asi es la vida

I've been in Amatlan for 2 weeks now, and things are starting to settle in. Not that they weren't settled in before, but I am continuing to meet more people, and now recognize a lot of faces when I walk around the streets. I am happy to report that my Spanish is good enough to joke around, which is nice because I have made friends with 4 jovenes (young people), who are my supervisor's nieces and nephews. The oldest one is 19, so they are a little younger, but it is still nice to be friends with people more my age.. or i guess people that aren't married and have kids. as for the people my age, I know there are some out there, but for the most part they are either married, or have left to go work in the United States or Canada.

the surveys are continuing to go well, and now have crossed 30 people off of my list. and in the middle of planting season, I might add, which makes it harder to find people. regularly, I get two questions. 1: "where are you from, Canada?" Most white people that come to Amatlan for longer periods of time are from Canada, and there are three people from the town who are married to Canadians. Which leads to the second most frequent question, which is: "and are you married?" To which I reply.. no, I'm not, but I'm not looking to get married quite yet. We will see if I can escape without a wedding... haha. But I always hear really good stories from people while talking to them about their immigration experiences.. just last night I talked to a guy who has been migrating to the US and Canada, legally, for about 18 years. a lot of people here go to Canada through a worker's program, and go for a maximum of 8 months a year, although sometimes they go for 4 or even only 2. and this man had a health problem from being in the sun so much, but the patron didn't want to take him to the hospital and pay some of the expenses, so this man called the UFCW in Canada's migrant worker help offices, and had a really good experience because the woman was able to advocate for him and forced the patron to bring him to the doctor. It gave me hope that workers do actually find those kinds of supports useful.

I am also going to be giving English lessons throughout the summer, which I am excited to have started. Its nice to be doing something concrete that gives back to the community that is hosting me and most graciously answering a survey taken by a United States citizen. I have one group of kids and one group of adults, with a special emphasis on those that migrate to work in the United States or Canada, so they can learn some English that can be useful to them. I had my first class with kids yesterday, and I think it went pretty well. I just went over some basics and tried to get them to participate.. although they speak really quietly and are kind of embarrassed. also, for not ever having taken an education class or taught English or any other subject I think I held my own. and I even developed my own pedagogy! its called the "how do you say..?" pedagogy. The kids ask a question in English and insert a Spanish word that they want to know. Then I will tell them what that word is in English and then we spell it, using the English alphabet. its good for several reasons: it involves the kids, letting them take a little bit of control of their own education because they get to choose what words they want to learn, they have to ask the question in English so it helps with pronunciation, and then we spell it, so they learn more of the letter of the alphabet. not very many adults came yesterday, but I am hopeful that Saturday people have more free time.

today, I spent a good amount of time "dis-graining" corn that they will soak in water, cook, bring to the maize grinding store, and then make tortillas out of. there are several different colors of corn, and sometimes they mix! which makes a really pretty dried ear of corn.