October 13, 2002

“Bound for the Beach”

Slapping the mosquitoes away with a vengeance as I type this only makes me more glad that tomorrow morning I will be on a bus to the beach and five days of wonderful vacation. Having successfully conned our professors into letting us not have class this week (we were not supposed to be on vacation until Wednesday), that happy day of freedom is that much closer. Of course, after being slammed with two monstrous take-home exams, I think all of us deserve two extra days of R & R.

What can I say, at least we had an interesting week of class. We finally got some straight answers out of our IR professor, although he couched those answers with the horrible news that our “short” midterm paper has to be 7 – 10 pages long.

In anthro class we learned all about the Maya calendar system and also found out that the book we just finished isn’t even half of our reading for the term.

Spanish literature class was the most interesting though. We are currently reading Octavio Paz’ descriptions and explanations of Mexicans and their culture. Included in our discussion of Mexican culture was a discussion of men and women’s roles in their culture. All I can say about that is that I felt bad for John Byers who had to defend the male perspective in a class full of girls. (He did a good job though.)

In other news, the mosquitoes are evil here. At the beginning of the week I was excited because I had noticed that the number of mosquito bites per square inch on my body had gone down. Unfortunately, I spoke too soon, and they have multiplied until I honestly can’t say whether I have more mosquito bites or freckles. However, hospitals are handing out information on the prevention and treatment of dengue, so at least I know they’re prepared for it in case I come down with mosquito disease. It’s all good though. I’ve got a special visitor coming to visit me tomorrow and I’ll be getting away from the Merida Mosquitoes at least for a couple of days. ¡Adios!