We are learning :) !

hi, everybody! We have had an incredible time. It´s been a very full schedule, including salsa-merengue dance lessons (¿are we tired enough yet?) Tuesday and Thursday evenings at our Cuernavaca lodgings, which is a retreat center run by the sisters of Guadelupe. (They were entertained by our shenanigans, but they didn´t join in.) Love their sweet dispositions and gracious hospitality. They cook SO well too, and offer worship in the morning) again, graciously ¨delayed¨til 7 a.m. instead of 5:30. ;) I saw my first couple of vermilion flycatchers there, and they´ve got ¨weed orchids¨growing from a couple of trees near the entrance. Ha. I´ll take those weeds, anyday.

It´s a restful place in the midst of the traffic and pollution, for sure. Maybe a spider or scorpion or two (seriously), and not always hot water or flushable toilets, but hey, you can´t have everything.

We get a chance this afternoon to regroup and rest at Universal language school. There´s a very cold pool out back in the sun. Wonderful.

We bid farewell to all of the cute kids (whose photos you haven´t seen yet ... sorry, it´s been a bit frustrating to finally get an internet connection and then find out that it´s not a strong enough signal to make uploads of images work well. I have a lot of video footage to edit once I get home, which will be a great keepsake for some of us, as well as make it fun to share the movents, voices, smiles and language). We had worked with the first and second graders to make sock puppets during the week, and we´d done computadora lessons (Lily, Paul, and Barry helping), along with the many jobs that Katie has graciously taken time to post for us in photos. Scraping, bleaching, scraping, tiling, painting, sewing, identifying birds and even taking a field trip Thurs. afternoon to an ecological park right in Cuernavaca with the kids. Delightful. They used the eight binoculars that Bill was able to get donated from a supplier to the Wild Bird Center in Boulder. What a gift! I had a chance to work with Paul in the first bird/science class on Wednesday as a break from puppet-making. (Lea was a fantastic leader for those classes ... she´s got all of the language! I learned the word for eyebrow and hair, though, so I´m not a total Spanish slouch.)

Yesterday afternoon we heard a great lecture by local professor (American) Ross Gandy about the history of power in Mexico and how the control of the economy, Televisa (free TV which just about every body in the country watches), and big business/the largest political parties go hand in hand. 10% of the population are the big-company folks who maybe drop their kids off at private school by helicopter on the roof and pay NO taxes. 20% are the middle class who cover all the taxes, and 70% are the workers/peasants/marginalized. They have no taxes, because they maybe make the equivalent of 57 pesos ($5 US) a day, if they´re lucky. I was glad to be informed as to how the free trade deal has affected family farmers (who can´t sell their corn locally for what others here can pay for cheap Iowa corn)... You may no longer wonder why Mexicans seek better opportunities north of the border when their own leaders mistreat them so much -- very little tax money is available for the stuff that matters, like strong schools, supplies, health care...

At a visit yesterday morning to Fundacion Sergio Mendez Arceo, we heard the compelling story of the work of that activist group to seek a change in placement of a huge landfill in one of the many ravines that run through or near this city of Cuernavaca. They, in conjunction with researchers at the University, have sought to show how other locations would be so much preferable for locating such a thing -- to preserve groundwater and the health of the local population, etc. They work from a sense of call to action as Christians to do the work that they observe needs to be done, not to wait for ¨someone else¨to do the right thing, but to place their own grains of sand and effort toward the good of all and of creation. By the way, the ecological park, with a lovely river running through it and lush vegetation for many species of birds that we saw, is the one un-trashed ravine in the city.

We washed the roof at the Fundacion yesterday after the talk, then returned this morning to put a nice thick coat of sealer-paint on the roof, as well as to brush and scrape the exterior walls and begin to paint them. Bright white and a raspberry color on the large doors of the garage-converted workroom. (We have a few of our young people with very painted feet and flip-flops!)

Then it was time for the end-of-the-week celebration with the children at La Buena Tierra and watching their puppet shows (Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, and Three little pigs). They were so proud -- as were we all. The sisters had made a lovely, big raisin/carrot cake that we shared, and we sang songs for one another. Their final song was ¨Paz y libertad.¨I´m gonna get us all the words to that one. It´s one of those that moves the soul - especially when sung with gusto by the lights of children from the barrio, these new friends.

more photos really

More La Casa photos

Here are a few more photos from La Casa de los Amigos mexico City. Steve helping prepare the dining room wall for plastering (he spent all day on this one!) Our group ended up hiring a local professional to do the actual plaster work because it ended up being such a big job. Lily is glazing windows at the front door, Paul is sanding baseboards, and Terry sewed curtains!

Here are some photos really!

Test Video from Sunday

This video is from Sunday when we walked around Mexico City (D.F.). It is of an organ grinder, of which we saw several, on the Calzada Madero.

A second one, which didn't upload, is of some Aztec drummers, dancers, and woman blessing people with incence and herbs. We saw this near the national cathedral and the museum of the Aztec ruins which we had just gone through. I'll try to upload that one later.
We have some more videos from the rest of the week of the kids at La Buena Tierra in Cuernavaca, also to come...
~~Lily (for Terry; she took these videos)

Service Learning Photos

Hello friends,
We've had a few days without good Internet connections to send much information. But our water has been restored today, which is a more basic need! We were smelly and scrouging last night for water to rinse off our very sweaty bodies.

I am trying to post more photos. I'm not sure if these will take or not. But hopefully attached are Barry and Mik taking out the stump of the century from an inner courtyard at Casa de los Amigos, Mexico City. Probably 100 pounds not including the roots taken off. Barry also laid some tile. Steve started glazing windows (mostly searching town for the correct supplies), Karen, Sonia, Gabi and Liana painted the bathroom in the girls dorm and bleached the walls, and Liana, Mary and Katie scraped a blacony to prepare for painting. This was all one day at Casa.

More forthcoming I hope.

Katie

We have 15 people total in our group. On Monday, I was part of a group of 11 who rode bus from Mexico City where we have been staying to Cuernavaca where La Buena Tierra preschool is. We had a wonderful time with the children there! They are beautiful, polite, and fun to be with. Lily and helpers taught computer skills with the donated laptops. Gabi and I helped 3 year olds make caterpillars and butterflies after reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (in Spanish). Paul & Terry taught native wild birds and how to use the donated binoculars. Cathy offered a seminar on health and nutrition to parents. Terry and helpers made sock puppets with kids. Other members of our group joined in ongoing classes and interacted with students and teachers. I was so impressed with especially our youth who have been learning Spanish and who jumped right in! (I felt quite limited, needing a translator for most conversations.) The preschool is in a very poor neighborhood; driving around and seeing houses made of what we would call trash was quite eye opening. Lizi, who founded and runs the school, has created an oasis for children in this neighborhood (even though the space is tiny and supplies are very limited compared to our schools). It sounds like she seeks most of her funding/donations from outside the children and their families to keep the school in operation. Quite an impressive project! (I hope someone who took pictures will post a few!)