Don't ferget yer fruits and veggies!

"In Vermont, authenticity is all; they do not try to keep it real; they are real."

This quote kept running through my head as more and more people loaded pictures of the beautiful Vermont foliage on Facebook and Instagram this week. Seeing all these incredible pictures reminds me of how much I appreciate being from such a wonderful state and having grown up there as well. Makes me miss home and all the great people I've met there throughout my lifetime!

That's not to say that I'm not having an amazing time in México, and that I'm not enjoying every second of my time here! I've grown to appreciate Mexico, the people, the culture, the language, and the food in a way that I feel like I can call it home now. I've really started to settle into the everyday Mexican life, and surprisingly enough there are elements that are very similar to Vermont (The downtown area has cafes like Church Street, and there are rural areas that are packed full of pine trees and cows!)

Along with how great the city and its surrounding areas have been, this week was jam-packed full of veggies, fruits, and great music!

Some of the volunteers got the chance to come up to Santo Domingo Ocotitlán to work on the huerta (And they got to ride up in style in the back of a truck.) We weeded and tore out a bunch of unwanted plants in and around the beds, and then watered and weeded some more.

We also got to eat an amaaazing lunch right there in the campo!

On Wednesday Mark and I had the chance to go up to Santo Domingo, and on our way back down to Cuernavaca we ate in the Tepoztlán market with Soledad, one of the staff members at the Fundación. Here's Mark enjoying some horchata and a huge taco.

On Thursday, I went to La Huerta de Lucía. We transplanted some lechuga, and got the chance to relax under some shade while eating some delicious snacks and sipping on coffee.

On Friday night a bunch of us went to an amaazing concert a little bit outside of Cuernavaca in an area called Acapantzingo. 

The two headliners of the concert were Los Amigos Invisibles and Nortec Collective. If you want to listen to some of their music, check out these YouTube vids:

Los Amigos Invisibles- "Yo No Sé"

Nortec Collective- "Tijuana Bass"

It was really great to see Nortec because a couple of days ago we went and saw a documentary about them. It explained how they formed as a band, their specific sound, and also about the culture of Tijuana. It's called Tijuana: Sonidos Del Nortec if anyone is interested.

Besides dancing our patoots off at this concert, Gerardo and I had the chance to go backstage and meet the Nortec Collective! We had to fib a little to get in, but it was a really fun and special experience to meet such a famous Mexican band!



Sunday was the most eventful day of the week. Soledad, her husband, four people from Santo Domingo Ocotitlán, and I drove to the Mercado el 100 in el D.F. (Mexico City) to sell the crops that the people of Ocotitlán had harvested and grown!

I made these signs for the market :)

 OrganiCOTITLÁN selling some of their hortalizas, frutas, y hierbas in the market!

 Soledad sealing the deal with some market-goers!

 Selling some ciruelas.. DELICIOUS, fresh produce!

 Soledad and Mari also gave a workshop on three medicinal herbs that aren't very commonly used in Mexico, but are popular in Santo Domingo. They taught about axihuitl, té de monte, and hoja de zapote. All of these herbs they made into a tea, which can be drank for various ailments, such as to relieve high blood pressure, stress, or to help you sleep at night.

 I got to drive in Mexico City! It wasn't as bad as I anticipated, except for the crazy motorcycle drivers, the cars getting within two inches of our car, the streets that appeared out of nowhere, and the couple of accidents that we saw en el camino. Besides that, it was just like driving in any other city :)

And the views along the way were gorgeous! (See, it's kind of like Vermont!)

This next week involves more gardening, working on new projects, learning more spanish, and of course eating awesome food!

Nos vemos :)

This Worm is My Best Friend

For the past few weeks, I've been working with La Fundación to implement and construct a vermicomposting system in Santo Domingo Ocotitlán. Well this week it finally happened, and the community will start their vermicomposting production, which will hopefully last for years and years to come! For those of you who don't know what a vermicompost is, here's a picture of what goes into the compost:

Yup, those are worms. But they're not just any worm. These worms are much more productive than your everyday wriggler. These are a species called Eisenia fetida, which produce some of the best compost around in a very efficient manner.

The reason why Santo Domingo wanted a vermicomposting system (lombricomposta en español) as opposed to a traditional compost system, is because these red wrigglers produce some amazing compost that they can use on their crops, helping the garden grow some pretty tasty fruits and veggies. Along with this, they can also make a profit from the worms, compost, and compost tea that will be created over the next few months. These little wiggly wormies produce and duplicate extremely fast, so eventually the village can create a small business by selling their organic products. Pretty cool, eh?

On Tuesday, I gave a quick presentation to a few people in the community about vermicomposting basics, and different techniques on how to grow and care for the worms. On Wednesday, a woman who sold us the actual worms came up to the village, gave a workshop, and helped us set up the vermicompost.

 Here's Carolina explaining how to set up the compost

 Don Isauro mixed the precomposted material that will be the food and home for the wormies for the next few months.

We then placed the worms in the compost, and watered it so the worms would be in a humid environment (they will die if it's not moist enough, and will also die if it's too wet).

Y voila! Now you have your compost and you wait to see the amazing effects that these little creatures have on compost, not to mention all the soil in the world! Pretty impressive :)

Besides playing with worms this week, I worked at La Huerta de Lucía again, cleaning up strawberry plants and transplanting lettuce. This little farm and orchard is a tranquil paradise, so it's a nice little escape from the city life. Not to mention that you can pull ciruelas straight off the tree and pop them in your mouth :) NOMNOM

 We've been getting situated in our new house this week, getting accustomed to the new location, learning how to live together (there's about a dozen of us in the house in total, so it can get a little hectic every once in a while). We have this awesome terraza that gives a great view of the cathedrals in the center, and it's a great place to kick your feet up for a couple of hours.

We also got five new volunteers this week!! Two from Los Estados Unidos, two from Australia, and one from Canada. Welcome new volunteers!!! 

Yesterday we had a little adventure when Gerardo was nice enough to bring us to a festival in Tepoztlán. The event was a fundraiser for a new alternative secondary school called TerraMar. In order to raise funds, they invited people to listen to GREAT music, watch a circus, eat delicious local breads, desserts, veggie burgers, traditional mexican food, and also play with their contraptions that someone had constructed out of recycled metal (bikes, weight machines, and German wheels for the circus!)! It was a great opportunity to meet some more people who are really involved with the community, and who are doing some incredible alternative projects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMVxTiYVCHw&feature=youtu.be

An amazing band called Sonidero Meztizo played. They are a couple, the chica from Chile, the muchacho from México, who sing/rap about the political and social atmosphere in Mexico. They believe in a united South and Central America, and the social and political changes that need to happen. Powerful messages!

Clowns, fun mirrors, German wheels, trapeze

 We all piled into the back of a car for the ride back. How many güeras can you fit into a car?

After the festival, we had a going away dinner for Link, who has been a volunteer here for the past 3 months, and the Mama Bear of the group :). We went to a delicious restaurant called La Maga (best sandwich I've had in Mexico), and then went dancing and fiesta-ing for a few hours. A very fun night indeed!

My advice this week: Play with more worms :)

Nos Vemos!!

Sol, Playa, La Arena, Vamos Ya!

This week was jam packed with fun activities, including the highlight of the week, which was the beautiful, sunny, and extremely humid Acapulco beach. But before talking about how burnt my bum got, I'm going to recap a bit on Monday through Thursday:

 LUNES (Monday): Chloe was nice enough to bring me to the Ejército de Salvación (Salvation Army) where we played with the niños for the afternoon, kicking a ball around, helping them with their homework, and most importantly ripping them apart when they got in fights. Who would've thunk that entertaining kids for a few hours was so tiring!

Tuesday was probably the most eye-opening and humbling day that I've experienced so far whilst being in México. We went to a neighborhood in Cuernavaca called La Estación, which is essentially a slum smack dab in the center of Cuernavaca. It used to be an area where train workers would stop to spend the night, and eventually it evolved into an actual neighborhood (I believe its called La Estación because there's an actual train station, and it's a historical area). La Estación is a very controversial area within Cuernavaca because the government wants to physically move the people living there (which one of the sisters at CCIDD estimated that there are 5,000 families living there). The reason to do this is because the surrounding area is very developed. There's a Mega (big grocery store), a Costco, and one of the main bus stations in Cuernavaca, i.e. the area is prime real estate, and the government wants to further advance the area in order to clean it up. In theory, "cleaning up" the area would be ideal, but displacing thousands of people to who knows where would be difficult, and immoral to say the least. Here are some pictures of the area.

 Every 10 minutes, Cathy, who is part of CCIDD and has been working in La Estación for seven years, would stop and explain to us the good, the bad, and the ugly that was happening in the barrio. The good is that CCIDD has been working with La Estación for 35 years, providing funds, workshops, and most importantly shelter and access to social welfare for people in the community. Cathy explained to us that she and other volunteers had helped numerous community members to build walls and roofs to protect their houses, while for other people they had provided funds so they could get surgery or take care of certain illnesses. The bad is that many households don't have access to proper sanitation (including toilets and water), so the water running through the streets is extremely dirty. Also, a large number of women in the community have more than five kids, and lots of them are single mothers because their husbands have either left to work in the United States (and some stay because they have new families there), or some of them have died. There's a lack of sexual health education in the community, so a majority of the women don't use protection and get pregnant... Which leads me to the ugly: There are many people in the community who have HIV/AIDS and don't know about it, or don't talk about it because it's a taboo subject in La Estación. When I first heard this, it was horrifying, and I think it's mainly because in my culture I've grown up knowing about this, and talking about this with my family. It was definitely a shock being in the community, and many of the volunteers talked about our tour all week.


On a more positive note, Cindy (the volunteer coordinator) and I went to La Huerta de Lucía on Wednesday. The huerta, which is owned by a lovely frenchman named Jean Louis and his wife, was one of the most beautiful and tranquil places I've visited in Cuernavaca so far. It's a farm located a little bit on the outskirts of the city, and they grow everything from your regular everyday crops like lettuce and corn, to medicinal herbs such as Arnica, to fruits I had never seen or heard of before (zapote, chirimoya). They also have rabbits!

 The really cool thing about this huerta is that they use it as an exchange place, where people from other local communities can exchange their goods for crops from the farm, and then Jean Louis and his wife sell their goods at a few organic markets throughout the week. Other local products include soap, dressings, fruits, vegetables, grains, cheeses, meat, eggs, sweets, alcoholic beverages, pasta, etc. It's a localvore's dream!


Here are some new spanish words I learned at la huerta:  chiquihuite (little basket); higo (fig); zapote (sapodilla plum); arándano (cranberry); huitlacoche (corn fungus); maracuyá (passion fruit)

On Friday, five of us embarked on the journey to Acapulco, the closest beach resort town. The bus ride was easy peasy, and we got to watch some action packed films (Face Off!)

We had a killer view of the beach from our hotel room! We ended up relaxing everyday in lounge chairs, getting heckled by beach vendors, and trying as hard as we could not to get burnt while getting the perfect tan :)

We ate some delicious food and had some exotic drinks

  Probably the most exciting event was when we watched the clavadistas, the cliff divers, jump into the turbulent dark waters at a height of 35 meters!!! We had an awesome view from this hotel called La Quebrada, where we not only got to watch the divers, but we also got to see a few traditional Mexican dances from various Mexican states. Estuvo padre!!!

Aren't they cute? :)

Another REALLY big event that happened while we were at the beach was that we moved houses! And when I say we, I mean the other volunteers and Casa Hoy staff were nice enough to grab our bags for us and move them to the new place while we were soaking up the sun (Gracias, guys!). We're a little further outside of the center, but it's a really cool volunteer house, and we have the chance to cook our own food here! So I'm pretty excited :)

There are FIVE new volunteers this week, which means we are 12 volunteers for the time being. It's a packed house, but very fun to get to know new people from all over the U.S. and Australia!

More volunteering activities this week to keep us hustling and bustling!

Hasta luego :)