I've arrived!

After a 15 hour day of travelling yesterday, we've made it to San Miguel.  It only took two planes, two buses, and a taxi to get here.  We're staying at a house converted into a Bed & Breakfast by the couple who owns it.  Our hosts, Alex and Kelly (both Mexican despite they're very American sounding names) greeted us with open arms when we arrived and then gave us two large sandwiches each to make sure we were well fed!  Needless to say, I was exhausted.The four of us are staying in one room with a large closet and bathroom.  Here are some pictures!  The first one is of our bedroom.  My bed is the one in the corner.  The next ones are of our bedroom balcony and then our luxurious bathroom.  We are living a pretty posh life in Mexico.

This morning Alex made us all breakfast.  I'm so happy that we have all our meals provided for us!  It's very relaxing and exciting to try all the new and AUTHENTIC Mexican food.  For breakfast I had coffee (thank goodness), papaya, banana, granola, fresh honey from a local farm, and cactus!  It was all really delicious, and I'd never had papaya or cactus before.  The papaya was really sweet, and the cactus was made in the frying pan with melted cheese on top-- yummy!

This morning we had a meeting with el Departamento de Infancia y Familias (DIF) -- sort of like social services.  They're helping us devise our schedule for going out to all the small communities surrounding San Miguel.  We'll be doing our nutrition surveys and height, weight, blood pressure measurements there.  Right now it's a little overwhelming because we're not exactly sure how everything will work once we're there, but we're going to our first community tomorrow.  Hopefully after tomorrow we'll have an idea how the rest of the summer will work.  It's been great that DIF has been so open to working with us though.

This afternoon we also met with Dr. Q at his home in San Miguel.  He lives in a beautiful home and invited us to try some of his favorite tequila (which he likes to chase with beer-- such is Mexican life). He'll be really great to work with and is very excited about our project.  A large problem in Mexico is that parents think that chubby kids are healthy because they're well-fed.  Having a full figure shows that there's food on the table and the father is able to provide for his family.  This will be a problem we'll encounter during our time here.  Our hope is that we'll assess the situation in this area during our summer and then make plans for future groups to implement health interventions.