Food and Fiestas

  Oaxaca, Mexico
Monday, September 17, 2007

Us with Anthony, Chris and Sue

The last two weeks have been fun but tiring. Our Spanish is definitely improving but I think our English (or ability to talk coherently) is regressing! We´ve met some great people at the Instituto and gone out a few times on the weekends with our new compañeros. Oaxaca has some really great restaurants and night life. Last week we ate at La Olla and the Tlayudas are to die for. They are hard tortillas with mole rojo or mole negro, chicken, cheese, avocado and tomato. Amazing!

Santo Domingo

On Saturday, September 8th we experienced slightly more American culture than Mexican culture. We went to Plaza del Valle to check out the cinema and fast food!. We saw Bourne Ultimatum and ate at Burger King. But we did read the Spanish subtitles and we had jalepeño poppers at BK. So it was like a fusion day! On Sunday, September 9th we went back to the Santo Domingo museum and went to the exhibit in honour of a famous Mexican woman Antonieta Rivas Mercado. It was a beautiful tribute to her life but quite sad as she committed suicide in France when she was in her early 30s.

Crazy caterpillar

So everyone who knows me knows how much I loathe creepy crawlies. Which is ironic considering that most of the creepiest crawlies live in the countries we are about to visit. But I made it through Australia and Asia with only one extreme cockroach encounter so I´m sure I can make it through the Americas. Anyway, this all leads up to my description of the bugglies that invaded the trees at the school this week. The locals call them gusanos (like the grub from the tequila bottle), but that might be a misnomer. These creatures are gigantic caterpillars with crazy red heads. They dangle from the trees just waiting for me to walk underneath so they can drop into my hair... Well not really - but that is what I imagine they must be planning.

This weekend was Independence day in Mexico. I think the original Dia de Independencia is September 16th but the birthday of one of the Mexican Presidents was September 15th so now everyone celebrates on the 15th and 16th. But really the celebration lasts from Friday to Sunday. On Friday the 14th we watched amazing dances in the zocalo from all over Mexico. There were boys dancing with machetes and the girls had fantastic costumes. We also watched a sample of Guelaguetza dances from the different regions in Oaxaca. In one dance the women carry pineapple and in another they dance holding a basket of flowers on their heads. It looks very difficult but they are so graceful.

Symphony at the zocalo

On the 15th we went out with Adrian´s family to the zocalo. It was bustling with people and there were fireworks and bands playing all night. We went for a walk at one point and found Andy´s classmate Sean and some of his friends. He had this crazy foam that you can spray but it doesn´t stain your clothes - so we had a foam fight. Then we bought hollowed out eggs filled with confetti and broke them on each others heads!! It was like being a kid again. Later on Andy and I were sitting with Chela and Coco at a restaurant near a huge firecrackers display with wheels on it that lit up and turned really fast as the explosives went off. When the firecrackers started to whiz and bang, ashes were flying in our food and beer and the smoke was so unbearable we were all coughing and ducking for cover. Then the fireworks (the safer ones in the sky) started and were really spectacular. My favourite part of the ´grito´ was when everyone yelled ´Viva Mexico´ and ´Viva Oaxaca´. The City put on a great party on Saturday night.

Independence parade

On Sunday, we headed back to the zocalo to watch the parade at noon. Later in the afternoon we returned to the house and ate Pozole (yummy soup) with Chela, Coco, Carlos, Pepe, Pilar and Santiago. We played a Mexican trivia game and actually got a few questions right.

On Sunday we´re heading to the beach at Puerto Escondido - about 8 hours by bus. We´re looking forward to some R&R for our last week in Mexico.