This might actually work.
Things seem to have settled into something resembling normalcy here.
Friday, I visited an orphanage run by the Catholic Church. I had no idea what to expect, but I had a blast. The kids were all happy and well-behaved, and they seemed well-fed. Decent living accomodations. Hell, they're probably better off (materially) than a lot of kids in Cuernavaca. I basically just spent two hours as a human jungle gym. Kids were climbing all over me. I was launching them up into the air, playing caballo, playing monstruo, and two little girls continuously demanded "¡Atrapame!" "Catch me!" Okay, it was really easy, but you can't just catch them. You gotta run around until they're tired. Which is about the same time I'm tired. It was a hell of a workout. I also saw some little girl faceplant into the cement. Ouch.
I spent Sunday in México DF again. We had a mandatory excursion to see the Palacio Nacional (mostly just Diego Rivera's murals there, which were fantastic). The group then went on to visit El Templo Mayor and La Catedral. Since I visited those last weekend, I ran off on my own to visit El Palacio de Bellas (Belles?) Artes. It's a beautiful building, with a few more excellent murals inside. Poor suckers didn't even get to go inside the Templo Mayor compound. I am definitely skipping out more often.
Finally, we visited the National Anthropology Museum. I had to meet up with the group by taking a harrowing VW Beetle taxi ride across the city (in Spanish, "Meet us at twelve" sounds almost exactly like "Meet us at two." Oops). Once we got there, it was immediately evident that we were not going to have enough time. The place is gigantic, and jam-packed with artifacts of the numerous indigenous cultures of Mexico. I was frankly a little bored, because there wasn't enough time to piece together a living image of any of the cultures. Artifacts by themselves are pretty and all, but I want to know what life was like for those people. We just didn't have enough time.
Otherwise, things have been pretty uneventful. Spanish is improving, and should get a big boost this week: I have two hours of one-on-one conversation every day. Nothing is more useful. Reading is easy now, listening is improving, and I can speak fairly decently. I think that the key to speaking a language in a daily manner is essentially just repeating common phrases over and over until they're natural to you. When you're trying to express a complex idea, people will have patience; if it takes you 30 seconds to say "I agree," they won't. Taxis make for great practice, because I can just have the same conversation with a cabbie over and over again.
It should also be noted that my passion for poli sci has returned. On Friday, one of my professors was talking about how Chiapas has this really rugged terrain, and a problem with healthcare. It's very undeveloped, with a bunch of unmapped villages scattered throughout its mountains. Naturally, the Mexican government thought a good solution would be to build a central, high-tech hospital and then have people walk two days just so they could catch a bus for two more days to get to the hospital. Morons. As he said this, I felt the familiar tingling, and it finally occurred to me what to say when people ask me why I study political science. I do it because the governments of the world make so many idiotic mistakes that need to be fixed, and somebody's got to do it. I seriously had this urge to just drop what I was doing and somehow take over the Mexican healthcare system in Chiapas, to set it right. I spent the next three hours daydreaming about localized clinics, small pastures that function as helicopter pads, and EMT-trained midwives in every village. Sheesh. I need to play Tropico so bad.
By the way, I finally got some pictures up. I'm on Flickr under the username of, what else, McBearclaw. You can also view them in the context of the blog post they belong in, because I've added them in. There aren't many right now; there'll be more after the turn of the month, but unless my dear readers feel like chipping in to help me pay for Flickr Pro, it'll be somewhat limited. Maybe it's for the best. This way, you only see the nine most relevant/funny/beautiful photos I've taken, and not the 141 that suck. Anyway, check 'em out. I recommend viewing the Large size on some of them, because they look freaking awesome. I rule.
Friday, I visited an orphanage run by the Catholic Church. I had no idea what to expect, but I had a blast. The kids were all happy and well-behaved, and they seemed well-fed. Decent living accomodations. Hell, they're probably better off (materially) than a lot of kids in Cuernavaca. I basically just spent two hours as a human jungle gym. Kids were climbing all over me. I was launching them up into the air, playing caballo, playing monstruo, and two little girls continuously demanded "¡Atrapame!" "Catch me!" Okay, it was really easy, but you can't just catch them. You gotta run around until they're tired. Which is about the same time I'm tired. It was a hell of a workout. I also saw some little girl faceplant into the cement. Ouch.
I spent Sunday in México DF again. We had a mandatory excursion to see the Palacio Nacional (mostly just Diego Rivera's murals there, which were fantastic). The group then went on to visit El Templo Mayor and La Catedral. Since I visited those last weekend, I ran off on my own to visit El Palacio de Bellas (Belles?) Artes. It's a beautiful building, with a few more excellent murals inside. Poor suckers didn't even get to go inside the Templo Mayor compound. I am definitely skipping out more often.
Finally, we visited the National Anthropology Museum. I had to meet up with the group by taking a harrowing VW Beetle taxi ride across the city (in Spanish, "Meet us at twelve" sounds almost exactly like "Meet us at two." Oops). Once we got there, it was immediately evident that we were not going to have enough time. The place is gigantic, and jam-packed with artifacts of the numerous indigenous cultures of Mexico. I was frankly a little bored, because there wasn't enough time to piece together a living image of any of the cultures. Artifacts by themselves are pretty and all, but I want to know what life was like for those people. We just didn't have enough time.
Otherwise, things have been pretty uneventful. Spanish is improving, and should get a big boost this week: I have two hours of one-on-one conversation every day. Nothing is more useful. Reading is easy now, listening is improving, and I can speak fairly decently. I think that the key to speaking a language in a daily manner is essentially just repeating common phrases over and over until they're natural to you. When you're trying to express a complex idea, people will have patience; if it takes you 30 seconds to say "I agree," they won't. Taxis make for great practice, because I can just have the same conversation with a cabbie over and over again.
It should also be noted that my passion for poli sci has returned. On Friday, one of my professors was talking about how Chiapas has this really rugged terrain, and a problem with healthcare. It's very undeveloped, with a bunch of unmapped villages scattered throughout its mountains. Naturally, the Mexican government thought a good solution would be to build a central, high-tech hospital and then have people walk two days just so they could catch a bus for two more days to get to the hospital. Morons. As he said this, I felt the familiar tingling, and it finally occurred to me what to say when people ask me why I study political science. I do it because the governments of the world make so many idiotic mistakes that need to be fixed, and somebody's got to do it. I seriously had this urge to just drop what I was doing and somehow take over the Mexican healthcare system in Chiapas, to set it right. I spent the next three hours daydreaming about localized clinics, small pastures that function as helicopter pads, and EMT-trained midwives in every village. Sheesh. I need to play Tropico so bad.
By the way, I finally got some pictures up. I'm on Flickr under the username of, what else, McBearclaw. You can also view them in the context of the blog post they belong in, because I've added them in. There aren't many right now; there'll be more after the turn of the month, but unless my dear readers feel like chipping in to help me pay for Flickr Pro, it'll be somewhat limited. Maybe it's for the best. This way, you only see the nine most relevant/funny/beautiful photos I've taken, and not the 141 that suck. Anyway, check 'em out. I recommend viewing the Large size on some of them, because they look freaking awesome. I rule.
posted by Cobblestopped at
5:04 PM
1 Comments:
Mrs. T. Heh. ¿Qué onda? Lamenté que no podía hablar más con tu y Seth antes de salir, pero estuve muy flojo y yo no había hecho mis preparaciones. Mi ultima semana en Estados Unidos fue una locura. Es bueno que alguien (El Seuss, supongo) te dio esta direccion. Hay menos para escribir sobre ahorita - solo clases y más clases - pero ojalá que yo vaya a viajar mucho por los fines de semana. Morelia, Pachuca, Veracruz - y creo que voy a pasar diez días en Oaxaca. Espero que tu tengas la oportunidad a estudiar el español en otro país. Aprenderás más en un mes que has aprendido en todos tus estudios. Di "¿Qué taaaal?" a Seth para mí. Cuídate.
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Cobblestopped, at 10/01/2005 8:00 AM
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