Ascending the summit....

It didn’t rain today! It was an absolutely beautiful day here in Mexico. The sun was shining- it was great! The only bad thing was my shotty internet (la red) connection tonight, but I guess I will manage. Since it was so beautiful I decided to take lots of pictures of Patzcuaro in the sunshine, so you should check them out on my flickr site (See link to the right).
This morning we went to Spanish class, met a cute perro, and played Spanish language bingo. In the afternoon we met with Richard and had an intense meeting about what exactly our projects and responsibilities are going to be for the summer. I am going to be designing and implementing a survey to gain a better understanding of the quality and availability of the health care resources in la cuenca (the mountain basin surrounding lake patzcuaro). I will be surveying the health care centers in about 22 mestizo and Purepecha communities to gain a better understanding of who is covered by which clinics and what the training of the staff is in those clinics as well as the quality of those clinics. I’m pumped. Although, I hope my Spanish will be good enough to actually conduct the surveys I design (If not, a staff member can help me and then I can analyze the data).
Around 7 we decided we wanted to climb to the top of the mountain we live on. Oh man, what an idea! It was beautiful, but lots of sweat, blood, and tears contributed to getting us to the top. Ok, perhaps I am over exaggerating but there definitely was lots of sweat and gasping. Uphill hiking is hard, but uphill hiking when there is little oxygen in the air that your body is not used to is even harder. It was amazing though, twice we were passed by some super athletic locals who could climb quite easily- I still don’t know how they didn’t die running up the mountain.
After our epic summit scaling, we decided to cook dinner! It wasn’t very exciting just veggies, pasta, and avocado salsa, but after our intense outdoor workout anything would have tasted great. After dinner we sorted beans! This was a pretty cool part of my day. I had no idea how beans were cooked. For those of you out there who know nothing about beans like me I will update you. First you have to sort them to check for rocks (?) and strange looking ones (This was a fun part- I had NO idea beans had such a visual variety, so amazing). Then you have to soak them overnight so that they can absorb H20. Then you have to let them simmer for FOUR hours! Woah, I don’t think I have EVER spent four hours preparing any sort of meal or food derivative. Tomorrow will surely be an adventure en los frijoles. There is a tortillaria down the street, so we are going to make rice and beans with fresh tortillas, peppers, and cilantro. Yummy. I will let you know how it goes.