Relajando

I just got back from my temazcal treatment. A temazcal is an indigenous steam bath in a very small room. The temazcalera loads the hot rocks with herbal teas and then also spends a lot of time hitting me and sprinking me with herbs. It was a really interesting experience. Afterwards I got a massage. The massage was great though it was funny because there was a lot of construction commotion, and later on there were so many dogs yelping, amidst the tranquil music of ocean waves. Anyway, it was quite a good experience and sort of a humorous one too, best of both worlds. Dad and I are going to go to a nice dinner in a little bit at a restaurant called Los Danzantes to celebrate our last night in Oaxaca city. Tomorrow at 9:30am we take a bus to Pochutla which is close to Puerto Angel on the Oaxacan coast. We are going to stay at least the first night and maybe more at a hotel called Bahia de la Luna in Playa La Boquilla. I am looking forward to it--the bus ride is about 9 hours!!! Get ready! I doubt I will have internet connections after tonight until we get back on Sunday night. Hasta domingo!

Entiendo las reglas

or at least i think i do! today I had 6 hours of private tutoring. I got so burnt out--it turns out that 6 hours with one teacher and one student is a bit long. Tomorrow is my last day and I will only have 5 hours. The thing is that I feel like I understand a lot of the rules of the language in terms of grammar but I just get the tenses mixed up when I am talking--and i need a larger vocabulary. I had a disillusioned moment in class today when I made a mistake on a relatively simple thing and felt pretty down about my learning curve. I have to remind myself that I have been in 8 hours a day of class for most of my past days where only spanish was being spoken and, most of the time, i understood what was happening. Anyway, just a little note. I am going off with my dad now to buy our tickets for the bus to Pto. Escondido for miercoles and then I have a bit of craft shopping to do. Tonight is our last tamales night! Tomorrow night we are going to a somewhat fancy restaurant for our last night in Oaxaca ciudad.

Estoy cansada

I am so tired right now and am really ready to go to bed sooner rather than later even though it is only 7pm, not quite even that. We had quite a weekend out in a few surrounding pueblos. Yesterday afternoon we ended up taking a public bus to Teotitlan del Valle and, when we first got off in the quiet, dusty, little town I wondered if I had really made a good choice on this one for an overnight. Once we found out hotel, one of three rooms in the house complex of two mexican widows and an american ex-pat, it felt good. Our room was extremely clean and cheerful with two twin beds and patios from which we could see our neighbors yard including her chickens (many), one burro, and a turkey. After we got to our room we went to a Zapotec influenced restaurant in town and had some good food and great atmosphere and chatting with one of the sisters who owns the restaurant. It sounds like tourism is really suffering in the pueblos since the violence in Oaxaca two years ago. After eating we went textile shopping at the market which was fascinating but also hard to say no sometimes. We had to our else everyone we knew would be getting lots of blankets and rugs. Also, we hadn´t realized that there would not be a cajero (atm) in the town so we were a little tight on funds.

We definitely heard a lot from those animal neighbors of ours all throughout the night and can´t say that i had a great sleep. It was an experience for me to hear the burro winnying all night and i learned that chickens and roosters do not only call at the break of dawn but also around 1am and other times as well.

When we got up this morning we got breakfast on our terrace of chilaquiles with mole negro, papaya, mango, fresh orange juice and some cookies. Then we took a taxi to mitla. Mitla´s ruins were really incredible in a totally different way from those at Monte Alban. Mitla is much smaller and is in the midst of a current town. The ruins are only partially excavated, i think partly for funds and partly they can´t excavate where people are living. The stonework is something to behold. These were later than monte alban and were both built by zapotecs but i think also later by mixtec people and show these intricate carvings on the buildings. Dad and I got there early and usually were the only ones in the ¨rooms¨. We then found out way to the bus stop and took a bus to market day in the town of Tlaculula. The market was frankly a bit overwhelming for me. Tons of everything you could need. Especially if you need chicken feet with their claws still on.

Hypocritical though it is, the look of all the parts of animals is a little overkill for me. I know that this should not bother me or i should head on over to vegetarianism but I can´t seem to push myself in either direction. I was thinking last night and this morning, while looking at our chicken neighbors, that i should be only eating chickens that live this sort of life. They looked pretty content in their roosts and teaching their chicks how to peck around in the dirt--a very important skill for a chicken. About three o´clock in the morning I was also thinking that this is the kind of burro i should eat. Maybe just this particular one...

Anyway, we took the bus back from Tlaculula to Oaxaca and showered (once the water was available) and then went to dinner. Here I am now, ready to sleep. Tomorrow I have my super day of private tutoring--hope it doesn´t get weird. I also made my appointment for a temazcal for after i finish school on tuesday. I made it through a hotel because that was the only way i could figure out. It was relatively pricey and i just hope all the money doesn´t go to the hotel and that the temazcalera gets a good cut as well!

I am going to try to take my laundry to the lavendaria tomorrow morning and they will deliver it to the hotel by evening so i am told. It would be nice to smell a little better.

Quickly

I am pretty tired right now. Had a big day. I woke up at 5:30 to someone ringing bells outside my homestay room: I think it was a van that parked and was going to set up in the market at the park (El Llano or Juarez park, tiene dos nombres) but I couldn´t figure out why they were ringing bells, and why so long?!! It wasn´t the church bells, just regular bells. I ended up falling back asleep until I got up at my normal time and had breakfast with the homestay dueños. Went to school where I had a short day of 9-2 and then moved the Hotel Las Mariposas where my room is lovely and was ready. Dad and I hurried to get to Monte Alban and were disappointed that the hours changed since the publishing of my guide and we only had one and a half hours to explore the amazing ruins instead of 2.5. It was still pretty magnificent and amazing to be there. We took a leisurely walk back across the city center from where we were dropped off and then had a beer on the hotel terrace. Afterwards we walked and had dinner at Maria Bonita, I had the first salad I have had in Mexico and it tasted great!

Tomorrow morning dad and I are exploring individually, I think I am going to visit some churches and a museum. Then we are taking a colectivo sort of a taxi to the pueblo of Teotitlan del Valle. I cannot find the accents on this keyboard so I am not writing correctly. Anyway, we are spending the night in Teotitlan del Valle and visiting Mitla and maybe another pueblo called Tlacolula on Sunday before returning to Oaxaca ciudad. I have class on Monday and Tuesday here. I am looking forward to a busy and interesting weekend!

Conversacion

I finished my conversation class today. This class met from 4-6 monday through thursday and was really interesting. At first I didn´t even want to be in this class but it was very worthwhile, thought provoking, and language challenging. The class was me, an australian couple, an american ex-pat, and a young american student, and our Oaxacan profesor. We just talked about different topics from graffiti to voting systems, to protests, to south american politics. It was great hearing the different perspectives and always interesting to me how i feel fine about offering constructive criticism regarding the US but do get twinges of defensiveness when others criticize. Part of it, i think, is that I think sometimes it is a simplistic view that others hold about american politics and do not think about the ways in which world powers are pulled and the decisions that are needed when they are expected to intervene in certain humanitiarian situations and not in others. Of course, who chooses what constitutes a humanitarian mission and what consitutes meddling? The other part is, I´m sure, just plain old defensiveness. Nonetheless, it is really good to hear different perspectives while noticing my reactions to them without necessarily giving in to them, though I was quite the debater today.

Dad and I are about to walk up to a cerrito above the city to watch the sunset and maybe grab a drink. It is a beautiful evening and has been a beautiful day.

No debo tener miedo...

Today in my grammar class I was thinking about how, at school, we are always telling children that they can try new things and make mistakes without undermining their quality as a student or a person. Maybe I should have been thinking more about my grammar and vocubulary but I couldn´t get that out of my head when mi profesora announced that we were going to play a game of gato (tic tac toe) where each section has a requirement of some sentence you have to construct correctly before you can enter your symbol into that section. Now it is only me and one other student in the class and I already have lots of guilt that i am bringing the class down since this is the other student´s third week in class and i am still in the repaso mode. I breathed deeply and reminded myself of this mantra of erores son opurtunidades para aprender. I made mistakes on the first two sentence tries because i did not understand something about conditional phrases. After a little while and a lot of embarrassment, i ended up getting the hang of it and feel that i came out ahead for the experience. It is definitely hard to take the risk of feeling incapable in your own eyes and appearing incapable in those of others. It is important though and I hope I am doing this.

I am pretty tired since I didn´t sleep very well last night. We are going to walk around a little tonight and eat some more AMAZING tamales that are sold by a woman in front of a restaurant every night after 7pm. I think she makes them at home and then comes and sits in front of the restaurant (to which i think she sells mole?) and sells them out of her pots. Last night we got one of each tipo: mole negro, pollo verde, pollo rojo, frijoles, y dulce and they were the best I have had. Can´t wait, wish I was hungrier!

Escuela

Well I am in my second day of school at the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca. I have a total of 8 hours each day of class and discussion sections and it is proving to be a bit tiring but also pretty interesting, challenging, and exciting. My group class that lasts from 9-1 has two other students and a teacher, Guadalupe. I placed into the nivel 5 class which was feeling overwhelming to me yesterday but i found that by the end of my first day i had even better comprehension than i started with. At 1 I have an hour of clase privada and i think that is going to be so helpful. Today my maestro, Hector, and I went over the admission process at my school and discussed how to talk about it in spanish. After that my dad and I went to lunch at the Hotel California Oaxaca which we did not choose for its name but for its proximity to school (1 cuadra) and its fixed price menu. 45P for una sopa de elote, pasta, enchilada (sin tortillas, un poco raro), postre, y cafe. Afterwards, we hurried back to school where we had intercambios with students learning english from 3-4 and then i had my discussion section from 4-6 while dad took his cooking class. I really am enjoying the conversation section though it is frustrating at times to not have the words for the political discussions or, por ejemplo, when i was trying to talk about casual carpool during our discussion of personal space in various cultures.

I am now at my dad´s hotel which I love using their one public computer with internet which they offer gratis to guests (and their hijas--i was specifically told i can use it). I love this hotel because their rooms are super clean, very reasonably priced (30-50 us per night) and the owner(?) is so kind. I am going to stay here on Friday night when my homestay ends and then again Sunday-Wednesday. On Saturday night we are going to stay in the weaving town of Teotitlan del Valle about 20km outside of Oaxaca city. The next day we will visit the ruins at Mitla and then return here. I think we will visit the ruins of Monte Alban in the morning of Saturday.

My homestay is going well though i have to say it feels a little bit funny staying in the home of a family that i hardly know. The homestay is a 5 minute walk from school and 4 blocks from my dad´s hotel so we are pretty well ubicado.

I have really been enjoying walking around the streets of Oaxaca and seeing the very mixed architecture. There are a ton of churches from the 16th and 17th centuries and i have yet to visit them. There are also some great museums that I want to visit. It is a bit difficult when i don´t finish with school till 6pm. Next monday and tuesday I will have class only until 2 so i should be able to do a little more visiting of sights.

I think i am going to go now, in a few minutes my dad and i are going to walk to get a tamale. I´m not sure i will have one but i will enjoy the walk. i have fairly sucessfully gotten into the local eating times of a huge breakfast and lunch and little or nothing in the evening. We have lunch at 3. For breakfast yesterday I had 2 quesadillas and cantelope and cafe and today i had scrambled eggs, black beans, watermelon, tortillas, y cafe. La vida buena.