I have three more weeks teaching English in Campamento Hidalgo.  The experience has been pretty nice.  The area is beautiful and I have relished spending more time outdoors.  The biggest problems I’ve had has been the amount of ticks!  While the temperature is bearable, there are an excessive amount of the little buggers.  Plus, they have ticks that are no bigger then the size of a pinhead or a speck of dirt and they cause problems!

The people have been nice and its been interesting to work closely with students who’s first language is Mayan.  Most of my students have ended up being teenagers or people in their early 20’s and unfortunately the class has been dominated by a group of teenage girls.  Unfortunately, because they act like teenagers and easily distract the class, which was intended for adults to learn to be nature guides. 

Nevertheless, my biggest challenges have been around creating a curriculum without a coursebook and with pretty minimal resources.  Luckily, the federal government is going to continue providing English courses starting this weekend for the year…so they’ll hopefully continue where we left off.  A few months is not enough time to really learn a language unless it was intensive. 

Three weeks left with only 2-3 day weeks and really only a few more hours of class.  I’m mainly concerned with the amount of verbs they understand in both a present, continuous and past tense.  We are going to hound them into learning as much as possible in as little time we have left.  More pictures and experiences yet to come.

MMMMMMMMMM yummy. Chocolate Chip scones.  I couldn’t find the right type of cream, so I used some really thick sour creamy-like substance (without the sour).  It turned out pretty well using a really basic recipe.  I think too many chocolate chips in mine, cause when I got a bite with none the flavor was so weak.  But I’m on the way to being a scone-expert.

2 cups flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tbl. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

chocolate chips

1/2 to 3/4 cup cream

Preheat oven to 425F and place rack in upper third of oven. Mix dry
ingredients together in bowl. Add chocolate chips to liking. Pour in
cream slowly while mixing dough with hand until all dry ingredients are
incorporated (don’t let it get too wet). On a lightly floured surface,
shape dough into a 8" disc (or press into a 8" round baking pan). Cut
into 8 wedges and arrange on baking pan lined with parchment paper.
Optional: brush top of scones with a little butter and dip buttered
side in turbinado sugar. Bake for 16 minutes until golden.   

Christmas started off with a bang…we had a Christmas party on Sunday the 23rd with over 20 people.  This was a chance for them to taste a bit of an US-American flavors. 

So here is to starting a blog on cooking "Whole Foods in Mexico".

 

On the menu: 
Feta-Dill Shrimp Stew
Herb & Veggie Scones with Jalapeños.

Everyone loved the food and I felt good about providing some new flavors and using the new stove.  YUMMY.  I can’t wait to master some of these recipes by cooking them more often.  They were both pretty simple, but the Stew was a bit expensive (dill is rare here in Merida, I finally found it at Walmart *?($#& in small packs).   

For Christmas day we made some stuffing that rocked the house. 

Mom’s Turkey Stuffing Recipe

We followed this recipe pretty closely, except for reducing the amount of broth to a few cups, replacing currants with dried cranberries (thanks Costco) and losing the "Turki-ness"  It became a vegetarian (hell even vegan if we hadn’t used butter) delight that Chema’s family was amazed didn’t contain any meat. 

Any my new favorite vegetarian website (101cookbooks.com) gave us a fairly dull but different mashed potatoes…

Kale and Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes

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I took a trip on Friday and have found a job!  For two months starting at the beginning of Nov, I will be teaching English with the organization ProNatura in the community of Campamento Hidalgo.  It is a community of about 28 families with 150 people.  There is no electricity but plenty of wildlife.  In the last year they have built a trail surrounding a lake and now they are being trained to give tours.  My job is to connect the ecology they are learning with basic English skills.  The hope is that the community can start providing themselves with an income by sharing their home. 
The first month, I’ll be living in the community 5 days a week (two days without the other teachers) and the second month I’ll be living three days a week with other teachers.  I think this is a great opportunity and I can’t wait to get to know the Ecology of the Yucatan as well as these interesting folks. 
For the next few weeks we’ll be building a curriculum and I’ll be preparing for my time there.  Below are a few pictures…

This week I took a normal day for cleaning the house and doing some homework and spent it with a classmate, Juan Philipe (John Philip) from Quebec off in some cenotes, or swimming holes (really more swimming caves). 

Since all the water in the Yucatan runs underground due to the pourous nature of the limestone bedrock, there are literal rivers that run to the ocean.   This means a humid climate with no rivers, lakes or creeks until you get to the coastline.  But every so often (actually there are thousands of them in the area – most undeveloped) you’ll find a cave underground with a nice clear deep ‘lake’.   It’s a nice way to escape the humidity and get a little swimming in freshwater. 

It can also be a bit creepy.  The cenotes can be upwards of 200 feet deep in some places and oftentimes they are connected by strong flowing underground rivers.  Chema has relayed the stories of people being sucked down into a cenote, but I think it is fairly rare. 

   

On Thursday, we headed off in our rental car for Cuzama (accent on the last letter) to take a tour of three cenotes connected by a trolly system pulled by horses.  The community set this up years ago and it is a regular destination for experiencing cenotes.  This was my second time and they updated some of the infrastructure (thankfully since it was a bit scarey before to climb down a rickety old metal later).  Take a look at some of the pictures.

And I’ve finally planted more seeds for growing tomatoes and other plants in my yard.  The backyard, is a mess.  Trash was burned there (including plastic and aluminum) by the previous tenants – so it doesn’t feel like the cleanest place to plant.  PLUS, there almost no soil in most of the yard.   But here are a few plants I’ve gotten going.  The left one (Stupice)  is going to need some love, but the one on the right (Yellow Lemony) is off to a good start.  Eventually I’ll have basil, peppers and cherry tomatoes.  I’ve got over 30 varieties of seeds to use! Thanks Kristen and Don.

And look at Mali, isn’t she just growing up so quickly? I’ve started training her every morning for 10 mins before we take our walk around the neighborhood and before the sun comes up and heats up the place.  We’ve got lots of work ahead of us. 

A little Spanish for those interested.  I’m trying to learn my Spanish verbs in present tense.

To Put/Place: colocar
     Yo coloco el libro sobre la mesa.
    Colocas el telefono sobre la mesa.

To Run: correr
    Yo corro a la derecho el calle.
    Corramos en el parque.

To Visit: visitar
    Yo visito mi abuela.
    Ellos visitan la eschuela.

To Return: volver
    Yo volvo manana.
    El volve hoy de la playa.

SO…it’s damn humid here, if I haven’t told you this already.  The average high temperature this summer has hovered around 98 degrees while we’ve had much in the way of humidity.  What that means is that 98 feels like 107.  I’m getting used to it though, and the temperature is beginning is slow crawl down to an average high of 85 (low of 64) in the winter.  Yep, it gets chilly here.

So now that it only gets up to 88 degrees, I’m still feeling sweaty, but I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out like I used to. I’m trying hard again to lose a few pounds (nothing like a little Mars weather to make you want to get a little more fit) so by the heat of next summer I’ll have less of a tire around my belly.

These were my Birkenstocks.  I’d had them about 11 years and occasionally I’ve warn them out around Merida.  I hadn’t put them on in a while and went to grab them from the ‘closet’ (really an area where you can put doors up but for us is just an indentation in the wall) and they were completely moldy.  The inside of them…I guess where my feet oils instigated the infestation.  Also moldy were Chema’s shoes…the soles of them.  I’m very unsure why…but it was pretty gross.

Since moving here I like to explore the different consumer products available.  Since I’m no longer able to buy my organic foods (okay there are a few products), or my local beers (I did just find a new beer here that is dark with a chocolatey taste, very exciting) – I’ve resorted to finding excitement in the slightly odd (from an American perspective).  First would have to be the toast.  Here you can buy toast.  It’s bread already toasted and packaged for you.  A few weeks ago I was wanting some bread to go with my morning (organic) coffee and I went next door to Mini Todo (that’s Mini Everything Luigi, a convenience store with Luigi from Mario Bros) and found toast with what is basically FROSTING (like on a cake – except on cakes here they have a different type of frosting, which I believe has lard in it – so in this case we are talking about US type frosting).  I didn’t realize exactly what I was getting until I took the first bite.  Of course a week later I went in another direction and bought "Doble Fibre" toast – 2 grams of dietary fiber in every piece.   That was needed after the Independence Day celebrations and lots of pork. 

Speaking of fiber, it seems to be in all sorts of products.  You can buy little cartons of milk in different flavors (Vanilla, Chocolate, Hazelnut etc) that have 8 or 9 grams of fiber per box!  They also have a ton of sugar, but at least your intestines thank you for the consideration.  Fear not though, you can buy regular milk (primarly sold in cartons, unless you buy it from the guy driving down your street everyday honking his horn and yelling "LECHE!") that has fiber included.  For a while there I was worried I was going to eat too much fiber because I was so excited by all the high fiber products.   

Thankfully though, this week I’ve resorted to natural fibers in the shape of fruits and vegetables.  I really don’t eat much fruit, so this week’s new plan has opened me up to the variety of fruits here.  Today I had some sweet pineapple.  Daily though, I do eat a Washington Apple, and at Costco this weekend I saw a box for Northwest Cherries — which I’m a little late, but next year I’m totally all over.  But there are many fruits here I’ve yet to try that I will speak of at later dates. 

Speaking of Costco, I felt right at home this weekend having a Costco hotdog (pre-fruit and veggie fast) because I was so hungry and an hour or so from getting home.  Besides a little odd color to the meat, it was the same experience as at home, just outdoors.   Soda and hotdog for $19 pesos (around $1.80).  And surprisingly I did not get a gut bomb I’m used to back at home despite the tremendous amounts of onions and jalapeños I put on my food.

Okay. That last post was a mistake. I meant to post it to a blog I started at www.grafter.org.

Since this site is my personal blog and I’ve not had much to say lately, I figured you might like to know that I am still alive and kickin in the Yucatan.  I am spending my time in one of three ways.  First, studying spanish.   I’m halfway through the first level and I’m loving it.  It’s great to have a stronger ability to communicate at a basic level.  As far as making it the main language in the home…that may take some time.

Second, I’m working on a blog from home.  So this is giving me time to hang out at home…clean the house, play with the dog, studying for the Teaching English as a Second language certificate, etc.  My hope is to finish the certificate and start a tutoring job part time by the end of my spanish class (in Nov). 

Third, I’m spending time with Chema and his friends.  This last weekend was a pretty busy weekend with Mexican Independence Day!  Viva Mexico!  We had two birthday parties and two Independence parties (one at our house!) as well as a family lunch.  This weekend Chema is out of town for his work, so I’ll be hanging out on my own, possibly doing some touristy things with a friend or a classmate. 

As of now I’m adjusting well to life here.  There are some cultural differences that still are a challenge, but as a start to take steps into the world around me I become closer to feeling like I have a life here.  And now that I’m spending time with a goal of blogging and developing my skills around web design/communications I feel like I have a path that will take me further towards my professional goals, that are starting to form.  Life goals are always based in part on the reality of the present and the hope for the future. 

Oh, and you can checkout my most recent resume here…ryanhawkes.emurse.com

Apparently Democrats agreed to require a vote of 60 for a recent bill on the Iraq war.  One of the main features of this bill was to require that troops get equal time in Iraq and equal time at home.  The Republicans opposed this and instead of going through the filibuster, they convinced Democrats to take a hit without forcing Republicans to sweat a single bullet debating that topic in a filibuster. It’s probably because Republicans are not in control and are using the filibuster more than ever!

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture
votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th
Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number
of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002,
according to the Senate Historical Office.

Kagro-X at Daily Kos makes a good point that basically Republicans have made it easier on themselves to get the majority to do its bidding with out the work.  Just the fear of a filibuster gets a bill to sink.  I say make them work for their poor politics!