When it rains, it pours

In the bathroom of the house we're staying in, a couple hours ago.

Real de Catorce

It's been a few days, but I'm working on it. We had a great weekend in Real de Catorce, an amazing little town in the middle of some mountains in the great state of San Luis de Potosi.

It's an old mining town, that at one point had a population of about 40,000, which is now down closer to around 2000. It was a booming place at one point, then went all ghost-town. In the past number of years, it's been becoming more of a tourist destination and it's definitely showing.

The Huichol indians know it as the place where the sun was born, which is pretty cool. They do a sort of pilgrimage there every year, walking for 30 days through the desert to get there. Then, they eat peyote as a sacrament and bond with the spirits. There's a specific mountain in the area that they go to, but we didn't make it there.

We rented a car with our Dutch couple friends and drove there - about 4.5 hours or so. It was wild driving through the Mexican countryside (which it all is outside the city). There's just scrub brush for as far as you can see, literally. Random cacti popping up all over the place, and small tornados of dust shooting up in the air and disappearing as fast as they are pointed out. It got exciting for a minute, when, rather than risk waiting at least an hour at a railroad crossing for a slow-moving mile-long train that was fast approaching, we made a split-second decision to gun the engine and just barely made it across the tracks, much to the consternation of the whistle-blowing engineer. That was some adrenaline rush, I have to say.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside loncheria which was quite interesting. Smack dab in the middle of nowhere, it was also a one-stop shopping center. They had one of pretty anything you could want, from extra car parts (tail-lights, fan belts, tires) to kids toys, toiletries, jeans, cowboy boots, and pretty much anything you could want. They even had cassette tapes, which I haven't seen for sale anywhere in years.

The last 25 miles or so are on a cobblestone sort of road on which you can't drive any faster than about 20 mph. It makes for slow going through a pretty hot, dry desert. The road goes up into the mountains, along a windy road until you reach the tunnel. The tunnel is 2.5 km and one-way only, so you wait in the line of cars until the guy gives you the go-ahead. In the meantime, you fend off the kids crowding around the car trying to sell you all kinds of fruits, foods and other stuff.

The tunnel is cool - there are small, boarded-up offshoot tunnels along the sides, a couple small chapel rooms you can see, and it all seems to be help up by wooden beams looking like they should have been replaced long ago.

Finally, you burst out into bright daylight and are directed to park in the lot, as the town really can't handle automobile traffic. This is a place that was designed for donkey travel, and not much more. We were told that since we had a hotel reservation, we could drive up and drop off our stuff. After a harrowing drive up streets, around corners, and down alleyways that our rental go-cart could just barely handle, we pulled up in front of the Hotel Real de Alamos. Luckily, there was a parking spot across the street that we fit in, and just left it there.

The hotel was perfect - a bed, a plastic table and chair, a toilet. No toilet paper, but I had anticipated that and brought my own. After putting our stuff down, we headed out to walk around and see what was up. A quick cerveza in the local cantina - noting the sign that Brad Pitt was there while filming the movie The Mexican - was great for parched throats.

Have I mentioned the drink that I've fallen for? It's called a chelada - and I really like it. It involves a small splash of lime or lemon juice at the bottom of a class filled with ice and with salt on the rim. Your choice of beer (Indio, Victoria, Bohemia, Sol, Corona) poured and mixed in. Refreshing and delicious!

We headed over to the museum that's housed in the former mint, from when the town was booming. There was some cool art, and it was a worthy stop. After that, it was just walking around the little streets and alleys.

I have to say that the "artisianal" souvenirs and other crafts, goods, etc were somewhat disappointing. It really seems like every single shop I've been in, whether in Zacatecas or elsewhere has the same stuff. I do hope to get somewhere I can check out some unique things.

If that's not possible, I'd like to have a look at the catalogue that its like every souvenir shop in the world orders from. It must be about a million pages long and indexed by country. I'd order a little Mountie from the Canada section, a poncho and sombrero from the Mexico section, a miniature Tower Bridge from England's offerings, and maybe a plastic eagle from the US pages. It was clear to me that the touristy line was long-ago crossed in Real de Catorce when I saw that every little store was selling the Rasta-coloured hats with fake dreadlocks. And that people were walking around wearing them.

More about Real de Catorce later, including the most amazing views ever, a disappointing bullfighting ring, horseriding to the top of a mountain, and going deep (or not so deep) inside a mine...

Entonces...

So, what's been going on…

One of the women who works in the office, L., had a birthday party for her little girl the other night. She is this amazing woman who has been involved with migrant workers rights for, literally, her whole life. And I do mean literally. She went to the US as a very young child with her family and worked in fields in various places around the country. A child, you might ask? But that can't be! We don't have children working in the fields!

Well - surprise, surprise. That tomato you sliced for that lovely salad you made last night could very well have been picked by a very small hand, joined to a very small arm, that is hopefully going to stay joined to a very young body. Of course, if it doesn't, and winds up separated in a terrible accident, good luck to that young person getting any kind of compensation – and enter CDM…But I digress.

L. went on to become an organizer for farm workers, and eventually rose to become a vice-president of one of the large farm workers unions. She moved back to Mexico less than a year ago – a significant move, considering the numbers of Mexican trying to get to the US – and has been a major organizing force for CDM. A true hero to many who volunteer here, and a truly selfless inspiration to me.

The party was at her house in Guadalupe, the next town over from Zacatecas, just out past the Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, Starbucks (not the one here in the Centro), and all the other strip mall joints. Not that I'm complaining…we hit up Sam's Club (my first time ever) on Sunday, and were able to shop for really cheap. It's going to make a big difference for our eating habits to be able to shop for so little. Guess it's like that for most of America. Are we wrong to patronize such a place? I don't know…but I do know that we can afford to shop there, and that helps.

Guadalupe is more of what I was picturing as far as a town here goes: 1-2 story buildings, not such clean streets, and lots of taco joints. I don't mean to be negative, really, just observing. Her street is a dead-end street (no metaphor intended), which allows the kids to play soccer without getting hit by cars. That's a good thing. The party was awesome, as far as I was concerned. The most delicious, yet simple, tostadas I have ever eaten in my life, which I've tried to recreate a few times with no success. A highlight for me, though we didn't get to see it put to use, was the huge piñata. I remember as a kid, my mom would make them once in a while (paper mache over a balloon, pop balloon when dry, fill with candy, smash as soon as possible), but this was (gulp) cooler. It was a horse of a size that a small child could ride on – and they did. Turns out that one of the kids was somewhat traumatized by the idea of smashing it, so the caballo lived to be whacked another day.

Spanish school has been good, and we're definitely learning lots. Of course, learning is one thing, but actually speaking is another. I asked Don Arturo for his help in finding me someone to speak Spanish with on a regular basis. He's also going to help me find some stuff to do with my free time. He suggested some sort of barter so that I can keep coming around there for lessons after my 6 weeks are up. Awesome.

I will admit, however, that I had my first confident conversation in Spanish yesterday. We are looking for an apartment to live in, and I stopped by one of the hotels where you can ask about apartments for rent. He sent me to speak to a woman he knew of, and I was off. She was a very nice lady and I was able to ask all the relevant questions. I even managed to understand some of the answers. The place was up about a million or so steps, which wasn't great. It was also a basement apartment, so I don't think we'll take it. We saw another today, but I'm hoping that over the next couple weeks, we can find something a bit nicer. Rent is pretty cheap here, with a small, furnished place going for under $400 US a month, with $400 being the high-end. By the way, they use the dollar ($) sign here, which can be somewhat confusing.

FYI – there's some new pics up…hit the link on the top right and scroll to the bottom of the album.

boy oh boy

do i have a lot (or at least a little) to learn.

long story short, we moved from our hotel to a friends place who's away for 3 weeks.

I just took my first shower, and spent the whole time cursing the fact that there was no hot water.

and then I thought to ask myself...wait - what's hot in spanish?

Oh. The 'C' is for Caliente, not Cold.

And there was the hot water...

next

Sorry for the delay of a few days…turns out the exchange rate on time isn't so great. Our American hours translate into days here.

What a week so far. We started Spanish school on Tuesday at the Institution de Fénix, founded by the Profesor Arturo Dorado, and staffed largely by his entire family. It’s been some time since I had to wake up at a specific time each day and get to a classroom, so it’s taking some getting used to, for sure. Oh, and we have homework! The classes are pretty good, and I'm definitely learning lots. At the very least, I know more than I did last week.

There are only four of us in the class, and only six altogether in the school right now. They have had a really difficult time this summer because of the media blow-ups about the swine flu (which Mexico was recognized internationally for dealing with in such an efficient fashion) and the "narco-terrorism". Many US schools cancelled their summer programs, so where there usually would be 80-100 students, there are only us 6. Kind of a tragedy for the family, as it is their sole source of income and rent on the building is high. I can imagine that this is a microcosm of many industries here in Mexico that have been greatly affected by the American media's need to exaggerate problems in general.
I wonder if anyone in the MSM (mainstream media) ever takes into account such things. I imagine they don't, as it's great for ratings.
Jerks.

Anyway, so we start the day with 3 hours of studying grammar, vocabulary, etc (telling time, comparisons, etc). It's crazy how many different categories there are in Spanish, some that don't exist at all in English, as far as I know, like Redundancias. Not to mention that I couldn't tell you what most of these things are in English, much less try to get them in Spanish. Double object pronouns? Indirect object pronouns? Prepositional object pronouns? Yes, I learned them at some point, but that was a looooong time ago…and I haven't done a lot of thinking about English sentence structure since.

Our teacher for the first part of the day is the youngest Dorado daughter, Lorena. She's trained as a psicológia, but is a fine teacher as well. She's also the shortest member of the family, which I know because we spent hours comparing the various family members to each other. We also know their entire family tree – their cuñados, yuernas, suegras,abuelas and so on.

We spend the next two hours with the Prof. Dorado studying pronunciation, random questions, and cultural stuff. He's a fascinating man, and I am really hoping that I'll be able to continue learning from him beyond the 6 weeks I have planned. He is not just a fly-by-night Spanish teacher, but a real student (and teacher) of linguistics. His insights into language, culture and how they fit together are pretty cool. Some things I've learned, though very basic if you know Spanish, are really interesting. Such as, the letters "n" and "ñ" are just that – separate letters. The letters (and sounds) "r" and "rr" are also separate! Yes, basic, I'm sure, but still far out. I do want to say that the letters are not indicative of the concepts he has taught us – just what I can remember right now…the concepts we've discussed with him are definitely more interesting than just letters.

The other two students in our class are a couple from Holland that are on a motorcycle tour of the Americas. They started in New York, rode up to Canada and back down through the US into Mexico. After a couple weeks here, they're heading further south through Mexico into Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina – as far south as the roads go – and then back up the other side, as time permits. They did the same thing through Africa some years ago, and have been living in Moscow for the past 3 years. Their blog is here - http://www.aukemarieke.blogspot.com/
Pretty awesome.

The school also organizes trips, movies, and other activities to get people more involved in the culture, which is great. We'll be going to some museums, archeological sites, "coffee socials", and other events which should be fun.

When we were talking to Professor Dorado about how much the school would cost – we had been told that people working at CDM got a discounted rate – there was a moment, for me at least, where I felt like we were here really doing good work, and not just some stuff that anyone could do and wasn't such a big deal. He was very clear that he gives the discount specifically because the CDM is a great organization that does very important work for his people. Call me sentimental, or even ask why I need to hear some encouraging words to feel good, but it gave me chills up my spine. I hope that doesn't sound negative in any way...

Another interesting thing about Prof. Dorado- We were talking about us being Jewish (and of course we were asked if we knew his Jewish friend in New York) and he mentioned that his last name is a special one. There are very few Dorados in Mexico, and mostly in one area. It turns out that the name is a Marrano one! Marranos were the Jews who were persecuted in Spain and had to hide their Jewishness from the Catholic Church out of fear of being killed. They took their "hidden" heritage with them when they went to the colonies, but over the years, mostly became actual Catholics. It's pretty cool that he is still aware of that part of his history (which his father told him about) although he definitely doesn't identify as Jewish in any way.

Some other stuff that happened this week:
We moved rooms in the hotel, which is great, because we now have a kitchen. I made my first meal in Mexico, which wasn't fancy, but I will say it was better than most of the restaurant food we've eaten. I'm glad I decided to bring my camping pots and leatherman tool, as they were indispensable. The crazy thing is that everything needs to be washed with bottled water – pots, dishes, vegetables and fruits. For the fruits and veggies (except those with peels), people actually wash them with soap to get the bacteria off, and then rinse with tap water, dry them and rinse again with bottled water. It's an annoying process, to be sure, but my stomach is thankful.
(Update: just wanted to say, it's not the bacteria the people worry about when it comes to the water, at least here in Zacatecas. It's the heavy waters in the aquifer, which has been ruined, due to the centuries of mining in the area. And check it! The biggest Corona factory is right here and uses the water! Huzzah!)

We learned what the terribly annoying and loud noise is every morning that goes on around 8am or so. When you buy gas for heating water and cooking, it doesn't come through pipelines or whatever. There are trucks that drive around with tanks on the back. They play loud music and scream "Gaz! Gaz!" Then, you have to run out and catch the truck. The guy stops and comes inside and takes your empty tank. Then hebrings a full one inside and hooks it up. A tank is good for a couple months, I think.

Moving right along.

Waking up Saturday morning, I had a feeling something was, well, not right. That feeling was confirmed by the many trips to the bathroom. That pretty much set the tone for the day. I was having trouble imagining anything good to eat, much less anything local. It was starting to feel like a flu of some kind, but hopefully not a porcine one. The shakes, feeling cold and then hot, maybe even a little feverish. There was an intense weakness that was only exacerbated by not having anything to eat.

I had asked around for a local supermarket, and struck out to find it. It turned out the store was only a couple blocks away. When I went inside, I was much happier than I ever thought was possible to be about a food store. There were so many products that I recognized that I literally stumbled around, knocking things off shelves, loading my arms up with more bread, peanut butter and jelly than could ever be healthy.

Frosted Flakes, Smuckers, Wonder Bread, and Skippy – they saved my life that day, and would continue to do so for the next couple days. The store only sells dry goods, however, and I had to find a cremerie for milk.

After I scarfed down a couple plastic cups of cereal and some sandwiches, I finally felt slightly human. There wasn't much I could do except lay around and feel crappy. Maybe I wasn't totally human, but some sub-species of human that just wants a good slice of freaking pizza. Or a felafel. That's a strange craving I've been having…

So that was most of my day. Miriam was out and about taking care of business, but gave me a call that evening to see if I wanted to come to dinner. Again, I couldn't imagine eating anything but bread, but I just had to get out of the hotel room.

Short aside – we have been using our iPhones down here, thanks to some kind coders who have developed a way to unlock them for use with phone companies other than AT&T. We were able to buy pre-paid SIM cards (or CHIPS as they call them here) and pop them right in the phone. Works for data, email, everything. Of course using them for data sucks up the pesos, but that's the price of technology.

I met up with Miriam, Rachel, Jon, and few other folk from CDM (we spend a lot of time hanging out together…) at the Argentinean restaurant. Grilled veggies, empanadas, fried spinach balls (?), and some french fries were the order of the night. I was still pretty queasy, though thinking back about what I ate, I definitely should have been.

(damn, there's a lot of black-flies here – go away!)

I still had the chills on a pretty mellow evening, but hot tea helped with that. Like I said earlier, dinner is a long drawn-out affair, and this was no exception. Not in a bad way, of course, but I'm definitely used to stuff happening a lot quicker.

We had planned to hit up a club called La Mina, which is this pretty cool looking nightclub in an old mine under the city. For real. You take a train that goes for around 2000 feet (or something like that) underground, and there's a real club down there. Well, I wasn't up for it, so Miriam ran off with the interns for a night of partying.

As it happens, the line to get on the train was a bit long, so they didn't bother with it. Zacatecas is turning out to be quite a party town (7 universities!) and they had plenty of other choices.

I opted for a low-key evening with Tory (lawyer), Dave (husband), and Karl (a temp bookkeeper here for a few weeks), stopping for more tea at Il San Patrizio. Of course that turned in a few hours of hanging out there and back at their house.

Oh man, their house! It's amazing. This huge, beautiful place with a massive terrace, many bedrooms, and just awesome. All for around $400 a month. Back in NY, this place would be closer to $8000 a month, at least. For real.

Got home, crashed out and barely woke up when Miriam came in sometime after midnight.

no water?

just tried to wash up before bed, but there's no water coming from the faucets...

normal occurrence?
hm.

And now, more

Friday was a working day for M, so I tried to get some stuff done also. I'm working on some technical stuff for CDM - moving to a different email host being the main thing for now - but I also found out that I'll be shooting and editing (gulp!) some video for them, which I've never done before. If you have any ideas, do let me know...

It was rough day as far as food goes. It may sound strange, but I had a hard time figuring out what to eat. I managed to find a yogurt drink that took the hunger edge off, but ended up walking around for a couple hours looking in windows, not knowing what was ok, what was not ok, and what…the heck is that thing?? Again, my lack of Spanish being a huge factor. Finally, faint with hunger and frustration, I ended up back at the office where a bunch of people were about to get a late lunch of tortas – sandwiches. Having eaten nothing all day, the sweetish roll with melted cheese, mustard and jalapenos was pretty much the best thing ever. And it wasn't fried, which was nice. It seems like everything is fried here. There's a general rule about what is cool to eat – packaged, peel, or piping hot. Of course, I don't think this includes street food, which has led me to another rule to add – portal. That is, if the place has a door, it's probably ok.

So far, so good.

Or so I thought…more on this later.

After the life-saving torta, I headed over to the Hostal Villa Colonial, the local International Hostel, uh, hostel to talk to them about possible apartment rentals. As I said before, the hostels are the places that usually own furnished apartments. The owner, Ernesto, is a really friendly guy who speaks perfect English, which was nice. We talked for a bit about what we're doing here, and he, like everyone we've met so far, knows about the CDM and all the people who work there. It's cool, because they all (hostels, hotels, language school) give discounts for people working there. He invited me to chill there anytime I wanted, to use their free wifi, borrow books from their little library and drink cheap beers (redundant in these parts) on their roof. I climbed the 5 flights to the roof to check it out, and was met with an awesome view of Zacatecas. Check out the pics in the link on the top right.

Hung out up there for a while soaking it in, and then headed back to the hotel. Right outside the hotel is a really nice park-like place (there's a theme here it seems – everything is really nice) and I sat for a while people-watching and relaxing. M called, and we met up with some of the interns for drinks back on the roof of the Villa Colonial. The interns are a totally cool group. There are some more interns coming, and a couple I haven't actually met yet. Then, off to dinner at one of the Italian restaurants. Pasta, pizza and caprese salad were all perfectly fine – the fresh mozzarella was actually one of the best I've ever had. Dinners here are definitely more extended affairs than back in NYC, at least. No one's in a hurry and it's all very relaxed. Food is shockingly cheap – dinner came to about $12 each including the wine, and this is at one of the nicest places in town.

After dinner, we did a little bar-hopping. Again, beer is crazy cheap here, and people seem to drink a lot more of it. One of the places we ended up is called Huracan. Seems that's the name of once of the great Luchadors or wrestlers. It was basically a shrine to the guy – see blurry picture below. There was something in the news recently about some "little people" luchadors that were killed by some prostitutes. There's a huge market for "little people" wrestling here. I think that political correctness isn't as popular here as in the US.

A couple too-crowded bars later, and we headed home. Back at the hotel, that massive room key you may have seen in the pictures decided that it was done working after 300 years or so of use, and got stuck in the lock. The front-desk guy got out his speedwrench (or hammer) and whacked away at it for about 20 minutes, finally ripping the lock apart, and we were in and asleep in minutes. Unfortunately, it was many, many minutes, again, due to the streams of cars honking, music blasting, whistles blowing and people singing outside on the streets.

Day 2...or is it 3?

What an education this is turning out to be. I'm only here for two days and I've felt humbled, exhilarated, frustrated, nervous, excited and so on.

We woke up late yesterday, having not been able to get to sleep as early as we wanted. Iced coffee was the craving of the moment, and unsure about it's availability at the fancy coffee place, we figured something familiar was good and easy. Yes – Starbucks.

Just like at home – same taste, same over-pricing, same caffeine buzz. Breakfast was non-existent. Really, because I'm not sure what to eat or where to eat. This is an issue that has come up over the past two days, that I'm pretty sure will resolve itself eventually. I'll be happy once we have an apartment and a kitchen. The thought of cooking actually excites me – something I couldn't have said last week.

Getting to the office was good, and I had a chance to feel useful – printers to be installed on laptops, shared network drives to be connected, some minor troubleshooting. Ahhh. Got to remember that I got some skills, even though they aren't of the visa issues/migrant worker/legal-ish type. I didn't think I'd miss the hours of working on computers every day, but I kind of am.

Am I a nerd for getting a knot in my stomach when I think about how there isn't a good backup system for the office? I think the answer is yes. I hope to implement (nerd word!) something soon.

We got in touch with the airline about our missing bags, and it turned out they were finally at the Zacatecas airport. They would have delivered them, but customs wanted to question us about the box of 300 or so contact lenses that were in Miriam's bag. Seems they suspected us of running an underground ophthalmology smuggling ring. I'll admit I was dreading having to deal with the legendarily difficult Mexican government and was kind of nervous that we'd get screwed somehow. At the airport, however, I can honestly say that we had the most straightforward dealings with government officials that I have ever had. They opened the bags, asked why we wanted to supply the entire Zacatecas with a -4.25 prescription contact lens and were totally satisfied with our (honest) answer – They are disposable lenses, one pair per day. Two minutes later, we were on our way back to the hotel, insanely heavy (and broken) bags in trunk.

Wow.

Back at the office, we sat in on an outreach training session. Basically, they were teaching how to be a labor organizer. Serious stuff. The real deal, like you (or at least I) have read about. Get people involved, get their spouses involved, don't let meetings get sidetracked by troublemakers, work with a partner to marginalize those trying to derail the meetings. Don't take pictures of people attending because it's intimidating; excitement is catching, so get into it. Learn how to respond worker's fears of repercussions from recruiters and employers if they were to speak out.

It's just tragic that there are legal workers who have been severely injured on the job who are afraid to come forward because it will mean they or their brother/son/cousin won't be able to find work.

We learn how to track down people in small towns and villages through the "town phone", local municipality, local police - but don't give too much info about why you want to track them down. Police are as likely as anyone to go after someone who received a settlement payment, not that we're talking big money to your average American. Man.

We kicked it around the office for a bit after that and headed back home. Rachel, the esteemed directora of the organization showed us her apartment as a possible place to live once they move out. She's got a kid that is about as cute as they come (no offence to any relations reading this). The apt is nice, with a view from the balcony that is just ridiculous. We'll have to see what else comes up – we did see a couple other apartments this morning, but they were not so viable. A big issue with renting here, is that if you get an unfurnished apartment, it comes with nothing but the floor, walls, and ceiling. No stove, fridge, or anything else you might expect. That limits us to the furnished places that are mostly brokered through the different hotels and hostels.

Off to our new hangout – Il San Patrizio coffee shop – for some iced tea and bagel-like substance (round doughy thing with cheese, black olives and grape leaves, pressed and toasted) with Rachel and the boy. Zacatecas is just a great place to walk around in the evening – cool, clear and tons of people out and about.

Unfortunately, the tons of people were partying late into the night, seemingly outside our hotel window. Cars blasting music, people singing and screaming, horns honking to no end, or so it seemed. Around 2:30am, M turned to me incredulously and said, "This place is noisier than Brooklyn!!"

Check it – there's a link on top right that goes to more pictures than you see on this page. Also, please comment, question, or anything else you can think of.

I'm interested in what you have to say about what I have to say.

Day 1.5

Let no one tell you that our first day in mexico wasn't a busy one. Because it was.

We found the hotel, Hotel Hostal Del Vasco, which is right in the Centro, the old city of Zacatecas. We go in and the screeching of tens of birds in cages hung from the ceiling rocks our ears. Whoa. There's a lot of birds in lots of cages making lots of noise. And oh great, our room is right here!

Turns out, we can't hear them from the room, cause the old building has walls that are thick enough to withstand the noise of tens of birds. Whew. The room is nice, with super-high wood beam ceilings, windows that open, a TV and beds to sleep on. Not too shabby.

We drop our bags and crash out for a few hours, trying to make up for the sleepless night of travel. It works.

After we wake, we take a look at Google Maps, figure out where the office of the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante is, and head over.

Brief aside for some background info: CDM is the organization that we (Miriam mostly with her lawyerly skills, though I hope be of some help) are volunteering with here in Zacatecas. They are a one-of-a-kind non-profit (hint, hint) that works with Mexican workers who get seasonal work permits to go to the US and pick YOUR fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, many of them get royally screwed by the American companies in various ways: getting injured on the job with no compensation, getting underpaid, forced to work with horrible pesticides that cause birth defects, forced to pay recruitment fees, and so on. In the brief amount of time I've been here, I've been shocked by how unfairly these extremely hard-working (and legal!) workers are treated.

If you're depressed by this, it's ok; You should be.

It's for real and it's not cool.

Deep breath....And that's why we're here.

Walking through the Centro, we're struck by how beautiful it is. Many buildings are made of a striking pink-ish stone and others are painted all kinds of amazing colors. Signs are painted right on the buildings, which I think looks cool as all get-out.

There are kids cleaning car windows, a la Holland Tunnel circa early-Guiliani, people selling shaved ice, wheels of cheese out of their trucks, and more dentists than makes any kind of sense. Clearly, Zacatecanos

love their teeth.

Looking at the building numbers, we find the doorway. Of course, had we glanced up, we would have seen the name of the org written in huge letters across the the side of the building.

Walking into the office, everyone is awesomely welcoming, talking about how great it is that we're here, if we need any help with anything, and on and on. Best welcome ever.

Everyone's really nice - there's a few interns from different law schools in the US, a couple lawyers who work for the organization (both of whom just had or are about to have babies), a couple organizers, an accountant and that's about it. It's small, friendly, and really feels like a family.

So we meet everyone and head out to get some lunch with the directora of CDM. We head to the obvious choice - italian food. Doh.

It was food though, and worked well. It's right next door to a really great coffee shop, so that was good.

Afterwards, we went back to the office where Miriam jumped right into her work with meetings and giving assignments and being the kick-ass lawyer that she is. I struck out to find a SIM card for my iPhone (yes, it's jailbroken, unlocked and now usable anywhere in the world with GSM). I found the nearest TelCel store and despite my total lack of spanish and the guy's total lack of engish, managed to buy a SIM card and get it working. Sweet.

Back to to the office, and then we're off with the whole crew for a dinner/welcome party. It rained something fierce during the 15 minute walk to the restaurant, and just like when it rains in America, we got wet.

We learned that you can order any dish that would normally come with chicken or meat and get it with just cheese instead. I got this chocolate enchiladas thing, which was just that, but spicy as hell. No beans came with it, and I've learned that that's pretty much how it is everywhere around here. I honestly thought that I'd be living on beans, rice and tortillas, but that doesn't look like it's meant to be. I might be a little bit disappointed.

Dinner was a long affair and we got to talk a lot about all kinds of stuff. Altogether, a pretty good group of people to be hanging out with.

After dinner, we happened on what turned out to be a Zacatecan speciality - these brass bands that go through the streets with people dancing and drinking tequila shots from a donkey. More on this later, I'm sure. I'll need to talk to the donkey to get the lowdown. Off to a bar for a late night beer and then finally home to the hotel.

We're pretty happy to be here, and can't believe that it's going to be for a whole year. We figure that'll actually sink in in a few weeks.

Day 1

And now we're here.

It's around noon, and I'm sitting in our hotel room in Zacatecas, Mexico. I'm pretty hungry, as my only food over the past 24 hours has consisted of an apple, crappy nacho chips and tic-tacs. Not even coffee. Miriam's asleep, as I probably should be, but as I said, I'm pretty hungry.

I'm looking at the spot on the floor where our other two bags would be if they'd made the trip with us from Chicago. The truth is, it was a hell of a lot easier getting from the airport without them, than it would have been with them, due to their insane weight, which we paid dearly for when we checked them in at LGA.

I'm thinking about showering, but I'm also thinking about having to shower without a drop of water getting my mouth. And now I'm thinking about not showering for the next year. Oy. Did I mention all our various medications are in the missing bags, including the one for la turista? Yeah.

The flight was uneventful from NYC, after a 5 hour layover Chicago. We were the only gringos on the plane, which was interesting. It did occur to me that in an emergency, we wouldn't have a clue of what to do. The english announcements were pretty useless. I guess we would have followed our instincts and soiled our pants. That may be a cross-cultural reaction. Kind of like a Heal the World for scared people everywhere.

The airport here in Zacatecas is obviously a small one. Customs and immigration were fine, there were no questions asked about what we're doing here or anything else. We now have 180 day visas. I really don't get what the big deal about getting through the US-Mexico border. We had no problems at all.

So, we took our bags, got in a taxi and headed into town. It's only about 20km or so, and the roads were just fine - at least in the sense that they were there. Crazy motorcyclists going really fast, pickup trucks full of commuters, and a monument built in the middle of the highway that you have to drive around.

Coming into Zac., we were thinking it looks like parts of Old San Juan in Puerto Rico and parts of Israel (poorer areas). The hotel is in the historic district of Zac., so the streets are cobblestone-ish and hilly, the buildings are old-looking and beautiful, and it's pretty nice looking.

I think this is it for now - maybe that shower and a walk around to see if and what I can eat.

Oh, and my absolute zero-knowledge of Spanish? Really, really unhelpful. It's going to be a bit rough, I think, until I get some skills.

Daunting

Tomorrow, we fly to Zacatecas, Mexico to spend the year.

Much more to come.

Stay tuned.