Hey all! It’s been a month or so that I have been living and researching in Valladolid, Mexico, and it is the perfect time to talk so far about how my experience has been.
When I first arrived here, which seems like so long ago, I faced a huge obstacle when it came to my original research question and goals. In my first week, I had little success finding information and sources, and that was partly due to my set-up and specific questions I was trying to investigate more about, and also partly because the area I am working with is not very common around these parts. So I had to pivot and change my research question and goals, casting a wider net. I went from my original goal of studying psychedelic mushrooms to just the study of overall all mushrooms that grow in the peninsula, and the culture around them. After making this change, and working hard to connect with as many people as possible, I started finding success come the second week. At this point, after the hard work I put in, I have been very successful and am looking to finish out this last part of my stay here in strong fashion.
Daily life here is a bit different from my hometown in the DMV area. First of all, the weather here is very hot and humid, with no A/C inside most places including the house I live in, so schedules usually revolve around that. Trying to prevent walking long distances in peak heat hours is key, so is staying hydrated throughout the entire day and using fans or water to help cool down. Another difference here is the neighborhood, and how everything is a very walkable distance from our house. For every meal, either I or a member of the host family goes out to buy the ingredients needed to make said meal right before it. Trips to the grocery store to stock up for a week, or even a month, are a wild concept here. Last thing I can talk about is how much I walk here. I walk pretty much everywhere, despite the heat, and it honestly is a great feeling. Whether I am walking 1 minute to buy tortillas next door for our lunch or walking 30 minutes to the city center, it feels great to walk around here and not have to rely on anything but my own feet for transportation. It helps that the city is relatively small and almost completely flat, so walking is never really a hassle. On the rare times I don’t walk, I can take a taxi for a very cheap price, so it is not too big of a deal if I don’t want to walk a certain time for whatever reason.
My favorite experience so far has been attending mass here at local churches. I am a devout Catholic and I gladly have been able to attend mass here in Valladolid pretty much every Sunday. The churches here are extremely old and historic, dating back to centuries before today, and they are also beautiful. Getting to see how others practice their faith in a different part of the world, and joining in on that practice, feels great and gives me joy. There are of course differences in services between here and the U.S., most notably in the language, but there are far more similarities, and it is interesting to see that even despite being in different countries, the religious practices and ceremonies still remain largely the same. It has also been a source for me to practice my Spanish and to get to connect with locals, something I have also enjoyed deeply. Overall the whole program here has been an excellent experience so far, and I will be back to talk more about it once it ends!