24 hours into the trip

So I´ve been in Mexico for 24 hrs now and have already had quite an adventure. Yesterday evening Kaitlin, a girl who is interning here from Chicago and is staying with Adriana, has been here just over a week so she showed me around the town. It´s a lovely place here with lots of big plazas where people of all ages hang out and sell goods and listen to music. There was this one huge fountain that spouts water along with the beat of the music. Last night the music there reminded me of Disney songs. Muy interesante. Kaitlin and I bought big smoothies and sat in the plaza, the only 2 gringos in sight.

Today I accompanied Adriana to a meeting with a wide range of people from University profesor to people running social businesses and other community organizations. It was hosted at a hotel by a group that helps advise the state government as to the actions they should take to benefit the community. So they hosted all these people as a sort of screening of the community needs. We each had a keyboard in front of us and they asked us to type suggestions as to what we thought the state government should do in the upcoming 3 years, classified them into several different groups like education and or sustainability, and then voted our our top choices in each category. Afterwards, I went with Adriana to a brief meeting with 2 people who are working with her to investigate the depression that many women face in these communities that are hit heavy by migration. Then we drove into the actual city of Guanjuato to stop by an organization that gives grants for projects like this research one so she could say hi to the people who make these decisions (good move, since it´s all about showing up, my dad used to tell me). The city was gorgeous! All cobblestone, narrow roads, beautiful old plazas with lots of trees situated between tall, colorful houses and businesses, withe the whole community embedded in the side of the mountains. We drove through these great stone tunnels that are very unlike those in the states. These are all the natural stone on the inside and have a few lights and not only go straight but turn every which way, with people parking on the side. It was just like a normal street, but underground.

I´ll leave in just a few minutes to go to El Gusano where I will be spending most of my time here. I will also go to 3 other communities for about 3 days each to photograph there as well, but El Gusano is the focus. I will be with Ian and Shaw the whole time (now you can breathe freely, parents) and supposedly I even get to stay in a house that has a bathroom! I can´t wait to see the guys and hear about their adventures thus far, and I especially cant wait to meet the people of El Gusano. It has been a semester building up to this. Even though I dont know them yet, I have so much hope in their capacity to love and I think they have a message to teach the world and hopefully my work will be able to provide an outlet. Adriana and I are both dreamers, so putting us in a car together, we came up with some tight ideas for ways we can use photography to teach in the states and raise money for la Fundacion and El Gusano.

Time to go. I´ll hopefully get internet connection around the 2 or 3 of June, so look for more updates then. Much love, and keep dreaming big and loving recklessly!