Emily´s Musings from Sea Turtles to Patriarchy

This post is really in no particular order, but these are some Today we FINALLY went to Akuumal. This is a beach a bit down the careterra from here that supposedly has lots of sea turtles and good snokeling. We tried to go last week three times, but the first time there was thunder, the second our friends didn´t feel up for it and I didn´t want to snokel alone and then the third our friends that were going to come didn't arrive until after we had given up waiting on them. So inspite of the strong winds we went today with Francesca, former class mate of Michaels who is still hangging around Playa on her vaccation. Once again the Carlos and Tanya were super sweet and lent us snokel gear so we didn't have to rent it. Francesca and I bravely headed out into the choppy waters and fuddeled around for about 20 minutes in the murk before deciding to head in. Disappointed I decided I was going to try again, so donning a life jacket I set out for some other snokelers that I thought might be on to something further out. Sure enough they were swimming right near three giant sea turtles! I was so excited. It was not a beautiful clear carribean sea as we had been promised but an amazing animal is really amazing in whatever the condition. They came up for air right by me and then went back down to munching the sea weed on the bottom, reminding me a little of cows. Their shells were incredible molted swirls of brown, green, black, and yellow and their head and fins reminded me of giraffe skin. They inspired me to remember a blessing which goes:

Baruch atah hashem, elohaneu melech ha olam, oseah mashea bereshit.
Blessed are you God of life, who creates.

Last night we had a similarly pleasant encouter, but with one of our own species. Last night we finally cashed in on spa gift certificates that Michael's mom had given un probably two years ago. We both enjoyed incredibly relaxing massages (and for me the much less relaxing, waxing of the under arms--which came first so I was relaxed by the end). We also experience a vapor bath in a large hut which can only really be called a hut if you are uncomforatable calling it what it really looked like, which was a giant oven. Michael wasnt so keen on the vapor oven, but I liked it. Any how, I digress. So we had massages and they were delicious so we decided to have a delicious meal to follow and went to a cuban place here called La Boguedita and had a wonderful cuban meal. We have been trying to decide how to spend our next week traveling and have been having lost of trouble. So we decided to ask our waiter what he thought of one of our plans which included spending next week's holiday, independence Day in San Cristobal de las Casas. As luck would have it he had just gotten back from this exact place 10 days ago and was super excited to share with us how amazing the whole experience was, where we should go, how much to pay for a tour of the Palenque ruins, where to stay, and which activity to do each day to optimize fiesta time in San Cristobal during the holiday. His enthusiasim was contagious and we were sold. We bought our overnight bus tickets to Palenque today and are off tomorrow night. I am very excited.

The final piece of my sharing has much less to do with Mexico and more to do with my general feelings of outrage at CNN's Headline News program, which is one of the english channels we get here and watch to pretend to be keeping abreat of what is going on. Today is the anniversary of September 11th. I am not sure about you, but I am pretty sure I could think of a lot of interesting, timely, and relevant reporting that one could do in relationship to this rather important national anniversary. So after a brief mention of it this morning I was pretty appaled when Headline News quickly moved on to a story about how the political candidates should leave the poor animals (be them pigs or pitbulls) out of the argument and let them be. Really, that is a Headline? On September 11th? So as you can imagine I wasn't feeling loving toward them when we got back from the beach and Michael turned on the channel to find them going on and on about a young woman who is selling her virginity to the highest bidder through a legal brothel in Nevada in order to pay for graduate school (she has a degree in women's studies). This was not just a report. They were taking calls from various viewers all of whom were morally outraged by this young girl's decision and going on and on about how she couldn't even be considered a woman and she should save herself for someone special and how virginity was fashionable (is virginity being fashionable a really compelling reason not to loose it?). The worst part was that the reporter himself was litterally imploring the girl not to do it ( If you are watching, please don't, please stop, think of the example you are setting, you will regret it!). It was all just very sickening for so many reasons. First it was just such a prime example of patriarchal desire to control and decide what women can do with their bodies and for what motives couched in a whole question of morality. The high and mighty morality that was on display made me ill. There are truly a lot of things in the world to get indignant about. If we focused that kind of outrage on illegal sex slave trade or the AIDS epidemic in Africa imagine what kind of pressure we could amass for some actual change. The report also left me wondering why we put such a high value on this whole virginity concept in the first place. It gives young women the impression that the first time really matters, but after that, whatever, you aren't a virgin, so you have no value, so no need to be self respecting or take control of your own sexuality. Right? you are ruinned--so no need to care. I recently started, but didn't yet finish a book on the history of the concept of Virginity, it was called Virgin: The Untouched Story, check it out if you are interested. Then there is the whole annoyance that this crap passes for news on a major news net work on a day when we should all be reflection on what it means to be an American, how we have changed and who we have become since the tradgedy 7 years ago. I hope that the rest of the media that I can't access easily from here did a better job. And I wish men would just lay off women and their bodies. Okay, I am done now. Sorry for those of you who thought this was just a travel blog. But I am traveling, and these are my thoughts while doing so.

May the memories of those we lost in September 11th and those who have died in the after math be for a blessing for all of us.