Horse back riding every week

Sisika's

every Saturday and Tuesday I go horse back riding at Sisika's. she has over 20 horses and i usully ride a horse named Coppa-- you can see her in the picture next to what i am writing and you might also be able to see how small she is.

she is a very good horse who loves to go fast and jump. Right now i am learning to canter and jump...its kind of scary and very fun.

over christmas vacation (wich was 3 weeks long)Talia and I went to a camp at her place. we did tons of fun stuff like bathing the horses, riding the horses doing fun activitys and vaulting wich is gymnastics ona horse it's really fun!!! i've stood up on a horse and done many other thrilling stretches.

ANother big part of it is learning how to groom groom your horses corectly-- wich is really fun...unless your horse bights when you clean it's hoofs

ADIOS!!!!

This is Coppa the horse i usully ride






















this is also Coppa

This is Talia with Barbie, she is a miniture pony.

theese are two of the horses at sisika's, the one on the right is stari

this is Apache the first horse I rode at Sisika's

he is huge and very fat.

this is also Apache.

Tikki and Rebecca's - Dog Rescue

Tikki

Tikki was our fourth foster puppy that we took care of for Rebecca - our dog rescuer hero. He was adorable and he is now in Colorado in his new home.

When we first got him he was about 3 to 4 weeks old and he stayed with us through Christmas and the holidays he left on January 5th, he probably was a mix in between a cocker spaniel and a poodle or something close to that but the biggest element of cuteness from him was his huge eyes and how small he was.

He could fit into small boxes and when we first got him he could fit in our hands if we cupped them. He was probably the most obedient foster puppy that we’ve had he only went to the bathroom in the house if we left him for a really long time and, another great thing about him was that he was more into us than Stella, (witch is bad for Stella, but better for Talia and I). He always wanted to sleep with us and wanted us to hold him and only sometimes he liked to play with Stella, Tikki is white with curly hair on hi sears and back he had medium long hair and huge black eyes.

I really miss him but hopefully soon we will be on our 5th foster puppy.

--Sabina

Mexico votes for Obama as their stock market tumbles

Mexico votes for Obama as their stock market tumbles

I’ve done my best – which is to say not very well - to follow the financial crisis and U.S. electoral saga from Mexico. I thought I might give you a sense of what these crises look like from south of the border.

As you can imagine, the newspapers are full of reports of the stock market crack, crash, meltdown, collapse – not sure what exactly it’s being called up there. The Mexican market has followed with similar huge losses and the peso has lost ground against the dollar (that is, as lousy as the dollar is right now, the peso is worse).

But the majority of ink and worry is devoted to the long term impact of a US financial crisis on Mexico. They have a saying here: when the US economy comes down with a cold, Mexico catches pneumonia. Mexican migrants lose their jobs in the US and remittances (funds sent back to families) dry up, cash-strapped US tourists stay home with the consequent economic losses for Mexico. Remittances from Mexicans account for over $20 billion of income a year, second only to petroleum exports in economic importance. The safety net is broken here as public spending has been slashed over the years – the safety net IS remittances. As unemployed Mexicans in the U.S. return home, the Mexican government has no plan for how to re-absorb them –despite the headline above translated as “Anti-crisis Plan to Save the Economy” and "24,000 immigrants return from the U.S." (that number referring to the state of Oaxaca only).

I’m not suggesting that Mexico become a U.S. state but with approximately 20,000,000 people of Mexican origin in the U.S. and with the impact of U.S. policies like the U.S. Farm Bill leaving such a heavy imprint down here, maybe they should have the right to vote in U.S. elections. From what I can tell, Mexico’s electoral votes would send Obama over the top. He’d win in a landslide.

Don’t get me wrong, I voted enthusiastically absentee. Nevertheless, I’ve felt like a bit of a wet blanket with my Mexican friends, suggesting that the issues that pain Mexican most, immigration and trade, might not be treated terribly differently by the two candidates. I remind them that it was the last democrat, Clinton, who championed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which perhaps has not been as dramatic as the currently U.S. crash, but has meant a slow and steady bleed for nearly two decades here. For a sobering view on this score, read Mike Davis’ devestating piece http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/mike-davis-can-obama-see-grand-canyon.html. On the lighter, more hopeful side, take at look at Obama’s pitch to Mexican-Americans http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fd-MVU4vtU.

Whomp, thwap, lucha libre

What better way to celebrate a parish's patron saint day than to host a friendly round of Lucha Libre. These masters of theatre, of good and bad, mask themselves and toss each other (unharmed) around the ring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucha_libre. The ultimate disgrace is being unmasked and thus being forced to change your identity. Talia watched a barechested drunken spectator get a little too rambunctous and get thrown in jail. For the rest of the Lucha Libre match, he yelled and rattled the jail bars, right behind the wrestling ring.

Real estate market crashes – intentionally - by Daniel

I hope you had a chance to read Sabina’s and Talia’s entries about the aerial marvels of an ecotourism site we recently visited. This entry will most certainly prove a lot more boring than their account of the Sierra zipline, but I wanted to provide a bit of background on this remarkable place just outside of Ixtlan de Juarez, Oaxaca.

As the name implies, Ixtlan is the birthplace of the much revered 19th century indigenous Mexican president, Benito Juarez. The ecotourism center we visited sits in the cloudforest foothills of a vast wilderness on communal Zapotec land (the Zapotecs are the most populous of Oaxaca’s 16 distinct indigenous peoples). Since long before Benito Juarez’ time, this land has been held communally.

As the billboard in the picture suggests, private property is neither part of the Zapotec cosmovision nor looked upon kindly. Translated, the billboard says:

"In this community, private property does not exist.

Prohibited -the purchase and sale of communal lands".

I had to extract my foot from my mouth as I asked a gazillion questions about how they manage this community resource. Clearly it seemed as if I was probing because I was seeking to purchase land. I wouldn't be the first gringo with a wallet full of cash inquiring.....

But vacationing gringos are likely the least of the Zapotecs problems. Just before NAFTA was passed in 1994, then president Carlos Salinas de Gotari, pushed through a constitutional amendment entitled Article 27 to permit the parcelization and sale of collective land. The idea here was to grease the wheels of free trade by unleashing this pent up real estate market, falsely held back by social engineering. One of the great gains of the Mexican revolution had been land reform in the form of ejidos, or collectively owned plots in which small farmers could pool their resources and be able to compete with large landowners. Since the repeal of Article 27, a great deal of Mexican land has changed hands, much of it reconcentrated in the hands of agribusiness. The Zapotecs of the Ixtlan wanted to make it crystal clear that their land was not for sale.

The ecotourism enterprise is managed by Ixtlan's popular assembly (called "usos y costumbres" or "uses and customs" law) which exists in parallel (and in some places in competition with) the municipal government, dominated by political parties and generally disrespectful of indigenous customs. The entire Ixtlan community co-owns the tourism enterprise. Collective work days, called tequios, are obligatory. Our guide into the forest was a young boy not terribly daunted that for the rest of his life he would be asked at times to fill unpaid community posts - no matter if he had another job or was living in the United States. This system of obligations and rights is a powerful glue that keeps a place like Ixtlan thriving as it strives to retain its unique culture in a globalized world that tends to steamroll over differences.

Tortillas and composting worms: A stable investment for the future

With the economy collapsing around the world, Mexican small farmers have an investment scheme – tortillas and worms. The two are symbiotic; the worms devour discarded organic matter and excrete the world’s best compost. The compost, applied to the corn plant, unleashes astounding growth.

Our neighbors here in Oaxaca (the good folks who found us our wonderful housing and community) are the Center for Support of the Oaxacan Popular Movement (CAMPO). They devote themselves to community-led development and human rights protection. They recently threw an eco-fair which drew about 5000 people. Folks came from indigenous villages in the mountains as well as from the urban barrios to learn about various sustainable agriculture, construction, fish farming and alternative energy techniques.

It’s a beautiful sight, people gathered around a makeshift fish pond in a Mickey Mouse kiddie pool, pumping Cesar the agronomist for information about how they could set up one of these in their own backyards. There is a groundswell of interest in how to produce food ecologically and cheaply. Not a bad idea during these troubled times for the planet's ecology and economy to learn how to grow your own food.... whether in Oaxaca or Boston.

Prices for petroleum-laden, chemical and industrial inputs for corn production – fertilizer, pesticides and hybrid schemes – are skyhigh. Many farmers have to leave their land idle or grow just enough to eat. It doesn’t help that the price that they receive for their corn is in the toilet, thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which opens the border to cheap corn imported from the US (and subsidized by us taxpayers).

For the past months, together with my Grassroots International colleagues, I’ve been toiling over a popular education curriculum on food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is a term gaining traction around the world, in particular by the tens of millions of peasants organized under the broad umbrella of the Via Campesina. The term is a vision really, of a radically reformed food system where small farmers have the right to produce food for their families and local markets and where consumers can gain access to reasonably priced, healthy local foods. That doesn’t sound too radical, but given the power of agribusiness and its congressional boosters, we have a long way to go in creating a fair food system that doesn’t make us all sick.

CAMPO’s work is an extraordinary contribution to this grassroots movement – of which farmers, consumers, environmentalists AND YOU are all part. You can check out the food sovereignty curriculum if you like on Grassroots’ website at http://www.foodforthoughtandaction.org/ and please look into that Mickey Mouse pool to start raising your protein.

The Biggest Wedgie This Side of the Mississippi - by Talia

Hi everybody,

I am having a pretty hard time here in mexico, but I know that I am coming back to boston. well today I left early from school at like 12:00. I have right now a fever really bad stomach ach and a bad head ach/dizzines.it is right know 4:28 mexico time and our school gets out at 2:30.

I skipped 3rd grade because it was too easy so now I’m in 4th grade and we’re learning in math like long division and multiplication. It’s pretty hard but it’s much better than 3rd grade. It only has 8 people – including me – so that’s good.

This weekend, we went to the mountains in Ixtlan. I really liked it and it was cold. at the moutains, there was a zip line. It was awesome. A climbing wall, you were attached to a rope so when you fall you are like flying. Also we went on this thing called the juegos de aire and you’re attached to this wire thing and you have a harness and so you want to go to the other side and you walk on things that are attached that are 20 feet above the ground and when you fall you fly again because you are attached to a wire.

Then we had all that fun and we went back to oaxaca on Sunday and we had lots of stuff in our car and we emptied our car and we put it all into the house. well, our house is really small and I don’t like it.

Goodbye and I miss boston and every state that my family is in and my friends and cousins and relatives and I’m sorry that the red sox didn’t win the world series.

The Mountains - by Sabina

the mountains

On friday afternoon we went with the Moore-Blooms on a trip to the sierra. When we first got there it was raining really hard, we all got out but Stella was especially happy to be there, as soon as we pulled up she wagged her tail fiercely and whined at the car door.

We got there at about 6:00pm so while the kids ran around the playground that they had there and the grown ups went to check out lean tos and camp sites, we chose a lean to because it would be raining the majority of the time so otherwise the trnts would get soaked, it was really buggy so we set the tents up in the lean to we put evrey thing in place and got sleeping bags and blankets (it was pretty cold like, 50 degrees!)

We went down to the comedor and all ate we came back and went to sleep it was also really cold that night so stella curled up next to us and kept us warm. In the morning we got up, ate breakfeast and went to the place where we get harneses and ropes and helmets for zip lines, climbing walls and "juegos de aire" air games.

A man called Francisco helped us get every thing and we started... First we went to "juegos de aire" there were 6 courses, the first was walking on planks with nothing for your hands to hold on to but the good thing was that we had harneses so we wouldint fall and kill ourselfs, next was a gorge of the jungle sort of thing we had to swing from rope to rope but most of the time you were just flying with your harness, then was a type of rope ladder but it was long so we had to shimmy it it was not that hard, then there was a log jumping that was pretty scary, and then a harder log jumping!!!!!!!! it was soooooo fun!!!!!!!

Next we went to a climbing wall where after you finish climbing you get to bounce off and the guy holds you and slowly takes you down. After climbing every body's body hurt alot!!! but it was really FUN!!!!!!!

Finally we went on a zip line but I was to scared to do it because it was like 30 feet up and you only have a harness and strong rope holding you up!!! But next time I'm going to do it.
And the next day we went to a cave that was NOT just an indentation in the rock but it was a really big cave! It was sooo cool!!!!!! Then the next day we left and came back to life here which is okay.
--Sabina