The importance of paying attention to EVERYTHING in another language...

The other morning I was eating breakfast and was still half asleep.  My senora was telling me how my one sister and her mom were going to Mexico City for the weekend to visit another sister.  She told me that I should come stay downstairs with her so that we both wouldn't be alone.  I agreed.  Apparently I also agreed to moving down here permanently.  I didn't realize this until it was too late and they had completely moved a bunch of furniture around.  I feel really bad because I had already settled into where I was and was really enjoying the family experience but still having a lot of freedom.  I also feel bad because the mom (my senora is technically the grandma) has moved up to one of the other bedrooms where I was...so basically I took her room.  Also the two girls are living together now (one had been sleeping in the same room as her mom).  The mom is only here for a few hours a day and exclusively to sleep, so it isn't a HUGE deal, but still.  I was told to try it and if I don't like it I can go back up there...though both the girls and my senora seemed super excited for me to be living down here.  Now, instead of having my own bathroom I have to share with at least 3 other people (though there are so many other random people living here that I'm not sure if they also use the same bathroom or not).  The room doesn't feel as bright and clean as the other one, and I get the vibe that large, disgusting bugs will be a frequent thing.  We'll see.  I'm not excited about it, but I'll make them happy and try it.  Her biggest reason for me moving was that there is too much traffic noise in my old room, but I so far think it's louder down here than up there....only time will tell...

Tomorrow we were supposed to go to a place called Hierve el agua, but that has had to be changed due to some problems outside of the place.  My family told me that it was just that locals are forcing people to pay now, but the Institute and my director have made it seem like more.  Instead we are going to some ruins called Mitla and another small town called Tlacolula, a village that is famous for it's woven tapestries.  It should be exciting though it is a long 2 hour ride each way.

The protest that had the main roads in the city closed was over by the next morning.  The only remnants that anything had happened were a lot of garbage (food leftovers and lots of beer cans/bottles littered the sidewalks).  Apparently that protest had nothing to do with the health clinic strike--which still continues as far as I know.  If I understood my professor correctly (he mentioned it quickly in a sidenote during class) it was two small pueblos who decided to come to Oaxaca to make their protest more widely known.  I'm not sure what they were protesting though...

The protest from afar.  Lots of people gathered.  Randoms standing on top of cars that were stuck in the intersection.

That was over but Thursday started a new set of protests... teacher protests.  Friday nearly all of the public schools in the state of Oaxaca were closed for the teachers to go protest.  From what I understand it happens annually and can last through the weekend or as long as a month or two.  No one knows when the schools will open again.  There were some marches around the city, and random street blockades on Thursday and Friday.  I think they must have been protesting on my street yesterday for awhile (I'm pretty sure there is some sort of government office next to my house).  I was taking a nap and woke up to hear a bunch of glass breaking and suddenly a bunch of people yelling.  By the time I decided to get out of bed to see what was happening--I had assumed that the glass was some dishes falling at one of the many restaurants near my house--things had pretty much died down.  From what I was told at lunch today there was a fight and they broke the glass front door down on what I believe is the government office.  Crazy stuff.  I got back home at like 11:30 last night and there were still a ton of people just chilling outside.

Milk men are still a thing here...they don't leave it on the doorsteps as I imagine milkmen to do but every morning between 8:15 and 8:30 there is a series of very long and obnoxious honks coming from a silver van.  Apparently he is the milk man and if you want to buy milk or cheese or who knows what else he sells you go to his van while he sits there for a few minutes.

I bought Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal the other day for something to keep myself entertained.  I have more than enough books in English with me but this seemed like a better use of my time.  I am thrilled to be reading it and plan to keep buying them (hopefully I will end up with all of them).

The other night one of the UW girls had gotten back to her house after class and was just organizing her room.  She walked over to her purse and saw something move.  Turns out it was a scorpion.  Her "dad" came to kill it and it turns out that they aren't deadly here...though getting stung by one apparently hurts something terrible. He also said it's a super rare occurrence and happens MAYBE once a year.  I am now terrified.  Since then I have seen a cicada the size of my mexican phone, another beetle (that was quite large), and 2 large squished grasshoppers on my walks home.  Not cool.

We have what are called talleres twice a week...basically cultural workshops.  This last week we had cooking class.  Monday we just went to the market, which was interesting as always.  Wednesday we made frijoles negros, salsa y tortillas and put them together to make memelitas (also known as sopes in other parts of Mexico).  Oh. My. God.  They were delish and I can't wait to make them for all of you.  I have been craving to eat the salsa again it was that good.

Michi and I with our Memelitas

One afternoon this week I was walking to class.  I don't like the way I go, but it's easy and about 4 blocks less than going the longer way...so I do it anyways.  The sidewalks are small, telephone poles are the in middle of them, and there is a wall the goes almost the entire length of the street.  Many times when you get to a pole you have to walk in the street.  I chose to walk between the wall and a pole at one point where there is a lot of space and a man who was walking towards me chose to do the same.  I had no way to avoid him as I was between him and the wall.  As he approached me he walked very closely and nearly kissed me on the cheek...as in I could feel breath on my cheek he was so close.  He quickly got a death glare as I kept walking.  Needless to say I've chosen to walk on the outside/in the street ever since.  

I went to the market this morning with mi hermana Karla, the older one.  This market has the cheapest fruits and veggies so they go every Saturday to stock up for as much of the week as they can.  A large pineapple, 10 pesos.  2 Kilograms of potatoes, 10 pesos.  2 Kilograms of tomatoes, 12 pesos.  Keep in mind that the conversion is a little more than 10 pesos to the dollar (So 10 pesos is a around 90 cents).  We also went to get chocolate.  My senora doesn't like the way the major chocolate stores clean their cacao beans, nor their ratio of cinnamon and I'm not sure what else...so she cleans and toasts the beans herself and puts together all the other ingredients.  So we took two large bags of the cacao beans and everything else to the chocolate store so it could go through the molinero.  Bascially it's a machine that grinds and mixes everything together.  When we got home she melted it and made it into several pans of chocolate bars which she will use to make my morning hot chocolate.  It's also used in mole.  If you have talked to my mother in the last few days you have probably heard that I ate mole (as in the small animal).  That is false.  I ate a sauce called mole (pronounce mo-lay)...it is very famous here in Oaxaca (this is the land of 7 moles) and has probably 100 different ingredients in it, including chocolate, but it is impossible to pick out any one flavor.  It takes a long time to make.  

On our way home from the market we drove past a tire store/alignment place near our house.  The sign outside stated that on Saturdays they give free tire alignments to women.  Interesting, eh?

Elections for governor are set to take place on July 4th.  It is very interesting to see how the campaigns work here.  You can go to any of the print shops and pick up your car stickers (literally stickers that take up the entire rear windshield) or large banners to hang from your porches.  They also apparently make life-size cut outs of the candidates (there is one creepily on a porch of a house behind my school...kinda creepy).  At stop lights people walk out in front of the stopped cars for the duration of the red light and hold up giant signs with their candidate info on it.  Today there were girls in tiny tiny mini-skirts passing out things at busy intersections.  One of the candidates, I have yet to figure out which, has a remixed version of "I gotta feelin" by the Black Eyed Peas that they are constantly playing near our school (the real version has now been stuck in my head for the last week).  There were girls near our house today passing out aprons that had candidate info on them.  Intense and different stuff.

Rainy season has yet to come to Oaxaca City.  South of the mountains they've been getting some but it hasn't crossed over the mountains as of yet.  It rained for a few minutes last night.  I think we might get some tonight as the sky was very eerie at dusk tonight.  The director of the Institute told us the other day that it will for sure start raining once the hurricanes come.  The city is protected from hurricane damage by the mountains, but still gets all of the rains from it (which is a good thing).  Apparently it doesn't matter which ocean the hurricanes are in, we'll get the rain.  It has cooled off at night more lately, but the day is still very warm.  I'm starting to slowly (very slowly) get tan lines on my shoulders from my backpack.  Hopefully tomorrow at the ruins will help even that out a bit.  

Una huelga en las calles

Today has been a very interesting day to say the least... but before I get to that I'll fill y'all in on the weekend happenings...

Saturday we had nothing planned.  I just hung out at my house in the morning and then met up with the girls later in the day.  We went to Parque Juarez which is also known as El Llano.  From there we walked to El Zocalo and walked around for awhile.  It seemed like it was finally going to rain, and we did feel a few drops of water but it never really happened.  We grabbed some ice cream (two of the other girls tried Chili Mango ice cream...it tastes about as bad as it sounds) and we people watched for awhile.  We then decided to head back to 100% Natural, the restaurant we had been at the day before for some alcoholic beverages.  I had a Vampirina which was a bottle of Corona mixed with pineapple sherbet and orange juice.  Soooo delish.

Sunday we had our excursions to Monte Alban and San Bartolo Coyotepec.  The drive from our school to Monte Alban was only about 20 minutes and was mostly through the city though a lot was up the mountain side. We got there early before there were many people there and it was still rather cool.  I can't imagine spending time there in the afternoon.  The pyramids were huge and the whole place was breathtaking.  It was definitely way more than I expected it to be!

There was a lot of information given to us about the history of the pyramids and such, but honestly I don't remember much... between being hot and wanting to take picture it was hard to process it all enough to remember anything.  But it was an awesome experience and was super beautiful to see!

The journey down the mountain to  San Bartolo Coyotepec was rough.  We were hot, thirsty and hungry and the roads were very windy.  If Dramamine didn't take an hour to take effect I would have loaded up on it.  Instead I tried to not puke, made a new 5 year old friend (no one tell Taylor or she might beat me up), and managed to spill half my water bottle on myself.  It was very cool to see the technique that they used and the pottery was beautiful.  Most of it wouldn't hold water, so the pretty vases I could have bought would have been pointless and most of it was simply decorative.  I wish it all wasn't so fragile or I would have bought a ton more!  

Yesterday was our first day of classes, nothing major.  In our cooking class we toured the markets again and watched them make Oaxaquen chocolate.  I was stupid and forgot to put the battery back in my camera so I couldn't take pictures.  It's a really neat process and the chocolate is awesome.  I plan to buy some to bring home (to make hot chocolate with). I also got to try some mole.

At lunch yesterday I was given some tortillas with what looked like some beef and beans in it.  I started eating but quickly stopped when I discovered something sweet that definitely wasn't beef.  I kept trying it to try and figure out what it was, but the taste was so odd.  For a minute I thought it was supposed to be a tortilla with just mole or chocolate in it.  I asked my senora...turns out it was sweetbreads... I asked her what it was but didn't understand... after looking it up I was glad that I didn't try to eat more.

I have had the same tomato/beef broth soup every day except Sunday in some form or another...

This morning I got up and got to school by 9 as we were supposed to be starting our volunteer work.  I will be working at a place called Instituto de Saludo de San Felipe.  It is basically a seguro social health clinic.  Anyone in Mexico who is employed, their children under 18, and their parents who are too old to work are eligible for this seguro social which is basically free health care.  So Lucero, the owner of ICO, drove us up to San Felipe.  It was a little frustrating because we were at the ICO at 9, but Lucero is a busy lady and it was probably 10 before we actually left for San Felipe.  It's a cute little pueblo that used to be it's own little entity but with the growth of Oaxaca it has now become part of the city.  It has it's own Zocalo and church and market.  We got out of the car and walked the short way to the clinic and saw that the gates were closed.  As we got closer we saw that there was a sign up basically saying that sindicato had closed them down for and undetermined amount of time due to a strike that was happening.  Lucero was having none of that and thought well maybe they'll want the girls to help out around the clinic anyways.  So she proceeded to reach through the gate and open it...and as we walked in remarked "I hope we don't end up in prison for trespassing."  We entered the clinic to find one doctor just chilling out.  She basically said that she was there just in case of an emergency in the town and that there was nothing for us to do.  It's an adorable little clinic-- 2 consult rooms, a birthing room, a dentist room, and a hospital room.  I'm pretty excited to work there.  

We were returning to the school when we realized that there were a few cop cars blocking our way back, before we could really see anything we thought maybe there was a bad accident.  It turns out it was a protest happening in front of the large free clinic/hospital on one of the busiest streets in Oaxaca (it's basically a 6 lane highway that I cross every day).  It was only that one block that we couldn't get down, so we went a different way and talked some cops into letting us go the wrong way down a one way to get into the driveway of the Institute.  We went and sat on the porch at the ICO and just hung out, listening to the rally from over the stone wall.  We soon saw people running down the street and intense honking.  One of the guys from the Institute went to go close the gates to the school (mostly just to keep the randoms that were gathered outside out of the school...we could still go in and out so it wasn't like the school was on lockdown or anything) and we saw people from the streets jumping up on top of cars that were stuck in traffic in the middle of the intersection.  We soon saw people walking by and heard lots of whistling.  Lucero explained to us that the protest most likely had something to do with the clinic strike and that they had blocked off one of the main arteries of the city to make a point.  After several hours of sitting at the school waiting for our intercambios (all of whom ended up cancelling after we sat around for 3 hours doing nothing...talk about frustrating) we left to go home for la comida.  We walked outside and it was crazy surreal.  A 6 lane highway, that usually takes a lot of time, patience, and courage to cross was void of any car traffic and instead was full of people standing around and vendors selling food.  They had blocked off the 2 main roads in the city, Nino Heroes de Chapultepec, y Porfirio Diaz.  It's hard to say how many people really were there because they are spread out over several blocks and are all sitting on the medians, the curbs, walking around...  It was very different from any protests I've seen in the U.S.  There weren't people holding signs.  No one was chanting things.  Every once in awhile you'd hear everyone start whistling and it sounded like a bunch of birds.  You'd hear sirens every once in awhile as the hospital was still open for emergencies.  While we were eating lunch my senora said she thought the protest was over because there weren't buses coming down our street anymore... so I took the short way back to class at 330...I was walking down the hill and the number of people walking up the hill (who normally drive or take buses) was insane... it looked like there had been some disaster at the bottom that people were fleeing from (like in the movies).  I got down to the street and the scene was exactly as it had been.  No one paid me any attention (well not beyond the normal cat calls at least) and I was on my way back to school.  I asked one of my teachers about it and he said it was a fairly normal occurrence in Oaxaca.  It's supposed to be illegal but no one really pays it any attention.  I am prepared for many more things like this to happen as there are elections on July 4--a very interesting situation that I plan to research a bit more and fill you all in on.  One of the other girls was told that they usually only last a day and are over by about 6 pm.  We left to head home at about 8 and the street was still blockaded so I guess only time will tell what will happen with it.  It was very interesting to see.  I feel like if a situation like that was allowed to happen in the U.S. there would be violence or some sort of fighting happening...but every just seemed rather content to be chilling in the street.  It was very eerie to walk out and not see all the cars and to sit through class without the obnoxious noise of traffic, but it was very interesting to watch it develop.  I got some far away pictures but was too scared to go any closer to the gates to get better ones.  

No worries, I still feel super safe.  As Lucero said, it's an experience.  I can only imagine how bad traffic actually was...it seemed horrible still on my walk home, and usually by 8 traffic has pretty much died down.

Sara, I found a place with really good chipotle hummus this evening...another reason you should come visit.

I tried quesadillas arabes last night... it was as big as Leah's head.

My phone is possibly not receiving texts currently... though I'm not really sure.  Some weird symbol randomly appeared today and I have no clue what it means, so if you try texting me and I don't reply it's either because I didn't get it, I have no money left on my phone (though I'm not really sure how to check that), or I just don't like you, *cough*tom*cough*.  

I got to watch the Grey's Anatomy finale last night, talk about intense television.

It is hot here.  No one knows why it hasn't started raining yet.  

I should weigh about 12 pounds by now from all the sweating and walking I do.

I've decided that they length of my day can be determined at the end of the night by how gross and dirty my flip-flop feet are.  

I think those are all of my random tid-bits for the night.

CIAO CIAO!

Links to fotos

We went to Monte Alban and San Bartolo Coyotepec today.  I'll write about those later but realized that I'd never be able to pick just a few pictures to post.  Anyways, here are the links to the pictures on facebook.  Just link the underlined writing and you'll go there.  For my techtards/non-facebookers out there just click the next button at the top of each picture to see more.  It should be set up so that you can see all the pictures even if you don't have facebook!

More pictures of my house

Monte Alban and San Bartolo Coyotepec

Algunas fotos de mi casita...

My window and table

The street in front of my house.  This was taken from my window.  I had to cross parallel to this traffic to go to the bank and it was very difficult... this is actually a fairly slow street compared to another that I have to cross to go to school.

This is my school.  It is the old estate and home of los abuelos de Lucero, the lady who  owns the school.  It is huge for it being a house and very pretty.

We took a tour of the city today and bought cellphones, which was an adventure all it's own.  I bet walking to find the right TelCel was about 5 miles...at least.  The rest of it probably totaled up to 10-15 miles of walking today.  I am now the proud owner of a brick, that is so old school it doesn't even have a color screen...quite the drastic change from my Crackberry, but it gets the job done (sorry if you get a text that doesn't make sense... it's been over a year since I've even T9'd and my phone doesn't even have that).  Found a cafe that I adore that has awesome smoothies, licuadas, and has a very extensive food menu as well, though I didn't really check it out.

We flyin first class up in the sky...

A little Fergie to get y'all goin on a Thursday night... I somehow managed to buy first class seats from Mexico City to Oaxaca... which in all fairness was a waste of money (though I had no choice)...the flight wasn't even a full 45 minutes long... I really got no perks other than apple juice during take off and drinking out of a real glass glass...

I woke up Sunday morning with a sore throat... by Monday morning it had worsened to a stuffy nose... with all the dry air on the plane I arrived in Mexico City barely able to breath without coughing and without a voice.  I therefore spent literally all day Tuesday sleeping.  I am feeling much better now, though it has progressed from no voice, to coughing, to sniffling, back to sore throat... I'm still not sure where drinking water is in the house so I don't really have anything to cure it with either...

I left Freddy's at about 8:30 this morning and took the bus from Playa Del Carmen to the airport in Cancun where I proceeded to sit around and do nothing for awhile... cue the flashbacks of the 18 hour delay in said airport...  My flight to Mexico City was alright, though if it weren't for the Dramamine I had taken I probably would have puked--more on my general views of Mexicana flights in general will follow...I found the girls from the UW rather quickly and we just kind of sat around until our flight.

It was very cool taking off from Mexico City and seeing all of the mountains and such that we flew over.  (Another little side note that I found interesting--in big cities like Chicago, New York, etc it seems like all of the big tall buildings are clumped together in one general area...not in Mexico City.  You saw a clump of 3 sky scrapers here and another 2 over there...just randomly scattered all over the place)  I paid much more attention to the flight attendants and the mountains than I did my book...which is saying something because I was at a pretty good part.  It was pretty cloudy for the middle portion of the trip but as we were beginning to land it was super cool.  Oaxaca from the air does not at all look like a city.  For awhile, I thought we were possibly landing in the wrong place.  Granted, Oaxaca really isn't a big city...but still.  As we were landing there were fields all around with random shacks... just before I could see the runway I looked out the window and saw a man plowing his field using a goat!  I seriously thought I was landing in FAWI because the airport was so tiny!  There was one runway, which we had to turn around on after we reached the end to go to the "gate" which was really just some stairs chilling on the cement.  Inside was even smaller with one national and one international baggage carousel.  My host mom and the older sister were waiting for me with a sign and we quickly checked out of there.  The first Oaxacan stop and go light we came across didn't work and for lack of a better word it was pretty much a clusterfuck of cars.

Apparently the big sport in Oaxaca is baseball...not soccer.

My family seems super nice.  They had another girl who has been here for the last four months from Oregon who is actually leaving at 6 tomorrow morning.  She is a super nice girl and I wish she was going to be around for at least a little while longer.  I was given a general tour of the house and had some "water" with my senora (it was really like lime fizzy water but whatevs) and then was going to come up and unpack/take a siesta when she said she was headed out to dinner with some of her friends and invited me along.  I got to see where the school was and had a delish burger.  It is like a 10 minute walk to the school, if I book it.  The biggest problem now is that we returned after my family had gone to bed so I don't know where water is (if I am allowed to have any) and such, and my throat is killing me/I can't stop coughing!  I know I'll make it through the night but it's just so weird to not be able to go to the kitchen and help myself.  I felt bad asking her so many questions so I just left that one alone in hopes that she might offer it up...though she did not.

It is hot as balls here.  There is no wind coming through my window.  The fan for my room doesn't work.  The other girl said I can steal hers once she leaves, which would be great except it still leaves me tonight in the insane freaking heat!

Some quick ponderings about Mexicana Airways...  I don't know if it's just that time of year/in Mexico or what but for whatever reason all four of my flights have been crazy bumpy and "sway"-y.  Landing in Mexico City was the worst today.  There was some intense cloud cover and we kept going up and down.  At one point I thought we were about to roll/fall out of the air with the random side angle we had going on.  (Leah, Terri...I thought of you guys as the guy next to me chuckled at me.  After we landed he looked at me and said with hand gestures subir y bajar y subir y bajar... fue malisimo!  So although he laughed at me...even he was a little freaked).  Good part of their service...they offer food and alcohol on all their flights.  And no, you don't have to pay a crap ton in cabin for them.  The flight from Chicago featured possibly some of the best cheese tortellini of my life.  They also come back to check to make sure you don't want anything else to drink as soon as they are finished serving the first time around...this pretty much continues in a cycle until you land.  Bad thing... (though this really isn't Mexicana but whatevs)... I thought sitting in the front row would be kinda cool... not only cuz of the first class aspect but because it would be less bumpy (which it was... I could hardly tell we had lifted off the ground)... It was pretty cool but the sounds of things clanking around up there make it a little bit more scary.

Alright.  I think that is all of my ruminating for the night.  I am going to try to get some sleep through this god awful heat... if the chocolates for the people at the school hadn't melted yet they certainly will tonight!  Oh and fail on the little brother sitch... he's only here before and after school and doesn't really live here :(

Also, I have internet at my house which is super chido (though apparently they don't use that word in Oaxaca) so expect more frequent updates from me!

Ciao ciao!

Leavin on a jet plane....

So tomorrow is the big day.  I'm "officially" a UW alum now even though I still have this one class to take this summer.  Here is a run down of what the big plans are for the first few days:

I will leave the metropolis of FAWI (Fort Atkinson, WI for those of you not in the know) at 8 tomorrow morning and will be travelling to Chicago for my flight out of O'hare at 2:10pm.  I will arrive in Mexico City at 6:15pm and will then fly to Cancun where I will land around 11:20pm tomorrow night.  It will be quite the long day of travelling but I have a few days of nothing.  I will be staying with Freddy for a couple of days and will not have Internet access.  I plan to spend most of Tuesday sleeping and watching movies while he works.

Thursday morning I will have to get up and return to the Cancun airport.  I have a 1:45pm flight to Mexico City where I will meet up with the three other girls from the UW who will also be on the trip (Kathleen, Michi, and Jessie).  We're all on the same flight to Oaxaca together and should be arriving there around 7pm.  The host families will be waiting at the airport to pick us up and we will go straight home with them that night.

Friday morning we have to be at ICO (Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca, the language school that I will be attending) at 9 AM for our orientation.  We'll be taking a couple of tours of the city and just generally getting to know where things are.  Luckily they moved this up to Friday so that we can know where some things are in the city on Saturday...which is a free day!  I'm hoping to be able to explore the city and buy a cell phone that day.  Sunday we are taking a trip to some ruins called Monte Alban and a little village called San Bartolo Coyotepec (it's a place that makes traditional black Oaxacan pottery).  I will officially start classes at 9 am on Monday with cooking class.

Many of you have no idea where Oaxaca is, and my "hand map" of it is pretty non-descript...so here is a map I found on Google.

The big yellow dot is where Oaxaca City is (where I'll be living).  The upper blue portion shows where many of the places I'll be visiting are in comparison to Oaxaca.  You can see where I'll be on Sunday (Monte Alban) on there as well.

Last thing... I am extremely excited to meet my family.  My senora's name is Aurora...she is an older lady who's grandchildren will be mis hermanos (brothers and sisters).  I will have two sisters (Karla who is 19 and Diana who is 12) and a brother (Sebastian who is 8).

I will post again as soon as I can (probably Friday or Monday) and let y'all know how things are going!