First day!

All the students made it, which is good (I had a few concerns). They came to orientation which always includes stuff like no binge drinking, no unsafe sex, and no tattoos. of course the fact that we have 8 incoming freshmen on the trip makes me laugh, their parents get really freaked out by those rules!!

Last night we had the opening ceremonies with UADY (University Autonoman de Yucatan) and they hired three musician guys to play. About 20 yucatecan students where there and it started off like the eighth grade dance with everyone sitting at the edges of the room and then the music started and Allan and Alba danced so everyone got up to dance. The students don´t know each other beyond introducing themselves--we haven´t even done the ¨go around the room and tell us who you are, your major, where you are from, etc.¨as there hasn´t been time. We´re going to do it today. My other big suggestion comes from the old Alternative Spring Break (shout out to Berri)--that they all get assigned numbers and they have to count off rather than we counting and then trying to figure out who is missing. Of course the numbers are in Spanish!

One of my pet peeves will be revealed this trip--posing for photos and then passing around 25 cameras. They are all digital. I remember fussing at the students in Costa Rica about this and that they could share. They thought I was being mean. Alas, we´ll see how this goes.

This morning we leave for the three day excursion to Playa del Carmen, Ek Balam, and Coba. I brought my flashlight for the night herp walk. I will be back Sunday night to Merida.

my reading list

I have finished two books since leaving Gainesville: Mother without a Mask and Growing Up Fast. I brought lots of wonky books to read which will be helpful in my job but of course I started with these. Both were very good and I would highly recommend them.

Mother without a Mask is about a British woman (actually she´s American but lives in England) who befriends a Sheikh family in the United Arab Emirates and she becomes like a second mom to their children. The book is about all kinds of cultural UAE details and it was really fascinating as I observed many of them myself when I traveled there this past spring.

The other book, Growing Up Fast, which I finished today, is about teenage pregnancy in Pittsfield, where I grew up. I actually knew a few of the service providers personally. It really set the context of the economically depressed area and how it impacted the futility of the situation. The relationship with GE and the city was a backdrop to the entire story and it makes a lot of sense to me to read it in a book rather than having lived through the decline in jobs, population, and economic opportunity. Apparently there is a documentary video which I will have to see called Good Things to Life: GE, PCB´s, and Our Town.

I also am on a social networking site called GoodReads which allows you to sign up and share with your friends your reviews of various books, what you´ve read, and what you are currently reading, and planning to read. Jill and Joe gave me some flak about not liking Life of Pi--it was stupid! But I appreciated Berri´s comments about Dean Koontz book better. If you are interested in getting on it, let me know and I´ll send you the invite.

Carlos says I am a true yucatecan

so I´ll accept that. Carlos and I went to lunch today at La Pigua, and we had a great time. He retired last year from his job as coordinator of foreign languages at UADY, so he is now tutoring students at home and spending more time with his family. We started with a relleno de cazon which is a shark-meat stuffed roll and it had a really nice sauce on it. I had the camarones con vino blanco and I am always happy to eat shrimp in the Yucatan. One of the men eating in the restaurant came over to say hello, he went to high school with Carlos and he is now a VP of a capital investment group in Miami so we chatted for a while.

Last night I at at the Restaurant Amaro, which is one of my usual spots for meals. I had gazpacho and chilaquiles de pollo and a jamaica to drink. I had actually forgotten all about the jamaica (hibiscus tea) and I really like it. They also had a musician singing trova music.

Tonight I am going to the airport with Carlos to meet the students and Allan and Mark and we have orientation at 9 am tomorrow. Our first field trip will be Friday through Sunday! Carlos loves my enthusiasm for food in Merida and says I am a true yucatecan. that is quite a compliment!

Buenas tardes from Merida!

I have arrived safely and am checked into the Caribe. They were excited to see me! I decided to hang out in the room rather than brave the really HOT heat and so now I am out and about town. I´m having lunch with Carlos tomorrow and the students and Mark and Allan arrive tomorrow. The only drama was that they didn´t have the customs or immigration forms on the plane so all of us went down to the immigration desk and they sent us back to the plane to get them, but they didn´t have them...anyway, I am legally in Yucatan.

I forgot a few great things about the TV: shows like constant soccer matches (currently Uruguay v. Peru), the commercials will say COME BIEN in lettering across random commercials, they like the Gilmore Girls here and are apparently showing season 7 and this week´s episode is the one where they have the knit-a-thon, I saw Bob Esponja (kara´s buddy), and an ad for Mexican wrestling in the masks.

I am trying to adjust to the Latin mealtimes so I am hanging out until it gets later to eat dinner. I am thinking gazpacho but you never know what might strike my fancy! Most of the central square is the same, so far. I´ll be exploring more.

air travel is not that well organized

I am in the Orlando airport and my connecting flight to Miami is delayed, but I should be able to catch my connection to Merida. The best part of the Orlando airport so far is that I just ran into Ava and Antonio! Ava is on her way to collect research for her dissertation in anthropology in the fishing village. Antonio is going to be a good boy and stay home to write his. She'll be gone for six months!

I had the unfortunate travel experience in June to go to Atlanta to give a presentation at the regional EDUCAUSE conference. The conference session went great--five students from five universities in Atlanta talked about their technology usage--but the travels sucked. First of all, I bought a ticket out of JAX because it was $123 compared to $900 out of GNV. We boarded the plane in JAX at 7:30 pm and were ready to roll when the pilot said, "um...there's a broken part on the plane so I'm not flying until we fix it." so we got off the plane and then hung around for the 2 hour delay. Around 10 pm they announced, "the part still hasn't departed Atlanta...hang around." it wasn't until 1:15 am that we flew to Atlanta. We arrived on Concourse C and then the trains were shut down for the night so I had to walk to the baggage claim (4000 ft). It was like being in a dream--there were a ton of maintenance people in the train chutes and on ladders and more. Then I took a taxi to the hotel in Buckhead. When I got there, there was nobody at the desk. finally after making some noise I got the woman to come out and she said, "I just rebooted the computers like we do every night, so it'll be about 15 minutes before I can check you in." I got into my hotel room at 3:38 am. I had to meet the students at 9 am!

In May, I went to Jamaica for a wedding and the Air Jamaica flight was delayed. Nobody told us anything and we waited in a very long line while nobody was in a rush to do anything. Once we arrived in Jamaica, it made more sense. No problem, mon.