Ciudad de Mexico

Rachel and I have begun our last leg of our Mexico trip, arriving in Mexico City this afternoon. We were greeted at the bus station by one of the drivers of my friend Manuel, who is an deputy finance minister of the Mexican Government,and taken to our hotel. Rachel was apprehensive about walking about in such a huge city, and glanced about as we walked watching for trouble. I, on the other hand, may be too relaxed about this place, taking pride in having lived in New York for a number of years. But this place is different (and a heck of a lot bigger, believe it or not!) So maybe our approaches will balance each other out well and we'll stay safe and have lots of fun. It's thrilling to be here.

We're staying right downtown in the historic district, and it appears that there are not too many businesses open at night around here. Dinner consisted of a Big Bite from 7-11 for me and granola bars for Rachel. We spent the evening in. I enjoyed being able to tune in Monday Night Football. We really miss our hotel in Puebla. It was amazing, and certainly has spoiled us. Pictures below are of my class in Oaxaca, us at dinner in Puebla and streets in Puebla.

Monte Alban

We went to Monte Alban yesterday, at the top of one of the neighboring mountains. (Oaxaca City is in the valley.) It was a prominent city in this region of Mexico for about 1000 years, roughly 400 BC - 600 AD, but don't quote me on that! It is believed to have been occuped by the Zapotec people, an indigenous tribe still in existence today. (The weavers we saw last Saturday are Zapotec.) Monte Alban is a fascinating place, and really beautiful. The various buildings served as temples, houses for the elite families, meeting places. There was a building devoted to scientific astronomical observations and an open-air sporting facility. All quite impressive. We are heading to Puebla for the weekend tomorrow and then to Mexico City from Monday to Thursday of next week. I almost forgot the last picture - that is me eating chapulines (grasshoppers!). Magdalena, the mother of the family we are living with, is in the background of the photo. She bought some chapulines for us to try. She said the small ones are the best, and she bought them from someone who cleans them very well, then roasts and flavors them with chile, garlic, lime juice, and salt. They are good - I couldn't really taste the grasshopper flavor (whatever that is!), and they are supposed to be a good source of protein. :)

Spuma fun

We are totally confused about how to do picture layout. Any help from other bloggers. Anyway, here are some pics from Saturday night's festivities. Sunday was Mexico's independence day, and they started partying the night before. Quite fun. Notice Rachel dancing with the locals. "Spuma", a kind of spray foam, was a big hit, and our group of 6 (all non-Mexicans) was a frequent target. We loved it. Our days here in Oaxaca end Friday and we're thinking of heading to Puebla next.

Saturday's Tour

Hey yall - a few pictures of the sites we saw yesterday. First the tree, quite impressive. We had trouble getting a good picture of it because it was super bright outside but very shady under the tree. Hopefully you can get an idea of it - for scale, notice the guy sitting on the bench in the first picture at the far right side of the photo. Our next stop was the rug weaving site. I took a picture of Bret sitting next to one of the figures out front. :) The demonstration was very interesting, particularly the wide range of colors that the weavers obtain from various plants and insects. The last 2 pictures are from Hierve el Agua. The water isn't actually boiling, as the name indicates; the water is cold. The minerals cause it to bubble up to the surface, so it looks like it is boiling. After years of running down the side of the mountain, it has created a waterfall effect in stone, colored by the minerals in the water. It is a gorgeous site in the mountains. The drive up was beautiful as well, with amazing views of the valley. The pictures don't do it justice!

My first post! We are sitting in a cafe downtown, enjoying a leisurely Friday evening. Magdalena fixed hamburgers for lunch today, at the request of the couple from New Zealand who are staying at the house as well. The burgers were great. Magdalena is a fabulous cook. We are really lucky to be staying with her and her family. Tomorrow we are going on a tour of a number of regional sites of interest - El Tule (the world's broadest tree), Mitla (an archeological site), Teotitlan (where we will see traditional indigenous rug weaving), Hierve el Agua (petrified waterfalls and hot springs), and a Mezcal factory (a relative of tequila, made from the agave plant). Normally we aren't big fans of the bus tour, but this definitely seemed like the easiest way to see a number of cool sites. Hopefully we'll be able to post pictures tomorrow or Sunday...

Settling in

We're getting more and more settled in here. Tonight, we plan to eat at one of Oaxaca's famous eateries. We've seen in the market spicy dried grasshoppers for sale. If you know me you know I may have to try them... And we were told that tacos that contain live ants can be bought - haven't seen those yet. We'll stay away from the insects tonight.
We're trying to figure out how to spend the weekend - it's indepence day Sunday, so lots of big things happening all over the country.

More pics from Guanajuato

Oaxaca days

We started classes today at our new school. I'm done with mine and Rachel has just begun hers. It never seems that we're able to coordinate our schedules so that we're in class at the same time. But this is my window of time on the laptop(when I can upload pics!) since R needs the laptop to work on her disseration when she's not learning Spanish. I really really liked my class this morning. Just two students, and lots of opportunities to talk. I'm hoping R will like hers as much as I did.

We haven't taken too many pics of Oaxaca so far. The church at the left is one of the many beautiful ones here. And the pic on the right is the Zocalo, a main square, with a bandstand in the middle, where the whole town seems to gather. It's a wonderful space, big and open, with beautiful old trees, cobblestone paths, lights strung out for the upcoming independence day. We love it. There's even a Burger King nearby (yes, I broke down the other night). I wish we had spaces like this in the US. How nice it would be.

first full day in Oaxaca

Hey folks,
We're settling in a bit now after having a somewhat difficult day. We decided after classes that we should look into other language schools. The school we were signed up for was unable to acomodate well Rachel at her level. We ended up finding a school which we think will become a good place for us. We start tomorrow. We felt pretty bad about talking to the first school, telling them we were moving. But they were very gracious, as was Rachel in talking with them. So our prayers worked and we feel much better about things now and are excited about tomorrow.

Wow, Oaxaca is really really beautiful. We had no idea. It's a lot more open feeling than Guanajuato, which we appreciate. Pretty palm trees in front of beautiful stone churches hundreds of years old. Bright sunny days, with jungle-like mountains not far off in the distance. Good coffee, picked right here in Oaxaca. Our host father works in the coffee industry. We want to ask him if we could go on a field trip. We both love coffee so much, and that would be such a thrill. Will post pics tomorrow we hope!

Just landed in Oaxaca

Rachel and I arrived in Oaxaca two hours ago after a pretty long day of travel. We left our host home in Guanajuato at 8 this morning, took a 5 hour bus to Mexico City, braved the Mexico City metro (which was completely fine) to get to the airport. Flew from there, one hour, to Oaxaca. Its a real change of scenery here. Oaxaca is fairly flat, set in a broad valley with some pretty big mountains off in the distance surrounding the city. About a quarter of a million people. I was particulary excited to see the tropical vegetation. I like it! Reminds me of our honeymoon. We were given a ride by our new school people to our new host home. We met three generations of women in the family. First the mom, then the grandmother, then the daughter. The mom, with assistance from the grandmother, served us some really good, slightly spicy vegetable soup, then a good meat and potato stew dish. I am amazed that I am able to have a conversation with a grandmother in Oaxaca, Mexico, or at least communicate with her. Wow. How cool is that?! Feels like we are from different worlds but the last two weeks seem to have gotten me a long way. It was fun trying to communicate with her. She is very sweet.

We have a nice room, and the house has a courtyard off which is the kitchen and dining area, both open air. Pretty neat. There are two other couples staying in the house. Two Americans and two Kiwis. Will be good to meet them. We are excited to drink some good coffee here. Rachel and I always like to drink coffee from Oaxaca at our favorite coffee shop in Chapel Hill. Now we are at the source. Start classes tomorrow...

Last days in Guanajuato

Hi folks,
It's our last weekend in Guanajuato and we're ending our time here with beautiful weather and a brass band playing off in the distance as we write from the table of a nice coffee shop. We went out last night with teachers and students from Escuela Mexicana, where we've been studying Spanish for the past two weeks. It was our first night out, having both been a bit under the weather last weekend and having been simply busy, in general, for the last two weeks. Monday morning we take a bus to Mexico City, and from there make our way to the airport from where we'll fly to Oaxaca City, our next stop for language classes.

I'm excited to have a whole weekend to rest before traveling and starting new classes. Learning a new language is so so exhausting. Rachel has been doing a super job speaking, and I think it's a bit easier for her than it has been for me, though she voices frustration about not being able to express herself nearly as well as she would like. I've come a very long way in my abilities, and feel really good about it. But every sentence is a struggle. I'm hoping that it'll be getting a little bit easier as we take more classes.

There's so much to write...we'll post more soon. For now, we want to try to post some pictures from our time in Guanajuato. We hope you can see how beautiful a spot it is.

Welcome readers!

Hi folks,
As we are traveling in Mexico, a new part of the world for us, we've decided to enter the world of blogging. Neither of us has ever had a blog before. Rachel wants everyone to know that I created the blog's name. Of course I think it's clever but she thinks it's a little goofy. She's probably right, but she's let me keep it for now. Thanks for viewing our page! We hope you enjoy it, and look forward to hearing back from you.

Love, Rachel and Bret