Hello all!  I know there haven’t been very regular updates to my blog, so I’m hoping to try to catch up a little bit this last week I’m here in M�xico.  I’ve had different issues – ranging from technical difficulties uploading to simply not having a lot of free time in which to write!

Anyways, this blog is primarily about our final “fieldtrip” while here in M�xico.  Last weekend (Friday – Sunday) we visited a tiny mountain town in the state of Puebla called Cuetzalan.  The town has a school that Penn State is “partners” with, and that we had the opportunity to visit.  It was pretty amazing.  The whole village is set way up in the mountains here (it took us 4 hours to drive there in our tour bus).  The scenery is gorgeous, and because of its location, the climate is closer to tropical than anything I’ve experienced so far while I’ve been here.  But here’s the play-by-play…

Friday Morning:

Up at 7:30am to meet up as a group to get on our tourbus and head for the mountain town of Cuetzalan.  The schedule for today is to drive deep into the Sierra Madres to visit a tiny school for the people who live in this amazing location.  My understanding is that Penn State helps this school out with occasional funding, faculty exchange, and gifts and in return they allow us to visit when we do our study abroad program here in the state of Puebla.  I didn’t really know what to expect for this school, but it was something so outside of my realm of experience, I don’t know that I could have been completely prepared for it.

To see a third-world type educational institution on TV or in a magazine is a thoroughly different experience than visiting one in real life.  While at the school we saw a powerpoint presentation on their computer (their ONE computer and projector…) that was pictures of previous visits to the school.  And they fed us lunch – a hamburger, fries, and homemade coleslaw.  As we ate, our professor remarked that this was most likely more food than most of the families saw in a day, certainly much, much more than they normally received at school. 

After we walked through the cement block school, that had maybe five or ten different classrooms, we went down to their “gym” an outdoor cement basketball court/soccer field.  They did a variety of traditional dances for us, and thanked us for the gifts we had brought them (plates, bowls, soccer balls, colored paper, pens and pencils).  After that, a bunch of our group played soccer with a bunch from the school.  Despite what you’d consider our height and weight advantages (as we’re all twentysomethings and they’re malnourished kids between the ages of 10 and 16), they kicked our butts at soccer.  I think everyone had fun, though, which was more the point of the activity.  J

After that, they did this fantastic thing where they build these giant paper balloons (out of a waxy crepe paper that we bought them), insert a wire ring with a rag soaked in gas and on fire, and then send them up into the sky.  A miniaturized hot air balloon.  It was a really neat thing to watch, and the balloons floated all the way up and out of sight behind the clouds as we were getting ready to go.

All in all, it was a pretty incredible day…one that made me extraordinarily grateful for my education and the opportunities I’ve had in my life.  The kids at that school have an impossible road ahead of them, and most won’t make it out of the mountain towns in which they live.  A lot don’t even have a proper house, and are hanging on only by a thread.  I wish the best for them, and am glad that Penn State, for all its flaws, is doing some little good somewhere in the world, at least.  We need to do more.

TO BE CONTINUED…