¡Hola todos! It certainly has been an adventure of a lifetime here in Oaxaca. As I’m writing this we are winding down our days in this vibrant city and culture. Personally I don’t want to return to the cold weather and snow that’s awaiting us, but for now I’m soaking up the beautiful rays. Oh and before I forget, as it is usually a customary, my name is Brent Schaeffer I am from Durham, North Carolina and I am a computer science major with a minor in the beautiful romance language of Spanish!

To start, a quick wrap up of what we are doing this week! Every afternoon we will be visiting villages outside of Oaxaca(two villages) volunteering with a non profit company named EnVia to help local business woman improve the appearance of their shops. Before I get into the details I would like to make a quick diversion to talk about EnVia and what they do. To summarize, EnVia was founded in 2008 with the goal to help local women in areas surrounding Oaxaca by giving out zero interest micro loans to help support their current business or facilitate with the starting of a new one. Micro loans in Mexico come with extremely high interest rates, in fact one of the highest in the world, due to this and the reality that many of the women in the villages don’t have banks to work with, EnVia formulated the idea of zero interest loans. If you would like to learn more EnVia I suggest checking out their website yourself ! Again as I said the goal of our volunteering is to assist the local woman in improving their shops in a manner that will catch the attention of buyers and hopefully increase their sales. Some of the basic points that we use are how can we adequately utilize the space and maximize all the sensory output with the products. Changes that my group made in our first village was framing the products in a way that the buyer could envision the uses of the products without having to ask or think about it themselves. For example we set up a tapete by a desk surrounded by two chairs to demonstrate that it would work well as a type of floor rug. This then allows a prospective customer to visually see how said product could possibly be used. Finally, to clarify, this process is one that not only involves us students but also the shop owners. Together we collaborate on how to improve the shops and as it should be the owners always have the final say as they are the masters and creators of the crafts!

On a different note I would like to share a bit about my home stay! As I sit and reflect on my plethora of experiences in Oaxaca there is one that significantly stands out to me personally and that’s my family. In reality my Oaxcaqueñan family is solely comprised of a widowed woman, Guadalupe Rueda Dávila, who I call my mamá Oaxcaqueña. She reminds me exactly of my own mother in many ways. To list a few, she greets me and says goodbye to me every day always asking if I have my key for the house, if I have all my school work and when I return asks how my walk was. At breakfast and lunch she sits with me and the other two students who are at her house everyday and strikes up conversations with us. To say the least, she is a genuine human with a kind and caring soul who wishes the best for others. I believe all of us are thankful to the various families that allowed us to enter their homes. Without their generous giving our experience would not have been as genuine.

To sum up many feelings, Oaxaca has become a part of us as much as we have become a part of it. Recently we took a weekend excursion to the Sierra Norte mountains, which form a part of the greater Sierra Madre Occidental mountain chain that spans northern and western Mexico and partes of California, where we camped and did various outdoor activities. When we arrived back in the city late on Sunday myself and other students were thrilled to be back as I heard comments saying I can’t wait to sleep in my bed and I feel like we have been gone for a long time. For this reason I myself said I am happy to be home. We felt the same sentiments that one feels when returning from say a vacation, school or even work to the comfort of a familiar place, which we call our home, even though in reality our homes are more than 2,300 miles away. The city and our Oaxcaqueñan families have in all manners become a new home where we feel the same sentiments as when returning to our houses in the states. Although we will only have spent a month in this lively and lovely city it has left an immense imprint on us that we will never forget. I myself and others can now say that we truly have two homes in which we feel the comfort of returning to.