The Patron Saint of Air Conditioning, and other topics

We have spent a pretty tranquil Sunday in SMA. Our one major activity for the day was to go into el centro and attend Mass at La Parroquia – which we did. It was a very lovely service, with lots of incense and a more traditional chorus than the mariachi band of last week. We thought we had our neighborhood down, but the cab driver took us to a different Calle Paloma in our neighborhood, and was a bit miffed when we told him that this wasn’t where we wanted to go, even though that is where we had told him to go. We had an assortment of our snacks to count as our lunch for the afternoon – my lunch consisted mainly of oreos and peanut butter, along with a nutri-grain bar and handfuls of multigrain cheerios. We compiled some of the data we collected from our surveys this past week, and worked a bit on stuff for next week, including the report on the various communities that the DIF has wanted us to compile. This coming week will be a little different, as the DIF is putting on health fairs, featuring REAL doctors of various specialties, so we’ll be tagging along, continuing with our glucose checks and vision screenings. We’re not really sure what else will be expected of us at these events, but we're intrigued to see how it goes and excited to meet the doctors working with the DIF.

We have tried various strategies to keep cool in our warm little domed room. It is heated by the Mexican sun streaming through the windows, the four hard-working non-energy efficient Lenovo laptops, and the various activities of four high-energy people in the same space. Our rotating fan, fondly rechristened “MasterCrap,” (as it was the least expensive fan in the store yet was grandly titled “MasterCraft”) does manage to cool the room down by the time 4 am rolls around… but we all take turns throughout the day, shuffling in front of it as it oscillates, redistributing warm air, wishing wistfully that it was cool air. In true Latin American Catholic fashion, we looked into which saint could reasonably be attributed as the Patron Saint of Air Conditioning, and Sister Mary Martha (who has a very entertaining and informative blog, by the way, called “Ask Sister Mary Martha”) had declared Saint Nicholas to be the Patron Saint in question. Apparently others have asked her this in the past, so our query was not that unusual, really. Her logic was as follows:  he moved from somewhere hot to the North Pole, so clearly he knew what was up. We also caught much of the Spain vs. Italy soccer game, which got me to reminiscing about my time in Spain, watching my host family watch Real Madrid games… which got me to reminiscing about other tv programs in Spanish, namely the telenovela for children loosely based on High School Musical called “Patito Feo.” So tonight Lauren and I watched an episode of the Mexican version of this Argentinian show(so that does make it a Mexican show based on an Argentinian show based on an American show) on NetFlix – oh yes, it is on NetFlix. It was very entertaining, and I worry that I am a bad influence on Lauren.