Day One: So today I experienced Oaxaca during the day. It's really beautiful here. There are mountains everywhere, and a lot of the buildings have really pretty architecture. Today I woke up about six from all the light and traffic. My room window faces east so I get all the sun. Yay. I got up around eight and tried to take a shower... in cold water. Not fun. Then Liesa, Jeff, and Sandi came and picked me up about nine. Sandi worked with the Holeman's in Peru for two years, and she's here on a bit of sabbatical until she goes to graduate school. She's helping me with teaching English until the other girls get here. So after they picked me up, we went and ate at a Denny's style restaurant. It was pretty good. They had AMAZING hot chocolate. Then we went grocery shopping which was really fun. Liesa gave me my weekly amount of money, and we went through the store. They have a lot of the same products, just different names. After that, we dropped the groceries off at home and went to the school so Liesa could teach her economics class. After she taught, we walked around the school, and she introduced me to people as we went. Then we came back, and Liesa went home, and I came to the apartment to hang out before dinner. It's just really pretty here. I was really homesick last night, but today was much better. Tonight Liesa, Sandi, and I are going to the zocalo (town center) and eating dinner. I'm super excited. :)
Day Two: Day Two began with another trip to another supermarket in a nicer part of town with Liesa and Sandi. After that adventure which involved lots of laughing over interesting Mexican ingredients, we all went home to grab lunch and chill out for a little while before reconvening to check out the bus system maps. The buses here run on routes that the bus companies buy, but the drivers make money by people getting on and paying them. The drivers are paid little if any by the bus company, so they rely on riders. There's usually a packed bus in the heart of the city. It makes getting on and off the bus really fun, especially if you're in a window seat. And the buses usually only stop for maybe two minutes at each stop, unless there's a bunch of people getting on. If you're getting off, you better hurry up. The traffic here is insane. Red lights are more like suggestions versus actual rules, and NO ONE uses blinkers. Everyone just kind of does whatever they want and does their best to not get run over. The pedestrians have it really rough because of all that. It's sort of like playing Frogger to cross the streets. Great fun, but slightly dangerous at times. Back to buses: It's 6 pesos to get on the bus and that's to wherever you want, unless you have to change buses. Then it's another 6 pesos. The exchange rate here is pretty good. It's roughly 12 pesos to a dollar, so it's basically 50 cents to ride the bus. Pretty good. Anyway, after a leisurely lunch, we got together at the Holeman's and Liesa went over the map she had. The only problem with the map is that it ISN'T an official city bus map because those don't exist. It was basically a paper map with multicolored lines following the various routes. After studying this carefully for 30 minutes or so, Sandi, Liesa, and I headed out to search for the organic market in town. It was mostly an excuse to ride the buses to see how the lines went. So we hopped on the bus and finally found it. Sadly, it was closed. But there was a beautiful park a block away so we walked over and caught a bus from there to the mall area just to see what buses were coming and going. Because the buses are all sort of independent and there's no real rhyme or reason to the buses, you have to look in the front of the bus for the stops or landmarks each one stops at. Some of them are very similar or identical, but some are different. So we sat at the bus stop near the mall area with our maps just to try to figure out if there was any sort of system. The conclusion we came to was, no, there's not really a system we could see. After than exciting afternoon, we came back to the Holeman's, went and got some awesome adobado chicken from a little stand, brought it back, ate, and then played Quelf. I wore my belt tied ninja style around my head for the whole game. Super exciting. Then I headed home and went to bed.
Day Three: Sunday = Church, of course. However, church in another language is VERY different!! Listening to two hours of church in Spanish was very neat, and very tiring at the same time. We sang (in Spanish of course) several songs and listened to several testimonies of how God was working within a few people's lives. Then one of the younger guys from the congregation got up to preach. He preached for about an hour and a half, and my brain quit attempting to translate after thirty minutes or so! I tried very hard to concentrate on listening and understanding (cough, cough, trying to understand) what he was saying but there was a lot of super-fast Spanish being thrown at me. After church, we went back home, and I attempted to recover from the Spanish onslaught. The H's have another missionary family that they are close to (The M's), and we all went to dinner together. The M's have three boys and one girl, all under the age of 8. They are busy people. Anyway, eating out here in Latin America is SO different than in the States. Here, there are no big restaurants like Logan's or Olive Garden. The biggest restaurants I've see that aren't American hold maybe 30 people, tops. Eateries here aren't made to push out large volumes of food, so I've noticed that the quality is much better. So, we went and ate tacos with the M's, and it was great fun.
Day Four: Monday and Wednesday are our OCS (Oaxaca Christian School) Days. These two days, we go to the school to help out the missionary kids (MKs) and teachers there. The school has grown a lot in the past two years or so, and so it has put a much greater strain on the teachers. They have to combine grades throughout the school in order to evenly distribute teachers. However, this can create some problems, especially in the younger grades when they are more talkative and can be kind of rowdy. But they are all very cute. I work in the 3rd and 4th grade classroom from 8 to 11:30. There are eight 3rd graders and five 4th graders. It's usually quite interesting to see teaching occur because it's often simultaneous. I can be teaching the 3rd grade reading, and the teacher can be teaching the 4th grade reading. You can imagine the fun in trying to keep everyone on task! But I do enjoy getting to help and interact with the kids. After getting home from that around noon, the nice couple that lives below me invited me over for dinner. I was slightly wary of going because he said the dish involved chiles (I hate hot or spicy anything), but I was pleasantly surprised that I loved it! And they told me about this guy that sells AMAZING cinnamon rolls just down the road every night. Another thing you need to know about Latin America is that it is totally normal for people to sell perfectly normal food out of the back of their vans or out of tiny little movable shacks. It's a cultural thing here. After I mentally moved past the fact that I was buying food from some guy I didn't know out of the back of his van, I did great. And the cinnamon roll was awesome. This particular guy also sells lots of different bread and pastries as well. My goal of losing weight while here may not go so well with this guy being just down the road... But it was still really good.
Day Five: Tuesdays are Children's Home and English Class days. We headed to the children's home that morning after running by Office Depot (Yes, we have one of those.). There are about 60 kids that live in this particular children's home. It gets state funding, and they house kids on campus as well as house a school that the surrounding community can send kids to as well. The home is really neat because it also takes in a lot of disabled children. The kids that live at this home are not up for adoption, they are there to live and get an education that they probably wouldn't be able to in their hometowns. Almost all the kids are from outlying villages that either do not have the resources to help disabled kids, or their parents just do not have resources to support them. So the home accepts them, and they get a chance to live in the city and get an education. When we showed up, the kids were on break because their schedules are backwards from back in the States. Here they have free time and bath time in the morning, and then they go to school from 2 PM to 6 PM. Except for the blind, deaf, and disabled kids. They all go to school at what we would call regular time. So, we got there and started coloring with the kids. They love to color. I had a little girl sit next to me and start chattering away in Spanish, unaware that I had NO idea what she was saying. She quickly figured out that I didn’t understand, so she just decided to curl up in my lap and fall asleep. I later found out that she was one of a pair of twins. Their names were Paoula and Paula, so one was named Paula in English and one was named Paula in Spanish. The only problem was that no one, not even the girls themselves, could figure out which girl had which name. The solution? Everyone calls them Las Melas or La Mela, which is Spanish for the twins or the twin. About lunch time, we headed into the kitchen to help serve lunch. That was interesting. The cook would dish it up and hand it to the kids, and then they would grab it and go sit down. They were all very polite and sweet, but some of the little ones had trouble balancing and full bowl and a full cup. The twins were especially cute and, I ended up helping another girl get them to eat because they were just playing with their food. After we left the children's home about two, we headed back to plan English class that night. In theory, we have three classes, one each at five, six, and seven consisting of a kid’s class, an adult intermediate class, and an adult advanced class. However, only five kids showed up about 6:30, so things weren't quite according to plan. Another thing I learned about Latin American culture is that if you say meet at ten here, it doesn't really mean ten. Mexicans show up around ten thirty, maybe ten forty-five. So hopefully we can convince everyone to stick to American times in our classes! Anyway, classes went well, and the kids listened great. One of the neat opportunities we have during class is to use teaching English as a door to share our good news. So I used colors to explain the news, and Jeff translated it into Spanish for me. After I got home, the couple below me invited me to eat with them again, this time at the Grand Taco. Again, it was a tiny little place, but good food!
Day Six: A Wednesday, so off to OCS again. It was dress Hawaiian day because we were studying Hawaii. I didn't get the memo. However, I don't own Hawaiian clothing, so I was going to stick out anyway. Another interesting fact about Oaxaca is that the indigenous people and some of the city people eat fried grasshoppers. They call them chapulines here, and they’re cooked with lime and salt. I have thus far managed to evade them, but one of the little boys in my class was eating them for a snack that day. I must say that I was with the girls in the class about being slightly grossed out by his consumption of said insects. After class, Sandi and I caught the bus home, and we tried to finish the English flashcards we were making. After spending over two hours on them, we were burnt out and ready to move on. So, the H's, Sandi, and I headed to the zocalo to eat dinner at Taco Inn. I should be tired of tacos by now, but I'm not. Of course they are really good here. At any rate, we finished and wandered back through the touristy market that sells anything Oaxacan you could find. Purses, key chains, clothing (They have a really cool looking jacket here that I love that for some inexplicable reason is called a drug rug), and jewelry. After searching through the all key chains, I finally found a cute Oaxacan black pottery turtle key chain to keep up with my keys! And on the way back to our bus stop, I had my first churro. They're like the Mexican version of a doughnut. It was pretty amazing. You can get them plain or filled with chocolate, strawberries, caramel, or lechera which is sort of like sweetened condensed milk. The lechera is my favorite.
Day Seven: Thursdays are a mostly free day, minus English classes at night, so Liesa, Jeff, Sandi, Rod, Connie (the nice couple below me), and I all went to this neat pottery market on the outskirts of the city. I bought a beautiful vase for 27 pesos (basically 2 bucks), and I wanted to buy a lot more! The H's told me that Oaxaca is famous for their black pottery and that they have a special village market they like to buy from. Hopefully I'll get to visit that sometime soon! After the pottery market, we came home and rested until English class at five. Again, no one showed up until six, but we had four more students than last time! This class, we were attempting to teach the English words and phrases for family, like mother, father, aunt, uncle, cousin, etc. That was fun to try to teach in English to people who spoke almost all Spanish. But at the end of the lesson, I got to re-share my colors story, and Jeff read a Bible story in Spanish.
Day Eight: Today was Friday, and it was quite the adventure. I walked down to the H's to have a mini Bible study and then we went over our week and plans. After we broke up from that, Liesa left to teach her class at OCS, and Sandi and I headed out to the movies. Yes, they have American movies in English here, they're just subtitled in Spanish. And it's about four bucks to see a movie here, so I was pretty excited. After finally figuring out which bus stop to get off at, we arrived at Parque Llano. It's a beautiful park near the main highway through the city, and Friday is market day there. There were a ton of vendors selling everything you could possibly think of. Clothing, food (stuff that looked amazing like desserts and tacos and then stuff like open air meat vendors and native delicacies like chapulines and a rice/chocolate drink called horchata that sort of grossed me out because it all looked funny), bags, toys, shoes, belts, movies, games, and anything else you so desired. Sandi and I kind of stuck out because you don't typically see guerras (white girls) at the markets, except in touristy places like the zocalo. After wandering about and getting lots of weird looks (which is normal for us here), we hopped on a bus to go farther downtown to the movie theater. The buses here can either be relatively nice or really sketchy looking, and this one was kind of in the middle. When we got on, it was already full with no seats open so we just stood. After two stops, we were starting to get to know our neighbors really well. Then the unthinkable happened for this American. I was forced to stand so close to the other passengers that I was bumping butts. I know that other cultures have different limitations and conditions on personal space, but as an American, I am not used to having my hindquarters that near anyone else's. As I considered mentioning this to Sandi, I looked over at her, only to have to immediately look away again for fear of laughing at each other. While I was mourning the loss of my personal space to someone, so was Sandi. The only difference is the person I was getting to know too well was a girl. Her new friend? A guy. That's what happens when two guerras get on the bus together. After finally, finally making it to the theater and laughing like loons while trying to maneuver off the packed bus, we bought our tickets and settled down to wait. When you buy movie tickets here, not only are they cheaper, but you get to pick your seats in the theater, and they are assigned on your ticket! It was really cool. We watched the movie (I was just happy to hear some English), and then headed to the grocery store that was right next to the theater. As I went to grab a buggy, Sandi came back to me and told me that they weren't going to let us in with our backpacks. We looked at each other for a moment and then just started laughing as we made our way to the bus stop. Evidently here, giant purses (like mine I had the first day I was here) are OK to take in the Sorianna grocery store. But NOT backpacks. We laughed about it the whole way to the bus stop. Once on the correct bus (here it can be like rolling dice, you never quite know exactly what you're getting or where you're REALLY going), we decided to head to the zocalo to eat dinner since we couldn't grab anything from Sorianna. The buses here say on the where they are going, but from what we can tell, no one really knows the exact route. You just hope the bus you're on goes where it says it's going. After much discussion, Sandi and I decided to see where the bus we were on would go since we had no real plans. After incorrectly trying to predict the bus movements, we gave up and just watched. As the bus went farther and farther north, we became more and more confused, and then finally it went beyond the scope of our map, but we continued to see other buses running the opposite direction. Soon, we even stopped seeing those. We were still in the city, but we had ridden it all the way to the end of the route, which was WAY far from the zocalo where we wanted to be. So we two guerras tried to make our way back to the last intersection that we had seen other buses come through because there weren't any buses running from where we were. As we tromped through what I am pretty sure was the hilliest part of Oaxaca very quickly, we kept getting weird looks. Evidently that neighborhood doesn't see a lot of white girls. An average brunette and a tall redhead kind of stick out here. We finally made it to the bus intersection and sighed. Once another bus finally showed up, we hopped on and tried to figure its route. We have limited success with that game. Finally we made our way to the zocalo, which was very busy because it was also market day there. After eating some more awesome tacos, we wandered through the marketplace and I bought an awesome native, handmade shirt. I'm really excited to wear it tomorrow! We had no mishaps on the bus ride home, other than I ended up sitting with a guy who had his arm around the seat back the whole time until he got off, and I moved to sit with Sandi. This American is quickly learning the Mexican definition of personal space. The definition? I have none.
Day Nine: Saturday. We went to Sam's and Wal-Mart to get the needed supplies for the H's Superbowl party. That was quite an adventure. Just like in the States, the government workers here get paid on the first and fifteenth, so Sam's was CRAZY busy. But, happily, I found a large jar of peanut butter, which I was really excited about because you can only find peanut butter here in small jars. And I love it. After fighting our way through Sam's and the crowds there, we headed to Wal-Mart. Those two places are not stops that are made often because they are on the other side of town for us, and it can be really inconvenient. Wal-Mart was a little less crazy, so that was nice. But Wal-Mart definitely had a downside. Sandi was attempting to buy some Gordon's brand frozen fish fillets, but they didn't show up in the system and the cashier just pushed them aside and rung her up. After Sandi explained that she still wanted them, the cashier called for a price check. After thirty minutes of what looked like nothing happening, the manager came back to Sandi and told her that she couldn't find a price in the system and that even as a manager, she still could not input the price and sell it to Sandi. So, I learned a valuable lesson about this culture: They think within a box and anything outside of that box is beyond what they can process. So the lady who was the manager couldn't move past the fact that the item wasn't in the system, and she couldn't find an alternate way around that. After the Wal-Mart adventure, we headed home.
Day Ten: Sunday. Church was as difficult to process as last time, but I still enjoy myself. Everyone there is so welcoming and excited to see everyone else. And although I can't sing in Spanish very well, there is something very profound and wonderful about listening to worship in another language. I very much enjoy that part of the service, even if I don't always understand the content of it. Listening to "People from every nation and tribe, From generation to generation. We worship You" sung in Spanish impacted me because I was hearing how someone else used their language to glorify the same Lord I speak to in English. And that was an amazing revelation for me. After church, we headed back to our houses to relax a little before the Superbowl party at five. That was quite an event, especially here. The H's had two other missionary families over, and we watched the game. Well, I sort of followed along with the points because football is definitely not my favorite sport. But even for a non-football fan like me, the game was quite close and relatively entertaining. There was some debating among everyone here over the best commercial. I believe it was a tie between the Oreo library commercial or the Taco Bell one with the partying old folks. Just a personal opinion. The Doritos commercials were also fan favorites here as well. All in all, it was a fun day, and it was nice to hear English during a sports game!
Day Eleven: Monday. Today was Constitution Day here in Mexico so the kids were out of school. Instead of going to the school, we went and had lunch on the zocalo with a team that will be working with Jeff this week. It was four people from a church in the States, and they're here on what is called a vision visit. The church they were from is considering adopting a village here and these four people came down to see the village and interact with it, as well as trying to praying over and following the Lord's will for them. They leave Tuesday to head to the villages and will get back into town later on Thursday, and then leave on Saturday morning. They were very sweet people. One lady on the team had even served in overseas missions before. It was great to meet them. After lunch, we all wandered down a few of the street branching off the zocalo. There are a ton of street vendors everywhere near the zocalo. The new people with us bought lots of souvenirs that they said they were going to use to promote prayer for and missions to Oaxaca within their church. I thought that was a very neat idea.
Day Twelve: Tuesday. Today was visiting the children's home and working on our English classes. The children's home always makes me smile. So many of the kids there need someone to pay attention to them and to hug on them. They are all very sweet. One of the cutest kids there is Zapotecan (the Zapotecs are an indigenous tribe, sort of like what the Cherokee or Iroquois are to us in the States.) and he loves playing ball. So he and I threw a rubber ball to each other for a good thirty minutes and then he ran over and hugged me. Most of the indigenous kids speak very little Spanish and no English, so communication can be quite interesting sometimes, especially with the kids like that one who don't speak anything but their tribal language. I'm told it sounds really neat. It's very tonal and similar to Chinese. But we had great fun coloring and playing ball. The kids at the home have a different schedule then kids in the States, and they all take their baths right before lunch because they go to school after lunch. So as we were assisting in the kitchen, kids would run in with wet hair and school clothes on, and a lot of them would scarf down food and head to class. Some of the youngest ones don't have to go to class and get to play all day, like the twins. After the children's home, we went home to gather our thoughts and get ready for class. We're supposed to have one kids' class, one intermediate class, and one advanced class, but right now we have one really basic, one basic, and no intermediate or advanced class. But it's giving us a chance to make connections and friendships with the people here so that we can share the news, and that makes it very worth it.
Day Thirteen: Wednesday, Today we went to help at the school, and that's always an adventure. The age group and personalities in the class I work in always make for, ahem, exciting days. They're all very cute though. I enjoy working with the kids. Because of the H's schedules, Sandi and I usually ride the bus home on days that we work at the school. The bus stop is a short walk from the school, and it's usually not a long wait. So when we got on the bus today, we were chatting until we got about a mile or so down the road and ran into a bloqueo or blockade. Here in Mexico, the government cannot interfere with a protest or demonstration unless it becomes violent. So when people here want to protest, they park their cars in major intersections and refuse to move them. Buses, cars, and motorcycles typically can't get through, and it really messes with traffic. Unfortunately, the road to our house is connected to one of the largest and most important intersection in Oaxaca. So guess what happens when someone decides to do a bloqueo? Yep, it takes us forever to get home. And I've been told that it gets even worse in May because all the teachers get out and start doing them to protest various things they dislike. However, this bloqueo was done by the Mixtecans (another indigenous tribe) to protest several Mixtecan murders that happened recently. So because our bus couldn't go down the usual route, we headed away from our road. By the time we realized where the bus was going, we were headed way away from where we needed to be! We decided to hop off and walk to the zocalo since we knew the bus that goes to our house runs by there. We finally made it to the major intersection where we head up the hill to our house (the Sep) and found that the bloqueo was still happening there. After trying to fight our way through the crowd gathered there, we had to find an alternate route home. We ended up cutting through the university and coming out on the road above the bloqueo. After finding a collectivo, we headed up the hill and made it home. Here collectivos are like taxi-buses. They run on routes like buses, but they are small like taxis. And they pack as many people in as possible. So you'll see collectivos go by and have eight people in it. Not always fun because you can end up almost sitting on someone you've never met before! Anyway, by the time we got home, a trip that normally takes fifteen minutes took us an hour and a half. So needless to say, bloqueos are definitely not one of my favorite things about here! After finally getting home from the LONG trip from school, we rested up and then went out for tacos because Wednesdays are taco nights. The tacos here are incomparable to the ones in the States.
Day Fourteen: Thursday. Today was grocery shopping and English classes. I'm starting to really love English classes because it lets be interact with some cute kids and sweet people that I wouldn't get to talk to otherwise. And I enjoy teaching when I get to do it. Grocery shopping here is different, but fun. It's always fun because you never know what you'll find. The first day I was here, we saw okra, and sometimes you'll see something one time and then it will disappear for weeks. English class is always fun because the kids we're teaching don't speak a whole lot of English and a lot of times they'll try to answer my questions and Spanish and I'll just smile and say, "No, this is English class!". But I do love being in there with them. We also have one of the older gentlemen from the church in our very basic class, and he seems to enjoy English, though he speaks even less English than most of the kids! They are all very cute. And I'm always happy that I get to stop by the bread guy's truck on the way home from English classes. I've taken to calling it the Peeta Mobile (a character from The Hunger Games, for those of you who might not recognize the name!), courtesy of one of my friends back home who laughed at my description of the bread guy's van.
Day Fifteen: Friday. Today was lunch with the vision team that Jeff had been working with for the past couple of days and taking them to the market. Lunch on the zocalo is always quite interesting. Because we're all white, the little kids and the indigenous people all come up and ask if we want to buy little trinkets or things that they sell like that. It makes for quite a lively lunch. After lunch was done, we headed across the zocalo to the market. On the way, we stopped at the chocolate store. In there, they sell mostly solid chocolate (flavored and plain) to make hot chocolate and a few other things as well. Something I've discovered about Mexican chocolate is that it is nothing like American chocolate. It's much darker and less sweet than American chocolate, and since I'm not really a dark chocolate fan and I love sugar, I don't typically like solid chocolate here. I do love the hot chocolate though! But in this particular store, they make a substance called mole (pronounced moh-leh). It's a sauce that is put over the top of a lot of foods, especially tacos. It made the shop smell amazing, but I've found that I don't really like the taste. Anyway, after the chocolate store, we headed to one of the biggest markets I've been to yet. They have everything you can think of and then some. I saw a beautiful Aztecan-style blanket that I immediately fell in love with, but I had to keep going to keep up with everyone! And here the indigenous ladies wander around the markets selling scarves, shirts, combs, brightly colored wooden items, and my least favorite, chapulines (chah-poo-lean-ez, fried grasshoppers). This market has food items, jewelry, clothing, blankets, scarves, brightly colored masks, and some of the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen. On Sundays, people here will take flowers and go put them on their families' graves at the cemeteries, so there were a lot of already-made arrangements that were gorgeous. I really enjoy wandering through the markets here. There are always neat things to see or smell or make faces at because I don't think I would eat it!
Day Sixteen: Saturday. Today was a very quiet, laid-back day. Really all we did was run to the grocery store and grab a few things. I don't think I've mentioned much about the people that wander through red lights selling things. Here, indigenous people and people just trying to make a living will wander through the cars at red lights selling little trinkets, fruit, gum, chiles, or anything else they might be able to sell. Jeff had a guy come up to the truck today selling cute little globe stress balls, and he bought several. There a lot of little things here that are so different from the States, but I think those are what make this place so neat to me.
Day Seventeen: Sunday. Today was church, and it was a lot of Spanish again. I really enjoy it, even when I don't always understand it. We sing songs that I already know like Hosanna, and I can't describe how cool it is to sing that in another language. It's just amazing. I really love it. I was just happy to get out of being sung to at church because today's my birthday. If it's your birthday, they make you come up front, and everyone at church sings to you. Very embarrassing, and not something I was looking forward to! Thankfully, somehow, no one knew it was my birthday, so I escaped unsung to. But Jeff and Liesa were sweet enough to offer to cook dinner for me, and I really enjoyed it. Steaks and potatoes are really good, even in Mexico.
There's my first few weeks in a nutshell. So far, there are very few things that I dislike about this place. I have loved living here and working with the people I am around on a daily basis. Your prayers have helped me adjust really well to a new place and new people - far better than I thought I would adjust originally. So thank you for those sweet thoughts and prayers as I left.
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