Dan´s Big Blog

in addition...

2008-01-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

Also, in addition to my last post, I wanted to let you all know that I´ve stopped mentoring one chavo named Mario Arriaga (saddly, his personal choice), and started mentoring two more named Luis and Ricardo.

So far things are going great. Luis lives in a rough neighborhood where there are a lot drugs, but he comes from a good, loving family and he just needs a little direction. Ricardo is a young one (15) with a BIG heart. We get along really well. His family is going through some hard times right now because his brother was arrested for robbery and is in jail where they can´t see him until they get the proper papers.

Pray for me as I work with these youth, and for them as they struggle through these rough circumstances.
Peace,
Dan

So... it´s been a while...

2008-01-15T08:05:00.001-08:00

Hey folks! I know it´s been forever since I´ve written on here and I´m really sorry. I´m gonnga try and do better.

Well, let´s just say that RECH is in full swing. The past two weeks we´ve been meeting to plan our activities for the year ahead and it looks like it´s gonna be good times.

At the end of this month we´re going to have an event in which all the youth (including me as the leader) stay in the church for 24 hours without eating or sleeping. I gave the idea to Fernando and Rebecca as something our youth group had done in the us (30 hour famine) and they loved it imediately. It´s the first event that I´ve been fully in charge of planning so I´m a little nervous about it, but mostly excited (because it seems like the youth are excited, it´s at least creating a lot of buzz).

From this month on, every month, we´ll have our RECH club (basically a wednesday night youth meeting like we have in US, but supersized and on saturday instead), and a mini-concert from a local Christian group (yes there are many) every thrid month.

I´m also in charge of planning two service experiences for the youth this year which will take place in April (local) and July (in Olinala, Guerrero - in my last month). So yeah, more to plan, but should be cool.

Finally, the youth will have their most exciting events - concert and camping trip - in August and November after I´m gone (tear). Yes, they have already used these as leverage to try and get me to stay and I´m sure it will contniue, but I´m already quite certain I´ll be returning to the US come July (so don´t fret).

So this is what the year ahead looks like for me. This is way belated but I´m gonna say it anyway. Feliz Navidad y Feliz Año Nuevo! Espero que todos ustedes estén bien contentos. Let me know what you´ve got planned for the new year. Don´t let it get away.

Peace,
Dan

My daily life...

2007-11-12T16:39:00.000-08:00

Well, my wonderful parents recently wrote me an email requesting that I tell more about my daily life here in the grand city of Naucalpan, Mexico. I began writing them an email, but decided that maybe more of you out there would want to know what exactly I do with my time here every day - so here it is:

Well, everyday I wake up between 8:00 and 9:30. I eat breakfast at home. It´s usually just me and Mario. He makes something like quesadillas, mexican eggs, or fried ham that we eat with sweet bread, tortillas, and coffee. Mexican´s have tortillas with basically every meal which is really interesting. They also don´t buy groceries very often - instead they just buy things the day that they´re going to eat them in the amount they´re going to eat. This means that every morning one of my tasks is to go to the Tortilleria (tortilla making factory/store) and buy 5 pesos worth of tortillas for Mario and I.

After breakfast I usually watch TV for a little (in spanish - so it´s good practice), study some spanish, read, shower, or prepare for english class, for my meetings with the young guys I´m mentoring, or run some kind of errand for RECH. At 2:30 Mario and I take a 10 minute Combi ride to the neighborhood of Molino where our pastors and their family live. We have lunch with the family, which includs Fernando and Rebecca (our pastors), their daughter Alva, their son Emanuel, their "adopted" sons Carlos (Cha Cha´s) and Luis, and Rebecca´s father Don Juve.

After lunch I usually hang out with Cha Cha´s for a while (he´s about 9 or so, and his family is often too busy to play with him much - his real mom lives in Atlanta, Georgia where she´s working and sending money back to Carlos). We play cards, foosball (which costs a peso down the street), or Tazos (remeber when Pogs were big in the US?), or watch Bob Esponja (Spongebob Squarepants) on TV.

Mondays in the evening I´m free to do whatever I want. Monday is my day of rest. I usually end up at the internet cafe these nights (like right now), although sometimes I go play guitar with H2O, the band from my church that is pretty good and get´s played on the Christian Radio station in Mexico City.

Tuesdays I go to the church at 5:00 to practice guitar with the worship band for the Sunday service. Afterwards (at 7:00) we have a prayer meeting in the church that lasts until about 9 or 9:30.

Wednesday is the only day I eat breakfast away from home. I walk downt he street to my friend Elías´ house and have breakfast with him and his family who I really like a lot. His mom is really sweet and is always trying to fatten me up and his sister, Cecia, is very talkative and funny. Wednesday evenings I give guitar lessons to a friend named Ponce, bass lessons to another friend named Gabi, and soon I´m gonna be giving guitar (and maybe drum) lessons to Ricardo and Luis (two other friends).

Thursday evenings I go to the church at 7:00 for bible study. It usually lasts a little too long (like until 10:00 or so), but is generally interesting and good Spanish practice.

Fridays I do things with friends in the evening like go out to eat or watch movies. I was meeting with one of the youth on Friday nights, but he´s having some problems and pastor Fernando is going to start meeting with him soon instead. The youth cancelled our meeting this past Friday and ended up getting in a fight in the street. Maybe it´s for the better that we won´t be meeting anymore, but I´m still disapointed.

Saturdays are days when anything can happen, but I usually spend them doing something with friends.

Sundays Mario and I leave for church at 8:30. It usually lasts until about 11:00 or 12:00 and then we have Sunday school until about 1:00 or 1:30. After that I usually go out to eat with friends or get invited to a church members house for lunch. Then, in the evening, we almost inevitably end up at the soccer pitch (which is good because I don´t get any other exercise and about the only thing I eat is meat).

Wow, that ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. Well, thanks for bearing with me through that. I hope it gave you some insight into what I do here - which is likely to be changing and changing again as time goes on. Take care of yourselves and keep in touch!
Peace,
Dan

What´s been up lately and... ¨the Combi¨.

2007-11-08T14:45:00.000-08:00

Well, I´ve been sick (throat problems) for about 5 days, but today I woke up feeling muuuccchhhh better gracias a Díos! The worst part of it all is that I had to miss RECH´s Camping Trip this past weekend. I already saw some video of it and it looked like quite a sweet time. Besides being sick (which I guess is an inevitable side effect of traveling) I´ve had pleanty to fill up my time lately. I´ve been meeting once a week with two chavos (young guys) from the youth group and basically mentoring them. It´s been really cool, but also quite hard at times when I can´t say what I want. I´ve also been working a lot to prepare for my first English class, which will be this Saturday! Ahhh!

Now a note on public transportation in Naucalpan:
How do I travel? One word - ¨Combi¨. What does this mean you may ask. Well, Combi is short for ¨Combinación¨ - the cheapest and most ¨interesting¨way to travel the city (which is huge, by the way). A ¨Combi¨is a van, most commonly an old VW, with the back rearanged for maximum seating capacity. This means, most of the time, you´re packed into this thing with like 10 or more other people while dodging other combi´s on the crowded streets. Needless to say it gets hot. Ohhh, and the things you see. Chavos (youngin´s) making out, Viejos (old people) from the campo (countryside) making there way to Mexico City where they can sell their handmade/hand picked goods, women carrying their babies in huge blankets the completely cover the baby so that you wonder how they breate, and the other day I hit the jackpot... a woman throwing up. Oh, it was awful, I felt so sorry and embarrassed for her as she passed her money to the driver and got out saying ¨disculpame señor¨, but I´m not at all suprised that it happened. Actually, I´m suprised I havn´t seen it more with the way they drive on the curving, hillside streets. Don´t worry though everyone!!! In reality, I generally feel very safe (Mom and Dad).

So, OK, I know... I still don´t have any pictures of Naucalpan or my friends on here. Lo siento amigos! I promise I will try to have some up soon. I hope you are all doing well wherever you are! I miss you! I love you! Peace and shalom and all that jazz!

Naucalpan, my first two weeks...

2007-10-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I´ve been in Naucalpan now for almost two full weeks and I can´t believe it. I´m living with a 23 year old guy named Mario who is really becoming a good friend and housemate. I don´t have any pictures yet, but I´ll remedy that soon.

I´ve been teaching guitar and bass (which has been kinda hard because in Spanish they use do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si instead of c-d-e-f-g-a-b), and I´m gonna be teaching English soon which will be really challenging but cool too I think. I go to the church Tuesday nights for prayer, Thursday nights for bible study, Sunday mornings for church, and whenever they have youth group which they call club RECH. There´s only been one so far, but it was a lot of fun. Besides that I run a lot of errands to help with the church like printing and distributing propaganda for the events, taking photos and video, etc. I also went along with pastor Fernando to a radio station in Mexico City yesterday where I videotaped a radio show (of which he was a guest), so that was pretty sweet.

On the weekends I hang out with this group of guys (Mario and his friends) that all pack into Mario´s little volkswagon jetta to cruise around town, eat, play soccer, eat, watch movies, eat, etc. All in all, I don´t think I could have asked for a better placement with SALT. I´m really happy with where I am, what I´m doing, and the people that are here to support me. Hope things are great where you are! Let me know what´s up! Peace.

final days in Cuernavaca...

2007-09-15T10:52:00.001-07:00

Well, my time in Cuernavaca is almost over, but I'm going out with a bang since tomorrow is the Mexican Independence Day. Tonight, so I hear, will be quite insane and I'm pumped. The festivities actually began yesterday with a huge concert at the baseball park across the street from the house I've been living in. From about 7:00 yesterdaymorning until 1:00 this morning our house was shaking with the sound of it.

Since yesterday was my

last day of language school I thought it would be good to post some pictures of the place I've been studying the past 4 weeks. So here they are. Enjoy.

Here are two pics of the grounds. Nice, eh?

For some reason I couldn't get this one to turn but whatever. This is Rosario, one of my three awesome teachers. The best thing about this place was the people. I'm gonna miss them a lot.

A-ZUL!!!!!

2007-09-10T06:54:00.000-07:00

So, this past weekend we made the 2 hour trip back to Mexico City to set up our mexican bank accounts. All was going well until we got to the bank and they informed us that the computer system was down and that it would remain down until at least monday morning (so, in other words, they still may not have it up). Needless to say this kinda ruined our plans.

Well we were bummed for a little while, but on the metro ride home I was talking to Derek about how I really wanted to go see a soccer game sometime and how I wasn´t sure when I would get the chance. ¨Well,¨he said, ¨Cruz Azul has a game today.¨ So we went home looked up the time (5:00) and the cost (80 pesos , or about 8 dollars) and decided it would be a perfect use of our saturday evening.

We reached the stadium along with a swarm of blue(azul)-clad Mexicans. After some confusion at the gates we made it inside and found some good seats (they were comfortably shaped even though they were just concrete) on the upper level.

The game started strong with 2 goals in the first half - first a header by Cruz Azul that went of the post and then a scramble that ended up in a goal for Pachuca.

At half-time they had a ¨rodeo¨of sorts where contestents raced through a gauntlet of cowboys (who attempted to laso their feet) and then shot at a goal that was defended by the Cruz Azul mascot (a giant bunny). Haha! It was hilarious. Only 4 or 5 people ever made it through (out of like 15) and only 2 or 3 goals were scored. The rest of the time people would be bounding through the lines of lasos until one eventually caught and they hit the turf hard, haha. It was almost as entertaining as the game itself.

Anyway, the second half was a lot slower than the first half. There were no goals in the first 40 minutes. We bought some peanuts which we doused in lime (mexicans put lime on everything), and were happily entertained by a group of energetic youths who were roughhousing a few seats down from us. Some dark clouds were creeping in and we thought for sure we were going to get dumped on, but the rain never came. Finally, in extra time, Pachuca scored again during another scramble in front of the goal and the game was over.

Cruz Azul (the team I´ve decided to make my own) didn´t win, but we had a great time anyway. I should also mention that yesterday we went to see the Frida Kahlo museum and that was also sweet (haha, maybe this shouldn´t be a side note, but it´s hard to tell much about a museum). Now we have one more week of language school before some traveling with the CRs and finally our placements. Thanks for keeping up and keeping me in your thoughts and prayers. Hope life is good wherever you are. Peace.

my first two weeks in Mexico...

2007-09-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

First of all:
For those of you who don´t know, the reason I´m in Mexico is because I´m doing an 11 month cross cultural service program called SALT (Serving and Learning Together) through MCC (Mennonite Central Committee). After a month of language school I´ll be in Naucalpan de Juarez in the state of Mexico. There are also three other SALTers from the States who are doing service in Mexico this year. Kiara will be in Olinola, Hannah will be in Cuernavaca, and Lisl will be in Nogales (on the boarder of Arizona).

Well, on Saturday August 18th I flew (with the girls) from Harrisburg, PA to Charlotte, NC and finally to Mexico City, in the state of Mexico, Mexico (you know, the country). The CRs (Country Representatives) for Mexico, Derek and Anna Hostetler live in Mexico City with their 4 year-old son Lukas. Derek met us at the airport and we rode back to his house by van through some insane Mexico City traffic.

All together we´ve spent about 4 days in and around Mexico City since I´ve been here. Derek and Anna really make us feel at home whenever we´re there and they even took us to see Teotihuacan one Saturday, which is a site with many ruins and two huge pyramids (one of which is the third largest pyramid in the world).

Besides our time in Mexico City, we´ve basically been hanging out in Cuernavaca (which is just about 2 hours south). Our language school here is called Universal. It is a really nice school with a good staff and some great teachers. The classes usually consist of 4 or less people so they are very personal, helpful, and interactive.

While here in Cuernavaca (4 weeks total) we´re all staying with host families, but I´m pretty sure I got the best one. They live in a very nice house with a walled in garden surrounding it. The mom´s name is Carmen, and she is amazing. Basically, her full time job is taking care of students who come to school here and she does a dang good job of it. She has 3 sons: Alfredo (Freddie - who was an english teacher, but now works for ICEE), Leo (who is married and lives in a casita - little house - in the garden), and Eric (who is studying graffic design at a university here). The father of the family died a few years back unexpectedly. I live with another American, a guy about my age from California, who speaks very little spanish. It´s been fun translating to the family for him and just hanging out in general.

Cuernavaca is a beautiful city if you can look past the occasional garbage in the streets and the many shaggy, stray dogs that roam around (all of which seem friendly, by the way). The time I´ve spent here so far has been great and I know I´m gonna be sad when language school is over, but life goes on. To friends and family who are reading this, I hope you are doing well. Let me know what´s going on in your life. Peace.