Odds and Ends

So, I realized recently that I have neglected to write on several anecdotes which have occurred since my arrival in Mexico. (The picture at right has nothing to do with any of these stories, but is an unidentified thing I saw in Soteapan and looked spicy - like these stories!) So, the round up:

- The police: So Mexico is notorious for having corrupt police and military officials. Unfortunately, I have already gotten a bit of a taste for the fun. To help curb unemployment, the government hires obscene numbers of people to be police. This, in turn, creates a glut of officers just standing around looking for trouble or riding in the back of trucks carrying very large guns. While driving down, back, and around Chiapas we were pulled over three times at road blocks to be checked out by scary men in military uniforms. While our car had diplomatic plates (apparently international non-profits and NGOs get them to supposedly supposed to help reduce the amount they get accosted) we still got to be hassled a bit.

The first time we got stopped they just asked for our registration, the second time we were all asked for ID on the pretense of making sure we weren't Guatemalans sneaking in over the boarder (which my Oregon driver's license sufficed as ID though the officer had no idea how to read it... though looking at me probably gave him a pretty good idea I wasn't Guatemalan), and the third time we were told to get out of the car. It was the third time which was the most discomforting. The military officials who stopped us spoke only very quickly in Spanish and had a tendency to point at things with one hand while casually slinging their shotguns over their shoulders. After we were told to get out of the car, they looked through my bag (and found a water bottle... and a dictionary!) and began looking through our glove compartment when Dagoberto bravely stopped them. He began elaborating on how they couldn't do this to us because we had diplomatic plates, then pushed the military personnel aside and essentially told them that the search was over. Once we got back on the road he told me that it is frequent that at stops such as that they will look through your car and drop drugs in their so they could subsequently find such drugs and demand bribes for your freedom. Needless to say, I am glad we had Dagoberto to save us... and I plan on avoiding the police here as much as possible.

- The meat: So, I have been on some form of restricted meat or vegetarianism for the past decade... which finally came to end here. I gave up beef years ago because I couldn't justify the environmental consequences of raising such large animals. With time, I eliminated all mammals from my diet, then went back and forth between eating poultry and fish or not. For about four of the past ten years I have been a vegetarian - for the other six I have at least been annoying and righteous.

But I decided upon my travels to Mexico I would become a situationalitarian ("when in Rome...") and enjoy the food without thinking about the politics behind the flesh but instead the love behind the recipes. So, I had broken myself in for meat while back in the States: I cooked and ate lamb for Passover with my friend Sam. I ate a pork sausage at the farmer's market with my Dad... but I just couldn't bring myself to eat a cow again.

I get to Mexico and happily eat the bounty or flesh available but manage to pick my way around any beef while ordering - until I took myself out to dinner one night and ordered some chicken enchiladas which I thought were coming with grilled chicken but instead came with a big 'ol steak (apparently the word for grilled can double as a word simply meaning grilled steak). So, I ate (most of) it. And it was decent, but not everything I had dreamed of and more. Going for a decade without beef I had occasionally indulged in fantasy and longing of memory of what beef tastes and feels like and I must admit I was a tiny bit disappointed. Maybe tofu isn't so bad after all...

- The great museum caper: My second day in Mexico I went out to explore the city and ended up stopping in at several museums. I will admit to being a bit disappointed by the Museo Frido Calla and it's relatively small size and the Museo Mural Diego Rivera was literally only one mural - but the Mueso San Marlos was quite nice, though poorly signed. I walked into the museum, bought my ticket, and then began exploring. Often my technique is to walk the perimeter of a museum and then spiral my way inwards so I don't miss anything. I took a hard left and followed a series of hallways which led to a series of stairways, which led to... the roof. I stood for a moment looking across the skyline of Mexico City (it's very low and brown) and realized that I likely was not intended to be there. So, I turned back and began down the stairs to see waiting for me at the bottom a museum official and two security guards. They glared as I approached, but I was able to string together "I want the museum. This is not the museum. Where is the museum?" To which the three laughed heartily and pointed me in the right direction.

Oh, the adventures I will have.

Home-sweet-agricultural-research-facility

Below this post you will find several posts which I wrote while out on the road for the past little bit. I was unable to find a wireless internet connection (and scarcely an internet café), so I just stored them up on my laptop and uploaded them up now.

So, the tour included a lot of time on farms, but also included some good touristy stuff. Finally finishing up the interviews, we made our way northward. We hit up the zoo in Tuxtla, went to a mad-big canyon (a km from the bottom to the top) for a river tour, and then made it to historic San Cristóbal de Las Casas for the night. The zoo was nice I that it only had local species in it (and it was a bonus that they have some pretty sweet local species, like the jaguar seen at right (the jaguar is the black lump in the background, that ferocious beast in the foreground is actually yours truly pretending to be a jaguar.)). They also had these unidentified little hamster-goat looking things just meandering about the grounds. They were about the size of a collie. I don’t know why people don’t have them for pets in the US yet.

Sumidero Canyon was mighty impressive - high walls and a beautiful river which was created by a dam a couple decades back. We took a power boat trip up the river where I am proud to say I saw real, live wild monkeys! And a mother crocodile (or it might have been an alligator (apparently they don’t differentiate in Spanish) with five of her little baby crocodiles (sadly the pictures aren't in focus.). If I see a jaguar in the wild now, my life might be complete(r)).

Sunday we got to Acayucan, a small town in Vericruz where we dropped off Sytske. In setting her up with a village we toured several tiny towns and I got to see another variation on the theme of small, rural life in Mexico. Spoke to several indigenous farmers about their land holdings, learned a bit about the local Saint’s festival and ate a lot of fruit which I had never heard of or tried before.

Maybe it’s just my love of plants which make fruit (see my at left picking a large guanabana), but I was simply astounded by the sheer number of fruits which I had never eaten before or never seen actually being grown. I guess it’s a good thing to see that globalization hasn’t brought absolutely every food from around the world to be available to absolutely all markets – but some of these things were quite intriguing and wonderfully tasty. The trip was great overall, but I will admit it is quite nice to be back in one place and more in control of my life. I spent much of the past week and a half trying to understand Spanish or just following what everyone around me was doing. I am again the master of my domain.

Video Adventure: Acayucan and our friend the guanabana.

While in the field I recorded a couple more videos. First, a general greeting:




Second a video tribute to a fruit, the guanabana, which isn't all that much fun to eat but is quite enjoyable to sing about. My parter in this Sesame Street tribute is Sytske, a Phd student who will be looking at the impact of NAFTA on maize growers in the state of Veracruz (exciting!) This is apparently what agricultural scientists do when bored:

The four conversations you will have while abroad:

There are only four conversations you will have with 90% of the people you meet while traveling:
1. Where you are from.
2. What languages you speak (and/or funny regional differences between various English dialects).
3. Where you have been and where you are going.
4. What your bowels are doing.

Now the first three of these options aren’t especially interesting - but I had forgotten that the fourth becomes something very matter of fact and mundane as you continue to travel. So, while the first three answers I give remain fairly static (I am from the United States. Oregon… It’s north of California. No, not Canada.) (I speak English and kinda French and enough Spanish to survive). (I got to Mexico three weeks ago, I’m going everywhere). But the fourth question changes from day to day, and as I have had several people ask me from back home I write here, in moderate detail, about how my bowels are doing:

Do not read beyond here if you do not want to hear about how my bowels are doing.

There’s lots of talk of Montezuma's Revenge, but I am happy to report that I have not yet suffered – too much. I will admit there have been a couple of meals where I thought I wasn’t going to come out alive, but even the turning belly didn’t turn out to mean anything. I have had the opposite luck to what the guide books (and somewhat logic) seem to recommend. The two times I have felt the sickest have been after eating at restaurants while much of the time I have been eating at street stalls and overall feeling quite good. The way I figure it is that in restaurants you can’t see what is going on behind closed doors – so restaurants which look nice enough on the outside have ended up making my tummy tumble. Street carts on the other hand, you can see everything that they are doing. If a place looks clean, everything is boiling and it is doing quick business, there’s no reason its food should make me sick. So, aside from some fairly run-of-the-mill diarrhea and some fairly warm trips to the toilet (thanks to all the chilies I have been eating…) things have been good. Contrary to what was reported to me, I have not yet been without toilet paper in a bathroom – though there have been a couple places where it was a close call. The practice of putting used toilet paper in the trash rather than the bowl has taken some getting used to, but has nonetheless caught on.

Apparently people in Chiapas don’t go to the bathroom. The time I have spent in the past several days since the start of this trip has included more not going to the bathroom than I could imagine. Nobody thinks to ask to go to the bathroom for hours and hours at a time though all of us are gulping down any liquid available in a desperate attempt to stay hydrated. Maybe all of that sin you would normally excrete through bodily functions of the nether regions are instead ejected through this awkward sticky sweat which I seem to have acquired since entering the jungle… ick.

Update: So, I am happy to report that the Universe’s sense of humor is still up and running. Within 24 hours of writing the last post I not only got a pretty uncomfortable case of diarrhea but I also encountered a bathroom with no toilet paper, which also happened to have no seat, which also happened to not have the capacity to flush (and subsequently several more toilets lacking the same amenities) The aforementioned bathroom was at one of the homes of one of the farmers I was speaking with and I eventually determined that rather than flushing you get buckets of water from the well and pour them into the toilet bowl until things look clearer. After a day of suffering I finally asked for help and got an as of yet unnamed Dutch drug from one of my colleagues which stopped me up like a cork in the nastiest bottle of wine imaginable.

Twelve strangers, seven and a half liters of coke, and five hours later

So, the point of this trip is to learn about farmers and their practices, and boy-of-boy did I do that today – and all in Spanish. This morning we got out of Tuxtla and headed out into the country. Our first stop was a farmer’s field that has been using conservation tillage methods to improve his yields. Fortunately everything they were saying in Spanish made a bit more sense because I am already fairly familiar with it in English. So, a short summary…

The Green Revolution was all about getting better seed out into the fields, but also made an attempt at getting folks to start using fertilizers, pesticides, and Westernizing/modernizing/destroying (depends on who you ask) traditional farming practices. In the sixties and seventies a bunch of non-profits tossed some tractors into the developing world and taught people how to use them, but didn’t give the funds for upkeep or have the foresight to think that the technology would continue to change and subsistence farmers would not be able to purchase new equipment or repair the old. This meant that people changed the way they had been farming for years to adopt this new way of doing things, but when the Western farming tools fell-through after a generation, many of the traditional practices were forgotten, leaving many people high and dry.

So in steps the new solution. CIMMYT, as well as a whole bunch of other people have been doing tests on a way of growing grain called Conservation Agriculture. In traditional Western farming a farmer will remove the previous year’s crop, clear the field, plow it under, plant as much seed as they can, dump the needed fertilizers and pesticides, and repeat. Conservation agriculture sort of turns the idea on its head; you pick the previous year’s crop, but then leave a lot of the remnants and stubble on the field, you don’t plow, you plant on beds with walkable rows in-between, selectively fertilize and pesticide, and then enjoy a bigger crop than you would have through the normal system (or at least that’s what the studies are showing).

The trouble is that for this system to work you have to go with it for a couple of years before anything works out. You should expect to have losses for three years, then break even for two years, then start increasing yields over your average – getting up to twice as much straw (an important fuel and forage in the developing world) and up to 25% more grain. It works because though the fields are more compact at the surface - they are looser down below where the roots need more aerated soil. This is because a healthy worm base is allowed to develop and the dirt isn’t compacted from running tractors back and forth on top of it all.

Frequently farmers will remove the stalks of grains to use as fodder for their livestock, to burn as fuel for cooking, or simply to make the fields look cleaner. By leaving some of it behind it allows some of the otherwise lost nutrients to be returned to the soil. Just as importantly, after an initial spike in troubles, a field with remains left behind allows for a balance of natural checks and balances which reduce the need for pesticides and herbicides. Those pesticides and fertilizers which do need to be applied, can often be put in by hand thanks to the increased accessibility provided by rows. This further reduces spraying and it further reducing the number of times a tractor needs to run over the field (or if planned properly, rows can be placed at the width of tractor tires allowing the tractor to only drive on those parts of the field not actually being used for growing). The stubble also helps a field retain moisture, reducing the need for irrigation.

Conservation agriculture also encourages the use of beds rather than planting on a flat field. In areas lacking irrigation technology, normally fields will be flood irrigated (that means essentially what it sounds like – you turn on the tap at one end of the field and wait until the whole field is covered with water). Using rows allows for more efficient means of watering with higher rates of absorption. Though using beds cuts down the amount of land which is available for planting, yields actually increase because of the increased availability of water and because of a nutty lil’ attribute plants have called allelopathy. Plants are able to tell how much room they have between themselves and other plants and adjust accordingly, so planting them as densely as possible is actually a disadvantage because the plants are aware of it and hold back their growth to compensate. Give them some room to grow and they will.

So, that’s what CIMMYT is trying to convince people to do. Some people are taking the bait, others are leaving it be. And I get to listen to hours and hours of why people are doing what they are doing.

Many farmers are of course dissuaded by the several years it takes for things to kick in and are skeptical of waiting all that time to get what they want (understanable; a subsistence farmer can often not afford a hit for three years) – but many others are neglecting to change for very different reasons. A lot of people have said they are reluctant to change just because they are reluctant to change. Family farms means that going with a new practice would go against what your own father taught you – and father know best, right? Even more interesting, there’s a social pressure not to let your farm look messy. Farmers will criticize those practicing conservation agriculture as being lazy or piggish. Allowing corn stalks to sit on the land may be good for business, but is bad for your social life.

That’s the academic side of things. The what-have-I-actually-been-doing-side of things is that myself and my crew of folks have been going from small town to small town in the state of Chiapas (right next to Guatemala) and interviewing farmers. It’s been great help to be with Dagoberto – not only am I getting to see towns I would never have found on my own, but seeing the backwoods parts of these tiny villages. Sometime Dagoberto has a contact from one of his science friends in a town, sometimes not. If so, he stops by the first guy’s house and asks him to wrangle up a posse to talk about farming for three to five hours. If he has no contacts he has somehow still been able to convince large groups of strangers to get together and chat for nothing more than two boxes of cookies and a couple of liters of coke.

Maybe I am out of touch, but I could never imagine this sort of thing happening in any part of America. These are farmers, working men, who are willing to take half their day (or all of their night) to just chat with a scientist, his nephew, and two awkward gringos. Crazy, but it works, and I know a lot more about what they are thinking about farming, plus some interesting conversations about immigration, where to go in Mexico, and our explaining what life is like without tortillas (there was a guy who absolutely refused to believe that people in the Netherlands don’t eat tortillas. Once we convinced him that they don’t eat much corn he insisted that the Dutch must make their potatoes into tortillas).

The most amazing ten hour car ride of my life

I am not sure how much that says, but it was a pretty cool ten hour car ride. (note, I am writing these posts without the internet and then posting them post-facto when I return to the world of the intereted). Never have I before consciously seen an environment which is wholly new to me. I’ve seen lots of places, but nothings which was this completely unfamiliar. The hills of the Mediterranean which I hiked two springs ago in Italy were different from things I was familiar with – but more of a variation on a theme. This was a whole new world. Two whole new worlds.

So the ride itself from Texcoco down to Tuxtla wasn’t that exciting, but it was some of the best looking-out-a-window I have ever had. I was giddy, like I am often apt to be, the whole way. The first two hours looked pretty similar two things around Texcoco and the last two hours were in the dark and uneventful besides us hitting a stray dog (errr...). But the six hours between were pretty cool. The car ride included me, Sytska (a Dutch woman who is just starting her PHD on the impact of NAFTA on Mexican farmers), Dagoberto (Mexican and an employee of CIMMYT who is leading this expedition) and Javier (Dagoberto’s nephew and his general gopher, fresh out of college and doing some sort of year of social service). All speak some English and Spanish (and Sytska, of course speaks Dutch, which was no help for this trip but she was able to affirm that what few things I had thought I had known about the Dutch language from living in the Netherlands for a month were wrong), though Dagoberto told me the first time I met him that he prefers not to speak English, so the car ride was full or lots of silence.

As I tried to do while in France, I began making an attempt to only think in Spanish – a process which slows my internal gears, simplifies my existence, and leads to lots of quick checks in the dictionary, but really has helped me actually speak in Spanish when need be. Looking out the windows, I was able to watch the high desert give away to a fascinating type of savanna landscape. Though I have no idea what Africa actually looks like (yet!) it seemed to match up quite well with what I have seen in the Lion King. The savanna eventually ended in some nice lush hills and valleys, which once passed broke into the jungle. Whoa.

So, I have never been in a tropical climate before and I must say I was amazed. The shape of the trees, the smell, the bogs, tree density, and everything. I can only compare it to that muggy room in every botanical garden I have been to – but instead of just a room it was a world. It really blew my mind. What sealed the deal was seeing pineapples growing. I am not sure how I thought pineapples grew but I certainly didn’t expect to see them just sitting there on the ground like cabbages (but sweet and adorable unlike real cabbages). So this is Chiapas.

Chiapas Bound

So this morning I was supposed to leave for Chiapas for a two-week tour to speak with indigenous farmers about their tilling practices and crop choices, but the trip has been delayed due to car troubles that I likely wouldn't have understood if they had been explained in English, so I take this opportunity to fill in some details of the past week:

- Last Friday was Sports Day at CIMMYT. The three regional campuses came together with the main campus here in Texcoco for fun and competition all day long. Therewere about 500 people here, most of whom participated in at least one of the many events: half marathon, 100m dash, basketball, football (that’s soccer), swimming, volleyball, and tennis. Because I am new on the scene here in Mexico I wasn’t able to officially register for anything – I did however manage to sneak onto a basketball team with a couple of folks I met. With my mad skills on the court we were able to clear out the competition and make our way to the finals, but sadly on an impassioned dive for a rebound from a free-throw I sprained my ankle and was knocked out of the competition. We ended up losing the game, but placing second – not bad for a team which was collectively speaking four different languages. With the help of an ankle brace which I bumbled through purchasing in a pharmacy and icing while watching a Smallville marathon much of Saturday, I am almost walking like normal today.

- On Sunday I decided it would be a good idea to lay out by the pool for an hour and work on my tan. While I was wise to cover my face with a hat, I was not wise to neglect to reapply lotion to my body after going for a dip. Big ol’ burn. Which while a little inappropriate is an amazing photograph of my short-shorts tan lines.

- On the subject of my short-shorts, I am happy to report that looking at the various outfits folks were wearing on Friday the length of my shorts is average rather than freakish. Americans are just prude about displaying the male body.

If the leak which was coming from the bottom of our truck is soon repaired, I will hopefully soon be on my way. And if I am lucky they have some decent wireless down in the jungle...

Our friend aegilops

Time for fun facts! Aegilops is the longest word in the English language which contains all of its letters in alphabetical order - but perhaps more importantly it is also a genus of grasses which are helpful in the efforts to create synthetic crosses of wheat. Oh, the nerdy stuff I get to learn. I am happy to report that the first couple of days of intensive research and speaking with folks has been quite productive. I have been casting a wide net – reading scientific journals, bumbling through conversations in broken Spanish during volleyball games, and doing some 'informal research’ (read: eating) on product availabilities of foods in local markets and supermarkets.

I’ve been writing a lot – mostly stream of consciousness scribbles about my interests (almost fifteen pages thus far) – but have found some really interesting questions for my jump off point - even in basic definitions. For example, I am studying bread – but what does bread mean? When studying statistics about consumption, or talking to someone about their diet, a single simple word can make a difference. Do breads have to be fluffy? What makes a cake a cake and not a bread? Do breads have to be made of doughs or can they come from batters? With the help of Wikipedia (though I will note with nerdy pride that I actually wrote the articles on dough proofing and did some major work on quick breads), some writing I had already done on the subject, and talking with folks I bring you Nathan Leamy’s rubric to bread:

A bread is a baked, fried or steamed good made of a flour based dough. (Flour is a powder high in carbohydrates made from the grinding of the nuts or berries of grasses or legumes. The flour most commonly used for bread is wheat flour, but there are a near infinite number of flours which can be made out of various ingredients.) I taught a baking course off and on while at Oberlin, and I normally divide the world of breads into four categories: yeast breads, chemical leavened breads, flat breads, and mechanically leavened breads.

Categories of Breads with example types

1. Yeast breads (includes sourdoughs and commercial yeast breads, pan breads and hearth breads)
1. Pumpernickel
2. Rye
3. White
4. Whole-wheat
5. Egg breads
6. Bagels
7. French Bread
8. Whole grain breads
9. Fruit and nut breads
2. Chemical leavened breads (also called quick breads)
1. Biscuits
1. Crackers (a cracker is a salty, especially flat biscuit, often with docking holes)
2. Cookies (a cookie is a sweet biscuit)
2. Scones
3. Cornbread
4. Fruit bread
3. Flat breads and unleavened breads
1. Tortillas
2. Naan (though some Naan and pita are made with yeast and some catch yeast, they are often unleavened)
3. Pita
4. Matzo
4. Mechanically leavened (Steam leavened/fat leavened/air leavened (fat, eggs, etc))
1. Croissants
2. Some biscuits

So, that's a start. I now know at least what-ish I am talking about. A bread need not be fluffy, a cake isn't a bread because it has a fat content which exceeds its flour content, and a bread can come from a batter rather than a dough - though I still think that's a bit wonky.

Video Adventure: Teotihuacán

Since we are in the future and everything, I decided I would occasionally put my goofy mug on here to show I am in fact alive. Below is a greeting from on top of the world's third largest pyramid. Below that is me failing at making such a video.

Successful video:



Take 1:

A new home away from home

Yesterday I made my way to my new home away from home. The International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (el centro internacional de mejoramiento de maize y trigo - cimmyt - pronounced 'sim'-'it') is where I will be hanging my hat on and off for the next two months or so before I go and wander around all alone. This place was the start of making new wheat and corn varieties for use in developing nations beginning back in the 60's, and it still does some pretty interesting stuff today. The superstar in the plant genetics world, Norman Borlaug - winner of the 1970 Nobel Peace prize for his work on these grains - works here as well as a bunch of other smart folks.

I've got a pretty sweet set-up where I am just sort of kicking it here getting to come and go as I please, helping with some of their research in exchange for time on field trips with them and access to interpreters. I will be going to Chiapas as well as a couple of other places with cimmyt, but also doing some work locally around Texcoco. While on campus, I have open access to the libraries of one of the most complete agricultural research stations in the world.

I have my own office which I can use as a base - and for now I am staying in a dormitory on campus. I am making efforts to move into a local town if possible, but at least for the next couple of days before I head to Chiapas on the 18 I will just be staying here. I have already dug into some really amazing stuff. While you might have thought I could ramble about plant genetics and agricultural politics before - man-o-man - now I will really be able to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about crop cover, the impact of raised beds on the fertility of staple grains, and such. I won't get into it yet, but let it be known there are some beautiful fields down here in Mexico, and some dense documents which go along with them.

There's another visitor down here, Bridget, that happened to have also to have arrived yesterday. She is working as an intern on some similar topics. Having another young person around is going to help make my time here lots more fun. As an accomplice we will be looking for trouble all around.

The campus is outside of Texcoco a couple of kilometers, which is outside of Mexico City by around 30 kilometers, so it's a bit country. The smog isn't too bad this far out and the water comes from a private well which is clean enough to drink from directly. There are around three hundred employees, with scientists from all around the world and a core staff which is predominantly Mexican. Most everyone speaks English and Spanish, but I've also met folks representing Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, The Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Chile, China, Germany, and more. I think it's likely the most international place I have ever been. So far I have only spied one other American. There are, indeed, two tennis courts, a pool, a gym, a cafeteria, and more. Only about 40 of the staff members live on campus so it's a bit quiet... which is part of my desire to move out into the wilds.

My research is going to be interesting because I am not completely in line with all of the agricultural politics of cimmyt and here I am in the belly of the beast. Let the heated discussions begin!

Oh Lordy - I almost died on my second day in Mexico.

Mexico is swell. I have never enjoyed eating food I can't name quite so much. The flight was four and a half hours and painless (other than the film, "I think I Love My Wife.") and my first two days in Mexico City were great. I stayed at a Quaker Hostel in the Centro Historico where I met some real nice progressive folks, most of whom spoke English. I spent my first afternoon after my arrival just wandering around and trying to get a feel for the city and the feeling is... it's huge. I feel like it is an interesting combination between a Western US with an old timey European city, with some filth added in for variety. The traffic is truly awful (the recommended way to cross a street is to wait for someone from the city to cross in front of you and to follow closely at their heels.), but the matter which really surprised me the most is the smell. It is unlike anything I have ever encountered before - a cross between chemical cleaners and raw sewage. Acrid and bitter, but not pungent - just lingering around every wrong corner.

Other than that, I enjoyed myself. I took all my meals from street carts by walking past several times trying to figure out what each one was serving and then cautiously sputtering in my embarrassing Spanish that I would like 'uno, por favor.' With much smiling and nodding, a good bit of pointing, and many gracias-es I was able to get several different - but equally tasty - combinations of a tortilla with stewed meats, cheeses, onions, cilantros, creams, and/or fresh made salsa. On the baked goods end there have been a number of tasty treats which I have been eating - though equally indescribable. The pound cakes are grainy, the donuts are mushy, and the cupcakes are a bit too oily. It's as if someone followed a recipe, but decided to switch the amounts of various ingredients for variety.

Last night I was invited to a wine and cheese party being hosted by a former Watson Fellow named Alder who is studying in Mexico currently. Having seen my project online, she e-mailed me several months ago and offered her assistance and some advice for places to go and study. Fortunately, everything she recommended I go see or do was someone who I had already contacted or planned on working with. She studies plant sciences as well (though quite a bit more seriously than I do...) and has been at University in Mexico City for the past year. She invited me to a small gathering she was having and it was a good opportunity for me to practice my Spanish (I was shocked to discover I was able to describe my project in comprehensible Spanish to some of her Mexican friends) and to feel like I am not entirely out on my own here. Sadly, I almost died.

There have been three times in my life which I can remember choking on things to the extent I worried for my personal health and safety. The first time involved a piece of cheesy pizza where I began fading and almost got Heimlich-ed. The other involved eight grade math and me putting my fist in my mouth (a story for another time). And this third time involved a piece of cracker and me turning quite red in the middle of a group of strangers, many of whom I had language barriers with. To relieve any suspense, I did not actually die, but I felt dern' close. And hopefully this incident, within thirty hours of the start of my Watson project, will be the closest I come to death... but who knows! Stay tuned!

Into the blue

This time tomorrow I am on a flight to Mexico. Things have finally been really hitting these last couple of days. I have been saying a lot of see-you-laters to people since I got back from my commencement in Ohio - but more importantly I have had to actually do practical preparing for my trip. I have been spending the past six months studying French and Spanish at Portland Community College and I have independently been doing a lot of reading on agricultural policy - but I haven't been thinking too much about the nuts and bolts of what one does on the ground when one gets to a foreign country. Matters like getting pesos and figuring out what sorts of touristy things I want to see in-between my research - those have somehow eluded me. I don't know where I am sleeping tomorrow night, so today I am finally reserving a room in a hostel for the first two nights before I go to CIMMYT to start my research and a series of field trips with them. Mexico City, here I come...

Thanks for the words of advice thus far - feel free to comment on things or toss me an e-mail. While I may not be the quickest to respond, I will likely be itching to hear kind words from friends afar. So long America, hello not-America.