Wednesday the 20th of February
Not much happened during the day... I felt kinda sick, and ended up just hanging out in the room most of the time. My stomach felt all fluttery, my head hurt (despite the meds I took) and my neck and back were sore as hell for no apparent reason.
But today was the day of the Lunar eclipse, and I was very excited to see it; my original plan was to go to the roof of the house to watch it, but Brandon came up with a better one. We were to go to Progreso to watch it, sitting on the beach. This idea eventually led to the formation of weekend plans, but we'll get to that later. We jumped on the bus, getting there around 6:30; the eclipse wasn't to start until well after 7:00 at night.
We walked down the beach, finding a spot way at the end to camp out, and I set up my camera and equipment. It was fantastic, the moon was bright enough (nearly full!) to read the writing on the sides of the beached boats, and we could see almost every small detail in its surface. I did some time-exposures, playing around with the light, and we just hung out, watching the shadow of the Earth start to creep slowly across it. Every fifteen minutes, I would take another picture (though they mostly looked the same) and Brandon would make another silly video on his camera, pretending that we were being invaded. It was good times.
As the moon became half covered, a girl came up to us, asking to see the eclipse through my camera. She stayed and talked to us for a while; her name was Cristina, she is a student Merida, and she is learning to teach autistic children.
We talked with her as we watched the moon go red, finally becoming completely engulfed by our planets shadow. When we finally decided we were ready to leave, we got a phone call from Derek informing us that the busses had stopped running. They had to take a taxi back into Merida at the cost of $25, which is insane as taxi rates go. Cristina, on the other hand, actually lives only a few streets away from us in Merida, and went to ask her aunt and uncle and mother if they could give us a ride back.
They congenially agreed, thankfully, but only on the grounds that we would go and have coffee with them first.
We talked at great length of our time in Mexico, the things we had seen, and they had much to tell us as well. Cristina is a Christian youth missionary to smaller outlying villages in Mexico, but didn't seem terribly enthused about it. The mother, as near as we could tell, didn't do much of anything but cook and clean their house, but she apparently was happy in that. The aunt was a doctor, and apparently slipped her husband estrogen when he was in a foul mood. The uncle, when not drinking estrogen-laced coffee, owned a medical clothing shop. They had three children; two daughters and a son. The youngest daughter is unmarried and the oldest just; the son, however, was killed in the States. He owned a shop similar to his fathers, and was leaving one night when he was attacked and robbed. He fought back, and was killed in response.
The way that the parents described this to us, however, was not in any way sad. They related the story of his life and death to us with relative ease, as I've noticed is the case when speaking about death with many Mexicans and their families. In the States, it's almost as if we wish not to speak of the dead, as if we're afraid of offending them or their memory, but here, they are spoken of openly.
It is much more well understood here that death is an eventuality, that it is something that is unavoidable and it happens to everyone. There are instances where it is tragic, and I'm sure that they did their share of weeping for their son, but he was loved in his life and is still loved in his death. Far from forgetting him, they allow nothing to stand in the way of his memory, and speak of him as though his death was only a minor inconvenience that just happened to end his life. While he is most certainly no longer among the living, and most certainly not spoken of as such, he is not a subject that is skirted. We two strangers, Brandon and I, were able to learn much about him; I doubt very much that many American families would be able to speak of the recently deceased to random foreigners they give rides to.
In fact, I'm not sure many American families would be willing to give a ride to a stranger in the first place, especially if they were a foreigner. It was a very enlightening experience.
So I've gone and waxed philosophical, and now I'm spent. More to come.