Xoconoxtle Día Uno

So...that's how "ho-co-no-tlay" is spelled. Yeah. Who would have thought? Let's be serious--today was an awesome day. Even if I can't exactly pronounce where I was. It is beautiful (in my opinion). So serene, though the ride there is not. It's the bumpiest ride...ever? Probably not. But at least 15 minutes driving on a dirt/stone road to basically the middle of nowhere. There are also lots of potholes. It's also partially on the side of a mountain. There is one part in the road where you are going down a hill, on really rocky road, and can basically only see...that in front of you, if you don't turn right, you will go straight down into a valley. Awesome. And we were in this HUGE van that belongs to the municipal president. I'm not really sure why that's the vehicle of choice...I guess at least it can hold 5 students and a doctor, which was our crew for the day.

We whizzed through interviews and tests. Let me explain a little bit about what I was doing. It is essentially the same project as I helped with last year when I was here. It is a study about cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes, as well as lifestyle and depression this year. We do 3 different surveys/questionnaires, then take vitals--blood pressure, weight, height, hip and waist measurements, then glucose. I can't do the cholesterol tests, but I can do everything else. I had forgotten how interesting it can be...how much I really loved doing this work last summer. It was really my first taste of research, and the reason that I wanted to do what I'm doing this year. You get to learn so much about a person in so little time, to make a connection with them, even though you will never see them again. It's a very bizarre kind of interaction. Anyway, it was awesome. We also were busy for the first 3 hours, and then there was no one, which was nice. So some of use (me, Charles, Kristoff and Dan, the doctor) went back to Juventino to find lunch and go to the bathroom (there is only an outhouse there, which wasn't even at the church, it is in a woman's hosue). It took us quite a while. We went to the same restaurant Kiko & Juanita took us to last week, since we knew the food was decent. It was somewhat difficult to find. So we got back to the church in Xoconoxtle around...2pm? I think we left around 11:30. We brought back food for Lorene and Joe, who stayed while we adventured. When we got back, they were sitting outside...doing basically nothing. They'd entered some of the data, but there'd been no more people. So we all sat around for a while...Kristoff, who is obsessed with having music playing at ALL TIMES turned on his iPod with portable speakers and we just kind of chilled...some people read, whatever. A few more people came in for tests. I entered some data--we got all of the data we've collected so far entered--and still had...hours to go until we were to do our platica--a work that means chat in Spanish. It's basically an informative session for the people of the community.

Lorene, Charles, Kristoff and I decided to play a game. This game was called "Throw your rocks into the bucked from 10 feet away." Though it sounds kind of...lame?...it's certainly better than "catch with a rock," which was the previously suggested game. The premise was pretty simple--take your two rocks (which we all were pretty attached to by the end of the game) and attempt to throw them into the bucket from a rock placed about 10 feet away. You get one point if your rock goes in the bucket but comes out and two if it stays in the bucket. We decided teams were the way to go--Kristoff & I were a team and Lorene and Charles. Let's just say I had no idea how much rocks can bounce out of buckets. By the end, KS (me & Kristoff) had 5 points, LC (Lorene & Charles) had 8. This score is to be updated tomorrow. It ended up actually being challenging and fairly fun. And certainly better than catch with rocks. I guess that's what happens when you're in the desert--anything can become part of a game. I'd like to call it creativity.

Our game of throw-the-rocks-into-a-bucket was somewhat rudely interrupted by people who were 45 minutes early for our platica. We felt bad playing our silly little game in the middle of their church yard...so we started cleaning up. The platica went well, though they were a little too in depth with the information I thought, and then I ended up being able to do an interview with one of the women there. We came home and hung out at their house for a little while, then I came home and ate la cena ("dinner," but really a 10 o'clock snack) with my familia. A thoroughly wonderful and productive day. Tomorrow I have plans to make more use of the time for my project and conduct maybe two more short interviews. For now, I must go to sleep. Pictures tomorrow of Xoconoxtle? And definitely of my pretty rocks.