The Great Chiapas Stomachache

Greetings from Chiapas!

Chiapas is an adventure in ways that I am not ready to articulate yet. I think I will need to process some more before I am ready to really talk about it. I am learning things about myself, among them how much I need to process things before I am ready to talk about them (I NEED TO PROCESS A LOT).

It´s colder, for one. San Cristobal is pretty touristy, for another. I actually had no idea it was such a hot spot.

I keep having moments where I deeply appreciate this opportunity, because I am getting to see things that even the brave tourists probably can´t see. I´ll write about that in more detail once I´ve processed.

The food is pretty good. I´m finding ways to make eating work. I´m not really a picky eater, but still. Yesterday we had one of my favorite meals the whole time at the workers´cafeteria in a coffee co-op in a town called Simojovel (a name which in Tsotsil means ¨field of ants up on high¨): beans, tortillas, eggs, and a bowl of chopped hot chiles and lime juice (basically my favorite food).

I am glad we´re moving so fast because I feel some homesickness starting to crawl in. Mostly I only hear from my parents (whine whine whine) and that´s sort of hard. On the other hand, I hear from my parents quite a bit, and that´s awesome! But I think that, combined with the coffee I´ve been drinking the past two days (not drinking coffee in Chiapas is sort of like deciding to tour some great wine valley and saying ¨nah, wine´s not really my thing¨), combined with the fact that the delegation arrives tomorrow, is the source of my stomachache. So I´m suppressing that, too, until I can process.

Until then--