Day 3: Cuernevaca Quest

Once again, the day began at 8 am with breakfast. Then we had a morning reflection and a session learning about the art of dialogue. Dialogue is different than discussion. Most people in everyday life use discussion, but not everyone uses dialogue. We learned dialogue is much more than discussion. Often, discussion merely involves people trying to get their own opinions out and people don't really listen or care what others say. However, dialogue is much different. It involves people truly listening to what others say. Dialogue includes reflection, concern, trust, respect, appreciation, affection, and hope for all those involved. It is a much deeper means of conversation than dialogue. From what we learned, I can see that dialogue is necessary to make things happen and to deal with crises; it truly allows one to see the full picture. I hope to keep this with me throughout the rest of my life.
Today was especially shocking as the Cuernevaca Quest involved us going to the market with only 50 peso's and trying to get groceries for the week. The average family has to buy groceries with only 50 peso's, and this would be about 5 dollars American. During the quest, we were split into groups and each given a different grocery list. We had to choice of going to a grocery store, similar to those in North America, or a market to bargain. It was shocking to see that the prices in the grocery store were basically the same as ours in North American, even though most families live off 5 dollars a week! The market had better prices because there is so much competition and we were even able to bargain to get even better deals. The locals there are all competing to support their own families. It was tough trying to communicate with the locals at the market because very few spoke English. We tried to speak the little Spanish we knew, and just communicated using hand signals and any other way we could. It was definitely a learning experience communicating with others of a different language. In the end, we managed to get tortillas, avocado's, rice, eggs, and toilet paper, as they were all on our list. It was devastating to see what small amount of food most Mexican families had to live off of. It really made us appreciate what we have back home.
The quest took up most of the day. It was a great learning experience. Later in the evening after supper we learned about the social issues of Mexico. We had done readings about this before arriving, but it was much better to hear about it from the staff of CCIDD.