EIL Intercultural Learning

Preparations for the Gran Fiesta on Tuesday are coming along well, although the work is beginning to take it´s toll on my body! Repeatedly winching buckets of bricks with no gloves on has left my hands blistered and sore, and bare-footed football has left similar scars on my feet! The day is long, working from  7:30am-6pm with only an hour for lunch, but the progress is amazing, the roof is almost complete and it looks magnificent.

¡Buenas tardes! Things are really busy in Ventanilla in my last week here, as the whole town is preparing for it`s annual Fiesta de Santa Maria. Every year the men from the village spend about a week building in the village church in preparation for the Mass and Rosaries of the festival. This year, the villagers have sacrificed the money for a big musical performance at the festival in order to build an impressive roof for the church. I have been helping with the construction which is sweaty work because of the lack of shade!

¿Que Onda Folks? I´ve really settled into life here in Ventanilla on the South West Coast of Mexico. This week I started giving guitar lessons to some of the local boys, and have discovered first hand why this part of the world gets a reputation for being laid back...! Here, 4pm means anywhere between ten past 4 and 6pm, which makes scheduling lessons tricky! Still, they´re getting better, and I have a couple of Carlos Santanas here in the making!

Greetings from Paradise! It has been two weeks since I arrived in the beautiful pueblito of Ventanilla, and each day I find myself more and more tempted to destroy my passport and stay put! Ventanilla is breathtakingly beautiful, with 70km of white sands and clear oceans, a vast labyrinth of a lagoon infested with crocodiles, iguanas and tortugas, and an idyllic island of palm trees and hammocks a short boat trip away! Life moves at a much slower pace here, and it has taken a while to adjust to ´el ritmo tropical´.

Hola From Mexico! Myself and fellow EIL volunteer Karen O´Regan are soaking up the incredible atmosphere in one of Mexico´s most culturally diverse states, Oaxaca. Oaxaca City really is fiesta central at the minute, with parades, music and dancing every day and night in preparation for the annual Guelegetza festival on Monday the 20th and 27th of July. Each community demonstrates its local costume, music and dance in festivals all over the state, and the sea of colours in the streets really is a sight to behold!