San Miguel Canoa

I spent the day yesterday in a small agricultural town called San Miguel Canoa. Actually, it's really two towns: Canoa, in the state of Puebla, and San Isidro de Buen Suceso, in the state of Tlaxcala. You simply cross this little bridge taking you from Puebla into Tlaxcala. I am writing a little ethnography about bilingual education in Mexico for one of my classes. I needed to go to this school in San Isidro called the Primaria Leonarda Gomez Blanco. The school has kids between the ages of 6 and 13 and the majority of them come to the school already speaking Nahuatl, the most-spoken indigenous language in Mexico. But, the kids don't know how to write in their native tongue and they also learn Spanish, the dominant language of Mexico. It was a really neat experience and took me like two hours to go 14km on two different buses! I'm getting used to the slower pace of life here so I wasn't too frustrated. The mountain is actually the dormant volcano La Malinche (it has been asleep for over 3000 years), named after Malinalli (also known as Malintzin), an Indian princess (according to one indigenous account after the conquest) who was sold as a slave by her parents to a different indigenous tribe and then she became the personal interpreter for Cortes (because she spoke Nahuatl and Maya and rapidly learned Spanish). She is known in Mexico as a traitor (there are differing opinions but that is the generally accepted one). Anyways, it was a great experience and makes me want to continue to learn about the indigenous languages of Mexico and possibly assist, in my own little way, in trying to change the negative views of indigenous languages spoken here.

This is what a small-town panteon looks like a few weeks after Day of the Dead. Well, at least this panteon looks like this a few weeks after Day of the Dead. This is the panteon of San Miguel Canoa and all of the marigolds are still here. It's very pretty and again, I just love the colors of Mexico's landscape, even when celebrating something like death.

Here is the house in which I am living. Our apartment is the first floor of the building. My friend Olivia has offered me a place to stay until I find my own apartment. I also wanted to include a picture of the gas truck because when I shared this story with my mom and dad, they were quite amused. Every morning this truck or a truck from a different gas company comes down our street. You can hear the truck coming because it plays music through loud speakers. The music is really funky and makes me want to get out of bed and do the merengue! I'm kidding (I'm usually out of bed between 5:30-6am) but the music is really funky and fun. Then, when the music has pulled you in, it stops for just a second and this man's deep voice comes on and says "Gaaaaas". The music then starts as quickly as it stopped and repeats over and over again. Last week Olivia had to buy a tank of gas for the apartment and she went running outside early in the morning and then her boyfriend hooked up the tank for us. Where else am I going to have such an experience?