The hot season is upon us!

April and May are the hot, dry months in Oaxaca.  I can't overstate this!  HOT!  DRY!  The sun feels as though it is burning through your skin after only a minute of exposure.  I have discovered that people here value the shady side of the street so much, that there is a kind of unofficial hierarchy (based on sheer pugnacity) about who will cling to the inside lane of shade nearest a building, and who will be forced to walk around them into the sun.  I have an advantage because I am tall and old, but not much.  Sometimes I pretend I am not paying attention and barrel straight ahead, threatening to mow everyone down who dares block my way.  That always works!

Fran continues her steady march towards excellence and her degree, carefully organizing her life to accomodate study -- the most time consuming activity -- food purchase and cooking, washing all her clothes and bedding once a week, and helping me keep the house clean.  We used to have a young woman to help with the housecleaning, but our budget no longer allows that, so Fran and I clean the house from top to bottom every Thursday.  That was today!

Without going into any details, we recently passed through a disappointing (shocking, unless you are used to it) set of circumstances involving a bit of intimidation to get students to get out and rally for a certain political party here in Mexico.  Those who live here can fill in the blanks.  Life goes on.

Fran is consolidating a small group of friends, and no doubt will continue to find more along the way.  Her studies come first, and she is too earnest and sincere to be a social butterfly so this process will be slower and more meaningful than most.

I am still looking forward to her learning English, since we are still basically depending on my Spanish skills which are approximately 4th grade level.  It IS interesting to note that though Fran has heard Spanish most of her life, she says she has been speaking it only about 3 years.  Her first language as you will recall, is Cuicateco!

So, we can communicate about most basic things in Spanish, but all the subtleties are lost.  If both of us put a significant effort into raising our abilities in each other's language, we might someday be able to share on a whole new level sometime before I pass on to the Happy Hunting Ground!

This Summer, we are thinking about sending her to full-time English classes while she works part time.  It's only a 2 month break, but her young mind will be able to wrap itself around my language much more easily that I can hers!

Please consider: A gift for Fran's family

This is just a suggestion for someone out there who would like to do something for Fran's family.  They live in a very remote village and use a bucket of freezing water for bathing.  I thought they would enjoy having a couple of these to hang in a tree, and it might even improve their health in the cold weather. 

You can see it here. 

I have heard that this is the best brand, and that having two 3-gallon sizes would be better than one 5-gallon.  These are small people, and lifting the 5-gallon to hang it in the tree might prove impossible.  They live in the mountains where there is lots of sun, so I think it would function excellently for them.  Their source of water comes from the mountains higher up, and is delivered through a pipe that the whole village uses.

If you would like to send one along, just let me know and I will make sure it gets to them.  You can email me at lcassady@gmail.com.

Well into the second semester!

I know Fran lives with me, but I rarely see her!  She has been just as tenacious and dedicated this semester as last, and is confronting a variety of different situations that demand her attention.

One of them is a difficult teacher, which has forced her to find outside support -- never a bad thing.  She had already turned the situation around as much as was humanly possible by visiting the teacher in his office several times to get him to actually teach her.  In the classroom he simply puts difficult problems on the board and sits diffidently at his desk while students try to solve them.  He's an older man, with health problems, so not much can be done.  Fran's job is to pass the class, and she seems to have created a way to do that.

Her classes this semester include a Java programming class, business accounting, research, and integral calculus.

As summer approaches she is thinking of attending classes over the summer to keep her chops, and also to shorten the total time of her matriculation.  Things do not get easier in this school, they get more difficult, and suck up more and more time.  Last semester she attended classes 4 days a week, this semester it is 5.  We have heard that they throw in weekend activities and projects in later years.

At Quaker meeting last week I had a fascinating discussion with an attender about the intricate caste system in Mexico, created by the Spanish friars, that included 35 or more castes.  To drive the point home, they commissioned a series of paintings of family groups, showing people what to look for as they made sure to put everyone around them in their proper place -- the clothing, the color, the things of daily life.  Today a main word of this kind of thinking is "muchacha" -- an indigenous girl who is basically brought in from the village to work as a slave for Mexicans who have enough money to pay (which isn't much).  That is what Fran could have been, if she had not had the strength of will to find her way out of that oppressive system.

I found a few of the caste identification paintings and include them below.

English Class for Fran

It looks like we are going to have to pay for a quality English class for Fran over this summer.  Partly because she is required to get an official certificate from a real school, and partly because the free lessons she is taking now are not moving a long as fast as we had hoped.  So this summer, I want to enroll her in Harmon Hall in Oaxaca.  Each month costs 2,000 pesos or $150.  If we can afford 2 months, great.  If only one, that's fine too.  If you would like to make a donation towards this class, you can go here:

 http://franciscaeducationfund.weebly.com/donate.html 


Thank you!

FRAN WILL RECEIVE AWARD FOR BEING #1 IN HER CLASS!

Fran will receive an award tomorrow for being the best student in her class last semester.  She is stunned and happy, and I am feeling like the goose who laid a golden egg.  Please join me in congratulating Fran for her very hard work, laser-like focus, and endurance.  It isn't often in life that I have had a chance to bear witness to accomplishment like this, and I can't stop smiling!

This is a huge encouragement for her, and I can't wait to see what she does this semester!

Tomorrow's the day!

Today, Monday, was a Mexican holiday (there are so many!) so Fran spent it preparing for her first day of school tomorrow.  She went shopping for food, cooked up a big batch of chilis and beans for the week, washed her clothes, took a shower (or two), sat down for an early dinner, and was asleep by 9pm.  That girl knows how to take care of herself!

She wakes at 6 a.m. tomorrow and I think she said her class starts at 7 a.m.  She's nervous and excited and happy, as it should be.  I will tell you of her first day tomorrow.  Goodnight for now.

Fran Returns to School for Second Semester!

Ha Ha...well, I got the San Felipe mountains in focus!  This was taken on my roof a few days ago.  I'll do better next time!

Fran is going back into the ring next Tuesday, February 4!  Today she left early to sign up for classes and choose her professors.  Because of her high grades she has been put into the "A" group, which means her classes will start early every day, and she will get off earlier in the afternoon.  The "B" group will have a later schedule and not be released til 7 or 8pm.  Other perks hopefully include getting first choice on electives -- she had to take Banda de Guerra last time and had to march around in the hot sun beating a snare drum!

During her long Christmas break she attended classes in English at the Oaxaca Lending Library where she got a scholarship, and continued intermittent classes at the Learning Center.  Yesterday she had to "try out" in order to get a high-level instructor at the Learning Center to coach her on Integral Calculus.  She passed the try-out but said it wasn't easy, and that the instructor -- very valuable to her because he teaches calculus at another technical school -- gave her a bit of a hard time.  Where math is concerned, Tough Love seems to be the preferred method here.  Or maybe just Tough!  The attitude of professors towards students is a bit militaristic to my sensibilities, but Mexico is a much more authoritarian culture, and maybe that's what it takes to weed out students that are less than 100% gung ho.  Fran is pretty focused on her standing in the class, not just passing the courses.

The break was good for Fran.  It gave her the chance to relax a little, concentrate on other things such as English and reading, develop her social life, and no doubt reflect on her experiences last semester in anticipation of what is to come.

Oh!  Also her brothers visited Oaxaca while I was in the States.  Here's a couple of photos, one she took of her brothers in her village some months ago, and one taken over the holidays in a cafe this last Christmas break...

Next year I plan to visit her village with a couple of her donors and I can't wait!  It's not going to be an easy trip, but it will certainly be an adventure!

Back to the subject of her studies...Fran is still very much on trial until the end of her first year, and cannot fail a class.  I know that's not going to happen, but Fran worries!

It has been really cold this winter so far, and we are in for more of the same through February.  Thanks to some donors who visited over Thanksgiving (you know who you are) she was gifted with some warm winter clothes -- and her mother sent her back from her family visit to Cuicatlan with a heavy warm blanket that smelled like remote pueblos I have visited -- of the cooking fire.

Please join me in sending Fran good energy for her upcoming semester.  We are both so grateful for your interest and your help!  Now that she is back in school, I will be blogging more frequently.  Abrazos!