In preparation for re-entry to the United States, I ate a corn-dog yesterday. I decided to take a new street home from the bus stop and lo! there was a slew of new food vendors along the way. A lady selling sweet pancake things, a guy with a wheelbarrow carrying buckets of different candies, some people hawking over-ripe figs and cacti-fruit. This one lady had a really decorative corn-dog tree on her stand and I just couldn't resist. It was okay except that hot dogs here are just a little too tender and under-msg'd (made of real pig, I guess). At home, I like to put a hot dog in the microwave for 3 minutes until it's an exploded, deformed, hard nugget. Delicious. Genny Drewes Chase taught me that little trick.

One of the supervisors brought home chamomile-flavored toilet paper yesterday.

We had a 'Girl's Night' with a friend here in Valle the other night. She gave Sarah such a Chola hair-do, it was hysterical. Her hair was levitating at least 4 inches off her scalp. I got my head ironed, which wasn't as unpleasant as it sounds. Our pal, Angelica, was totally put off that the only hair product I use is an over-stretched hair band. The minute she left, Sarah and I mussed up our heads to their normal states of dishevelment.

All of the volunteers are leaving their towns tomorrow morning. We're picking them up in 3 buses and taking them up to Guanajuato city for debriefing. They leave Monday and then the staff has another week to close-out the project. About a week ago, I started to get sort of homesick. Shocking as I've been desperately plotting a way to stay down here. Maybe it's the anticipation of home...Every night I dream about someone or something from California. I do have a pretty wonderful reunion in store: my entire nuclear family will be up at Juniper Ledge. I can't help but fantasize about walking up to the porch in the morning, seeing my folks and assorted siblings drinking coffee and reading the paper; the little kids scrabbling around in the dirt. A clear sunny day in the mountains, the smell of juniper and pine. AGH! Thinking about this actually hurts my heart a little. I am so whipped on my family.

In preparation for re-entry to the United States, I ate a corn-dog yesterday. I decided to take a new street home from the bus stop and lo! there was a slew of new food vendors along the way. A lady selling sweet pancake things, a guy with a wheelbarrow carrying buckets of different candies, some people hawking over-ripe figs and cacti-fruit. This one lady had a really decorative corn-dog tree on her stand and I just couldn't resist. It was okay except that hot dogs here are just a little too tender and under-msg'd (made of real pig, I guess). At home, I like to put a hot dog in the microwave for 3 minutes until it's an exploded, deformed, hard nugget. Delicious. Genny Drewes Chase taught me that little trick.

One of the supervisors brought home chamomile-flavored toilet paper yesterday.

We had a 'Girl's Night' with a friend here in Valle the other night. She gave Sarah such a Chola hair-do, it was hysterical. Her hair was levitating at least 4 inches off her scalp. I got my head ironed, which wasn't as unpleasant as it sounds. Our pal, Angelica, was totally put off that the only hair product I use is an over-stretched hair band. The minute she left, Sarah and I mussed up our heads to their normal states of dishevelment.

All of the volunteers are leaving their towns tomorrow morning. We're picking them up in 3 buses and taking them up to Guanajuato city for debriefing. They leave Monday and then the staff has another week to close-out the project. About a week ago, I started to get sort of homesick. Shocking as I've been desperately plotting a way to stay down here. Maybe it's the anticipation of home...Every night I dream about someone or something from California. I do have a pretty wonderful reunion in store: my entire nuclear family will be up at Juniper Ledge. I can't help but fantasize about walking up to the porch in the morning, seeing my folks and assorted siblings drinking coffee and reading the paper; the little kids scrabbling around in the dirt. A clear sunny day in the mountains, the smell of juniper and pine. AGH! Thinking about this actually hurts my heart a little. I am so whipped on my family.

Courtney demands that I at least write about what I'm eating.
Dinner tonight: a hot dog that came out of a package labeled "FUD" and that was a most unnatural maroon color. On toast with mustard and ketchup. For dessert: faux rice krispie treats made of a generic honeycomb cereal and pink marshmellows. And that pretty much sums up my health regimen down here in Ol' Mexico.

Things in life are otherwise fine. I have an unsettling feeling that I'm in the calm before the storm, though. Our regional director arrives tomorrow. Also tomorrow, the vols have their 'free day' in three groups in three different big cities. On Saturday, the volunteers all come into their respective municipal cities again- except this time with their 5 best Mexican friends from the rancho- for a youth project fair. Challenging? Yes. Unmanageable? Pretty much. But I've given all sorts of heaps of money out to supervisors this week and I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed.

Do I sound whiny? I hope not, because actually this work is pretty kick-ass. Our counterparts are incredible. I routinely wander into their offices with a long list of problems or issues or questions and they just take care of everything. And they're also really fun, which is a bonus. We had a big meeting today with our Valle Presidencia contacts and everyone was just hootin' and hollerin' and enjoying each other. Ooh, and the director of the environment agency is charming and muy guapo, save for the adult braces.

Earlier this week I filled in for a sick supervisor, which means I got to take all sorts of crazy buses out to a rancho by a lake and hang out with the volunteers in their tiny room and listen to the rain on the tin roof. They were cute, all excited and homesick and freaked-out. They kept asking if it was hard for me when I was a vol (it was, very) and looking for reassurance. It was just one of those moments when I could really appreciate being the age I am. Things are easier now. I can hang around and have awkward small-talk with a host mother for hours, no problem. I can totally choke down cow hoof-pad, easy as pie (but not as delicious as pie). I don't mind when kids laugh at me or host sisters lovingly call me the spanish equivalent of 'big-ass girl'. I like the perspective and patience that comes with being an old-timer. In Amigos-land, anyway.

Other news: I had a long and glorious conversation with my long lost cuz, cruds, the other day. She's in Thailand and I just figured we wouldn't talk until the fall. But yay technology! Turns out I can just call her cell phone any old time over skype. It was a little trippy- she was wandering the streets of some Thai village in the rain at 10 p.m. while I sat in bed at 10 a.m. with sun streaming through my windows and the omnipresent gas-truck song playing out in the street. Anyway, just so you all know, I may be eating questionable cow and pig parts, but she's eating FROGS and LIVING SHRIMP.

This morning I swept and watered the sidewalk in front of our house, which is a very Mexican thing to do. This transpired because yesterday, on the walk home from our daily horchata-fix, Sarah pointed out that the 10 square feet of sidewalk in front of our door is a total dump. All of our neighbor's cement-areas are spotless, and ours was littered with every empty doritos bag and gum wrapper and plastic bottle in Valle. She thinks maybe people were putting their garbage there to teach us a lesson. Though we're not particularly beloved in the neighborhood, I don't think we're disliked to that extent. Regardless, I was totally ashamed and got right to it. And that's my story.

Volunteer briefing was a success! And I came away from it with only two mildly humiliating experiences: being forced to dance on stage at the welcome party, and giving an impromtu speech in front of a huge crowd in Salamanca. That's why they pay me the big bucks, I guess.

It's really quiet in staff house today. All the supervisors are out on their routes, which is something Sarah and I have been looking forward to all week. Now that they're gone, though, we're bored out of our minds. There's plenty to do but most of it requires being trapped in the house all day long, answering phone calls and working on the computer. We're working on a list of things to do in case of extreme boredom. So far, we've got:

1. make rotting fruit into popsicles
2. trim the dead bushes in the front yard
3. write poetry
4. try to imagine worst-case volunteer emergency scenarios so we'll be prepared
5. make fly traps

other ideas?

We're well into our marathon week of supervisor training and volunteer briefing. This morning, we're heading up to Silao to pick up 56 blue-shirt-clad 16 year olds from the airport. I have this little pit in my stomach....a feeling like life here in Valle will never be the same after today. A touch dramatic, I know, but things really do change from here on out. I ran into Sarah in the hallway early this morning after I had stumbled out of bed, and she said "Today is the day we become the mothers of 56 teenagers!" I hope they like cow hoof-pad.

Our big lovely villa is falling apart. On Tuesday, we lost power in almost all our electrical outlets. As I type, I'm looking into the backyard where four supervisors are huddled around a surviving outlet and a surge protector with their computers. All the food in the fridge has rotted; there is a fly infestation in our remaining food. Yesterday, Teo and Julia were electrocuted while doing laundry in our old-school machine. I tried to bake a spanish tortilla last night and the temperature dial caught on fire (Teo says all he could hear me yelling in the chaos was "why is THAT on fire? how does a DIAL catch on fire?"). Today, the rest of the supervisors come home, which means that there will be nine of us here, with a huge heap of work to get done and no fridge or electricity. Should be interesting.

It could be that we're just living in an old creaky house. HOWEVER, We've also discussed the possibility of the angry ghost of Ramon Gallardo (the original owner who died here a year ago). Also, the possibility of Catholic wrath (we've taken down a lot of cruficixes- crucifi?- and paintings of Mary since we arrived). We're having our first official staff meeting tonight and we've entertained the notion of a group apology to the spirits of the house. Our other tactic is to harass the landlord with a little more vigor every day.

Street Diaper! is a game Sarah and I play on our long walks around Valle. It's structure is similar to punch-buggy, except that the punch is delivered upon recognition of a street diaper. [This is a borderless game- try it in your own city!] So, the other day I saw the mother of all street-diapers...a street diaper-change! Though secretly thrilled, I also felt deep sympathy for the mother, laid out on the sidewalk, wrestling with the diaper of her squirming and crying toddler. Ah, the trials and tribulations of parenthood. But it's a fun game.

I had a meeting with a bunch of counterparts yesterday in Salamanca. One of our counterparts lured a little boy, who was waiting outside the office with his mom, inside with a bag of candy; when he got close enough, she grabbed him into a big hug and smooched him in an overbearing-auntie sort of way. He wrestled himself away and then, as he walked passed the rest of us, reached out his arm to shake my hand. The ladies thought this was hysterical and called after the boy "RACISTA!" as he ran away giggling.

The first supervisor came back from route last night and we got to all snuggle on the bed and listen to his wonderful stories. It's great to know that the sups are developing good relationships with the town people, but it did make me the tiniest bit envious. We don't get to do that as directors; we have a lot of professional relationships but it's just not the same as being out in the field, in someone's home, playing with their kids. We are making friends, though, so I can't really complain. Miguel, a chavo from the Municipal Environment/Ecology department, came over the other night and we drank mate and laughed and laughed. And Oralia, a nurse from Salamanca, has invited us to dinner. So there are opportunities for friendship, which is nice.

We had a little freak-out this morning when we realized that the volunteers are arriving in 5 days. We're on top of stuff, but there are just so many little things to get done. I am the queen of making little tiny neurotic lists on scraps of paper that I then lose.

It turns out that cow hoof-pad doesn´t really "agree" with me. Yeah, you read that right. COW. HOOF. PAD. It looks a lot like big stiff cubes of translucent jello. It trembles and bounces. It sort of has the texture of an eraser, with a delicate outer-coating of slime. It squeaks a little when your teeth cut through it.

The manager at the hotel-restaurant where we will be holding Volunteer Briefing really wants to serve hoof-pad tostadas to the vols. He says it´s a Mexican delicacy. So when we went to pay for briefing yesterday, he asked if we wanted to try them and we couldn´t say no. Also, we thought: how different can this really be?¿

REAL DIFFERENT, it turns out. Sarah and I agreed that eating the three heaping, quivering tostadas was probably the hardest thing we´ve had to do yet as Amigos directors (and that includes a lot of public speaking and scary meetings with VIPs). There was the eating itself (I developed a technique whereby I choked down the cubes whole...this gave me a stomach ache for the rest of the day); there was the part when the manager described the hoof-pad as "really nervy," as though it were a good thing; and there was the part afterwards when we had to explain why we didn´t feel it would be a good meal option for the volunteers. All told, we handled the situation well and left the hotel quite pleased with ourselves and only mildly nauseated.