Discovering What the Mayan Calendar Reads

Usually when you find these study abroad type of editorials in the Nexus, you can kinda call out what people will talk about. They go to a trendy European city, they lecture you about the world-class food that they have there, count you a short tale about the ‘exciting’ nightlife, and in the end, after comparing the place to IV, they go on to say that there is nothing like studying abroad because of the surprises it brings. I’m Chris, and I’m here studying abroad in Mexico, a country everyone including my own mother (who grew up there) warned me about coming to. I’ll try not to bore you with the same sequence of topics in my piece here. But of course, I do agree with them in one aspect: that there is nothing like studying abroad.  Mainly when you get the chance to enter places few have seen, like I have with living in a Mayan home amidst hundreds of small indigenous communities. How did this happen? Well, I guess you can say it’s like one of those surprises we students abroad often state.

Before I even left for this muddled but gorgeous neighboring country the US has, there was an anxious family back home and the expressions on some people’s faces saying: “Why the fuck are you going there?” that had me a little bit fretful about coming here. It was a whirlpool of mixed feelings I had and, reasonably, the worries stem from the current Drug War that has gotten bloodier by the month and is spreading across ‘la republica’. You can even argue that it’s spread into the hands of the US as well, as just not too long ago three US embassy workers were assassinated. There was that topic, and there was also the one about swine flu. This was constantly brought up every time I answered the question of where I was going to studying abroad. I always found the theme of swine flu to be a bit funny and ironic since the chances of getting it in IV were perhaps the same as they are here (If you would recall the numerous cases last summer). Up until this day, almost exactly 3 months since I arrived here, still no swine flu and fortunately, I haven’t run into any problems with the drug cartels. So, what exactly has this choice brought me to? (more…)