Holiday Inn Express Downtown Oaxaca

Day 3

 

Today was such an exhausting day that I guess I'm going to have to let the pictures speak for themselves to a degree, unless I decide to come back to it tomorrow.  Just for a quick overview:

 

We took a tour that was intended to be 3-4 hours long and ended up lasting from somewhere around 10 a.m. until after 6.  It was eventful, to say the least.  The most titillating market experience, personal demonstrations on how to make alibrihes (folk art wooden ...

... out on Monday.. to my new home on the hilly side of Oaxaca...a room with only four corners, window and pink curtains... i^ll be heading for a matress shopping later on and there won{t be pink curtains in my room! the place is cheap compared to other places i^ve seen...and i have only local housemates..good for my spanish i guess:) as i seem to be the only gringa in the neighborhood i receive quite a lot of looks with questions written in the face... but the ...

... paid our school fees for the next two weeks and signed up for the Saturday tour. We used the rest of the afternoon to locate a Sunday service in English and found a small Anglican/Episcopal community, a short ten minute walk away. After several wrong stops we found a restaurant (La Cantanita) that was recommended by Rachel from ICO. In some circles, well-cultured women are not supposed to drink in this type of ...

... quite hot. On saturday we got on the bus in D.F. and took the six hour bus ride to here. After the halfway point you drive through some spectacular mountain scenery with big fluffy white clouds clinging on the tops. Unfortunatley, I fell asleep after three hours of farm land and nothing much to look at. (....will finish later)

... it! Their reaction is "A PIG??!!?" From there on out you raise the pig, feed it, wash it, groom it, excerise it, and also give it steroids to bulk up. At the end of that you show it. They said "who are you showing it to" haha well I'm showing it to a judge and other people show their pigs with me. "what do you mean 'show' it", I said "you just walk it around a pen" haha that's it? Yea. And after you sell it and they kill it, lol. Very funny and odd conversation. Next I came ...

... and the image of Oaxaca as beeing this tourist paradise has been perpetuated, anyway in the summer of 2006, spurred by the federalies cracking down on an annual teachers march, the citizens of Oaxaca took over the city for about 6 months -- well anyways it is really interesting to read about, but once again Oaxaca is being touted by the government as a peaceful great place to go spend ...

... via a collectivo. The woman there said to just walk down to the Abastos and stand along the street where all the buses pass and ask "¿Etla, Mercado? " until someone basically says yes. Sounds easy enough to me. Not the case. Oh my gawd there were a ton of buses, and asking is always easy, but understanding the answer is not. The buses surround the Abastos head in all sorts of different directions out of the city. I used some deductive reasoning and ...

... mole is a chocolate-based sauce you serve over meat, usually chicken. Needless to say, it´s friggin´delicious. I practically licked my plate clean.

Making my way through the market for the last time, a peculiar booth caught my attention. It was nothing but huge baskets filled with various dried insects.

¨What are those for? Do you eat them?¨ I asked.

¨Yes, in quesadillas!¨ And insect vendor motioned over to a woman with a basket full of ...