Beatles and Stomach Woes

WILT

I awoke today with a strong urge to listen to the Beatles. So I listened to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on my walk to the Comisión de Derechos Humanos (CDH) and from CDH to el centro, then I listened to Abbey Road on my way home from el centro.

I woke up bright and early, left around 9:45 and walked to the Humans Rights Commission (CDH-Comisión de Derechos Humanos) to look for volunteer activities. It was about a 10-15 minute walk. The morning was beautiful. Last night it thunderstormed at 2am, like rattling, booming thunder. Crazy. Luckily it didn't keep me awake for too long.

But anyway this morning was beautiful- fresh clean air and the sun was out. So it was a nice walk and when I arrived at CDH I was pleasantly surprised to see an extensive property with a couple different house-buildings and a pool in the middle! It is also situated in a very pleasant, quiet residential area. The people in the CDH were bright and friendly, and I told them that I had just graduated, was here teaching English, and was interested in becoming involved in some service opportunities 1-2 times/week. I met with one woman, Rita, in her office we chatted for a while. Everyone was extremely receptive to me, and we decided that tentatively I will come to CDH twice a week. One day I will offer an English workshop to the employees in the Comisión, and the other day I will participate in some sort of community project.

I feel great about this encounter, and am really excited to get to work on it. Fulbright is such a nice program… really, like TOO nice, that I actually began to feel like I was losing touch with reality for a little while here. Reading Tom Power's and Carla DeSisto's blogs about their volunteer years so far made me feel like I was greatly missing that part of my life, so this should be really good. I hope I can find a project that I'm able to do consistently; I would love to work as a mentor to vulnerable youth (ie/ street boys) or something like that. We'll see... This morning was a breath of fresh air and I can't wait to become more involved in CDH.

Anyway, back to what I listened to. The first song that came on my ipod after I left the CDH office was “When I’m 64,” which was ironic because the people at CDH had just invited me to accompany them to an elderly home. The second song was “Lovely Rita.” Quite appropriate, as the woman’s name was Rita who I had spoken with all morning. Cheers to coincidences.



WIA

Unfortunately, my diet today was restricted to water, bananas and plain white bread. You can read more about this unfortunate circumstance in the previous post. The good news is that I went out with my friend Laura (another Fulbright ETA) and Alison and Mike (Alison is a research Fulbright and Mike is her significant other). Alison gave me the phone numbers of two doctors who specialize in treating Montezuma’s pinche revenge. Pharmaceuticals are mad cheap here. Holler.

I would like to share with you something that I cooked yesterday. Nopales are cactus leaves. When cooked (boiled is the preferred method), their taste resembles a sweet pepper, with the consistency of… well, a sweet pepper I suppose. Maybe a little softer. I made them yesterday with eggs for breakfast. Here are the pictures.









Yesterday at work we (English language colleagues at La UTEZ) celebrated all the September birthdays. Everyone brought in something home-cooked. It was deeeelishus. Unfortunately, however, I am suspect to believe that it was this lunch that caused me so much grief in my tummy. But what was a girl to do? There was no way I wasn’t going to try the pork skin dish… Ah, the woes of adventurous eaters.

T.I.M.

While exploring downtown with the other Fulbrights tonight, we happened upon this sign. **A prize will go to the person who can come up with the best caption for this sign. Please post all suggestions in the comments section of this blog post.**