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.
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.
La Coreana Americana 