Buenos dias from Merida! I have been here almost one week and will go to Cepeda tomorrow. Today I will present my proposal to professors Patricia, Rocio and Hector and maybe some other people, also I was invited to some masters proposal presentations about worms and seeds so I think I will go to those soon.

So far it has been very easy to live here. It is easy to talk to people, which is the first thing--Alfonso does his job very very well. Because of conversations I have had with him, I think it will be much more possible to do well in the work I am attempting. We have talked about the importance of establishing trust, and how to do that, and he has taught me words and phrases in Maya, and he has told me stories of his many years of working with campesinos to acheive stability and sustainability in agriculture. His son Diego has told me about the beautiful things there are in the Yucatan, and about a spirit that lives in the spiny tree, and how to tell by the sound of the hen´s squawking that she has laid an egg. I have told Diego about airplanes and what he will get to see in Santa Cruz, and how not to freeze (everyone asks me ¨no tienes frio?¨ disbelievingly here. I do not think it is cold, it´s maybe 65 or 70 degrees F, but everyone is wearing five sweaters and ¨muriendo del frio.¨ I tell them that when it is hot I am going to melt because I am not accustomed to the hot, I am accustomed to the cold and that is why I am not cold.) I am very happy that Alfonso, Aidi and Diego get to see Santa Cruz in the Intercambio.

But even his family cannot have the same luck. Joanna, his daughter-in-law, must wait for her husband to come back from San Francisco and they do not know when that will happen. Maybe a year, maybe more. I could not bear that. I know that on March 24th I will see my love and I am so relieved for that simple, taken-for-granted fact. At the same time I am torn apart because the injustice of the border and the trade agreements that our government has imposed allow me freedom to see those I love, and prohibit people whose love is no less strong and whose human dignity is neither greater nor less than mine from doing the very same thing.

The education and solidarity that I bring is a drop in the bucket and will not change anything for Joanna or millions of others in her shoes. But it might help some of the kids in the school in Cepeda to choose a career that will allow them to travel and to express their opinions to people of power. It might shine some light on how I could go back to the US and tell the people that matter, we must extend a hand, we must not be so greedy.

I have gotten to meet a lot of Alfonso´s extended family. The other day we piled a lot of us into the car and went to four different houses. A Chayotear means to go eat somewhere for free, as in when PICAns come to a potluck without bringing food, or when you bring eight other people to eat posole at your daughter-in-law´s father´s house. You are a Chayote if you do this, and you are welcome because you are family, or friend of family. (I thought at first that chayotear meant harvest chayote, which is a kind of squash. This provoked much laughter.)

I am anticipating challenges when I go first to the community. Gracias a David, who has laid a very good trail to follow and has endeared himself to the community, I hope that I can live up to the kindness and openness that he as shown and that the people have returned. But I am also anticipating good things--good conversations, ganas de trabajar, songs and dances and much learning on my part. My plan is to work with the teachers and the students to do a compost experiment: try four different compost systems to see which works best while learning the scientific method of experiments and the science of compost and why it is important and if it works well with the way things are in Cepeda.

I am very grateful for the kindness of Alfonso and his family, for staying healthy thus far (may it continue! I do not want to burden the community with sickness) and for my ability to speak Spanish, and for the evenings and mornings when I know that one day is past in a beautiful clouded sunset and another will be beginning in which i have no idea what will happen, but I look to it with much hope.