English classes and Mexican parties

Queridos todos,

Cómo han estado?! No, no se preocupen! I won’t write my whole blog in Spanish ;)

For the wonderful people that missed my last blog, and frankly to anyone else that is reading this: I wish you all a very loving, inspiring, peaceful, joyful, successful, connected, creative, flowing, awakening and adventurous new year! (I figured I can still wish you this in February, since the Chinese and Tibetan new year have started as well recently :) )

My new year started off amazing again, this time not in the USA, but back at Tashirat – in Tepoztlan, central Mexico. In my previous blog I explain a lot about the project, it’s an awesome place so check it out! Coming back from holidays with my friend Christian on new year’s eve, I spent the rest of the evening with about 15 Muslim girls from the States and some other fellow volunteers, singing with an Ukulele and guitar around a campfire. The Muslim girls came to help out at Tashirat for a week, organized by the inspiring group called “Muslims Without Borders”. It was a lot of fun to have them around. I spent some dinners chatting with them and was able to join their nightly group lecture/discussion about all kinds of things in life, seen from an Islamic perspective. Very interesting!

The holidays we’re awesome! Right before Christmas I took the bus to Orizaba, where I was going to spent some days with Christian and his family. The welcome I received by the family was warmer and more hospitable than I could’ve ever imagined! Funny enough (since in Mexico the most crazy reasons are generally seized to have a party or a free day) they don’t celebrate second Christmas day (Boxing day). The 24^th is the day of going to church and the big family dinner, most young people meeting up at night to continue the party (like we did :) ). First Christmas day is the day of sleeping in (because you’re hung over from the night before) and of the “recalentados” (reheating the food left over from the day before), spent again with family and friends.

The family went out of their way to show me the best places of Orizaba and together with Christian’s father, we made a 2-day trip to the city of Veracruz and the beautiful National Park of “Los Tuxtlas” and the lake of Catemaco. After that, Christian and I took off for a little road trip with 2 of his friends, leading us to do rafting (beautiful and hilarious!), crashing at some cabañas, driving to the colonial city of Puebla, meeting another friend of Christian and having a great night and day at Cholula (little city grown together to Puebla, with a huge student area full of bars and clubs and a cute centre with a big church build on a pyramid). I’m very grateful to Christian and his family and friends: they took such good care of me and I had a great holiday!

Back at Tashirat things were slowly getting back to normal again in January. This also meant more structure for us. The volunteers Craig and Donny went back home in the second week of January, but luckily Jakob is still here! He came the day I left for Orizaba, so got to know him better after the holidays. He’s now like my little German brother (21y), or rather: my son ;) – people assume all kinds of things when they see us together, but the craziest was a Mexican guy, looking for an excuse to start a conversation with me, asking me if I was his mother... how old does he think I am?! Haha! So now he’s my son, and we’re having a really good time together :)

As I wrote in my previous blog: things at Tashirat are very fluid, changing all the time. So not that unexpected, my schedule changed completely:

Since the beginning of January Jakob and I are teaching English classes together, to all the primary school kids of the school Ixaya: An hour every day per class = 3 hours of teaching for us every day. And not only are we now officially the English teachers, we’re also the Physical Education (Gym) teachers: on Tuesdays and Thursdays we do gym, where we try to integrate English as much as possible. In the afternoons we help out in the green houses that they’re building here right now. We used to work there every afternoon, but after some negotiation we now help out 2 afternoons a week and have more time for preparing, reading, meditating, going to town etc :)

Unfortunately the classes with Tashirat kids in the mornings and tutoring with Sami in the afternoon is not part of my schedule anymore, but it’s all good cause we’re helping where they need us the most. Self-sustainability (= cultivation project, catching rain water, creating compost etc) is the main focus of Tashirat right now, and it’s great to see the green houses rising out of nothing! Soon we’ll start seeding.

Jakob and I make our own green juice every morning (spinach, celery, carrots, cucumber and lime, yum!); go to yoga every day; we’re cooking our own lunches (and experimenting a lot!); singing a lot together (Jakob sang in a choir for years); prepare the classes in the afternoons and Saturdays; have very interesting talks about many things in life; have similar talks and fun with Antares who drops by regularly; go to town to buy food for the week and relax while drinking a coffee…

We also often get invited by the workers (the guys coming from ‘outside’, working in the cultivation project) to go to typical Mexican events. It’s very interesting for them to have a “Güera” in their midst; they’re joking around a lot and trying to take me everywhere. It’s fun though, they’re all good people… and I have Jakob with me ;)

“Güera” is the word used for women that look like me: white, blond, blue eyes… Gringa or Gringo is used for people from the USA, Güera/Güero is used for white people in general.

Anyways, the number of traditional Mexican weddings is now up to 3 and I also added 2 “quinceñeras” to my list. When a girl turns 15, there’s traditionally a very big party, a “quinceñera”… almost like a wedding! They celebrate with a massive, very colorful and glittery dress, sometimes even crowns and wands, traditional dances and a huge cake that the girl is now a woman (at 15!). Just like at the weddings, there’s oftentimes a band playing for a while and food and drinks are served to everybody who comes to visit. Everyone is invited and there is dancing going on! However, for Jakob and me it’s mainly very funny, sometimes even hilarious, to observe these festivities. With all respect of course, it’s really great to be part of it, but “very different” are words said many many times during these evenings. The strangest part for us is still the fact of lacking socializing (so it seems at least): many people come with their whole family to the party (there are always tons of kids), they sit down, eat, drink, maybe do a dance, sit, drink… and that’s it! Hardly any talking involved!! Yes, friends meet, greetings are exchanged very frequently (since they all know the whole town), but real talking is very rare. A fact that doesn’t help in this (or maybe is carried out exactly because of it – as we speculate and form our own theories ;) ) is the fact that the music is always incredibly LOUD. They also don’t seem to differentiate in the kind of party (15^th bday or wedding) in connection with the music: it’s always the same “hoempa-hoempa” Mexican music or shrill electronic music as they play in the bars and clubs. In the weddings here I didn’t detect any turkey’s though (see a previous blog about the turkey dance at a wedding in Texcoco) and of course these are all traditional weddings in smaller towns, two things that make them very different from weddings in cities e.g.


Last Monday the kids of Ixaya were off, so Jakob and I took the opportunity to go on a little trip. Bussing it to Puebla, we went couchsurfing with Francisco and Hector, two great guys we met some time before in Tepoztlan. We had an awesome time: partying in Cholula, sightseeing in beautiful Puebla, hitching a ride and getting invited for breakfast because of it, singing with the Ukelele on a rooftop with view on snowy mountains, going to the flower market in Atlixco and mainly 'getting weird' pretty much the whole weekend :D

I’ll try to upload pictures as soon as possible, probably somewhere this weekend!

Abrazos para todos!