this country into nothing more than sombreros and mariachi and drug wars.  As we sneer at others for having nothing, we are the ones who are lacking.  We take away a world from ourselves and our children through sheer ignorance

(And here I was, saying at the beginning of this essay that I wasn’t in the mood for writing).

Anyways, after Chiapas, we made our way to Oaxaca.  If Chiapas is known for its gorgeous natural beauty and wilderness, Oaxaca is known for its FOOD.  And it lived up to its expectations.  Rita and I spent a lot of time eating – tamales (the biggest ones I’ve ever seen), tlayudas (another version of a tortilla/filling food that is native to Oaxaca), and mole (of course).  We did a cooking class where we learned to make pescadillas, soup, mole, and arroz con leche, and I officially decided that if medical school doesn’t work out I’ll come back to Mexico and become a chef here!  We also spent a lot of time wandering through art markets selling alebrijes (colorful painted fantastical wooden figurines) and textiles (woven using traditional indigenous techniques).  We also did things like go to a mezcal factory, go to museums, go to Hieve del Agua, and hang out with people from our hostal.

And then, I came home!  As always, it’s good to be home again.  I love this apartment, with my kitchen and my bed and my things.  It’s going to be a weird feeling, cleaning this place out.  I’m a wistful sort of person, and one of the things that always got to me was emptying my dorm room in college.  In August, you pack up your things in the car, go to campus, get your key, and open the door to an empty room – a room that quickly becomes filled with your things as you make it into your home, as you fill it with memories and tears, secrets and belly-aching laughter, textbooks and friendships over the course of the academic calendar.  I was so lucky to always live with dear friends in college, and each of my living situations throughout the four years – dorms the first two years, apartments the last two – remains in my memory as containing a period of my life.  Freshman year, the giant stuffed panda where me and my roommates used to take naps instead of in our beds, back when I didn’t study and didn’t know I wanted to be a doctor lolol.  Junior year, the couch with the flower-printed blanket in front of the bay window where my roommates interrogated me after my first date with the boy who now is my boyfriend.  Senior year, the kitchen that my roommates and I would use to throw cooking competitions and cook restaurant-style meals to serve to one another.  And though filling these spaces takes months, in a matter of hours at the end of the year, we dismantled them, taking down the photos and posters, rolling up the rugs, packing the dishes into boxes.  And just like that, the rooms would be empty.  No longer ours.  We’d close the door after the RA inspection, and it became just another empty room, waiting for its next owner.

I’m sitting at my kitchen table, right now, writing this, and looking around me, I see home.  This garish pink tablecloth I bought my first week here, desperate for a pop of color and for an errand that would give me purpose.  The two blue pots that we have that I have battered and worn in as I fell in love with cooking.  In less than two months, my lovely apartment will no longer be mine.  We’ll clear out our cabinets, pack up our suitcases (oh god, SO not looking forward to that), and leave not only this apartment, but this country.

Why does time move so fast?  I feel like a child when I say this, but it’s true.  I think this, especially now, as the days whiz by.  I blinked a few times, and college flew by.  I took a breath, and I’m already a year out of school.  What will it feel like when I’m twenty-seven?  Thirty-five?  Fifty?

Future Catherine, as you’re reading this, at some point in my future, I hope that you’ve kept this peace that I found here in Mexico for you, and that you’ve lived your life in a ways that makes you chuckle at my worries.  I don’t want to be afraid to grow old, and I hope you aren’t either.

This weekend, I have some light plans with friends (lunches, dinners, etc.), and then this coming Thursday, one of my best friends from high school will be coming to visit me!!!!  I am SO EXCITED to have Faye come visit, as she’s 1) a lovely human being and 2) I can’t wait to show her around Mexico.  It’ll be refreshing looking at my small town through her newcomer eyes, and we’ll be doing a trip to Guanajuato/San Miguel so she can see some other places!

Well, I think I’ve written enough for now.  Ugh I always start off saying this will be a “short” recap and then I write 1300 words and at some point wander off into wistfulness territory.  At least I can say I write honestly!

pre-spring break thoughts

(This post was written a few days ago. Now we’re a few days into our trip, which has been amazing! Blog post will come after the trip).

Hello! I’m sitting in a hip vegan restaurant with exposed brick walls, eccentric lighting, and servers who speak English. In other words, I’m definitely not in Valle anymore.

I just arrived in Mexico City to begin my weeklong spring break trip with one of my Fulbright friends, Rita. We’re meeting in Mexico City later today and catching a flight early tomorrow morning. We’ll spend a few days in Chiapas before making our way to Oaxaca and spending some more time there.

Mexico City is absolutely beautiful right now, all cool spring winds and floating dresses in shop windows and purple wisteria blooming in the Alameda. I walked the twenty-five minutes from the hostel to the museum and found a restaurant nearby. There was so much going on in the streets, vendors selling huaraches and sopes (which we don’t really have in Valle), a billion people walking around, and street performers with everything from guitars to LEGO costumes. I’m going to eat lunch and then spend some time wandering around el museo de arte popular, the museum of Mexican folk art. We had a tour there during orientation but I want to go back to slowly wander through the exhibits again.

Walking on these streets, I kept thinking back to my first week here in Mexico. We stayed in this same area, and I walked down the same street I walked down with a group of Fulbrighters our first night here as we ventured into the city to find dinner. I remember being stunned by the huge amount of people – it’s not that I’d never seen big streets before, but I’d never before seen such a homogeneity of Mexicans in one place. My first night in Valle, when I was completely along in an apartment in a town where literally I knew literally one person, in a place 2,222 miles from my home, in a new and foreign country, I remember being petrified and stiff in my bed. With every noise outside, the blare of music, car engines backfiring, people shouting indiscernibley, I curled a little more into myself and wondered what I had gotten myself into.

And today, I got up, threw out my trash, greeted the gas man as he told me “Hola mija,” stopped by the bakery to pick up some snacks, hopped on a bus, and came to Mexico City. So many simple things that I had to learn upon coming here.

Yesterday, me and Bere had a mini freak out where we realized that coming back from spring break, we’ll have less than two months left in Valle. It’s this indescribable sadness upon realizing the end is so near. There is so much that I wanted to see before I left, but I’ve already accepted I’m not going to get to everywhere on my list!

More than the traveling though, I’ll miss my ordinary extraordinary life here. My friends, my routine, my tranquil life. Because I know I’ll be able to come back to Valle one day, I’ll be able to return to this place, but I’ll never be able to return to this time and this place. In the future, stores will close down and move. The children I love right now will grow up. Distance will grow between the relationships I have here. It’s not a sadness, but just a simple inevitability that comes with the movement of time.

I learned this on my second trip to Granada last summer, the first time I had been back since I studied abroad. Studying abroad was such an important four months of my life. My first time really living alone and abroad, I grew so much, saw so much, and learned so much in this time. Granada, for me, is representative of a period of my life where I learned to use my voice, to go from shy and self-conscious to a stronger, bolder self. My memories there are of joy, growth, love, and self-awareness. But going back just wasn’t the same. I had forgotten the streets I used to know by heart. Locations of shops had changed slightly. The food didn’t taste as good as it did in my memories. When meeting my host family for lunch, my heart was soothed a little, because the place I had called home had barely changed – but I had. I could not longer understand my host mother’s accent perfectly, and my Spanish was rusty as I tried to tell how just how much I missed her.

Going back to Granada, funnily enough, reminded me of my own mortality. That inevitable passage of the thing we call time. I could go back to the place I called home, but I couldn’t, I will never, return to both that time and that place. And that same concept applies here. Keeping this in mind has helped me to enjoy each and every one of my simple days here immensely.

And more than this, that same concept applies to all of the places I will find myself in my life. As I enter medical school, I want, I will strive, to remember this as best as I can. Even with the work and the stress, I want to enjoy medical school as it happens and not let it take my joy from me.

Mexico, I will miss you immensely. Thank you for letting me into your beautiful heart and your beautiful home. And thank you, thank you, for teaching me to love my life in the moment.

sentimientos

Although I do a fair amount of writing, I don’t really do recaps of what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis on my blog.  So, I’ll do one right now!

January was a tough month, but February was honestly a fantastic one!  I went to Mexico City briefly at the beginning of the month and met up with my friend Rita.  I finally saw the Frida Kahlo house, ate churros, and went to the beautiful biblioteca Vasconcelos that I immediately fell in love with – the architecture was so beautiful and insane, not to mention that it’s a house for books #english major.  Then, the rest of the month, I stayed in Valle!

A couple of dear friends had birthdays this month and every weekend we had somewhere to go and something to celebrate.  I was invited to some lunches and baby showers and learned how to make homemade tortillas!  On Betty’s birthday, we went to her house and made enchiladas, on Johanny’s, we went to her house and met her cousins, and then on Johanny’s actual birthday, we went to Cafe Terraza and ordered drinks for a few hours, laughing hysterically and cracking jokes and telling stories the entire time.  It’s those kinds of belly laughing with friends that are the best.

We also hosted some things of our own!  A Fulbright friend, Katie from Guanajuato, came to visit me, and honestly, it was so much fun.  Valle is a non-touristy location, (like, literally, nobody ever comes here), and so I didn’t realize until she came how lovely it was to show someone else why exactly I love it here.  I took her to Crossfit, we walked around our town, and we invited a friend over to making Korean dumplings to celebrate the New Year (also because I was craving them).  A few weeks later, Bere and I hosted a dinner party with our closest gym friends, where we cooked American/French food and they brought Mexican tacos!  We stayed up late eating and drinking wine and exchanging gossip and basically having a girls night, and it was wonderful.

A huge thing that I’ve learned from Mexico that I want to carry with me for the rest of my life is the gift of being a good host. I want to give as freely as I have been given.  I want to be a generous person.  Growing up, my family wasn’t the best off, so I think from that I have a bit of a hoarder’s mentality from that (no lie LOL).  When my dad brought home snacks that we liked, my sisters and I would hide them from one another so that we could greedily eat them ourselves.  We didn’t really get birthday or Christmas presents growing up, so I never really thought about the value of giving gifts or what they mean to other people.  To be honest, I thought more about what kind of things I could accumulate for myself than what I could give to others (Selfishness, I would say, is one of my greatest sins).

But over the past few years, especially as I have traveled, I have been struck at what people have done for me when I am lost and alone.  Mexican culture especially, is one of the warmest, more generous cultures that I have experienced.  Within days of meeting people, I have been invited to their homes to eat, to meet their children and their families, invited to birthday parties and baptisms and breakfasts, events that I would consider intimate, privy to only the closest of family and friends.  I want to adopt this level of generosity and openness of spirit into my own life, for the rest of my life.  Being able to host a few friends in February felt really good for that reason 🙂

Last week, Anand visited me again (I’m so lucky to have a boyfriend whose job gives him a lot of time off!).  We spent a few hot days in Valle – literally, it’s now 85-90 degrees during the day and as soon as you go outside the sun blazes down on you – before making our way to San Miguel de Allende for the weekend.  San Miguel is a very touristy location, renown for it’s large expat-population.  I had gone once before when I went to Dolores Hidalgo to visit Rachel, and I liked it, but I thought it didn’t seem authentic and it was weird hearing so much English around me.  Indeed, it is very different from traditional Mexico, and the outside influence is strong – some stores accept American dollars, prices are exorbitant (not to Americans, but definitely to Mexicans, and definitely to me), and it’s a little too….clean and polished to be a real Mexican pueblo!

But unlike last time, I loved San Miguel.  Maybe it was the food we ate (we did a food tour and literally everything was amazing), maybe it was the shopping (we wandered through an arts market for three hours indulging in things we wanted to take back with us), or maybe it was the company (;)), but it was just a perfectly idyllic two days and I loved it.  It was also kind of nice feeling like a tourist again; I haven’t been traveling that much (which is such a relative term LOL I literally went to Huatulco last month) so it was nice to indulge in touristy things.

The past month, I definitely still struggled a little with eating/exhaustion/etc.  I don’t think I  was eating enough, I was constantly, constantly, tired, and even after sleeping 8-9 hours a day, I was still falling asleep on buses and in school (hey, at least it was at the privacy of my desk though and not in front of students!).  I’ve been trying a lot more to get better at taking care of myself; I’ve skipped the gym a few times to rest more and I’ve been trying to keep as set of a sleep schedule as possible.  I think it’s hard for me to eat as much as I usually do because a lot of my appetite comes from eating with other people, but Bere usually cooks her food and takes it to her room so we eat alone.  Growing up, my family always did family dinners and in college I’d eat and cook with friends.  I’m going to try to get better though!

I have around two and a half months left in Mexico now, and in the time I have remaining, I’m excited to enjoy it as much as possible.  I’m working on my Spanish, I’m still cooking, and in a few weeks I’ll be going to Chiapas and Oaxaca with my friend Rita for spring break!  To be honest though, I’m not planning much traveling other than that at the moment, because I want to enjoy being in Valle as much as possible.  It’s been a balance of wanting to see other parts of Mexico and experience new things versus staying in Valle and developing the relationships I have here, and I’m happy with the way it’s worked out.  I’m definitely traveling a lot less compared to other Fulbrighters, but I have a community of people here and that means a lot to me.

Valle – it doesn’t look like much, but it’s home 

There have been some moments where I have felt I haven’t traveled enough, and some where I felt I’ve traveled too much.  But in the end, if there’s one thing I’ve realized from this year, it’s there there is no one Fulbright in Mexico experience.  Even if I’m scared I’m missing out on things (no matter which choices I make), in the end, I am so, so happy with my life here, and that’s what matters.  I’ve genuinely found so much peace here in Mexico, and I don’t know how I could have started med school by going straight through from college.

On a final note, I’m so happy with how my blog has turned out this year!  When I studied abroad, I literally stopped writing after 5 weeks LOL so I don’t have as memories of what I was doing.  Writing for me is so wonderful because it captures moments in time that sometimes I can only remember by looking back and reading what I wrote.  I’m glad to be recording this year in full.

cositas 16 – non-Mexican foods in Mexico

Or, comida extranjeras en México. 

Every country has their own version of food, right?  Right.  What’s interesting upon traveling is realizing that every country has their own version of ethnic food as well.  In Spain, the Korean restaurants I went to didn’t serve banchan, the iconic small side dishes that should accompany every meal (I assume the lack of this is because the demand for Korean food in Spain isn’t large enough to justify the cost).  In France, the Vietnamese food I’ve eaten there was some of the freshest and most delicious Vietnamese food I’ve eaten – which makes sense, due to the large number of Vietnamese immigrants that live there.  And of course, in America, we have our sushi, our pho, our pad thai, our spaghetti, our bagels, our hummus – a variety of food around the world, because we have a variety of people around the world.

It’s one of the reasons why I could never live in Valle permanently.  Although I love living here this year, in the end, a girl needs her bagels and pad see ew and NYC-style pizza to survive – and things like that are pretty impossible to get here. Most of the time, to have ethnic food, you need ethnic people.  It’s a simple but true equation!  And in Mexico, especially where I live, there just aren’t that many ethnic people.  However, there still are ethnic foods – the world is a global place, after all, and Mexico is absolutely no exception.  So this post is going to be about the ethnic foods I have tried here with varying results, some hits and some misses, and how they are made uniquely Mexican by the way they are cooked.

1.  Sushi is hands down the biggest difference for me in terms of ethnic food in the U.S. versus Mexico,  All Mexican sushi – all Mexican sushi – has cream cheese in it – queso philadelphia.  I am not entirely sure why all Mexican sushi has cream cheese in it, but it’s there.  Perhaps the Philadelphia roll made it to Mexico first and then Mexicans just liked cream cheese so much it made it into all sushi rolls?  I acknowledge that my taste buds are different and no version is superior, and I also acknowledge that I cannot eat sushi here for this reason and am already craving it for when I go back to the U.S.!

2.  Pizza is another thing that’s pretty different here.  There’s none of that thin-crust NYC pizza that I love, sadly.  Crusts are a lot thicker, pepperoni is a lot more processed (I think one time my pepperoni was spam…?), and the cheese-sauce combination isn’t quite as melty-delicious as what I’m used to.  Pizza also comes with packets of salsa and a spicy-mayo like condiment that you pour onto top of your slice.  The spicy-mayo version is pretty good!

Pizza that I ordered from a restaurant in my town…the cheese wasn’t mozzarella, but I couldn’t quite place what it was! 

3.  Having had a lot of Indian friends in college and an Indian boyfriend the last few years, I love Indian food.  And the one time I had it here, not gonna lie, was pretty disappointing?  The saag paneer barely had any spinach in it, and the naan was a little soggy.  I think Indian food is an example of a food where you need an Indian chef, especially if you’re introducing it in a country where it’s not as commonly eaten.

4.  As in (I assume) all countries, Mexico has its Chinese buffets and take-out shops.  The tastes are a little different than Chinese buffets I’ve eaten in the States, with a little Mexican flair added in.  I’ve had chicken with chile guajillo at a Chinese restaurant, a very Mexican chile!

A big Asian buffet in Salamanca, haha.  Note the samurai statues? 

5.  I promised you hits and misses – so for my last cosita, here is a big hit: Korean food!  There is actually a huge sub-population of Korean in Mexico City, originally brought over to work in textile factories in the area.  There’s enough Koreans to have a small Korea-town, complete with grocery stores, cafes, and restaurants in Mexico City.  When I went with my boyfriend (who has come to love Korean food as much as I do), we were both very pleasantly surprised!  And here’s the best part – the entire time we were eating, there was a worker at the restaurant taking her dinner break behind us, eating yukkaejang (a spicy beef stew) with tortillas. Doesn’t that image make you happy?

So ultimately, I guess this is the thing – yes, I’m not used to a lot of the ethnic food here in Mexico, and I miss the versions of the foods I love back home.  Sushi without cream cheese, thin-crust pizzas with mozzarella.  But at the same time, when you take two cultures and have them smash together like atoms in a particle accelerator, you can get something totally new and totally beautiful, like yukkaejang with tortillas.  And I think that’s a wonderful thing.  I may be used to the product of cultures colliding with America, but here, there are many cultures colliding with Mexico.

So even though these foods may not appeal to my tastebuds, I do appreciate them, because they’re common to the Mexican mouth.  It’s interesting, how every culture in the world somehow adopts things like pizza and Asian food, customizing them in a way to fit the national palate.

cositas 15 – Guanajuato

Valle de Santiago is located in the state of Guanjuato, a state located in the center of Mexico.  It’s capital is the beautiful city of Guanajuato (yes, same name), and it has quite a few pueblo magicos and beautiful touristy locations around the state.  Here are five more things about Guanjuato as a whole!

1.  The reputation of Guanajuato is that we’re a bunch of mochos – uptight Catholics. Now, I don’t know how much that is true, but the majority of the people here are predominantly homogeneous, non-indigenous, and catholic.  The religious side of Guanajuato comes out through its abortion legislature – Guanajuato has one of the strictest laws against abortion in the country.  It’s one of three states to ban it in all circumstances, and there have been cases where police have investigated women with miscarriages in hospitals under the suspicion that they induced their own abortions.

2.  Like I just mentioned, Guanajuato also has one of the lowest indigenous populations in Mexico, which makes for a type of homogeneity, and also a lot of white looking people. If some of my friends went to the US, people would probably think they’re of Italian or European descent. (Just another reason why racial categories DON’T make sense, because not all Mexicans are short and tan, unlike media perceptions). Compare my state to the state of Chiapas (which has one of the high indigenous populations in Mexico), for example, and the differences become stark.

3.   Primary industries here are agriculture and factory-based. There are a lot of farms here, and Guanajuato actually produces some of the largest numbers of migrant farm workers who come to America with experience working on Mexican farms. There are a lot of Toyota, Ford, and Mazda companies here as well factories like Dannon (the yogurt company), Colgate.  I’ll go into Mexican education in another cositas post, but it is because of the many manufacturers in this state that many of the students in my school train in majors like food science or agricultural engineering to prepare to work in the factories that are here.

4.  Historially, Guanjuato is known for being the “cradle of Mexican independence.”  It is here that many of the first revolutions against the Spanish were started.  The iconic grito de la independencia by Miguel Hidalgo took place in Dolores Hidalgo, and the anniversary of that day is Mexican Independence Day, September 15th.  There are a lot more historical sites in Guanajuato that have to do with Mexican independence as well.

5.  Smaller ethnic populations here are surprisingly, Asian!  Every time I go to the immigration office, I make eye contact with Asian people who look like me.  Because of the Toyota and Mazda factories that are here, Japanese people make up a significant subpopulation in Guanjauto.  When you go to bigger cities like Irapuato, there are actually signs written in Japanese as well as Spanish, which was super surprising the first time I saw it!  The Korean and Chinese populations are significantly smaller, but it was pleasantly surprising for me to realize that a few number of Mexicans here have actually worked with Asian people before.  Immigrations patterns are fascinating! 

This is the overall vibe of Guanjuato, I would say.  After visiting the south of Mexico, I know how different Mexican culture can be depending on the part of the country you’re in, but I’m glad to be experiencing this one!  In general, people say that people in Central Mexico are less warm and less open than people by, say, the coastline or the south (a stereotype that also exists in America, funnily enough), but I’ve had nothing but good experiences in my town.  I can definitely see, however, how larger industrialized cities in Central Mexico could be much more intimidating places.

And thinking about all of the places I could have ended up this Fulbright year, really makes me amazed at how grand Mexico is.  If I had been in a big city in Yucatan, or a small pueblo in Hidalgo, or a beach town in Quintana Roo, or Mexico City, my experience would have been completely different.  The Mexico I have come to know and love is largely based in my experiences in my one town of Valle de Santiago, located in the singular state of Guanajuato.  So if you’re reading this, I just want you to know how huge, how diverse, and how different Mexico can be.  There is no one Mexico.

And if you’re a future Fulbrighter who’s reading this, I want you to know – there is no way you’ll learn everything there is to know about Mexico in one year.  But do your best, and you’ll leave this country much wiser than you were going in.

 

cositas 14 – alegritas

Small things that make me happy here:

1.  The courtyards of my school are perfumed by orange blossoms right now.  The small, white flowers smell like jasmine and honeysuckle and are so strong you can smell them from across the plaza when the wind blows the scent your way.  I´ve never smelled flowers from a real orange tree before (I don´t remember flowers in Spain?) and I could stand all day by these flowers, breathing in their smell.

2.  There´s light in the morning now when I head to school on the bus (unlike in the colder winter).  When I open the door of my apartment, the streets are still empty like they were in the winter, but now the building are all bathed in sunlight, the golden kind that you get in the earliest of the morning and just before sunset.  On the bus, when I pass the carnitas shops, their copper cauldrons gleam in the light, white sheets of steam billowing from their gleaming bellies.

The sun is always up now by the time I get to school

3.  On the walk from my apartment to my gym, there´s a pharmacy on the corner that always has a small pug dressed in cheetah-print pajamas chilling in the glass display case next to bottles of contact solution and boxes of allergy medication.  A few weeks ago, I finally realized that this is not ONE pug, but THREE IDENTICAL PUGS with IDENTICAL CHEETAH-PRINT PAJAMAS that take turns lounging in the little glass display case.

4.  I´m friends with the old man who runs the vegetable stand where I buy my produce.  He has the kindest face, and everyone who works at that vegetable stand in general is so nice to me.  Whenever I stop by, everyone waves to me and asks me how I´m doing.  One time, I forgot what kind of chile I needed for a Mexican recipe, and a few of the workers paused and had an intense discussion about what kind of chile I needed to buy.  When I didn´t stop by for a week when I was traveling, the old man and his wife asked me where I had been upon my return and told me I was missed.

5.  Almost every morning at around 10:30, I go with Mariel and Areli and Ivan (who work in the office) to Mariel´s small shop just outside of the school.  She sells lunch food, printing services, and school supplies for students at UTSOE, and everyday, we go to support her business by eating her delicious food.  I usually eat two chorizo quesadillas and two milanesa quesadillas, Mariel and Areli usually get tortas of carnitas or cebrada, and Ivan usually gets tacos.  We talk and relax to Delia and Andrea (Mariel´s daughter), Ivan shows us pictures of memes on his phone, and we all coo over Marisse (Andrea´s 1-year old daughter).

Marisse is the cutest, fattest, hugest baby ever, and the days she reaches out to me to pick her up are the days that melt my heart.  I didn´t grow up with a lot of young children around me; all of my cousins grew up in Korea and in college I didn´t really see babies at all.  Being able to see Marisse grow and develop her personailty has been such a lovely thing!  And talking to every one and taking our midday break is always so relaxing.  Our daily lunchtime in general always gives me a lot of real joy.