Swearing In & Host Family Life in Guanajuato

As of last April 19^th, we are no longer PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) but are now PCVs! (Peace Corp Volunteers).  Our service will end officially on April 18^th, 2014.  The swearing in ceremony took place in the garden area of the Peace Corps Offices in Querétaro and we were officially sworn in by Laura Dogu, who is the number two person in charge at the US Embassy in Mexico.  The ambassador was supposed to do the honors but had a last minute change of schedule in conjunction with the G20 conference.  

We chose Salvador, our fellow volunteer who is originally from Spain, to do our five minutes volunteer speech in Spanish.  He did a great job and even though we took the easy way out as a group choosing our Spanish speaker to give the speech, in terms of presentation skills and personality, he was a very good choice to do the honors. The ceremony was more emotional than I had expected.  I am not sure if this was due to the ceremony itself or only our vast relief at finally finishing our 10 weeks of grueling training!  Even though we consider ourselves lucky in terms of being assigned to Mexico, the training experience seems to be difficult no matter where in the world you do your service.  Between classes running six days a week and the anxiety about your future service, it seems to universally be the part of the Peace Corps experience that everyone is glad to see come to an end!  Speaking of classes, as far as we know, we all made it successfully to the “intermediate low” level of Spanish that is required for our program.  So that at least means that we aren’t on language “probation”.  That said, once we get just a bit more settled, Antoine and I want to start to see what we can do with online resources to continue trying to improve our language.  We also plan to get a television, which we don’t currently have, in order to get more practice listening to Spanish. 

After the ceremony itself, we visited with our center directors, host families and PC staff for a while.  At that point, our center director and counterpart colleague were invited along with the other important guests to one of the CONACyT research centers for lunch with the Embassy representative.  Meanwhile, we went back to our host family’s house, packed our things and went back to the center to await our ride to Guanajuato-our new home base for the next two years!  Before I change the subject and talk more about our first days here in Guanajuato, here is a photo taken after the ceremony.  The Embassy person is the tall woman in front of Antoine in the light blue jacket.  Behind me is Sam, our youngest volunteer from our group, headed out to work in the rural area of Puebla near where they are constructing a giant telescope. He is hoping to work with some of the surrounding villages on eco-technical projects.  The other people in the right side of the photo are the other 3 new PCVs from our group.  Two of them are staying in Querétaro working at Universities and Salvador, standing next to our Assistant Director Kitty Kaping, will be living in Leon.  Finally, the last two people in the photo are Beatriz Charles, our program manager, and in the back row middle, our country director, Dan Evans.


 

 

So, after the ceremony we were able to ride up to Guanajuato with our counterpart Laura and her driver.  We are currently living with our new host family in an area up above the city center called “Los Filtros”.  It is a little residential enclave about a two minutes’ walk from the main highway that runs between the city center and our CONACyT center called CIMAT where we are working.  We love our new host mom, Rosi.  She is a single mom with three sons.  Since two of them study in Querétaro, it is quiet most of the week and we live downstairs in a little separate studio apartment, which is a huge improvement over the single small room we had at our first host family's house.  The bathroom is built into a passageway and have a very low ceiling so poor Antoine has hit his head at least once that I know of and has to duck to shower, but neither of us are complaining since we are so happy to have a much more comfortable space.

The walk is surprisingly bucolic-we walk by a corral with cows, horses and mother hens being followed around by the cutest little baby chicks!  Every so often, for some unknown reason we will walk by and see one of the cows alone standing outside the corral or wandering up our little dirt road.  That is the moment that we realize we are actually having a Peace Corps moment despite working at a mathematics research center with all the comforts of home.

Our Visit to Mexico City & Countdown to Becoming a Full Fledged PCV!

I decided to do a flurry of a couple of postings, since it has been awhile since I have posted anything.  This is mainly due to the fact that our training days are really long and packed with stuff to do.  But we are beginning to the see the light at the end of the tunnel!  It is Saturday and we only have 2 more weeks of training before our swearing in.  Swearing-in is officially Thursday, April 19th, so not even quite 2 full weeks left to go.  It was actually supposed to be Wednesday April 18th but the US Ambassador will be at the G20 Summit.  I guess he figured he need to be there in Puerta Vallarta instead of our swearing-in!  We are all looking forward to our swearing in although we have lots of big things to complete before that happens. 

Speaking of the Ambassador, we were invited to go to his home for a cocktail party when we visited Mexico City last week.  We were in Mexico City for just 2 half days and one night to visit the Benjamin Franklin Library, to meet resource people from the Department of Commerce and State and US AID.  In addition, we met with the officials at CONACYT, which is the Mexican government organization that runs the research center where many of us will be serving.  When we went to visit the US State Department people, it turns out that one of currently serving volunteers worked with her in Washington, D.C. for many years and she was the person that snagged us an invitation.  The Ambassador was not at home, so his second in command was hosting the reception.  It was being held as the closing event for a Smart Grid conference that had been held that week.  Needless to say, it was really fun to see the house-which is really large and lovely, and it was really fun to be driven though the most beautiful parts of the city to get there!  I don't have the photo that we took of the group in his house, but when I get it from the person who took it I will post it  But here is a photo of the courtyard of the hotel we stayed in.  It was in a great area with good distance to nice restaurants etc.  It is called the hotel Casa Gonzalez.  Even though we loved the charm of the place, the rooms were just okay. Next time we will stay in the same neighborhood but find a different place.

 

Meanwhile, now that we are back at our training site, we are working on a practicum with one of the local universities here in Querétaro, and we are giving our final presentations next week.  I am working with one of my fellow PCT's (Peace Corps Trainee) supporting a professor who is developing low cost parallel robots.  So not exactly the classic Peace Corps experience!  We need to give our 20 minute presentation in Spanish, so that could be painful all around for both presenters and audience, but great practice for the Spanish qualification test which is also looming.  I started out at the intermediate level of Spanish, so in order to be sworn in unconditionally, I need to have advanced by 2 sub-levels.  I have no idea if I have done that, but fingers crossed that I have because there isn't too much time left to cram!  If I haven’t advanced enough then I will have to build a plan with the language instructors to get to that level before the next early in-service training, which happens 3 months after your service starts. So I am hoping that isn’t the case.  I do want to work more on my Spanish once training is through, but in my own way and at my own pace.  We are really hoping to stay focused on staying in Spanish with our colleagues at the center rather than using English.  Many people there speak lots of English, but our hope is to limit our English to class time only.  It is bad enough that Antoine and I speak English at home!

Okay I guess I have finally caught up.  On a final note, this week has been a fairly important holiday week in Mexico, “Semana Santa”, the holy week ending with Easter tomorrow.  So yesterday, Antoine and I went to the centro of Querétaro to watch the silent processions.  These are processions of volunteers from different churches around the state who silently march barefoot between seven churches in the city.  It is really beautiful and impressive.  Most of the people are carrying heavy crosses or statues of Christ or Mary or Guadalupe.  The atmosphere is respectful but also carnival like with people lining the route to watch and there are also little stands that sell tortas and gorditas and other yummy types of snacks.

Down to SIx Trainees & Our Future Site Visit: Warning Long Post!

A few weeks back we lost one of our fellow trainees.  We aren't sure what really happened-why she decided to early terminate. She was the only other woman in the group and also the other trainee assigned to Guanajuato, so now Antoine and I will be the only "pioneers" going as the first volunteers to the new center there.  I think she was struggling with the language and I also think she had not pictured her Peace Corps experience being the kind of unique experience the technology transfer program here is in Mexico.  It is a fairly technical, professional program, although many people in our program who are seeking the more "typical" PC experience find that in their secondary projects working with children in the pueblos or building houses with Habitat for Humanity programs that some people work with here.  In any case, we wish her the best.  I am sure it was not an easy decision to early terminate after the long process of applying to Peace Corps.

We also had a chance to visit our new center and future home city of Guanajuato, and also to meet our new host "mom"!  Unfortunately, the town is just as hilly as I feared! the picture above is a picture of the monument to El Pípila.  He was a miner and hero during the Mexican Independence.


The bigger issue is that it is really mostly a tourist city and a very youthful university city, so staying in the center can be really noisy. And of course then there are the famous "callejones", the little narrow streets only accessible by foot or steep staircases.  So the topology may make it very hard for us to find a place to live that is relatively accessible and not too far from shopping and the bus we need to go up to the centro.  So fingers crossed that we will find something we like. 

Up at our center we met one the employees that we will be working with whose family is a very old family from Guanajuato and she has promised to help us house hunt, so that would be terrific!  And in addition, she lived 8 years in Ashland Oregon, which is the sister city of Guanajuato, so she we have some northwest memories in common.  She actually took us to her family's home while we were there.  She is the oldest of 7 girls and 1 boy in the family, so her mom's house was a beehive of visiting family. We met Suzy's 1 year old niece, who was adorable and who was wearing this cute little crash helmet they had bought her since she is just beginning to walk.  Her neighborhood is one that we are targeting.  It is about 10 minutes from the center.  We would have to take 2 buses to the center where we will work but it would be worth it to be able to live in a little quieter part of the city.  We will see how things develop.  We have been told that it is harder to find housing in Guanajuato than in Querétaro since it is really much smaller-probably only 70-100,000 people versus a million, and then you have all the limitations caused by the hills-there just isn’t enough room in the valley to build anything else.  So will just have to wait and see. 

We won’t be facing looking for a place right away, anyway, because we will be staying with another host family for the first month.  We met our new host “mom”, Rosie on our future site visit as well. She seems great.  She is a single mom with three sons, although the two oldest ones are living and studying in Querétaro.  So she lives with her youngest son who is finishing high school.  They live up the hill from the center of Guanajuato on the road that goes up to our center, CIMAT.  Their house is situated on a hill with stunning views of the city and it feels surprisingly rural.  To get to and from the center, we walk about 2-3 minutes down this kind of dirt road to the main road where the bus runs up to the center and down to the city.  Along the way we pass donkeys and cows and chickens!  So it definitely gives you that more traditional PC experience!  Her house is very modern, with satellite TV, internet, etc.  Where we will be living seems much more comfortable than our room here in Querétaro because she has a little private kind of one bedroom apartment in the bottom of the house where we will be staying.  It is two rooms connected by a bathroom (very low ceiling in the bathroom, so Antoine may have to stoop to shower!).  One of the rooms is set up as a living/dining room with a refrigerator and the other room is the bedroom.  The little apartment has a couch and a dining table with 4 chairs and desk.  So compared to our 8 x 10 foot room here with only one chair and a stool-it will almost be like having our place, so we are excited about that!

Last but not least, we got to visit the center where we will be working which is called CIMAT.  The first thing you notice about the center is that it is a collection of buildings built on-you guessed it, a steep hill!  And the architect in his wisdom decided he didn’t want to block the amazing views by putting in any handrails, so I spent two days huffing and puffing and teetering up and down cement stairs between floors!  The good news is that I definitely won’t have to join a gym here-I will get all my exercise just living in the city and going to the center!  It is going to be a challenging assignment on many levels.  Since it is mathematics research center, the researchers who work there tend to be relatively shy introverts and “in their heads”.  No joke that when our counterpart introduced us to one of the pure mathematics researchers, he said “hi” and them turned around and almost ran into a door because he was obviously thinking of some esoteric mathematical thing!  In addition, the center was built like a series of little rabbit hutches-so no gathering around the water cooler there.  So, it could be very challenging to meet with people and figure out how to interact with them on projects. 

The good news is that we really liked our Director.  He is this brilliant guy who has won the national prize for mathematics here in Mexico and written a number of math texts.  He seems really interested in our backgrounds and hopeful that we can help the centers focus on how to put more of mathematical research to work in the commercial area.  So if we have his support in that, we may actually be able to get some interesting things going.  Meanwhile, our counterparts have got a few starter project ideas for us to collaborate on. We are going to be helping with a web site project and also looking at some of the project management processes and software testing procedures!  So it feels very similar to the kind of work we have done back in the US.  They all want us to get some English discussion groups going.  That is one of the charters of the TT program here in Mexico because all of the researchers in the CONACYT centers need to speak and write in English to present at conferences and to publish papers.  So we will be working pretty actively with the post grad students to help them improve their English skills.