We visited a workshop where alebrijes are made by an extended family in a pueblo near Oaxaca. Alebrijes are carvings made from the copal tree, and painted with intricate and colorful traditional Zapotec designs. This video shows the process beginning from the carving, creation of the natural dyes, and painting of the alebrijes. Also, some of my favorite alebrijes created in the workshop.
Family visit to Monte Alban
Last weekend we spent an afternoon at Monte Alban, and 2,500 year old Zapatec city. This is one of the oldest organized cities in the western hemisphere and once housed at least 40,000 people, and oversaw a much larger population. See the slide show below . . .
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Feeling More at Home
After our second week here, I can finally say that we are all starting to feel more at home here. Arianna is doing very well in her new school. She is making friends and tutoring her teacher in English, which just makes her feel so proud and important! Ostara has had a great second week — no more crying or needing to be picked up early. She says her class is fun, she has some friends now and she understands more of what is said in class (though no specific words yet except for Como estas? and Como te llamas?).
Andrew has made friends with one of his intercambio buddies. I had a new student join my class this week and it has helped make our class more dynamic and interactive. She and her husband are headed to Peru to spend some time with friends there. They have been traveling by motorcycle for the past few weeks in Mexico (the blog of the PanAmerican motorcycle tour is here). We also met another couple from Canada and we all went out to dinner together tonight. It was so nice to carry on a real conversation in English with someone else besides Andrew. All of our new friends are heading off in different directions this weekend, but our time together holds the promise that we will be able to make more connections to other interesting travelers and natives that cross our path.
My classmate and I went to the tianguis in Llano Park today with our teacher. I appreciated the tour he gave us of the many kinds of food, drinks, candy and authentic clothing there. We ended our tour with a taste of Oaxaca — tacos called barbecoas made from either goat or sheep. We tried both and decided that we liked the leaner goat meat. We also tried a hibiscus refresco and one made from tuna (a type of fruit) and rice. They were both delicious and the meal was very filling.
I returned to the tiangui later to buy ingredients to make mole amarillo. Andrew took a cooking class yesterday and after eating the results of his labor, decided he enjoyed it so much that he wanted to repeat the process and share the mole with his family. I have tasted mole amarillo before in a chicken empanada and think it is one of my favorite moles. Can’t wait to try to duplicate the experiment!
We also had a dance class tonight in salsa at our language school. It was basically a private lesson and I was surprised at how much progress we made. After reviewing the basic step, side step and “suzy q”, we went into right hand turns, cross body leads with and without turns, what I call the “hairbrush” where you guide your partner’s hand over the head, two handed turns and double cross body leads. We still need to practice at a faster tempo but I think we both feel confident enough to go to Candela and check out the real salsa action in town!
Best wishes to our fellow travelers as they continue on in their respective journeys!
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A Tour of Our Apartment in Oaxaca
Rebecca created this video tour of our apartment in Oaxaca
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Arianna’s First Week at Colegio Teizcali in Oaxaca
My first day was rough. I had no friends and could not understand any of the Spanish. I had a tour of the school – it is square, and there is a playground in the middle of the school, and an outside gym. The sides are hollowed out, there are the classrooms, it is made out of brick. My sister’s class is on the right side. My class is on the bottom of the square building, not quite on the bottom of the square. My teacher is very nice, she is about as tall as Mommy, she only knows a little English and she wants me to teach her English writing.
The second day I had nearly caught on to the Spanish and made myself some friends. My third day, I had made myself another friend. On Thursday, everybody went swimming except me and a few other boys, but we had fun, too. My fourth day I had 3 friends and I could understand most all of the Spanish. I am learning a lot of Spanish, but not much else.
I have 3 friends. One is named Sorley, and she is small and very friendly, and she was my first friend. And then Vania is tall, with a good sense of fashion, short black hair, and is very nice and tries to speak English the best she can. Vania is my best friend. And then there is Elisa. She is VERY tall, very friendly and helpful, she has curly hair, and she likes to help me and she is very nice. Elisa is a very good friend.
The first day our bus came right on time, but Daddy didn’t get me to the bus early enough, and we got off at the wrong place. We had to walk for like a mile past some freaky stray city dogs. The second day, my Dad figured out that we could ride a grey bus and we could get a lot closer, but still not close enough. The 3rd day, my Dad had nearly gotten everything right, and figured out how and when to make the bus stop, we didn’t have to pass the freaky dogs anymore, and I was pretty early. The fourth day, my Dad had gotten the times, the buses, and the places all right, so I was early for school, got dropped off at the right place, and we know the right bus to take now.
Arianna
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Oaxacan Dentist
Finding a Dentist in Oaxaca
Riding on the bus on my way back from picking up the girls I happened to notice that one of my molars didn’t feel quite right. On further inspection, it was obvious there was a fairly large hole in one of my teeth. I thought that I had lost a filing. This happens to me quite frequently, as I grind my teeth in my sleep and crack my filings on a regular basis. I have learned from experience that when I notice a missing filing, it is very bad to wait a week or two to seek help from the dentist. Since we are here in Oaxaca for another 5 weeks, I knew I had no choice but to find a good local dentist.
How do you go about finding a good dentist? Well, being the modern man that I am, I sought the guidance of Google. I found a local dentist that spoke English (very important, in my situation since I definitely would not want to end up mistakenly saying “Si” to the question “So, you want me to yank out the tooth without novocaine, correct?”). He also was trained at Univ of Michigan, and is well respected in internet forums because many Gringos fly down from the US for cheap dental care. For those of you who may be looking for a good dentist, the one I found was Dr. Angel Gomez Reyes, with the website OaxacanDentist.com, on Bustamante 2 blocks south of the Zocalo.
I called and spoke to Dr. Reyes in person, and made an appointment for the following day, quite relieved to have found a good dentist in Oaxaca and have a way to take care of the problem. The next day I set off from the apartment, and walked down Bustamante Ave with the address in mind. On Bustamante 2 blocks south of the Zocalo I saw a sign that said “Dentista” and I knew I must be in the right place.
I walked into the dentist’s office and I saw nothing at all like what I would expect. In the United States when you walk into a dentist’s office you generally see a clean waiting room with a reception desk. No waiting room, no reception desk. I walked right into a room with a dirty old dentist chair that looked like it was from the 1920′s. Next to it was a small equipment table covered with old, torn, filthy tin-foil, and adorned with multiple large tools that would fit in nicely in a Medieval torture chamber. A woman was in the room cleaning equipment. I anxiously said “Estoy verando Dr. Reyes”, she said “Dr. Reyes no esta aqui, es alli” I didn’t understand at first, and then it dawned on me. With great relief I realized that this was NOT Dr. Reyes’ office.
When I left, I went two doors down and found Dr. Reyes’ office. Inside his office I was relieved to see a waiting room with a reception desk and a friendly receptionist, and inside a clean examination room with recognizable dental equipment from this century. It is amazing how comforting these little details are, which we see but take for granted every day. The little details that tell us that everything is as it should be and that we will have the kind of social interaction we are accustomed to.
Well, I am happy to say I did have the type of interaction I am accustomed to and I received excellent care from Dr. Reyes. He found and filled a large cavity in a molar. I liked his care so much that I am planning to return next week to have him complete a porcelain crown on another tooth, for about 1/3 the price it would cost me in the US (even with insurance).
Spontaneous Parade
Rebecca and I were on our way back to our apartment from a quick shopping trip, and ran into this parade. As far as I can tell, it was a spontaneous parade to celebrate life. I love the music – a cool mix of mariachi and jazz. Check it out:
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Hitting the wall
Learning Spanish in Oaxaca
After 3 days of intensive Spanish classes, I have already hit the wall. I thought I knew so much Spanish –4 years in school (although that was a LONG time ago) and one hour a week of Spanish with Josefina for the past year or so. It should be easy for me to just pick things up and start talking, right? Wrong! I have a lot of vocabulary but not a lot of experience conversing, so it takes me forever to say what I want to say and even longer to understand what someone is trying to say to me! And when I do finally manage to spit out what I am trying to say, my teacher corrects all of my mistakes. What is a perfectionist to do?
I broke down in class on Thursday and asked my teacher if we could just chat. He was very kind and did just what I asked, even though it must be painful to listen to me speak so slowly and incorrectly. The strange thing is, after I stopped worrying about getting all of the answers right in the book and just focused on chatting and getting to know my teacher and vice versa, I felt more confident. Focusing on making a connection with another person took the emphasis off of being perfect. Today we only did one exercise in the book and conversed the rest of the time. After speaking Spanish for so long, I felt my brain start to shift a little. Rather than trying to translate everything into English, I just started using Spanish words to communicate.
I still have a long way to go but I think that the conversational style of learning Spanish is what I have been lacking in my previous classes and what I so desperately need right now to become more fluent. Hope I don’t kill my teacher from a slow and painful death of listening to me massacre his language!
Oaxaca Parade
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- Rebecca on the rooftop patio in Oaxaca
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- Ostara watching the 20 de Noviembre parade in Oaxaca
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- 20 de Noviembre Parade in Oaxaca
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- Oaxaca parade from our rooftop patio
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- Watching the parade from our rooftop patio
Rebecca on the rooftop patio in Oaxaca
Watching the parade from our rooftop patio
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Riding the City Buses in Oaxaca
One of the most difficult things about traveling in a foreign city, where you are somewhat less than fluent in the language, is traveling. We have enrolled both the girls in a private school for the next month, and the school is about 3 miles away, requiring a bus ride to school. It has taken me 3 days to figure out how to get on the bus, how to get off the bus, which bus to take, where to wait, where to get off. All of these things SEEM simple, but when you are in a foreign culture, and don’t understand the language, trust me, they aren’t.
The first day going to school, we took the correct bus on the way to school, but got off about 1 mile from the school. We had to ask a half dozen people for directions as we slowly trudged closer and closer to the school — we were all SO happy to see the building! On the way back from dropping the girls off, we wanted to go back to the city center, so we were looking for a bus that said “CENTRO” on it. We saw a bus with the word “CENTRAL” and figured it must mean the same thing (at least I did, in the way of honesty, Rebecca did ask “do you think there’s a difference between “Centro” and “Centra”?). So, we had another 1 mile walk to get back from the closest point.
The second day we missed the first bus that was going by because it was different color than the day before – apparently the color of the bus doesn’t mean anything? Or at least does not correspond to the route. Anyways, we had to wait an extra 30 minutes for the next one, and were late for school.
Today, the third day everything went smoothly – the correct bus, the correct stop – and we were 20 minutes early because everything went well.
The bus ride itself is interesting, too. Ostara calls it “The Night Bus” because it reminds her of the crazy bus the drives through London in Harry Potter. It drives fast, careens around corners, screeches to a halt, starts again while passengers are still in the process of disembarking – altogether quite an adventure. The girls love it!
Note to self: Never say “Bahan ahora” (I’ll get off now) to the bus driver. This results in the driver slamming on the bus, and all unsuspecting passengers to lurch out of their seats towards the windshield. Give the driver a distant goal, like if a school is a block or so away, say “Bahan de la escuela”.
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