Catrina

A couple days ago, I went to the park for my daily soccer with a friend from church. I ended up playing soccer with about twenty kids between 6-11.  When I got there a little girl came up to me and asked if I would teach her to play soccer.  I said yes, and she excitedly passed along the message to all the other kids.  Before long we had made two teams, one with me on it and the other with my friend on it, so that it would be fair.  It was all girls(With the exception of Luis), and they all kept telling me what there names were and saying 'Emma! Emma!'  I felt bad because I could only remember a few of their names, but they were all quite charming.
In the park there is a soccer-field with two nets and all, so we were able to have an almost proper game.  In the beginning my friend and I were scoring all the goals, so we made a secret rule that we could each only score every other goal for our own team.  It was really hard because you'd be so close, with an open shot, and then you'd pass it to a team mate who also had an open shot and they'd miss it.  But the looks on their faces when they did get the ball to the back of the net were priceless.  There was one girl in particular, Carolina, who scored two goals.  You could tell that she might as well have scored the winning goal for Germany in the World cup, that's how happy she was.
It was amazing to see the difference in skill and energy change as we played.  You could see each girl getting more confident, and happy to be playing as the game went on.  Judging from the high heels, makeup, and what people have said, here in Mexico there is more of a gender divide.  The boys are more masculine and the girls are more feminine.  This makes it especially awesome to be a part of young girls playing soccer and being strong, because if boys can, then so can we.
One thing I noticed that day at soccer, is that kids are responsible for each other and themselves more than in the US.  In the US, some people might think it was weird and irresponsible to let your three year old be taken care of by your six year old. Here I've seen a bunch of young kids taking care of even younger kids without their parents around.

Today we celebrated Halloween at the church. There was a party which included dinner at seven o'clock.  When I got there I was going to be a gangster, but my friend Javiercito forgot to bring his hat which was very important to my costume. I didn't want to have no costume so Lupita and I walked over to my house and figured out another costume. I ended up being Catrina, which is a famous image that depicts a female skeleton, very popular in Mexico. I wore a girly dress and Lupita and Sandy, using only eyeliner, made my face into Catrina. It looked pretty awesome in the end. It was very Mexican, which seems appropriate for my first Mexican Halloween!

Lessons learned

Today was a big long day, in a good way.  This morning at nine o'clock I walked over to La Vina to help cook the food for the feeding center.  I ending up spending about an hour opening yogurt containers and pouring them into a huge pot, then cutting up millions are fruits to put in the yogurt. At the church kitchen everyone rinses whatever they're about to use before using it.  Today while I was standing in front of the sink rinsing off a cutting board, there was a horse outside the window right in front of me!  One thing I've noticed that is very different here is that, even in a neighborhood, there are goats and horses roaming around everywhere.  In fact this morning as I waked past the park I saw two horses eating some grass on the soccer field, and that wasn't the first time that I'd seen that.
Another thing which is interesting are the drinks that people make.  So far I've had three lemonade-like drinks.  The first one is made with from tamarind pulp.  It looks like brown colored lemon sitting in the bottom of the drink but it tasted good, especially because who knows how much sugar was put into it.  The second one was Pepino juice which I loved. Pepinos(cucumbers) are my favorite food and who doesn't like water and sugar?...So mix them all together and you've made magic!  It's the same idea as lemonade except for better in my opinion because the cucumber taste is very refreshing.  The third one, that I had today, was pineapple juice, which wasn't my cup of tea at all. Lesson learned: I'm not going to be eating pineapples anytime soon.
After the feeding center was over one of my little bros, Ethan, and I went over to our friends house.  Ethan is 6 and his best friend, Angel(On-hell) has two older siblings: Lupita, age 12 and Javiarcito(Ha-viar-cito) age 14 almost 15.  So we had a blast!  We all rode to their house, 7 of us in their 5 person car, and stopped on the way to get some pollo(chicken)  and some fresh tortillas from one of the millions of tortillas.  After a delicious lunch of beans, chicken, peppers, and tortillas, Esther,their mom, gave us some thumb-shaped, red-colored lolly-pops. Everyone except for Ethan tore theirs open with excitement which I should have noticed as a red flag.  I was expecting a sweet and spicy Chile tasting lolly-pop, but it was mint, not a good kind of mint.  Lesson learned: Mexican lolly-pops aren't what you think they are.
After a couple more hours of painting nails, playing guitar and hanging out we went back to church for worship night.  At La Vina there are worship nights or classes every Saturday night and today was a worship night.  It was just a whole hour or so of singing songs.  I loved it!  I only knew a couple of the songs but it was very relaxing. At some point in the middle, one of my friends pulled me aside because they were very upset.  She was crying and talking in rapid Spanish so I only understood bits and pieces of what she was saying. Lesson learned:  You can be there for someone by just being there. Even if you don't understand what they're saying, just nodding understandably and offering a hug can give someone all the love and support that they need!

Color run!

  On Sunday I ran in a color run!  It was really cool because I had never run in one before but I've always wanted to.  And the course was on a road right next to the ocean.  I was hoping to run it in less than 30 minutes because I hadn't run in so long, so a 10 minute mile seemed reasonable.  But I ended up crossing the finish line in 18:30!!!   Unfortunately that amazing time is to good to be true and when we mapped it out we learned that it wasn't actually a whole 5k, it was 2.5 miles.  But that's still around a 7 and a half minute mile which isn't bad for not running in so long.
Also on Sunday I had my first soccer team.  We drove down to the field 30 minutes before the game, as instructed, but to my surprise the team didn't warm up, or stretch or anything. All the other girls on the team were 18-25 years old so a lot of them were rushing in last minute coming from jobs.  I was, admittedly, expecting the team to be amazing! Out of this world!  Way better than my team in Ann Arbor!  But I was a little surprised to find out that I was wrong.  I suppose this is a good things and a bad thing because, although it means I might not improve and learn from the other girls on the team, I will get played in the games.

This picture is of me and some of the kids from church on Saturday.  Every Saturday there is a feeding center at the church.  I went and helped cook the food in the morning and then serve after there was some programming. One thing which we made was agua de pepino(Cucumber water) which is like lemonade, but with cucumbers.  When the Felix, who is the lady who makes all the food for the feeding center, was putting the cucumbers in the blender I was thinking 'ew' but it's actually really good!  And the kids love it:)

Futbol

Today I got to tryout for a soccer team. I met the coach and had a tryout for two hours.  It was intense but I did well and made the team.  After the tryout while we were waiting for my Mom, Ellen, to come get me because it was getting dark, he was talking to me about his church and about God(in Spanish of course).  He mentioned that he was Catholic and I told him that I was Episcopalian which has very similar services to Catholics except for that we have open communion.  He said no no we have communion for everyone too.  It's Jesus's table not ours.  Doors are open not closed.  Then he was telling me about how doors were open not closed to Gay and Lesbians too.  He kept saying 'no problema'.  There are some girls on this team that are Lesbian but 'no problema'.   He was a very nice guy and I loved that even though there was a language barrier, we were able to have a conversation about something so serious.  And I was very happy to hear that 'the doors are opened, not closed'.

Hoy yo tienia practicar futbol.  Yo conoci a el maustro de futbol y tenia una greca para dos horas.  El maestro fue hablar a mi sobre Dios y como en su iglesia, aceptan Gay y Lesbians. Creo que esta muy bien! Y tambien ahora estoy en el quipo.

A wonderful day!

Today I got to meet people from the church!  At La Vina there is a bible study for adults and Sunday-school-like-thing for kids.  I helped with the little kids. It was chaos! There were at least 25 of them, ages 1-6 and there were two adults which includes me, who can't speak Spanish fluently. Everyone was running all around the small blue room, cutting pieces of paper and yelling while drawing outside the lines of the coloring sheet. All the kids, especially the little girls, were very excited to talk to me and thought it was very funny that I didn't understand some of what they were saying. At one point we went outside and I gave a boy named Luis a helicopter ride.  Immediately all 25 children ran at me wanting a turn. It was an incredible moment to be standing there surrounded by happy Mexican children.  They all seemed so happy and they were climbing on me as if they had know me for years. That moment made me feel so happy to be here and to be able to serve these people.  People are truly amazing and I'm so excited to get to know and hopefully help these people here in Mexico.  After the adult bible study was done some older girls came out and talked to me.  I actually understood a lot of what they were saying and I was able to, slowly but surely, have a conversation about something other than 'Hello how are you what's your name'.

Repeta por Favor

I have arrived in Mexico!   Yesterday I spent all day on planes and in airports but I'm finally here.  We went from Detroit to Mexico city, and then from Mexico city to Mazatlan.  I can't describe how exciting it felt to land in Mexico city. I had a window seat so I got to see the colorful buildings and palm trees get bigger and bigger as we landing.  In the airport everyone was, of course, speaking rapid Spanish and buying things with pesos.  Just now as I'm writing this, a man drove by yelling in Spanish the titles of today's news, looking for interested customers.  In Mexico the water isn't as filtered as in is in America so you can't just drink any water, especially if you're American.  Knowing this I went in search of a store in the airport that could sell us some juice or some other bottled beverage.  Finding a 7-Eleven I spent around 10 minutes trying to ask the two young men working there if was a minimum for credit cards.  I finally figured out what they were saying after saying 'Repeta por favor'  many times!