URGENT!!! CAR VIOLATED!

my civi has been stolen!!!

i walked out to work this morning to find... nothing, my car was gone from the street where I securely locked her doors the night before. SO if you see this car minus the kayaks please call the police. i know my car must feel violated and upset so keep your eyes open! Dirty car thief rats! my car is old and just rolled over 200K miles, why her? i know she's hip but she's old.

let´s talk about...

family planning..baby...

when i was doign my undergrad work i took a class that i felt made me the pro on what to do and not to do in marriages/relationships. my loving mother would mock my sound advice and tell the ladies in the neighborhood to come over and i could solve their martial problems. maybe if they gave me the time... (he he)

also who knew just 7-8 years later i would actually be doing therapy in an adult outpatient facility for my internship.

and now look at me...

i´m here in mexico i´m teaching family planning and prevention in the street

or in a church with no roof

they even sounded the church bell to remind the women we were ready to begin soon

may it be a reminder to all to not mock the one who may be your sex therapist one day

cuentepec: part one

cuentepec is a rural indigenous village about 1.5 hours from cuernavaca that has multiple different problems facing the community. the amazing thing is that it is a very communal community they live pretty harmouneously with each other. (i´m ready to sign up for communal living.) they have a food co-op and are doing other co-ops.

right next to the church a group of women work in the panaderia (bakery) one day a week and rotate with other women to watch children, etc. the men are in the fields and work all day. (we bought a lot of the pan it was delicious, i should hate coca-cola for new reasons but am still currently drinking it)

it sounds pretty ideal but there has been some governmental help/hurt done to the people throughout the years as well. it reminds me a lot of injustice that has happened in the United States with Native Americans. the government won´t subsidize any of their farms because they live this communal lifestyle and won´t be part of industrialization. so a few years ago when there wasn´t rain for 3 years then men had to immigrate to regions where there was work to sent home. this situation could be found in almost any country. theres´s a lot of poverty and hardship.

also pigs running around town

so our group of both mexican and american students were asked to help out in painting a school, repair, sand and paint the church benches, along with the women make an adobe room for a co-op of women to use to sew and make other things together and also we brought some new shelves for the library and put them together.

my group´s job was sanding and painting by hand. honestly i´ve never done this before at least sanding by hand (i´m obvious a rich spoiled american). one thing that seems to be universal is gum underneath church benches. we had some great helpers named david and rodrigo.

it was an eye opening experience and there´s not a quick fix to many of the problems but there are a few that i´d like to see started but we´ll not get into that. i may be calling upon friends and family though...be ready i´ve already thought of jobs for most of you...

we had a great time as a group and will return next week. a lot of this is good exposure to realize the problems in our own country and resolve to relieve poverty, sufferage and injustice not own at home but abroad as well.

it happened

by observing all the elements can you tell what happened?

re-entering the womb

yep you heard it right. i re-entered the womb on thursday after class.

here´s señor gomez welcoming us in and stephanie showing us the proper way to re-enter the womb of mother earth. i would explain more but it´s sacred. just like when i paid for my mother to go to a sound/music therapist and i picked her up as she was rebalancing herself though the labyrinth of leaves and wouldn´t speak of her experiences (for awhile)... the same is going to go with me. if you want more info about being in a fetal position for over an hour or two or what this represents and why you´ll need to ask me personally and after sensing your aura and reasons why you want to know i may or may not tell you more.

el fin de semana

elements of a succesful weekend are as follows:

delicious mangos on a stick....

swiming to a rock with fun friends in the ocean...

flying in the air, one of the cheapest ways possible...

eating at a resturant

2 places down from your hotel

with views like this...

sipping on a coco frio...

watching freakish divers at quebrada dive into water up to 130+ feet

where is all of this found?

pie de la cuesta and acapulco...

different philosophies

so we went to an orphanage yesterday that made me realize hmmm... i´ve got my own opinions on the "how to´s" in child welfare and realized i think i´m right when really there´s just another way of doing things or a different philosophy about doing child welfare that i´m not used to... obviously.

so here at this orphanage there are 900 children and once this organization has guardianship of these children they never try to get them adopted. that´s the problem i have with their philosophy. they reason saying that they´re able to keep siblings together, which i believe is very important as well but that´s what we try to do in the foster care system in the US but if a family was able and willing to adopt a sibling group, why not let them? is foster care the only answer? no. why keep children/adolescents in a group setting if they could possibly be within a family setting. yes, their model is a different definition of a family but i wonder how these children/youth do once they are out on their own. do they know how to connect with only one person? where´s the prevention in all of these societal problems?

the organization does a lot of great things. most youth are able to attend a university in monterrey after they give back a year or two to giving service at their organization. i believe in giving back and in self sufficiency even though not everyone is able to be self sufficient. is there opportunities here at the orphanage that other children might not have if they were adopted? yes.

we seemed to see the happy cheery side of the orphanage. when we would meet children i almost felt like... see look at this youth their so happy here....support us... i wasn´t completely convinced. it´s like the contriversoy over adoption fairs, should people be able to "shop" for children? it seemed that many of these youth seem to have a inner self confidence but i question the philosophy of not letting children/youth be part of a smaller family unit. i heard that even if they get a baby or young child they won´t try to get them adopted but since the organization has custody the child will grow up in a group setting. are they able to normalize with others in their same situation? yes. is adoption always work in making happy new families that bond easily together? no. i realize more and more i have my opinions and philosophy on things and that´s o.k. that there´s differences but i support more and more research to see what is working best to help children and youth that come from difficult circumstances. we need as a society to find out how we can best serve these children and youth.

cemetarios

is it weird that i have a thing for cemetaries? i think death and how people bury their dead, pay respect for their dead, and how people in general think of death is intriguing. just because i have my funeral song already picked out AND will be making my own casket (because it costs too much to buy one for families), does not make me weird.

mi casa

so from the looks of the front door it seems...eh.... but once you open the doors...whoa... it was a lot nicer than what i was expecting. so again the moral to the story is... don´t judge a book by it´s cover... just like me...just because a honest man on the street here in Mexico called me gordita doesn´t mean you shouldn´t be my friend and judge me. he was even willing to take professional photos of me... for a small fee.

back to the house... so there´s about 12-15 other English speaking students also at the house which isn´t terrible but they all aren´t wanting to speak spanish all the time which sucks for me because i NEED to learn a lot of spanish while i´m here, if i´m supposed to help people i need not be speaking a lot of english while i´m here. so sometimes it feels like a female dormitory but it´s fun. this is a a sampling of lunch time, which is the biggest meal of the day (around 3:30ish)

we also have a pool BUT it´s not clean yet and kind of like our boat at home i don´t want to bring it up too much because it might be too good to be true to have something wonderful that actually functions. but don´t worry there´s still a taste of w.t. here. there´s a pink flamingo (i took this especially for f.p. down in moab so she knows i feel at home amongst the flamingos).

all and all it´s pretty posh. life it good living less than 2 minutes from the school. it was just like in moab with my work, right next door. what´s up with commuting, it´s bad for the environment, puts too many miles on my poor civi and is a waste of time, money and our mother earth.