Hump Day

It´s wednesday.

Today marked the end of the middle of the first week, and clearly I am so doing fine on my own that I am spending the next hour here at the little internet cafe next to one of the many impressive cathedrals here in the city. Quite the juxtapositions here.

Anyhow I do feel like I am creating and there is emerging some sort of a rhythm here. It helps that you can walk anywhere in 15 minutes in this city.It´s 10 minutes of brisk walking from my host family´s place to the center of town. And it´s super close to the school- 5 minutes of leisurely walking.

My routine so far has consisted of breakfast in the morning with Estela (the school sets everything up with the family- but it´s up to you if you want to eat meals with them- I chose breakfast). This morning´s menu was cereal and bananas with jello (slightly strange-but i have had some great eggs and tortillas the past few days). We sit and chat a tiny bit (my brain really doesn´t start working as you all know until after the caffeine has hit my blood stream- and that´s in english). Breakfast is at 8:15 and school starts at 9 am. This gives me just enough time to eat, chat, and walk to the local coffee shop before class.

The local coffee shop is run by this very cheerful dude named Ruben. He gets a kick out of my minimal Spanish and I get a kick out of talking soccer with him. We watched the Barcelona v. Chelsea match today in the afternoon (today was a two cup kinda day). Anyhow, after grabbing the closest thing to strong coffee that I have found so far, I head off to class.

Class starts at 9 and goes til noon. We have two short ten-minute breaks in which to socialize with the few other folks that are here right now (this swine flu frenzy has really affected attendance at the school-which sucks for them but is sweet for our teacher-student ratio). So far I have met a handsome and kind family from Zimbabwe, a crusty adventurer from Tucson named Todd, and some random other U.S. folk. There´s also a group of Linfield students down here taking an archaeology class through the Institute. I told the professor about the Linfield-PLU connection- small world.

So far class has been real basic. Understanding the basic formalities of salutations, basic interactions (asking people where they are from etc.), and basic grammar (el Agua- not la Agua- tricky). I love learning all of the vocab. My favorite word right now is pelicula- that´s the word for movie. I don´t know why I love it so much. But just say it out loud once- it just sounds so weird, interesting, and funny all at the same time. Word nerd. Today we started really getting into the differences in the verbs ser and estar. And I´ve already given the feedback to my very open (not that she really has a choice) teacher- Marisol- that I really just need to do a lot of conjugation. That´s another funny word. Word nerd.

After the first three hours of practice, mi maestra assigns homework for the next day. Today it was writing a brief paragraph about how i´m doing here, what i think of this place, and what i think of my host family- all to practice using ser and estar. Then, after our second ten minute break, we start in with conversation hour. This means that we are supposed to talk for an hour about whatever the hell we want. So far this has mostly consisted of me finding a good question and intently listening to Marisol talk. It´s way easier to listen than to talk...in Spanish that is. But I am doing OK I think with just making my best effort to blunder my way through all of thoughts I want to express. My problem is that I want to express myself in the exact same way in Spanish that I do in English and boy is it work to stick with trying to actually see a full thought expressed fully in Spanish right now. Imagine lots of random nouns accompanied by an even more melodramatic and involved series of gesticulations from me. And then imagine Marisol laughing her ass off pretty much for the entire 15 mintues of the hour that I actually say anything. I don´t know how good I am at being a focused and structured student- but one thing is for sure- we have a good time.

After 1pm I have an hour break. I´ve been walking home and picking up a couple of tostadas from this great local vendor (fresh avocado, black beans, chiles, and ham) and eating them at her little hut before laying down at the house for a siesta. My next obligation is at 2pm with my Intercambio (exchange with a local oaxacan) whose name is Noe (the Spanish version of Noah). He wasn´t there today so I went back to the coffee shop as mentioned, and got to catch the second half of the Chelsea-Barcelona match. Totally sweet- Barcelona came through in extra time to tie it up for anyone who cares.

Then after our intercambio (we do half hour of spanish and half and hour of english)- I have anouther hour break before having to be back at the school for my cooking seminar. I like to use this time to get my homework done. The atmosphere at the school is very conducive to hanging out- it´s a gorgeous old Hacienda with tons of green space and terraces- so a good place to focus. Then the cooking with Berta begins at 4 and ends a little before 6pm.

Cooking has been fun and a good way to have dinner built into my schedule. Yesterday we made Chilaquiles which was quite similar to the Entomatadas we made on day one- save we made a Chile Verde sauce and we ripped tortillas into chips to fry up. Oh we also used Epozote instead of parsley (I have never heard of this herb- not that that should surprise anyone). I had seconds.

Then at 6, with belly full and brain saturated with spanish (seriously, I found an verb oozing out of my right ear and it looked like estar), I go for a nice walk around the local park. The park is almost always full with food vendors, local families, people exercising, and lots of lovers. The displays of public affection can only be rivaled by those I´ve seen in Paris. For being a Catholic culture- there is a lot of very open sensuality. There are also lots of cute little kids playing soccer. There´s an internet cafe close by to the park that I have been using and it makes a nice little ending point to the business part of the day.

People really are out in the evenings here because the relative coolness of the evening is so enjoyable. It´s cool to see how much people appreciate public space and simply enjoy being with one another. Old couples walk holding hands. Young couples giggle and steal kisses under the trees. Little ones run around in the fountain. And everyone just seems happy. Ít´s really refreshing.

I´ve been lucky enough to have made a couple of social connections so far and have enjoyed them the last two nights. Monday night, I randomly ran into the friend I made through Easton, Anna-Laura, downtown at an open air cafe. We met in Puerto Escondido and I learned that she was-is an architect here in Oaxaca! So we had a grand ole time just reconnecting, catching up, and both being very glad to have a friend in Oaxaca (not a lot for young, single professional-aged folks here). And then last night I went on a great hike-adventure with this crazy desert dude (he actually took class from Ed Abbey at U of Arizona back in the late 80´s) from Tucson. Todd drove down here and originally was going to snorkel off the Yucatan for 4 months, followed by some time in the jungle that separates Guatemala from Mexico, and then finishing with a language school in Chiapas. But he ended up hiking in the mountains around here and sort of fell in love with the idea of taking school during the week and hiking on the weekends. He´s a character. We hiked about 5 miles and the last 3 were in the dark- winding and twisting through a part of town we didn´t plan on being in. Which was just totally part of the adventure. That´s the other great part about Oaxaca is that everywhere here is safe- there´s like nothing in the way of violent crime here. We had a good time and laughed about more or less intentionally getting lost over some beers.

So anyhow- thought I´d just paint a small picture as to the day to day downhere for you all. May begins the rainy season down here- and we´ve already had some delicious smelling and ear popping thunderstorms. This also means that the temperature here mellows out and stays quite reasonable for the entire month (I´ve been told). I don´t know that there would be a bad time to come to this place- but I think I ended up coming at a very good time.

Off to catch a movie- I hope I can read the subtitles!

Besitos