Welcome

Hello,

I decided to keep a blog about our family’s semester in Mexico mainly for myself, a chance to consider and remember the moments that will make up our time in Puebla. But this is a blog, also for you, family and friends who care about us and asked for updates, so I’ll record true stories, but, as a blog, not all the stories.

One semester is such a brief moment in time, so brief that, occasionally, I already feel as if the time is a memory. In my future memory, these five months are a lovely, golden nugget. I hope I am right about that. And I welcome you along with us to find out.

In 1980, my Aunt Susan, my mother’s older sister, packed her bags, slammed the trunk of her car shut, and drove south towards Puebla, Mexico. She ran a library and taught for three years at Puebla Christian School. I’ve been thinking of her recently and how her history and my future are crossing in the same city 46 years later.

My own journey to Puebla began when I first considered applying to the Fulbright Scholar program in 2022, I was inspired by a Fulbright Scholar working at Uganda Christian University’s writing center. He was generous with his time and ideas when I reached out for advice. I began generating ideas to apply for the Fulbright to support the work he started. Through a path that in retrospect seems both circuitous and weirdly foreordained, rather than at Uganda Christian University, my Fulbright work will be at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP).

BUAP was established by Jesuits only a few years after building began on Puebla’s cathedral in 1575. It is no longer a Catholic university, but now a public university with over 70,000 students in campuses across the state of Puebla. I will be in the Facultad de Lenguas working with master’s students writing theses in English and with the Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Estudios de Posgrado to offer workshops on publishing academic articles in English.

When my sister, Leslie, joined me for a little scouting trip to Puebla in November, the trip went wildly better than either of us imagined it could. We found a bilingual school and an apartment two blocks from the school. We also had a wonderful time.

Leslie and I toured the school where Aunt Susan worked. A group of kids were strumming guitars downstairs, a student inquired seriously over a book with her teacher, and the library was there, full of books, at the bottom of the school.

Aunt Susan’s stories and the beautiful hats she brought back during her visits were my first impression of our southern neighbor. There in the place that she worked, I thought about how her time in Mexico changed her and possibly me. Five months is a brief moment in time, and I am curious about how it will change each member of our family and the winding paths that are our lives.