30 September 2013

Heathrow, the ten hour layover

Hello everyone! I am currently going on hour seven of my epic ten-hour layover in Heathrow, and I've managed to hook myself up with 45 minutes of free internet so BLOG POST it is.

Mexico. Was awesome. There were a lot of things I really loved about it: the weather, the sun, the research, the places we went, the cheap American food and yes, you can judge me for that last one. There were also a couple things I wasn't too fond off, namely, being a walking dollar sign for everybody and constantly getting shit for being foreign. By the end, Jovanna and I had solved that first one though, mostly because we got tag-team shopping down to a science. The latter we just had to try and laugh off.

So yes. I'm happy with the research we got and really proud of ourselves for how successful we were, given the amount of roadblocks in our way. We landed in Mexico with no idea of where to go, what to do, and no help whatsoever from all the people who had promised to help us. But we got shit done, and it was awesome. I took Mexico on for the challenge, and I think I can safely say that we rose to it!

The way back has been loooooong and occasionally awkward. On the plane, I said to myself, "Well, this has been fun, but it'll be nice to go to a country that's not so xenophobic." And then, in the two hours I spent waiting for my next flight in the Dallas airport, I got harassed about my green card status, my visa, and whether I was "one of those Brazilians." All this while standing in line for American citizens. So thank you, Dallas, for confirming pretty much everything we East Coasters believe about Texas' ability to throw spontaneous racism parties. The flight to London was long, my pumpkin muffin got squished, and my in-flight entertainment was for whatever reason stuck on the Disney Channel, but it worked out. Mostly because my muffin was still awesome and the flight attendants fixed the Disney Channel, so I was happy. Yay, muffins!

Up next, a blog post about all the things that happened that we kept from our mothers. In the meantime, here, have all these pictures of us running around in Mexico. Our research tooks us to some pretty cool spots, and the other places we went to on our days off/when we were hard-core transcribing.

I fed a squirrel!


It's not an adventure if there's no shady truck ride up a mountain.

Naturally-occurring infitiny pools? Yes please.













Attack of the weird creatures!










Adios!

07 September 2013

More Adventuretime Updates

Hey all!

Sorry I haven't been blogging much! The project is going really well, we've had a bunch of interviews and have several more lined up. Fieldwork is really fun but really hard. There are a lot of politics in the area we're working that we didn't know about, but which may wind up making my thesis. They're really interesting, but it means that there are very few people willing to talk to us that don't have their own agenda in doing so.

Thus far, the most difficult part of fieldwork has proven to be pretending to like people we really...don't. While most of the people we've met and talked to are awesome and we love them dearly, there are definitely some people we have to fake positive feelings for. We've also been stood up at interviews and been cockblocked by people who don't want us talking to other people, but for every tough experience, we have an amazing one. So basically, we go from emotional high to emotional low in the space of half an hour.

On the whole though, this has been a ridiculously positive experience. We've been in the same hostel for three weeks and are good friends with the staff, as well as numerous groups that have passed through the hostel. And even though we're basically learning fieldwork on the fly, we're pretty stoked with the success we've had thus far.

Don't worry, we haven't forgotten to have fun! We went to Teotihuacan the other day, so YAY. Have a lot of pictures of us climbing shit.














We also checked out the Frida Kahlo museum, which I would highly recommend.





Up next, we're hiking the volcano. YAY!

That's all I got for the moment. Adios, amigos!