Life after the Influenza

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the long gap between entries. I had wanted to right a post last week during our "vacation" due to the influenza and ended up filling my days up with other things and never got around to it. The last few weeks have been pretty interesting. Last monday, upon finishing my class here at the school for foreign students, the director of the school announced that classes in the entire country would be cancelled until the 6th of may, meaning another week and a half of vacation, after just having had 2 weeks off of school for Semana Santa. I headed home and was informed of the situation more on the news and from my host parents. Cubrebocas, or the medical facemasks began to appear more and more in the streets as people were advised to either stay in their houses or wear masks. In the matter of about 2 days, masks were no longer available in any part of town, as they had all soldout. Needless to say, that didnt stop my host mom from making about 50 homemade masks out of cloth and string. The schools then announced that classes for the elementary and middle school would be shown over the TV during the break in order to not lose so much classroom time. I spent various morning watching the classes with my host sister, who wanted to do everything but spend her time away from school in front of the TV watching her "class".

Like I mentioned before, I managed to find lots of other things to keep me busy during the break. I learned how to make pozole, a traditional mexican soup, tamales and the black beans that my host mom makes. I also taught Omar and his family how to play poker and we spent one afternoon playing, gambling dried black beans instead of pesos. One day I spent at the house of Alejandro´s aunt just outside of Xalapa swimming and relaxing. I also spend the better part of another day teaching my host mom to make pizza, which we sold for their food business instead of the usual rice, beans and meat.

Getting back to classes has been nice as well. We started back up yesterday, although the elementary and middle schools are still on break until the 11th. I came to class today at the school for foreign students to find that about half of the students had gone back home because of the influenza, so the school is fairly empty. Actually one girl from my group returned home as well.

It´s been really fascinating to see the change in mindset that has occured here in Xalapa over the past week regarding the influenza. At first, like I said before, lots of people wore masks in the streets, but after a few days that faded off drastically and things resumed as normal in Xalapa, although the TV news channels indicated otherwise. The widely taken stance on the influenza now is that its been a government conspiracy more than anything else. Most people that I´ve talked to here believe that the influenza exists, but that it was started by the mexican government as a way to distract the mexican people and cause panic. This stance goes along with many other things I´ve observed about peoples thoughts regarding the government that all culminate in a lack of trust and faith in any kind of politics. This stems from a long history of government corruption and deception that continues today and has a major affect on the mindset and feelings towards politicians, police and other officials.

Well, I need to be going now, the school is about to close for lunch. Hope everyone has been well! Until next time!