There were peasants singing and drummers drumming, and the archer split the tree

Sports day at Centro JUCONI! After Israel ran the normal activities, I ended up teaching a bunch of the mothers how to play basketball...I know, ME, right? I find that all I have to do is surround myself with people who don't know how to play at all and then I can unleash my inner Latrell Spreewell. :)

Most of these mothers are indigenous women around my age or younger and they each have several children. They have lived in the pueblecitos outside Puebla for most of their lives and have limited activities outside of their homes. They were hesitant at first, giggling and ducking when someone tossed the ball at them, but as we kept playing they got more aggressive and kept trying to steal the ball from each other. I kept coaching and cheering for them and we didn't stop until everyone had made at least one basket. One mother, Lupita, got it together and started making it every time she shot. Each time the ball went in she screamed in delight. I told her this could be a new career option for her and that she should go practice with the jovenes in her neighborhood in the afternoons. She asked who would make dinner for the family and I said her husband should do it sometimes so that she can focus on her new talent. :) She loved that and thought it was so funny, mostly because it is depressingly unlikely that her husband would ever consent to that plan. He's a little machista, ese.

After the basketball game we had a pushup contest which I would love LOVE to have pictures of because everyone's form was so terrible! I kept trying to explain that your back/rear end should be straight and only your arms should bend, but they all kept contorting themselves and it was hilarious. All of the falling over and laughing created camaraderie and afterwards we walked back to the paradas for the buses all together with two of the little girls clinging to my hands, twisting to look up and talk to me. I feel so much love from those little birds. I've been here about a month now and I am so glad to see my days getting longer. Too many words again, right? Just four more in this section. I AM SO HAPPY!

So: Centro JUCONI is on the other side of the mercado Hildago, which is so huge and deeply winding that it makes the Pulga in Houston look like a mall kiosk. It's also the kind of place that gives you an eerie feeling that you could disappear, be murdered under some tarp and no one would ever notice. The sketchiness doesn't disturb me much, but these things did!:

Chicken lynchings:


These white things are cow stomachs (panza de rez). People just buy these and march off with them!


"SOME PIG." They murder Wilbur and put his head on display, and people take it home and make posoli, which I will maybe never eat again.

Gahhh! There are seemingly endless tables heaped with the corpses of dead animals. These were some of the less graphic meat stands. Another one I saw had raw cow hearts hanging off the table, turning slowly in the breeze. Everything in this part of the mercado is splattered with blood and smells hideous. I told Marce that I think in my country we try to hide our meat and kind of pretend it isn't really part of an animal carcass. Anyway, I just wanted to share the carnage.