Week 12: Telma, Tiny Tent, and Tepeyac

This week in school was very relaxed. Honestly, I think most of us were actually looking for work to do. However, it was a very interesting week in rotations for Brendan, Victoria, and I. We are still rotating in one of the public hospitals, ISSSTE, and this week we started our rotation in OB/GYN. We were about an hour in to our rotation on Wednesday when the doctor asked if we wanted to observe a C-section. Of course, we accepted the invitation and WOW what a cool experience that was. The process was much less delicate that I had anticipated – at one point the doctor was pulling on either side of the incision to open it further. Shortly after, the he pulled the little girl out of the womb and she breathed her first little breaths here on earth!

Thursday, Emily, Katie, Mary, and I decided to go celebrate Emily’s 21st birthday at the Japanese restaurant in town – somewhere we’d been wanting to go for quite some time now. We enjoyed rice, sushi, and chicken teriyaki, as well as cake for the birthday girl!

This weekend, Brendan, Hana, Mary, and I had the incredible experience of going on a pilgrimage to the Basilica de la Virgen de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe) in Mexico City with about 200 other UPAEP students and faculty.

To recount the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Juan Diego, in the 1500s a man named Juan Diego heard music coming from the hill of Tepeyac, and this lured him to the top. There he saw the Virgin Mary looking like a native princess. She told him he should build a shrine to her at the top of the hill. However, when Juan Diego went to tell his bishop, he didn’t believe him and wanted a sign. Mary told Juan Diego to return to the top of the hill, pick some flowers, and show them to the bishop. This would have been a miracle in and of itself, as it was the dead of winter and flowers weren’t growing. So Juan Diego picked some of the miraculous flowers and brought them in a telma (cloak) to the bishop. When we dropped the telma, not only did the bishop see the flowers, but a miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

We had a 4:00 AM wake up call on Friday morning, as we needed to be at UPAEP by 5:00. We arrived feeling very sleepy and waited for the kickoff mass at 6:00. After mass we boarded the buses to head to the village where we would start our pilgrimage. The bus ride was about an hour long, and I think we all thought that hour long nap was pretty critical.

We arrived at the village and had two hours for breakfast. We were laughing to ourselves about having such an early wake up call to not start walking until 10:00, but enjoyed seeing the people we knew from UPAEP – students from our classes, doctors, med students from rotations.

And then we headed off! I spent the first two or three hours walking with Mary through a gorgeous countryside. There were beautiful fields and farm animals, and we could see the snow-capped mountains beyond that. I always love talking to Mary and it was super awesome to have that time together talking about everything from faith, our experiences in Puebla and ND, home, and everything in between. We stopped for a brief break/snack around 12:30 and then kept going up the mountain! Brendan joined Mary and I for parts of this leg. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous. Purple and red wildflowers lined both sides of the path. The sun was shining brightly. We passed the occasional little farmhouse, brightly colored orange and yellow.

Then we took the traditional Mexican long lunch, in this case, an hour and a half. We, the ND students, decided to eat quickly and then take the rest of the time to lay out in the grass and take a nap. At this point, our feet were starting to get a little sore and blistery, so it was nice to be able to rest for a bit.

Then it was time to continue down the road. As we were leaving, I heard someone behind me say, “Cati!” which is my Spanish name. I turned around an saw a guy that I did not recognize, but he said he recognized me from the first day of class when I attended this psychology and technology class (which I dropped after that first day). He then introduced himself as Miguel. I was VERY impressed with his memory, and we actually ended up walking that whole three hour leg together and I enjoyed hearing about his thesis, his study abroad in Canada, and his summers in West Virginia and Nashville. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a selfie together 😦

As it was just starting to get dark, we walked out into this beautiful field. At this point, my feet were hurting pretty badly, so I welcomed our 15 minute snack break. Then we had about two more hours until we got to our campsite! It was getting pretty chilly at this point, but everyone was given a little bag of chocolate and candies and made the final push.

We were so excited to see the campsite around 9:30 at night! There was already a sea of tents being set up when we arrived. Everyone checked their tents with UPAEP to be ready at the campsite when they arrived. Brendan, being very kind, picked up and checked our tents for us, so we didn’t see it before we arrived. We knew it was a just a two person tent for Hanah, Mary, and I, but when we pulled it out and laid it on the ground, all of us burst out laughing at how tiny it was. We quickly set us the tent, ate a delicious chicken soup dinner, and then went to bed! It was hilarious. We were very snuggled together all night long.

The next morning, we warmed up by the fire and enjoyed some breakfast tamales. Then it was time to pack up the tent and head back on the road. Okay. For anyone doing the math, it is about 85 miles from Puebla to the Basilica de la Virgen de Guadalupe, which would be pretty tough to do in two days. Instead of walking the whole 85 miles, the bus took us to the mountains on Friday and we walked about 21 miles. On Saturday, the buses took us to a spot about 3 miles from the basilica, and we walked the rest of the way in. All of a sudden, we could see the basilica ahead! It was definitely very exciting and rewarding when could finally see it.

As soon as we arrived, they held mass for the UPAEP pilgrims in the new basilica. (The old basilica is leaning so aggressively that they were concerned about leaving the telma with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe there, in case the building were to fall. Literally, when walking around in the old basilica, I felt myself losing my balance several times from the slant.) At the front of the new basilica is Juan Diego’s actual telma with the miraculous image on it. It was such a cool experience to go to mass there.

After mass, we went up to Tepeyac, where the Virgin Mary actually appeared to Juan Diego in 1513. We also went inside the chapel that she told him to build there. It was so so cool think that we were in a place were the Virgin Mary was 500 years ago.

After spending time in each of the basilicas, the chapel at Tepeyac, and buying some earrings as a gift for Rocío, the four of us got some McDonald’s McFlurries and headed back for the buses.

When we got back, it was pretty late, but I quickly showered and joined Emily, Mary, and Katie for a girls night with pizza, wine, and Brie cheese. It was such a fun way to come Puebla, laughing and sharing stories from the weekend.

Now we’re all looking forward to this coming week where we will be hiking one of our beloved volcanoes, the Malinche! More to come 🙂