week 54/55: last stop: mexico (june 25-30)

where it all started: over 50 years ago, a man named father wasson, a newly ordained, native-arizonan priest living in mexico, caught a little boy stealing from the poor box in his church. the little boy had been orphaned and when questioned said that he stole the money because he was hungry. when the little boy was given a harsh sentence by a local judge, father wasson asked the permission of the judge to take home the child so he could feed, clothe and take care of him. over the next year, the judge passed along 32 more boys to father wasson and so began nuestros pequeños hermanos. there are now 9 orphanages throughout latin american and the carribean and since 1954, over 16,000 orphaned and abandoned children have been assisted by nph. so, when i found out that the st. pats group would be taking their annual trip down to mexico just around the time i would be leaving the dr, i figured that there couldn't be a better way to end my year than to see where it all started.

i met up with st. pats at the airport on thursday afternoon on basically no sleep after a crazy last couple days in the dr. despite being pretty out of it, it was great to see some familiar faces. nph in mexico has two main parts... one is the main home in miacatlan and the other is the high school about an hour away in cuernavaca. we drove about 3 hours to the home in miacatlan, where we stayed for the next 5 days. it was great to see the home and see how different it was from where i had been the past year. first of all, they have over 3 times as many kids as we do, so that part was really overwhelming. they also have been functioning for so long that they have the benefit of having older kids, who have graduated high-school, called "year of service pequeños", helping out around the home. in fact, they basically run the place. after graduating, all the kids have to give back a year or two to their younger brothers and sisters by working as caregivers or other positions around the home. at our home our oldest kid just graduated high school, so we don't really have this whole dimension yet... but it was cool to see the potential to have that in the future. oh... and i also learned that dominican spanish and mexican spanish are super different! i got a lot of blank stares as i sputtered off what i didn't know, but quickly learned, where dominican words.

i loved the home in mexico, it was really beautiful, but at the end of the day i'm still glad that i was in the dominican. i'm sure i would have had a great experience anywhere i went, but i really loved the smaller atmosphere of the home in the dr and being with all the kids in mexico really made me miss my boys. oh, but p.s.... one difference that i definitely preferred in mexico was the food... oh my gosh i missed mexican food. the dominicans do not do spicy and at practically every meal in mexico there was salsa... it was just glorious! the food was very simple in mexico too, but the kitchen makes homemade tortillas every single day (about 6,000 each day... i think is what they told us)... oh my gosh, they were so good. i'm sure after a year, those too, like the rice, would have gotten old... but it was a nice change of pace!

el rollo: we spent most of friday and saturday hanging out with the kids at the orphanage, but on sunday we spent all day at a local water park. now when i first heard "water park in mexico" i'm not gonna lie, i was a little scared... i pictured scary, shady state fair style stuff. but it ended up being really, really nice. it was one of the coolest and nicest water parks i have ever been to. (drew you would have gone crazy!) however, there still was reason to be scared... i'm not sure that many of the rides would pass many of the safety standards of the united states (not because they were poorly constructed... just because they were really intense!) for example, these slide to the left were sooo tall. i would say take splash mountain and disneyland and double it... oh ya, and ditch the boat. they were so high and so steep. women are not allowed to ride them unless they sign a waiver form saying that they know there is a risk of injury. it's pretty crazy... tyler went (and scratched up his back and busted open his elbow...although he said it was worth it) but i didn't feel like risking my chance of ever having children to go on a water slide, so i passed. we did however have fun doing some cliff jumping and also going down the craziest "lazy river" i've ever seen. basically it's your normal lazy river that goes around in a big circle, but then there is this part that we called the "angry river"... off to the side there is an area where people stand and then there is this huge pump that pumps out massive amounts of water into basically a huge tidal wave that topples over you. so you stand there and try to hold your ground, but eventually everyone gets sucked in and pulled out into the lazy river. it was really fun... but actually really scary... you literally get pulled away by this current and and sucked under the water and are banging into people... it's really out of control. overall, it was a great day and although we couldn't take all the kids with us, for the 50 or so that could come, it was an awesome experience.

cuernavaca: one of my favorite days in mexico was monday, when we headed out to a nearby city called cuernavaca. it's about an hour away from miacatlan and is where the kids live and go to school when they get to the high school age. we took a little tour of the school which was cool because not only is it a normal school, but then they have all this vocational training for the kids. like kids learn how to do computer stuff or sewing and carpentry... they even have a sample hotel room and bar and kitchen set up so they can learn everything about the hotel/restaurant business. it was really quite impressive. we got there during a break so we got to witness a really intense soccer game between the girls and eat some amazing enchiladas from the snack bar.

next we headed out to a very poor village in cuernavaca, called la estacion. there we gathered with some people from the local community center and another group (i can't remember the name) that does a lot of work in the area. with them we broke up into groups and each went out to visit one of the houses in this community. it was very humbling to sit with these families as they welcomed us into their homes. we just sat with them for about 30 minutes and talked about their lives. after being in the dominican republic for a year, seeing how these people lived wasn't quite as shocking to me as it should have been, but it did show me once again that poverty is everywhere, that there is need everywhere and it really makes you think about all the stuff we have in our lives that we really could live without. afterward, we all talked about our experiences and then headed back to the house of the group that had showed us around, where they made us an awesome lunch.... pastel azteca - a casserole with chicken, tortillas, cheese, corn, salsa and cream cheese and nopales - a salad made with cactus... yum.

after that we headed into the city of cuernavaca, which i loved. it was just such a cute little city. my favorite part was the cathedral, which was gorgeous. on the outside it was just this big old, but still cool, looking building, but on the inside it was beautiful. it was so modern-looking... so unexpected... oh and this really cool font everywhere... i know that's a weird thing to comment on... but i love cool fonts (look at the beatitudes below). after touring the cathedral and a couple surrounding churches, we headed over to this marketplace to do some souvenir shopping. it was a cool marketplace, with some really cool things... but just so overwhelming. i'm so excited to come home and shop in a store where no one is yelling at you! after that, we ended the day with a nice relaxing dinner at a nearby restaurant.

perfect ending: i was kind of sad because i had booked my ticket home without knowing the schedule of the st. pats group and their flight actually was leaving about 4 hours later than mine and they had plans to stop off and see the site of our lady of guadalupe before heading to the airport. i was really bummed because i had always wanted to see that and i couldn't believe that i would finally be in mexico and i would miss it. so i made this whole plan to leave the group a day early and make my way up to mexico city on my own and then stay in a hostel for the night and go to the airport in the morning. but, when i got to mexico, people started telling me that my plan was a lot more complicated than i thought and actually a little dangerous to just be taking buses and subways all around mexico city when i didn't know what i was doing. so, i kinda just accepted that i'd have to visit our lady another time... but then on tuesday, the day before i was supposed to leave, i ran into an old friend from nph-dr who was in town visiting for graduation. i was telling her all about my trip and she had a taxi that was driving her and her friend around and she offered to let me use it to go up to mexico city! i can't imagine what that cost her, but she told me not to worry about it and to consider it a thank you for all my work in the dr. it was so great! so that afternoon i headed out with my new friend, paco, the taxi driver, and we made the 2 hour drive to mexico city. he was so nice and we spent the car ride working on our second languages... he would practice his english with me and me, my spanish with him. he took me up to the site of our lady of guadalupe, which was huge, btw... i thought it would just be this little mountain with like a chapel... but it's this huge massive thing. there are all these churches and chapels and shrines, dedicated to all different things. there were actually three different places where juan diego had visions and then you can climb all the way to the top of mount tepeyac, where juan diego gathered the roses that would eventually create the image on his tilma (if you don't know the story... head here http://www.franciscanfriars.com/RMH/OLGtext.htm). paco showed me all around and gave me all sorts of fun facts about the area... it was like having my own little tour guide.

at the bottom of the mountain is the basilica, where the original image of our lady of guadalupe is displayed. it's really cool, but the manner in which you can view this image is really quite interesting. there was a mass going on when we got there, so i kinda thought that i'd just be able to see it from a distance, but no... just wait... you can go down under and behind the altar where there are 4 conveyor belt/people mover thingys that go back and forth and you ride on them and can look up at and take pictures of the image. it was quite entertaining. but in all seriousness, it was really cool to see this and a great end to the trip.

well, that's it for me. it's been a crazy year, but one i'll never forget. going back home will probably be a little weird at first and take some getting used to... but there are some things that i am definitely ready to get back to... certainly all my family and friends (and mountain dew!). thanks for all your prayers and support this year and for following along. hopefully i will see you all soon... in person... yay!

God bless.

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