Mexico Week II

LIFE AS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE 

Q: What did the Buddhist monk say to the hot dog vendor??

A: Make me ONE with everything

That joke is for you, Art. Because I can definitely envision you actually saying that to a hot dog vendor, haha! ;)  

Buenos dias, amigos! For those of you keeping up with me, thank you very much. I am feeling quite self-conscious about it all, but I'll continue to keep you posted nonetheless! I told myself I would update at least once per week and will try my best to do so. 

I was told from a reliable source that the color of text is a bit difficult to read due to the background tone of the template I'm using. I'm going to mess around with the formatting and will attempt to correct that. Other suggestions for improvement are appreciated. Something else - I figured out how to adjust the exposure and color on the photos I take, so they should be much better quality from here on out. Did you hear that?? I figured this out BY MYSELF, CANDICE!! Candy is my go-to computer problem-solver. But alas, she is having her own adventure on the other side of the globe. Hence, self-taught life lesson numero uno. 

Week Two at Cuauhnahuac has been ... interesting. Long story short, four teachers (including the director of the English Department), abruptly packed their things and headed back to the US. This created a lot of confusion and hectic-ness within the department, but actually has turned out to be beneficial to me because I've picked up a good number of the classes that they were teaching. 


However, it also poses a challenge because I'm picking up classes after someone else has been teaching them for months. Life lesson numero dos: assess the situation and carry on. Worry not, students! We shall overcome. Anyone want to come to Mexico and teach?! I'll hook you up. For real.   

Alright, so about the pictures to the left and below ... Tacolgando la Guayaba is the name of Danio's (in red cap) and his friend, Mike's taco stand business. Bringing delicious tacos de barbacoa y cochinita to the streets of Cuernavaca daily! Barbacoa is beef covered in a pot with maguey leaves and slow-cooked until tender. Cochinita (my favorite) is a traditional slow-roast pork that involves marinating the meat in citrus juice and coloring it with annatto seed. Choose your meat, throw it on a few corn tortillas with a bit of chopped onion, fresh cilantro, and lime juice - delish!!

  

The best part? Each taco is $5 pesos. That's less than $0.40 USD. Eat your heart out, fellow foodies!

Mexico's Independence Day is this Saturday, September 15th!! Everywhere you go around the city, there is red, white and green. I've been informed that it's going to be a good time - music, food, and lots of other festivities. Looking forward to that ....

Other shanigans have included another epic hiking trip to Tepoztlan. This hike was not as much hiking as it was rock climbing. Life lesson tres: be prepared for anything. Or don't be prepared, but do it anyway. The overlook that we hiked up to was a rock wall covered in graffiti. Mexico has some of the most awesome graffiti you'll ever see. Who needs an art museum?? Just bust out your spray paint and go to town.  

The photo above is my "Intro to Sentences" workshop this morning. My students totally ROCKED in identifying parts of a sentence today!!  Exciting stuff. Te amo Mexico y te amo ingles <3

"What we think is less than what we know: What we know is less than what we love: What we love is so much less than what there is; and to this precise extent, we are much less than what we are." - R.D. Laing