La casa

The first night I spent in Mexico City, an enormous, sprawling, dirty town. The hostel I stayed in was nice enough and offered free breakfast (cold scrambled eggs with some spicy shit in them). At night I drank a bunch of beer with the typical type of people you find in hostels; wayward backpackers who don´t seem to have much purpose in life other than believing they´re too good to live in their home countries but don´t do anything when they travel except drink, move around, and complain about the world without doing anything about it (or quite often without knowing what they´re talking about). I felt like every single one of them was a philosophy major who got bad grades. There was one Danish guy who seemed a little more intelligent, but I got the impression he was depressed.

Anyway...

I´m in San Miguel now and everything is bueno. On the bus ride from Mexico City we watched Juno en español, so that was... impossible to understand. There was also some guy who jumped on at the bus station trying to sell some kind of dental prophylactic cure-all in an eyedrop bottle. I didn´t get one. There are two other people living in the volunteer house right now, which I took pictures of but will have to post later (the house, not the girls). One is a 20 year old German girl, Kristina, and the other is a 22 year old girl named Amanda from a tiny town in Southern California. Kristina leaves in a week or so but Amanda is staying until long after I leave. There are other volunteers living on there own: Poppy from England who is living in a huge house her mom owns, Hazel from somewhere who I haven´t met and might not meet, and a married couple comprised of some guy from somewhere and some girl who went to UW. I also met the Mexican friend of Amanda and Christina, a 23 year old named Ozvanny. He and Poppy got arrested last night, but we´re still not sure why. They were released after being ¨interviewed.¨

Today was my first day of work in the Hogar (home) de (of) Los Angeles (me). The founder, an ebullient Christian from Chicago, showed me both guardarías (daycares) and introduced me to whoever was there. There were a bunch of Mexican women. Some names I can remember are Isabel, Flor, Nezvi (or something), Ana, Fabiola, and the only Mexican guy, Miguel. All of the women hired are mothers of children who are or were in the daycare. All mothers of children are required to volunteer one hour for every day their child is at the center. The kids are pretty great... their ages range from somewhere around three months to three or four years. All I really did today was rub some backs, play around, and change some clothes. Next week I´ll start helping in the miniscule health clinic at the new daycare, run by Mexican husband-and-wife doctors. Who knows what they´ll have me do, considering the extent of my health-related vocabulary is "are you sick?"

The city is pretty cool. Hilly streets made of cobblestones. Tonight I´ll spend some time in the city center, which is a 20 or 30 minute walk from my house. This weekend should provide some time for exploring on Saturday and a hike with some other angels on Sunday. I think that´s enough for now. I don´t really expect to post entries as often as I have been but there isn´t anything to do in the house except read, and reading is for nerds.