San Luis de la Paz and visit of the Secretario of SEMARNAT

Last weekend I headed to San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato for a little get together with some vols that are about done with their service. In a very out of context weekend for me, I did not take a single picture. Probably for the best though. Anyway on Wednesday, the Secretario (head) of Semarnat was here in Puebla to sign the coordination agreement between the federal and state government. It’s a big show at the signing, that took place in an ecological park, that includes the governor, the municipal president (pretty much the mayor of Puebla), the head of SEMARNAT, and then the state heads of SEMARNAT, CONAFOR, PROFEPA, and CONAGUA. The Secretario also took advantage of his brief visit to Puebla to check in on the progress of our Valsequillo project, which is quickly moving into its first phases of the diagnostic and participatory workshops. The press session after the signing was pretty much only questions about the project since there have been more than a few problems in the area of study lately.

For those that read Spanish, here is a fairly inaccurate newspaper article about our project, but the comments of the Secretario were accurately recorded.

http://www.lajornadadeoriente.com.mx/2009/05/21/puebla/ecl103.php

The Secretario after the signing, being mobbed by the press, this is where being tall really comes in handy in Mexico (both for him and for me)

Puebla's soccer team played against the Puma's on Wednesday night, so coming back from the signing, mascots and flags were flying everywhere in anticipation of the game. (unfortunately they lost 1-2).

Happy Thanksgiving and the Secretario comes to Puebla

Along with the other vols in the office, we brought in a little taste of Thanksgiving to the office on Thursday. Since we've never really been big on the traditional thanksgiving foods in our fam, I stuck to the potato based dishes, that were comliments to the more traditional dishes of stuffing, cranberry sauce, and green bean casserol made by others. We failed to find the ingredients for a pumpkin pie, but were lucky enough to find one at Costco.

Unfortunately, the Thankgiving festivities of the morning were the end of free time for the day, as the impending arrival of the Secretary of SEMARNAT (think the head of EPA) was arriving that night and one of the projects I am working on is a pet project right now. So after preparing all the information, we ended up having to go to the hotel to wait for the secretary to arrive and review everything in case we needed to scurry and get anything else prepared. So that quickly turned into a late night. The next morning there was a breakfast and a press briefing about the priorities for SEMARNAT in the state of Puebla. During this, much attention was given to the project we are currently involved in, so hopefully this will transpire into more action and money.
El Secretario during the press briefing

From left to right (secretario, president of the municiaplity of Puebla, our delegado)


I have also learned that I am not a good event photographer. The table settings and lines of juice and fruit are much more interesting to me then 1,000 picts of people speaking......


Then afterwards, the secretario came to visit the office, addressed all of us, and took a picture with us all wearing our shiny new uniforms.photo from alysia


Later in the afternoon, we had a baby shower for a woman in the office. This was my 1st baby shower. I'll take this time to explain tacos arabe for a min. Tacos arabe originated in Puebla and is a taco made on pita with shaved, cooked pork. You can buy them by the taco or you can by the meat by the kilo and it comes with salsa and a stack of tortillas or pitas. So for this occasion we got a couple kilos of meat.....you gotta love 2 kilos of meat in a plastic grocery bag.
Then there were some games. Not sure what is normal for a baby shower, but there was some dressing of baby dolls while blind folded, feeding people baby food while both are blind folded, and guess the circumfrance of the mother to be (which I have say I was the closest).