21 November 2013

November life updates!

AH! So I haven't blogged about anything interesting or entertaining or stupid and boring in three weeks. I'm sorry! Life has been pretty hectic in between school, work, thesis, transcribing, blah blah blah. Plus side, I am just 35 minutes away from being DONE transcribing for good! Downside, I have NO FUN STORIES.

That's not entirely true. I have a couple fairly interesting tidbits in my life:

1) Amsterdam didn't happen because Al and I have been so busy. But I am less than a month out from going back to America for Christmas, yay!

2) I wrote an article for an anthropology blog, yay! Here, have my full name.

3) Al has started writing for the Huffington Post Germany, yay! Here, have his real name.

4) I started taking Mongolian! Because three weeks into the semester, we found out our uni offers it. I don't know why I was so surprised, it's almost like I forgot my uni also offers obscure languages like Nahuatl and Lakota and Tok Pisin. I figured better late than never, especially because we are actually relocating to Mongolia at the end of this.

5) HOLY MOTHER OF GOD MONGOLIAN IS SO HARD. I swore to myself I would never learn anything harder than German, and now where am I? I'll tell you. Staring down the barrel of 8 cases, 8 ways to negate a sentence, 4 O sounds I can't tell apart, something called vowel harmony, and the fucking Cyrillic alphabet. So there's that. Trying to read makes me feel like I've taken a brick to the cerebral cortex. It doesn't help that everyone in the class has already spent time in Mongolia/learned Classical Mongolian because they're linguistics majors and get off on noun declensions and paronyms. I asked the one girl today how many languages she had fluent speaking command of today, and she told me six. Six. Jesus. I mean, my goal is to eventually speak seven, but I figured 2 and a half at 25 wasn't terrible.

6) Kulturschock! is getting an overhaul sometime next spring/early summer. Al and I actually have plans for this whole blog thing come Move To Mongolia time, so there's that.

7) Why did it take me this long to get into Battlestar Galactica?

8) I only have seven things.

That's all for you today, folks! Gotsta jet, I am powering through these stupid transcriptions!

01 November 2013

American vs. German WWII films

The other day while taking a shower I got to pondering WWII (as you do), and how my understanding of it as an American is entirely different from anything I've encountered here. WWII in America is an affirmation of American awesomeness. WWII in Germany is an ever-present monster that informs the vast majority of German politics, culture, and national outlook seventy-some odd years later. Hang out in Germany long enough (i.e., like a day) and you are bound to run into WWII, because the past is never far, especially when the past was fucking awful.

Curious as to whether those differences in American/German understandings of WWII translated to film depictions of the war, I convinced my boyfriend that we, one American and one German, needed to watch one American and one German WWII film* and discuss. So that's what we did.

*The films we went with are technically miniseries. So sue me.

Let's meet our players.

American series: Band of Brothers
German Title: Wir Waren Brüder
Follows Easy Company and the 101 Airborne paratroopers as WWII happens and they fight across France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany. Based on the Stephen Ambrose book of the same title. Actually happened.


German series: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter (literally, Our Mothers, Our Fathers)
American Title: Generation War
Follows five friends across the course of the war. Two are soldiers on the Russian front, one is a nurse, one becomes a singer, and one's Jewish, so you can imagine how well that works out for him.



Spoiler alert: everybody dies.

Just kidding. But if you haven't seen BoB or UMUV yet and you're planning on it, you should probably stop reading now because I'm going to give away basically everything.

Difference 1: Theater of Operations

One of the first things I noticed when I decided we were going to do this was how American films are split pretty evenly down the middle in terms of whether they're about the European or Pacific theater. Most everyone can name a couple famous movies from each theater. If anything, I think we might be slightly (slightly) more skewed towards Europe, but it's not awful.

Nearly all German films are about the fighting in either Russia or North Africa. There are virtually no, I repeat, NO German films about the Germans fighting the Americans. When I brought this up with Al, his response was "NUH-UH. There are PLENTY." So I challenged him to come up with them. Three days later, he'd come up with all of one, so there's that.

Al says that the reason for this is because the European front for Germany wasn't all that interesting--they got it really fast, they lost it really fast, and we're done now. The Russian front, however, is where Germany really lost the war, especially after Stalingrad. The Russians did what they always do, namely, let the enemy hang out in the snow and freeze to death (fact: never start a land war in Asia), and the Germans obliged in great numbers. And it sucked. And everyone knows maximum suckage results in maximum amounts of movie deals later on.

So that's what Al thinks, and he's probably right. I however, think it has something to do with the fact that it's more socially acceptable to hate Russia for WWII than America.

Difference 2: Distinguishing between the Wehrmacht  and the SS

One of the things German WWII films are very clear on is the difference between the Wehrmacht (the army) and the SS (Senior Shitheads). It's debatable whether and how much the former knew about concentration camps--the latter ran them. In one UMUV scene, in which the soldier brothers are clearing out a farmhouse in Russia with the help of Ukrainian (for lack of a better term) mercenaries, we see a pretty stark differentiation. The soldier brothers see a little girl being thrown over the shoulder of a giant Ukrainian man, and put a stop to it by drawing their guns on the guy, saying the little girl is a civilian and they're not to be harming civilians.

Up saunters an SS officer who informs the brothers that that little girl is a Jew and therefore a danger to society. The brothers say they don't care, she's still a child and a civilian and they'll take care of her until they find a safe place for her. The SS officer reluctantly agrees, and hands the girl a piece of chocolate. Then he puts her in a headlock and shoots her point-blank. The brothers are horrified and disgusted, and the differences between them and the SS are clear enough to be seen by Stevie Wonder.

In BoB, there's no distinction to be made between the Wehrmacht and the SS, and the series goes one step further in barely distinguishing between Nazis and civilian Germans. For example, after E Company has been in Germany awhile, one soldier says to another something along the lines of "Isn't it funny how long we've been in Germany, and we haven't seen a single Nazi?" referencing how all the Germans they meet profess not to be Nazis.Which they clearly don't believe. 

Difference 3: Morality

A giant difference between German and American WWII films is how they present and deal with morality. If you've ever read BoB the book, Stephen Ambrose comes right out and says "The Americans were morally superior to the Germans." This is also something that we, as a culture, truly believe, as in "Those bastard Germans, they had concentration camps. What? We did too? Well, maybe the fucking Japs shouldn't have bombed Pearl Harbor if they didn't want to live in a camp. Have I mentioned how awesome we are? We are so awesome. Anyway, I bet Japs love camping. I was a Boy Scout. Boy Scouts shouldn't let gay people in. We are so awesome." 

This fundamental belief in our own morality is beaten so hard into our war films that the DVDs come home with bruises. But since very few people are naive enough to paint that black/white a picture of war, American WWII films are pictures of morality with a few moments of immorality--usually committed by someone that's not the hero--thrown in so audiences know that occasionally, some people do bad things in war.

In German films, it's the opposite. Immorality is the rule, and the snippets of morality (produced by the "heroes") that pop up are the exception. Characters are walking, talking propaganda machines--until the war gets so bad and the temperature drops so low that someone realizes Hitler has left them to freeze their asses off outside of Moscow. Cue unhappiness.

Difference 4: The effects of war.

In American films, war brings out the best in people. BoB is basically one long chronicling of how the men of Easy Company find new reserves of personal strength, courage, camraderie, and faith in order to meet and best the challenges that the war throws at them. They are heroes to be admired and exalted.

Unlike the poor fuckers of UMUV. Ten minutes into the first episode, Friedhelm, the younger soldier brother, remarks that "war will bring out the worst in us," and this serves as prophecy for the rest of the episode. Greta, the singer girl, starts an affair with an SS officer. Charly, the nurse, turns in a fellow nurse at the hospital upon discovering she's a Jew, and even though she'd done nothing except be kind to Charly. Friedhelm, the younger solider brother, suggests forcing Ukrainian peasants at gunpoint to clear a minefield--personally and by stepping on said mines. And Wilhelm lets his brother get beaten up by other soldiers and shoots peasants in the head. Turning BoB's morality on it's head, the first episode of UMUV is one long chronicling of how everyone is an awful fucking person. Except for the Jewish guy who, somehow, you still don't like. You feel awful for him because you know what's coming, but you still don't like him.

Im summary: American WWII films are full of heroes. German WWII films are full of anti-heroes.

Difference 5: Layers

Given the amount of shit the characters in them have to grapple with, it's fair to say that German WWII films go significantly deeper than American ones. In UMUV, you watch as all the characters wrestle with the terrible things they've done, and see every painful moment of their struggle to forgive themselves, redeem themselves and come to terms with themselves and everything that's happened (to varying degrees of success). They are, for the most part, generally decent human beings thrown into awful circumstances beyond their control, slowly realizing that the glorious war they signed up for turns out to be epic suckage. They yo yo between the terrible things they're forced to do and the terrible things they choose to do and try to find some way to come out of the war with their humanity intact

American WWII films, by comparison, are practically hunky dory. Because BoB claims moral superiority that is never questioned or challenged, it's a great exercise in patriotism but goes nowhere in terms of character development. Practically everyone is your favorite, and you know most of your favorites will make it home. And if none of your favorites come home, well, then you are terrible at picking horses. In UMUV, however, you're not sure everyone's coming home, or even if you want everyone to come home. Your feelings towards the characters are just as complicated as their feelings about themselves, something you don't see nearly as often in American WWII films.

Difference 6: The Ending

BoB has a great ending. They win.

UMUV has an awful ending. Berlin is a hot mess of rubble, the younger soldier brother commits suicide by Russian soldiers, the singer has been executed in prison for saying bad things about Hitler, the nurse gets raped by a Russian soldier but makes it back, and the older solider brother kills his commander, defects (for the 2nd time) and walks to Berlin from Middle Of Nowhere, Russia. 

And then, to top it all off, your German boyfriend gives you the lowdown on his grandmother's 1000-mile flight on foot to escape the advancing Red Army, and that's when you realize you require an episode or five of Friends in order to regain your will to live.

Happy watching!

17 October 2013

The Current German Election Crisis*

*as understood by an American who does not really understand it

Many of you know  that Germany is in the midst of an election crisis. For those of you who don't know: Germany is in the midst of an election crisis. Many of you also know that in my 2+ years of living in Germany, I have been notoriously lazy in attempting to understand the German political system, because--let's not beat around the bush--the 7 or so parties that regularly fight in the colosseum that is Der Spiegel are approximately 5 more parties than my brain is accustomed to dealing with. We like to make things simple in America--Democrats tell Republicans to go fuck themselves, Republicans tell Democrats to go fuck themselves, and Independents, which is a fancy name for Everyone Who Will Never Be President, do a hoedown on the sidelines and get paid attention to by exactly no one. Easy peasy. If politics were a game, Americans would play Guess Who (has a mistress and does coke lines off their intern's hot bod). Germans would play a fucked-up version of Monopoly in which players can spontaneously team up to monopolize the railroads, there are bodies under Park Place, and the banker smiles too much.

As a result of their odd and persnickety system, the German political landscape looks less like a lovely Amsel Adams photograph and more like a bomb went off in the backyard. Which, metaphorically speaking, one just did, and it is called The Most Recent Election. My efforts to understand The Most Recent Election have mostly consisted of listening to my politically-active boyfriend complain on the phone and accidentally clicking on a Facebook post linking to Welt.de when I mean to hit the one below it on 19 Reasons Why Pants are the Enemy. My initial reaction to this mix-up was sadness. My next reaction was "This would be so much more interesting if there were dinosaurs."

Challenge to self: accepted.

Let's meet the dinosaurs. On the right to left spectrum, here are the five most important dinosaurs:






 T-Rex: the CDU (aka, Merkel's party)
 Place at the party table: center (for Americans, the CDU is equivalent to a more liberal version of our Democrats)



                               

                                 

   
Pterodactyl: the FDP
Place at the party table: center








Brontosaurs: Die Grüne
Place at the party table: Left





 
Stegosaurus: the SPD
Place at the party table: To the left to the left

                                                                                                             



Triceratops: Die Linke:
Place at the party table: Left left left left. Formerly the communist party  that ruled East Germany with an iron fist and nudist beaches.







This is what parliament Dinosaur Island looked like after the 2009 election:


In order to get shit done and pass laws (e.g., caveman hunting season, assigning asteroid watch, carrying Jesus around) the T-Rexes (CDU) and the Pterodactyls (FDP) teamed up as best buddies in order to create a majority.


This way, they were able to roam the island and keep all the other dinosaurs in line, which worked out pretty well, especially when the other islands started suffering under the financial crisis. The dinosaurs were like, "Your lives suck, but we are doing GREAT."

Now this is what parliament Dinosaur Island looks like after the most recent election:


The T-Rexes got even more votes, but their buddies, the Pterodactyls, got voted off the island completely, which means the T-Rexes no longer have a majority to get stuff done. This is a problem, because now the T-Rexes have to try and make friends with one of their sworn enemies (either the Stegosauri (SPD) or the Brontosauri (Die Grüne)) in order to get a working majority on Dinosaur Island again. What about the Triceratops, you ask? The T-Rexes and the Triceratops are mortal enemies (the level above sworn enemies from which there is no coming back). Like werewolves and vampires, just with giant lizards.


In the days since the election went to hell, neither the Stegosauri nor the Brontosauri have been able to find common ground with the T-Rexes, and indeed the last T-Rex/Stegosaurus meeting ended in a screaming match. So now the Stegosauri and the Brontosauri are considering teaming up with the Triceratops to form a majority, in which case the T-Rexes would be out of power entirely. The problems with this are: 1) this would result in about as socialist a government as the US is already accusing Dinosaur Island of being, and 2) if, theoretically, enough Brontosauri flat-out refuse to work with those pinko commie Triceratops, their plan is null and void and Dinosaur Island would have to throw out the entire election and have a new one.


To summarize, no one has any idea what's going on.

The End.

09 October 2013

Ah, Germany...

After the chaotic, helter-skelter, unapologetically in-your-face time that was Mexico, here are the things it's a relief to be back to:

--People standing in lines. Alternately, people not cutting in front of you in line.
--Cars letting your cross the street and not trying to take you out in what I assume to be a pedestrian point system redeemable for tax breaks or tacos
--Being able to break a 100 bill without being made to feel like you've not only ruined the other person's day but killed their dog as well.
--Not being harassed on the street for everything from being foreign to wearing capris to not buying a useless mini-hammock for your pet ferret which you don't have.
--Fresh air.
--People actually adhering to things like stop signs, lane markers, and traffic lights, rather than taking them as "guidelines."

And here are the things I miss already:

--The weather. The sun. Tank tops. Summer. Walking outside and being like "You know what? It is actually hot today."
--The smells. Every time I get back to the first world after being somewhere else, I feel like I'm missing a limb. Then I realize that nothing smells like anything in developed countries.
--The colors. Mexicans know a lot about painting things to assault the eyeballs, and I love it.
--How cheap everything was. For the price of a one-way bus ticket in Göttingen, I could ride the subway in Mexico City fourteen times.
--Every day being exciting. When we were working, we never knew what adventures or mishaps the next day would throw at us, which was both exhilarating and exhausting, but mostly exhilarating. My days now consist of transcribing, working, reading, and transcribing, sans excitement.
--Things being open. All days of the week. Until seven pm. I know, crazy right?

And now I've got to get back to transcribing. Adios!

02 October 2013

Things We Don't Tell Our Mothers Until After The Fact

So when I found Jovanna in the airport an August 16, the first thing we did was catch up on our lives. The second thing we did was make a pact not to tell our mothers any of the weird things that happened to us until after we were back in our respective countries and our mothers could stop thinking that a drug cartel was going to mail them our heads in a box. Now that's I'm safely back in Germany with my head firmly attached to my neck, here's a list of all the things we didn't tell our mothers.

1) The protests

The center of Mexico City was rocked by absolutely massive protests while we were there...and we lived two blocks away from the heart of it all. The area all around our hostel turned into a massive tent city, and the protests got so crazy that the subway station was constantly being shut down and the cops were everywhere. Everywhere. One time, we came out of our hostel to find six buses full of cops in riot gear lined up along our street. With their automatic weapons hanging from their necks, because, you know, anywhere else and they'd be too far to reach.



2) Crime

While we felt very safe in Mexico City, we still bought dummy wallets just to be careful because there was a lot of petty crime that we heard about/was experienced by our friends. One of our friends from the hostel was out on the streets one day when someone, he didn't see who, tried to slash his pocket with a knife. Unfotunately, his hand got in the way. So instead of cutting his pocket, they just cut him. Three guys we knew were robbed by police officers. Apparently, a much-loved tactic by the D.F police is to find foreigners drinking on the street, approach them, and tell them they're going to be arrested unless they pay up. Newsflash for everyone going to D.F., the worst the cops can do to you is take your drink away--they cannot, regardless of what they tell you, take you to the station. But if you're foreign and your Spanish sucks, they'll absolutely take advantage of you and take everything in your wallet. One guy we knew paid 300 pesos ($23, €17). Another guy lost 700 pesos ($54, 40€). Another friend had 20 pesos in his wallet, so the cops asked him if he had a bank card. Drunken idiot he was, he said yes, and lost a full 1000 pesos ($77, €58) to the cops. 

The worst thing that happened to us was Jovanna was out buying tacos and put her wallet in the pocket of her hoodie. As she was walking back to the hostel, she felt someone's hand reaching into her hoodie pocket...so she smacked it and kept walking. Then got back to the hostel and said "So...I think someone just tried to rob me?" "What did you do?" "Hit him?" "Yeah, that's fair."

3) Getting into a stranger's car

The back story is that we had met this guy briefly and were scheduled to interview him later on. The night before our interview, he called us up and said "I'm in my car across the street from the hostel. Get in the car. Bring your laptop." We were like "...Yeah, alright." 

No, he did not rape us and chop off our heads. Actually, he just wanted to give us a USB full of traditional music he thought might be useful for our project. We figured he'd be fine since he seemed very nice, but decided not to tell our mothers that this happened.

4) That time I almost got us trapped in a riot

Remember the teacher's protest from Number 1? Jovanna and I, after a month of working in and around Mexico City, were off to Puebla to follow a lead, hopefully get an interview or two, and see a bit more of the country. This, however, required first getting to the bus station, which in turn required walking through the teacher's protest to get to the subway. Not that this was a big deal, seeing as we did it every day, and the worst thing that happened to us was we getting smacked in the head by the low-hanging tarps. 

As we walked through the protest, we noticed that a lot of people were packing up and leaving and figured it was because the law they had been protesting had just been signed by the president. Police in helicopters were swooping around overhead overseeing everything, and several former protesters cheered and waved at them. To greet the crowd below, one of the copters swooped in really low and hovered right above us, sending one rain-soaked tarp flying and giving me a bath. That's when I heard the music--a drum corps! That's cool! Plus, lots of former protesters were waving sticks to the beat of the music and chattering away gaily. I wanted to stick around and watch the musicians, but Jovanna, being a total bitch, was like "we need to get the fuck out of here NOW so get moving." Reluctantly, I started strolling. Jovanna was not pleased and was all "Tina. MOVE. NOW."

As it turns out, the reason the protests were clearing out is because the cops had been authorized to use deadly force to get rid of the people. The crowds were not cheering at the helicopters, they were jeering and throwing things. The copter did not come down low to greet the crowd, it came down to intimidate them. The drum corps was not a drum corps, it was riot cops in formation slapping their shields with their batons and moving in on the square a couple yards from where we were. And the people around us were not chattering gaily, they were flipping shit and arming themselves with stakes and bats because word had gotten around that there were fire hoses, tear gas and rubber bullets on the way.

All of which, in my complete obliviousness, I missed. All of which I discovered two hours later when Jovanna was like "So...please explain to me why you strolled through the pre-riot like you were on a picnic?" And I was like "...What pre-riot?"

5) Questionable adventure times

So one of the really cool things Jovanna and I did during this trip was take a short side-trip to the beach so we could transcribe interviews somewhere that wasn't D.F. While on the beach on our first day, we were approached by a random guy and offered a tour to go swimming with florescent plankton. We agreed because fuck yeah florescent plankton, that's why. It was only later that night, when he picked us up at the gas station and herded us into the back of his shady pick-up truck, in which we then drove along winding roads in the pitch black for 45 minutes, that it occurred to me that perhaps what we were doing was really stupid. Because we had no idea where we were, or where we were going. Also, this was an unofficial tour, not one that went through the hostel or anything. It occurred to me, as I was contemplating my death, that perhaps we had grown a bit too comfortable in Mexico.

Long story short, no, the guy was not a murderer, he was actually really nice. And the florescent plankton were SO COOL. We jumped in the lagoon and the water lit up!

6) The blockade

Our long, thirteen hour bus trip back to Mexico City turned into a long, eighteen hour bus trip back to Mexico City because some oil workers and farmers got pissed off about something so they blockaded the road. For nearly five hours. Because apparently, that's what you do in Mexico when you're mad. I woke up right when we got stuck on the road, only to discover there was a cockroach infestation under my seat and by my wall. So I flipped shit. Conversation went as follows:

Jovanna: Oh my God, Tina, there's a blockade. They don't know how long it'll last. Last week it was eighteen hours. We might have to turn around. We're stuck here indefinitely.

Tina: FUCK THE BLOCKADE, THERE ARE COCKROACHES. UNDER. MY. SEAT.

Jovanna: ...I hate you right now.

So I made Jovanna sacrifice having two seats to stretch out across so that I could take refuge in the area of the bus that was not infested with cockroaches. I was so relieved to be away from the cockroaches that I couldn't have cared about the blockade if you'd paid me.

and finally...

7) Busing an hour out of the city to interview a total stranger, missing the last bus back, getting stranded, sleeping in her house, and not having our phones to tell people where we were.


Mom, remember when you texted me and Al in a panic because you hadn't heard from me in nearly two days? Yeah, that's what happened.

So the story is that we had an interview set up with this lady who lived in Texcoco, an hour outside of D.F. Due to the rain and the ridiculous crowding on the subways, we were over an hour late to our interview. The poor lady waited for us the entire time. When we finally arrived, she herded us into a cab and off to her house we went.

It was right about then that I realized I didn't have my cell phone. Oops.

The interview went really late, and when we missed the last bus back to Mexico City, she offered to let us crash in the spare bedroom. We weren't entirely sure, but there was also the fact that we didn't have enough money to go to a hotel or take a taxi back to D.F. Anyway, she and her family were AMAZING, they were so lovely and warm and they fed us and told us stories and dressed me up in traditional Nahua clothing and it was awesome:

Figuring that my mom would probably be freaking out, I figured I'd Facebook her real quick and be done. However, the house were we staying at didn't have indoor plumbing, let along internet, so after dodging the rain to use the toilet in the concrete bunker, I borrowed Jovanna's phone to text my mom. Then I thought: will my mom freak out more if she doesn't hear from me, or if I tell her I'm alive but sleeping in a total stranger's house? I went with Door Number 1, and I think I made the better decision.

(Sorry Mom!) 

While Jovanna and I had an awesome night, we do acknowledge that what we did may or may not have been a little dumb. The End

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!