About a month ago, I started volunteering with an organization in San Miguel called CASA. They have a variety of programs, but most everything they do is centered around helping people in some form or another: they run a midwifery college, have a maternity hospital, provide stellar need-based tuition daycare (you pay whatever you can afford, even if that's nothing), have tons of education programs related to sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, and domestic violence prevention, and there is even an acting troupe and a weekly radio production that help spread the word about all these things. Basically CASA is incredible. I was really lucky to find out about it and stoked when they said I could volunteer. As a volunteer I really just filled in wherever they needed help, which was great because I was able to work in a lot of different programs there. I would proofread PR materials, working in the daycare, visiting rural communities, etc. My last week working with CASA, I went along with a group of first-year medical students from Dallas (billed as "doctors from Houston!" at one of the places we went) who were in San Miguel for their spring break. The days I was with them, we went into rural communities and schools, where people lined up to receive health check-ups. CASA sent me along to help translate and take pictures, so I have TONS of pictures from my days with the med students. At the end of the students' week in SMA, CASA threw a party for them, complete with tequila shots, two pinatas, decorations, singing, and lots of food. I'm all for anything that involves tequila and pinatas.

The building CASA is in is BEAUTIFUL. It was designed by one of the co-founders. I'm no critic, but I think he did a great job. The first picture above is one of the courtyards after the party. The pinatas were hung from the tree in the background. The first was destroyed in just a few hits by a girl who probably missed her calling as a baseball player and decided to become a doctor instead. The second pinata's demise required the best efforts of every other person in the group.

Upon entrance to the courtyard everyone was given a necklace with a shot glass strung from it.


Some of the CASA women lined up watching impromptu war cry competitions and Shakira sing-offs (maybe a result of the tequila):



CASA rents out their property for weddings and other events on the weekend. If you're planning on getting married and just happen to want to do it in Mexico, I suggest calling them.

This is one of the boys at a school we visited. A lot of the students had developmental and physical disabilities, and being rushed into a room to have a bunch of kooky strangers inspect your body is pretty overwhelming. The playback mode of my camera worked as a great distraction, kids always like to see pictures of themselves and some of them will even stop crying to do so.

So timid!


Touring the sights of SMA.



Look at this tree! It has bougainvillea all over it. I'm sure the tree has seen better days, but the flowers are looking great. This is the group of med students. They apparently are really practiced at taking jumping pictures, because they're all pretty much spot-on the whole way through. Very impressive.





I'm not sure if it was a special occasion or what, but a lot of the kids in one of the communities we went to were wearing costumes. Darling.



This boy's mom brought him in because he had pain in his right leg whenever he ran a lot, something she said had started when he was really young and had persisted ever since. It was so sad to see cases like that, of people who would line up to talk to someone about a potentially serious or complicated medical condition, when there really is only so much that a group with limited resources can do in such a short period of time.

On the brighter side, I think he passed his eye exam with flying colors. The med students gave ear, eye, and throat exams, listened to breathing and heartbeats, and took blood pressure and glucose levels. They also were able to give a lot of advice on different questions that people would ask them.


This girl was pretty precious. She kept her hands like that for probably half of her check-up.


...well, when she didn't need to move them to stick out her tongue, that is.


One of the CASA workers holding a baby while her mama had an exam.

These are a little (little = 40-ish days) overdue. My apologies.

The botanical garden in San Miguel is great. I've heard that winter isn't really the time to go there because summer is the rainy season and that's when everything starts blooming. A lot of that is true. The garden looked a lot like Sacramento when it's not getting rain: dry grass and dead plants filled the landscape. No problem though, as a born and bred Sacramentan, I have a strong affinity for that look. Not that you need to be raised in a place with torched summers to enjoy the botanical garden here- even during the dry season here there are tons of bright, beautiful flowers and the different types of cactus are incredible. There are rarely other people so visitors get to mosey around and enjoy the place on their own schedule, which is really nice.





Apparently there is a woman who comes to the botanical garden and inch by inch twists the grass into long braided ropes that line the walking pathways. She has done an unbelievable amount of work so far. Usually the ropes line the pathways but occasionally she gets wild and weaves them in between trees along the pathway.




Sadly, my two-and-a-half-month stay in San Miguel is coming to an end of Tuesday. I was able to extend the trip a couple weeks, but now it's time for me to get back to the US and return to the life of jobs and rent payments. Although I'm sad to leave Mexico, I'm pretty excited about the transition. I'm really going to miss the house here. The rooftop patio has a bunch of plants on it and one of my favorite hobbies has become sitting out there in the sun with my camera, occasionally taking pictures, but mostly just taking in sun.

For Valentine's Day Roxy, Sean, and I went to Guanajuato. We had decided to go because the day worked for us, but it turns out that being there for Valentine's was a GREAT choice. There was so much happening in the city. I'm pretty certain that anybody in the general area who had a Valentine went to the center of town to show off the present they received. There were markets set up selling all types of V-Day items. Flowers, balloons, and candy everywhere.

The city itself is beautiful. It's about an hour and a half from San Miguel by bus. We had a short checklist of things we wanted to see and first on my list was the Diego Rivera museum. I was so excited to see it that we had the taxi from the bus station drop us off directly there. Things were going well until I stepped out of the car and ended up face to face with a closed sign. Definitely a disappointment. I guess there's always next time. We did a good job of finding great things to do all day, so it ended in success.

Teatro Juarez:

Aaand the stuff just to the right of Teatro Juarez:

These are just a few of the many stairs up to the museum of mummies. The museum itself was a little strange. It boasts the world's smallest mummy, a really tiny baby who is propped up next to his or her mother, whose crudely stitched up stomach suggests that she died and they tried to save the baby. Not sure if that's exactly what happened, but a really sad thing to see.

We took a blind stab at heading up to something titled "mina" on the tourist map. We assumed that would be one of the mines that Guanajuato is famous for. Could have ended really badly but it ended up being one of the best parts of the day. We had a beautiful view over the entire city and it felt pretty nice to be up in the quiet after a long day navigating crowds and dodging balloons.

We were going to have a bit of a wait at the bus station before returning home so we picked up a deck of cards before heading there. Turns out they were for a specific game, and certainly not one what I know. Instead of the regular suits they had coins, goblets, swords, and clubs (like what cavemen have). Instead of the Jack, Queen, King combo they had three royal men of various ages for the 10, 11, and 12 cards, no 13. The numbers 8 and 9 were skipped, too. We should have looked harder at the box the cards came in, because it said count: 40 pieces. The three of us had been spending a lot of time playing hearts and rummy so we decided we could make it work with hearts, but it was tough. Definitely not a good 3 dollar purchase.

On Saturday my sister Roxy and her boyfriend Sean arrived. They booked tickets to come visit me in December so we've all been looking forward to this for a long time. It's been so much fun to prepare for them coming- I've been making lists of the things we can do since the first night I got here. San Miguel is so much fun to walk around in; the streets are filled with interesting things and if it weren't for the ever-present danger of stepping in a huge hole in the sidewalk I would never look down while walking. Right after the house tour when they arrived "Really?? This is where you live?" we headed out to grab some lunch (Lebanese food down the street- delicious baklava) and mosey around for a while. Seeing Roxy and Sean walk around in awe reminded me of what a great place this is.

The colonial style buildings add an interesting spin to seeing the sights- the streets are all lined with walls that have various sized doors and windows and so you have to stare straight in the door right as you walk by to see what's inside. This is made much more difficult by the previously mentioned gaping holes in the sidewalks. A door, when open, might lead to a huge courtyard filled with little shops and cafes or it might lead into a tiny pharmacy- you never know until you catch it at the right time. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to when businesses here will be open. Team R&S will agree with me on that one. A lot of shops don't have signs permanently posted outside either, a lot of the time they just hang a sign up on the opened door. All this gives the town a feeling that things are ever-shifting. Streets are different every time you walk past. It reminds me a lot of Harry Potter with the magical shops that you can only see if you are tuned in enough.

Although I have a good handle on where things are in the town, I've become REALLY aware that I don't actually know where anything is specifically. I can lead Rox and Sean somewhere but if I have to give directions it goes something like this: "Turn right on Relox and go a few blocks... the tortilla shop is going to be on your left somewhere along the way. You'll hear the whirring of the machine when you go past the door. There are always three men inside and a lot of tortillas. If you hit Calzada de le Luz you've gone to far." No joke. But it's because that's how I find things too. There are very few permanent landmarks you can use. To find the movie theater we're going to tonight (something I've been to three times already and walk past at least twice a day) I just have to see if there's an open door on my left while walking up Hernandez Macias before I hit Umaran. Nothing more tangible than that. If you don't see the inside of the theater somewhere along that block it means it isn't open. Come back later. No, there are not posted hours. No sign outside either. Nice try.

We went home and played a round of Acquire, the current family obsession before the tired travelers went to bed. Acquire has really taken the Dunbar/Raab/Reids by storm this winter. The fact that both Team Mama-Grandma and Team Rox-Sean lugged the game to Mexico tells you how we feel about it.


The next morning we ran into a little trouble trying to find a place that was open for breakfast. We followed our noses to a delightful pastry shop that I have always admired when I walk by but somehow have never gone into. I think I knew it would be trouble. We ordered three scones and two slices of cake. Cake for breakfast is something along the lines of a family tradition for us. This cafe (the Petite Four for anyone looking for the recommendation) is one of those really rare pastry shops that makes beautiful AND delicious sweets. I can tend to be a snob about sweets and I get really annoyed with pastries that look pretty but don't taste good. We have returned to the Petite Four multiple times since that morning. Our cake of choice was the heart-shaped raspberry one on the bottom shelf:


Yes, that is lined with white chocolate. It was good. Really good.

For dinner our second night we went to the spectacular Dila's restaurant, which is famous for it's huge margaritas and blow-your-mind delicious food and center of my mother's reasons for starting a "return to San Miguel" fund.


After slurping the last of our margaritas and repeatedly thanking the restaurant staff for such a wonderful experience, we followed the noise of loud music to the Jardin, the town center, where there was a concert going on. Maybe it was in honor of the upcoming Valentine's Day, or maybe they set up the concert because Sanmiguelenses (and I think Mexicans in general) love to dance. The crowd was huge but we easily wiggled our way to a good spot. We arrived in between songs so I was pleasantly surprised when the music started again to see the sea of people start moving in waves of dance. Partners made up of fathers and daughters, grandmothers and grandsons, and couples of all ages danced and sang along to the music. The performers brought up a bunch of people from the audience for a dance contest. A woman who was probably in her late 70s won. All this was happening beneath the San Miguel Parroquia (read: big, beautiful church) lit up against the night sky above us.


Walking home we passed the street vendors in the Jardin that sell these 4-foot long blow up crayon-shaped things filled with air. I've never seen them before coming here and I really, really wish they were around when I was a kid. Since first seeing them I always jealously watch kids play with them from afar. They're made of really thin mylar (like the big silver birthday balloons but more delicate) so they don't have much weight to them. One end is slightly rounded and the other is tapered, so you can bounce the rounded end on the ground and it shoots up unexpectedly high in the air then floats down. They seem to defy gravity and when you add in wind they turn out to be worth their lifespan in fun. It's a shame they don't last longer, but what can you expect from something that has a tendency to float into oncoming traffic. As the three of us were leaving the concert we passed a bunch of families that had kids playing with the mylar rockets. Sean did a really good job of knowing that even though I was saying that I didn't really want one that I actually did, so he talked me into getting Roxy (the only one with change) to fork out the 2 dollars we needed. I was really excited about it.


It's very possible that the reason these haven't (as far as I know) been imported into the US is because they basically wreak havoc on any family foolish enough to buy them for their children. We saw a mom, holding an infant, who was patiently walking away from her son as he whopped her on the head with the rocket/sword. Sean and I played like kids with our new toy until it finally deflated enough that it didn't really work anymore. One of us would go upwind and throw or bounce it into the air for the other who would have to run around to catch it. That's really all there was to the game, but it entertained us for probably a half hour. We were a total spectacle. It was a good community bonding experience, too. We sent our toy sailing into lots of groups of people, including some passing police, who laughed at me more than my joke when I tried to tell them in Spanish that they got the points for that round.