i have some very bad news for all of you. ok, really it is just bad for me; i imagine you will all find it something else entirely.
first, i had an incredible weekend in huajuapan de léon. i met about 40 other english profs, went out with them all on friday night and had an incredible time. i just found at least 5 other really cool people who are dying to travel and see more of méxico, and on top of that, i just made friends with four other profs who work at three beach resorts within four hours of me, so now i have a free place to stay any time i go to the beach. score. i cannot really put into words how much fun i had on friday night, but to give you a hint at what the evening entailed, i danced. oh yes. again. i was as shocked as you and believe the ladies were more shocked than you can imagine. i had fun though and found a few friends who were willing to teach me some dancing steps, which i did not really learn or anything, but now i know what they look like.
for the bad news. but really it comes from good news. i have a new friend with a car (yes i have regressed to 16 years old where the coolest kids in my world are ones with cars) so i got a ride from the conference into the capital of the state, same name, oaxaca. a four hour bus ride turned into 2 hour car ride. the 6 hour bus ride from oaxaca back to tehua-york (this is the tehuanas(people who live in the city) new name for their home town of tehuantepec. they call my town of ixtepec tristepec which is a mix of the name of the town and the word triste, which means sad. evil people. i call it feliztepec, which sounds better, and is a cross between the town name the word feliz which means happy. much better) only took 4 hours. yahtzee.
so in oaxaca i am staying with some other profs and we are going to go out to dinner and then, i know you cant believe it either, dancing. my friend from another campus tells me i look like a vago, which is a slacker or more directly, a bum. she says my clothes are far too big for me and it looks like i just lot 45 pounds. as i am soaking this in, she tells me my hair is looking horrible as well. sweet.
i agree about the hair part, so we set off in search of a hair place for me. we find a place that is relatively cheap and i tell her i dont know what i want to do with my hair. i pick up a telenovela (soap opera) magazine and start looking for guys haircuts i like. she points out the obvious, my hair is not like theirs, so we see what the young stylist has in terms of style books.
this might have been my first mistake. i was with two women, one of whom had clippers, and was pretty much at their mercy. they found some looks they liked which i did not. why not? bc every picture had a guy with gel in his hair.
lets go back to the late 80´s and early 90´s. i was around 10-13 years old, and do you know what the best tv show on was? yup. saved by the bell. if you are a guy and you did not think zack was the coolest dude this side of ferris bueler, who it turns out, the character was probably based upon, then you liked slater. i thought a.c. was a tool, so zack was the man. naturally, i wanted his hair. a hand-me-down blow drier and lots of hair spray later, i had a sweet wave haircut (not the tsunami a young miss hulia toy was sporting during her homecoming queen days, but something slightly similar). i dabbled in gel, played around with mouse, whatever my sisters gave me or told me about. i was super cool.
14 years later i no longer think gel is cool. probably bc every single guy down here uses it. most use too much of it.
anyhoo, the ladies are gabbing about how i dont know anything and i firmly saying no. never. not something i will mess with. so the girl starts to cut my hair, although she never stops telling me how guapo (handsome) i would look if i just used some gel. nope. not happening sister.
as she starts to finish up, i notice my hair is a bit shorter than i wanted. not quite a crew cut but super short. the girl smiles at my reflection in the mirror and asks if i like her work. then she takes out a tub of gel, like a vat o mayonase from sam´s club, and holds it up for me to see. my friend has watched all of this and right on cue, nods to the girl to go ahead with her plan.
thoroughly satisfied with themselves, the two women share a laugh as i pay woman and walk out the door. i then went and bought a shirt which is not 2 sizes too big (i agree with the last assessment about my clothes as well but i aint going to buy a new wardrobe). when we met up with the other profs, i was told that i was the cachorro (puppy) of my advisor because i had let her convince me to put gel in my hair and buy a new shirt. i let them laugh but knew i would be washing my hair in 30 minutes and all that gel would come out.
when i got out of the shower and had dressed, my friend knocked on the door. in her hands was jar of gel.
long story short, i now use gel in my hair. not proud of it, but here we are. and i dance. but i also speak spanish, which according to my new friend alejandro (this means alex in english) combines with the previous two to make me an honorary mexican. so here we are. i have a few pics, but i shant be sharing them right now. i am going to let this news sink in and maybe in a week or so unveil the new billy. greasier than the old billy, but a billy all the same.
also pretty cool is that the hotel we stayed in is a chocolate factory. so the smell day and night was killer. i am not a huge fan of chocolate so i did not try but a small taste, but i will be heading back to oaxaca soon so i will be sure to pick some up for a certain sister that i know loves the sweets.
six months on friday. as i reflect on all the changes i wonder what i will be like after the next six. who will recognize me? short hair. i knew it was a bad idea in the first place, and now i have resorted to product. i also am starting to like banda music (think: mexican polka stuff you might here sometimes with accordian, keyboards, guitars, bass, horns, 20 people in the group, etc. and i am starting to learn the words.) be very afraid.
¡zapato vive! ¡la lucha sigue!
20 February 2006
16 February 2006
three things strike me about your comment juan gon: 1. one dollar seems like robbery for just one avocado. it better be the big-boy variety. 2. i am slightly surprised that there is a town called ¨carpentry¨or ¨carpenter´s shop¨- this surprise is tempered by the reminder that there is a place in arizona called table mesa. which means: table table. i think the town is underwritten by little ceasars. 3. avocado beer both intrigues me and seems to be calling my name simultaneously. methinks i shall have to do a little ¨will davis, jr detectiving¨ to see if i can score any of that golden-green goodness down here (i just guessed on the color but from how i am picturing, i think it is right).
and to the man who one day landed on the shores of this great nation from that finest of fine cigar producing nations, yes, that is a full 9 days worth of beard you are looking at in the picture of me in puebla. thought you all might not be getting your money´s worth from this blog? ha. 50 cc´s of beard, comin atcha.
as a footnote, of course i shaved said beard just over 3 weeks later, although i still sport some sort of chinny-chin-chin thing (basically what i wore throughout the ¨summer of spanish world tour¨ and when i became an official member of the ¨birch boys¨ in august 2004) that each day screams out to be shaved off. and my students say i only turned a deaf ear to their requests!
and to the man who one day landed on the shores of this great nation from that finest of fine cigar producing nations, yes, that is a full 9 days worth of beard you are looking at in the picture of me in puebla. thought you all might not be getting your money´s worth from this blog? ha. 50 cc´s of beard, comin atcha.
as a footnote, of course i shaved said beard just over 3 weeks later, although i still sport some sort of chinny-chin-chin thing (basically what i wore throughout the ¨summer of spanish world tour¨ and when i became an official member of the ¨birch boys¨ in august 2004) that each day screams out to be shaved off. and my students say i only turned a deaf ear to their requests!
cuban b, you just won the secret prize. no one knew that i had an award for the person who wrote the most comments on the day after i slyly, or rather overtly, commented about there being not enough comments, but it must also be said that no one knew i eat garlic toast twice a week. both are interesting in themselves, but only the first factoid is of use to my caribbean friend. you have just won yourself an all-expense paid trip to ojo de agua, the llolaga one not the crappy tlacoltepec where you have to dodge beer cans and corn cobs, leaving from ixtepec. yup, that prize (imagine rod roddy from the price is right here saying this if you will) has a retail value of almost $5.00*.
or, you can enjoy this column from mcsweeney´s that has made me laugh the most today. also, try scrolling down to almost the bottom of the page to find his other ¨dan kennedy solves your problems with paper¨ artilces.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2004/8/18kennedy.html
timmay, chavez is loved like you would not believe down here. i say go for the t-shirt. if the sons and daughters of steel workers and coal miners in the grand state of pennsy dont accept and respect you for who you are as an individual, fail them. dont even think twice about it bro. f´s all around. that, for certain, will shut them up for at least a week. hey, you´re in a union state, which as far i can tell mean´s you´re essentially untouchable. you do have tenure, right? that might be something to consider.
a jewel amongst thieves. that sounds like one james ¨felonious pelonious, just dont call me shannon¨dougherty (i bet i just butchered your name) talking. might be right. might not. fast fact: when drop all the nicknames, which i am not sure you would ever want to do, james william d and i have the same initials.
and coming back to another of the west indian´s insights, yes indeed i am a man of the cloth, and that fact shan´t be forgotten in any of the circles of which i have run. who could forget the chicken wing miracle of 2005? truly a stain which ¨a little club soda¨ will not get out but only the higher cleansers.
i am off to huajuapan de león for a conference where all the english teachers, and all the other profs as well just in a different building, will be getting together to share our wisdom and trade worm stories. at least, i am looking to share my possible worm experience. i just volunteered to give a 10 minute presentation tomorrow morning. why not.
goulet had too many cherry poptarts backstage. i´m out folks!
or, you can enjoy this column from mcsweeney´s that has made me laugh the most today. also, try scrolling down to almost the bottom of the page to find his other ¨dan kennedy solves your problems with paper¨ artilces.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2004/8/18kennedy.html
timmay, chavez is loved like you would not believe down here. i say go for the t-shirt. if the sons and daughters of steel workers and coal miners in the grand state of pennsy dont accept and respect you for who you are as an individual, fail them. dont even think twice about it bro. f´s all around. that, for certain, will shut them up for at least a week. hey, you´re in a union state, which as far i can tell mean´s you´re essentially untouchable. you do have tenure, right? that might be something to consider.
a jewel amongst thieves. that sounds like one james ¨felonious pelonious, just dont call me shannon¨dougherty (i bet i just butchered your name) talking. might be right. might not. fast fact: when drop all the nicknames, which i am not sure you would ever want to do, james william d and i have the same initials.
and coming back to another of the west indian´s insights, yes indeed i am a man of the cloth, and that fact shan´t be forgotten in any of the circles of which i have run. who could forget the chicken wing miracle of 2005? truly a stain which ¨a little club soda¨ will not get out but only the higher cleansers.
i am off to huajuapan de león for a conference where all the english teachers, and all the other profs as well just in a different building, will be getting together to share our wisdom and trade worm stories. at least, i am looking to share my possible worm experience. i just volunteered to give a 10 minute presentation tomorrow morning. why not.
goulet had too many cherry poptarts backstage. i´m out folks!
15 February 2006
i am still trying to find a program on this computer that will let me know lighten the photo i just posted (i have one at my apt but it is obviously not here, so...). it is a good-un. one of the twin sisters (oscar´s sisters) and one of oscar´s nephews are not in the pic. sylvia, osc´s you know, woman, is taking the photo.
it is really cool because his brother sent the photo from puebla and titled it familia. he said that everyone there wanted to make sure i knew that i was part of that title and that they all expected me to return to see them very soon. oscar always calls me brother also, which makes me feel good. on top of it all, did i tell you? i am finally a godfather. yes, little alexia natalia is my godchild.
was i the only one waiting for me to become a godfather?
ok there is a very good reason my posts have been absent recently. it is called www.mcsweeneys.net and if you have not gone, do it right now. you will never return to my blog. there are daily posts and then there are some hilarious features as well: posts from an english adjunct at ¨large state uni¨ is one of my faves, as are the anals of science. seriously. you will cry laughing. i no longer do any work because that is where my time goes. this is not totally true but at least an hour a day is spent there. this is entertainment for years to come. i may make a list of some favorites to post on here.
and please, dont everyone comment at once. give me a break, you know. i mean, i think you must all be trying to post at once and they are all getting blocked.
it is really cool because his brother sent the photo from puebla and titled it familia. he said that everyone there wanted to make sure i knew that i was part of that title and that they all expected me to return to see them very soon. oscar always calls me brother also, which makes me feel good. on top of it all, did i tell you? i am finally a godfather. yes, little alexia natalia is my godchild.
was i the only one waiting for me to become a godfather?
ok there is a very good reason my posts have been absent recently. it is called www.mcsweeneys.net and if you have not gone, do it right now. you will never return to my blog. there are daily posts and then there are some hilarious features as well: posts from an english adjunct at ¨large state uni¨ is one of my faves, as are the anals of science. seriously. you will cry laughing. i no longer do any work because that is where my time goes. this is not totally true but at least an hour a day is spent there. this is entertainment for years to come. i may make a list of some favorites to post on here.
and please, dont everyone comment at once. give me a break, you know. i mean, i think you must all be trying to post at once and they are all getting blocked.
09 February 2006
in response to c-line, i still use my hotmail account. i just began the other this morning and i dont see a complete switch ever happening, at least no time soon, so dont feel you need to change the address. i just through it out there bc gmail seems to be the best service, at least the largest (this is wal-mart thinking at its finest).
speaking of, i shop at wal-mart, or aurerra, in mexico. i dont like myself for it, but damn, the prices are low. i mean really low. avacados, which i eat one to two of per day, cost 15 pesos a kilo in wal-mart. in the market in ixtepec, they are 25 pesos. it is amazing (dont i sound like a bumpkin, or did i always) the selection they have compared to the town where i live. my friends from the big cities have complained about how expensive the town markets and stores are and they shop there exclusively. i only buy chicken, avacados and maybe one or two other things there. all else i support the local community. it is hard to avoid it. evil magnet.
did i mention i eat avacados? how much are they in the states? i am addicted to them so this could be bad for when i return.
i never thought i would begin a story this way, but... so i was eating a tomato the other day. for real. a red, pulpy, evil, acidic, used to make me want to wait until you turned your head so i could toss it into a napkin or out the window so i didn´t have to eat it, tomato. and i ate it. dont love them, but i eat them. astounding.
but peaches? i have never really liked peaches. why are they hairy? passion fruit? hairy? those words dont go together in my mind. of course, i would now eat a peach. i eat almost anything (except vile onions when i can avoid them, which is damn difficult bc it is in everything down here. if i were a chef, i would create an entire way of cooking that left those nasty things where they belonged: in the ground) now, but still i dont love a peach. which makes these two comments from anonymous all the more odd. and calling me peach? i am in the dark. any lamps out there?
speaking of, i shop at wal-mart, or aurerra, in mexico. i dont like myself for it, but damn, the prices are low. i mean really low. avacados, which i eat one to two of per day, cost 15 pesos a kilo in wal-mart. in the market in ixtepec, they are 25 pesos. it is amazing (dont i sound like a bumpkin, or did i always) the selection they have compared to the town where i live. my friends from the big cities have complained about how expensive the town markets and stores are and they shop there exclusively. i only buy chicken, avacados and maybe one or two other things there. all else i support the local community. it is hard to avoid it. evil magnet.
did i mention i eat avacados? how much are they in the states? i am addicted to them so this could be bad for when i return.
i never thought i would begin a story this way, but... so i was eating a tomato the other day. for real. a red, pulpy, evil, acidic, used to make me want to wait until you turned your head so i could toss it into a napkin or out the window so i didn´t have to eat it, tomato. and i ate it. dont love them, but i eat them. astounding.
but peaches? i have never really liked peaches. why are they hairy? passion fruit? hairy? those words dont go together in my mind. of course, i would now eat a peach. i eat almost anything (except vile onions when i can avoid them, which is damn difficult bc it is in everything down here. if i were a chef, i would create an entire way of cooking that left those nasty things where they belonged: in the ground) now, but still i dont love a peach. which makes these two comments from anonymous all the more odd. and calling me peach? i am in the dark. any lamps out there?
a couple of new updates today. also, this is driving me crazy, who is the peaches person? i know peaches can come from a can and were put here by a man.... i mean, i like the presidents of the united states, and i agree i have not heard the song in a good while, but, is this just spam or what? if this is an actual person, email me.
oh by the way, my sis amy invited me to gmail. i know, i am excited too. my email addy is: stillwill.i.m@gmail.com i tried for my old will_i_m but gmail wont let you use the underscore. life is tough.
so email me at the new addy or post a comment.
or if you are the peaches person, let me know who you are. was it just a random stab in the dark that i know this song or should i remember who you are?
oh by the way, my sis amy invited me to gmail. i know, i am excited too. my email addy is: stillwill.i.m@gmail.com i tried for my old will_i_m but gmail wont let you use the underscore. life is tough.
so email me at the new addy or post a comment.
or if you are the peaches person, let me know who you are. was it just a random stab in the dark that i know this song or should i remember who you are?
On december 22rd around 11pm i pulled into Puebla and was met at the bus station my friend oscar chavez and his girlfriend/mother-of- his- child/ live-in-lover Sylvia. They drove me back to an apt that oscar aunt owns and in which he resided before moving to ixtepec. The current occupant, oscar´s buddy, was out of town for the holiday so I had a room with a bed.
Virtually no place has heat in mexico, outside of really nice hotels, which is interesting bc puebla was hovering around 0 degrees centigrade at night. Luckily, I packed my warm long underwear tops and bottoms that I use for snowboarding, vest and stocking cap (this is by the way the entire set of cold weather clothes I brought to mexico), so I was ¨snug as a bug in a rug¨ each night as I slept in the apt. and for the most part each night in both puebla and san cristobal.
My first day in puebla oscar, Sylvia, the baby and his twin sisters picked me up in their volchito (volks bug are affectionately called volchos, or the diminuitive, volchito) and we were on our way to the registrar´s office. People were getting married and throwing rice; it was all quite interesting and I though oscar and Sylvia were going to get hitched. No, they were going to register their baby. I felt kind of bad when oscar told one of the twins that she could not be a witness because I was going to be. So now I have my name attached to alexia natalia chavez vega´s birth certificate. It was funny because oscar wanted to add another name as we were standing in line (his fourth name) but Sylvia was having none of it. I lobbied for the extra name but she said five was too many. Never thought I would hear that, especially considering I thought four was already a lot.
The daytime temp is considerably warmer so I was able to stroll around in a short sleeve shirt and pants. This was good because I spent most of Friday going to museums and old cathedrals. Puebla, the city of angels, named because the founder of the city, a Spanish missionary, claimed he was told in a dream by an angel that he should build the city in its present location. 400 years and about 200 churches later, you have puebla de los angeles. A beautiful cosmopolitan city about 1.5 hours outside of the choking sprawl of d.f., or mex city, which I avoided like the plague. Sporting a few million people, puebla is hardly a pueblo as the name would imply, yet it is a nothing next to the dark giant of d.f. the cities protector is popocapatapetl, which I know I just butchered the spelling of, a somewhat dormant volcano covered in snow most of the year. Around 17000 ft or so, it is spectacular, yet you need a day without smog to really get a good view from town. There was only two such days, xmas eve and day, when nearly everything was closed and most of the people stayed with their families and avoided driving.
The food was particularly amazing here. The chile poblano is quite rich and there are many dishes which incorporate chocolate into the mix. Sylvia is a chef, so I was spoiled because she and oscar´s twin sisters kept trying to feed me the entire time I was there. To them, I looked skinny and they were on a mission to rectify that situation.
For xmas eve dinner we had barbacoa, essentially barbeque mexi style, salad, pasta, beef, all sorts of food. I was at oscar´s brothers house with oscar´s bro and wife and 3 kids, oscar´s two sisters and his dad and Sylvia. We ate for hours and then after played games until 4 in the morning. It was then that I found out that xmas day is not the day when kids get presents. That day is dia de los santos reyes- the day of the saint kings (when the 3 wise men showed up in tbe biblical story) and that is January 5 or 7. it was funny because the two older children wrote letters to the santas reyes and placed them on the xmas tree. At 4am I reminded the mother to take the cards off the tree so that the kids would think santa had come and gotten them. No, that would not happen for another two weeks I was informed amid laughter from the group. I had no idea the kids got nothing on xmas day. They knew this, however.
Xmas day was slow with more eating and games. Nothing was open so we stayed in most of the day.
The 26th I went back to the downtown center of puebla with oscar and we went to visit more museums and cafes and I visited the monument for which the date cinco de mayo, or 5th of may was made famous. Basically, an outnumbered group of Mexican soldiers successfully defended the city against a French invasion. Of course, the French came back about two weeks later and mopped the floor with rag-tag Mexican army, but that is conveniently left out of the story.
If I could choose a city to live in, it would probably be puebla. The climate, the people, the variety of things to do all add up to an amazing place. There are cafes and book shops all over the place and the architecture is astounding. It would definitely be one that I recommend to anyone who wants a taste of city life in this country.
I was hoping to leave on the evening of the 26th but it did not work out bc the buses to the place I wanted to go, Chiapas, were full. Well, when I say full I mean that there were no discount seats available. Each bus has 2 student and 2 teacher seats available at discounted rates, but this is only during vacations when schools are not in session.
So I waited until the next day and took a bus to the state of Tabasco, which is right next to Chiapas. My guide book said there would be ruins near the town of villahermosa, which there were. Unfortunately, the town was not really great (sticky hot and filthy: fairly ugly) so I left after being there for about 24 hours and headed to palenque in Chiapas.
Palenque is a small town in the lowlands of Chiapas. I arrived around 10 am and found a cheap hotel to stay (100 pesos a night). Just outside of town are the ruins of palenque, which are the largest and most incredible I have seen to date. The city was occupied for about 1000 years and there are giant pyramids and temples and hundreds of other buildings that have yet to be excavated. This is essentially the deal in mexico: there is no funding to dig out all the sites so a good 75 percent remains hidden. In this case, it added to the mystique because as I approached temples standing over 200 feet tall rising out of the steaming jungle, the howler monkeys that called to each other in the forest beyond left me with the distinct impression that I had travelled back in time. The place was green and there was still a light fog lingering in the air and despite the hundreds of tourists, I felt a sense of calm. The architecture here is amazing. They managed to harness a powerful stream and built passages to carry it away from the major buildings yet provide water and even some beautiful waterfalls in other areas.
Did I mention I forgot my camera in the hotel that day? Ya. After about 4 hours at the site and museum, I caught a van back to the town, kicking myself for missing out on the best photographic opportunity of my trip.
So I decided to return the next day. I located a tour office and got some prices on a tour that included palenque, misol-ha (a 250 ft waterfall that you can walk under and then swim around in the huge pool) and las cascadas de agua azul (a series of incredible waterfalls that stretch for roughly 7 kilometers where the water ranges from bright turquoise to about five other shades of blue- Carolina, sky blue, more that I don’t know the names for). The next morning I was on my way back to palenque, armed with a camera.
At 8am, the van picked up a pair of Australians and they took the seats behind me. I quickly decided that today was the day to meet people, so I asked them where they were from, etc. jared and sophie were from easternmost point in Australia, I think it is something like barin bay, but that sounds wrong so don’t quote me on it. They had spent the last week in Puerto Escondido, near where I live, and were on their way to Guatemala in a few days. This two ended up being my buddies for the next 3 days and we spent new years together as well. When they finally return to Australia in march, they will send me pics of the places we saw together over the next few days, but until then I have to wait.
Sadly, the tour company screwed them over so instead of heading on to san cristobal de las casas (also where I would be going the next day) after visiting the waterfalls, they headed back to palenque with us. The other people on our van ended up being great fun also. There were two Australian girls and a kiwi named will who were outgoing and talkative. They had been studying in mexico for a month and were just touring around as well. We all spent the afternoon together and I realized I was speaking English more than I had in over a week since leaving Acapulco. It is so much fun to be with a group of travellers who are all looking for something new and exciting. We shared lots of stories and this may have been one of my favourite days on the trip. I returned exhausted to my hotel around 8pm and after having a quick bite, went to bed in anticipation of my 7am departure.
San cristobal was all I had hoped it would be. Located around 8000 ft, the town is set amid looming and lush mountains that in the afternoon capture storm clouds and thus leave the town smelling of a faint scent of rain for the evening hours. gorgeous and fairly colonial, san cristobal is a haven for tourists, mainly from Europe, who come to experience a different mexico. As Chiapas was annexed by mexico from Guatemala less than 150 years ago, the feel of the place is that of another world (a world which I assume is Guatemala though I have yet to go). The native people speak two main dialects and originate from the mountain wilderness to the south and east. I explored various museums and took away from my trip a better understanding of the plight of the natives as their forests are stripped for timber and the wild is slowly tamed by companies looking for oil and any other ¨valuable¨ resource that may lie hidden in the jungle.
One gets the feeling that the people are a little sad because they see the destruction all around them yet must sell their handicrafts to the foreigners who are inadvertently helping to exploit the community. The quality of the crafts sold in the town is remarkable and some of the most beautiful artwork I have seen in mexico originates here. The foreigners are everywhere. At least 1 in 3 people that you see are of clear European extraction, thus making the place feel both comfortable and strange at the same time. This is mexico, but somehow it is not. The contradiction is startling as you wander the streets and read signs in multiple languages and visit shops catering to the foreigner. This deep in the forest one finds a mini-european city. It is strange indeed.
I found a youth hostel and shared my room with 5 other travellers who all turned out to be quite fun. And it was only 35 pesos a night (yup, $3.50 u.s.a) with a kitchen shared bath and shower, t.v., books, games, etc. I was in heaven. Most of the tourists were from other countries so we could only communicate in Spanish which I found really amusing because here we were from about 10 different countries struggling to say what we wanted a common language that only a few of us knew pretty well. The effort was worth it and I heard some wild and tragic (thieves, mainly) stories about travelling.
New years eve was a blast. I met sophie and jared and we ended up going to many different places, listening to live music and chatting about travelling, Australia, etc. I really want to visit them some day, so if anyone ever wants to fund a trip down there, I have a free place for us to stay! They are truly wonderful people and I still hear from them about once a week as they have gone to Guatemala and belice and are soon headed to costa rica. The first day they tried to convince to drop my plans and spend the next two months travelling with them (partly because I spoke Spanish and could help them and partly because we were having such a good time), but I fought the temptation (clearly, I am writing this description after all).
This leads up to the marcos sighting. We hung out all day waiting for marcos to show up, you know, waiting for the revolution, and just talking and drinking coffee and wandering through the markets. Well, the first two hours we sat in the central square and waited because we wanted good seats. Around 7pm we heard that he would be late, you think?, because he and his friends were walking. So we grabbed a bite to eat and walked around some more.
Essentially, when he showed up around 9pm, there were about 15000 people in black ski masks marching in with him. As you might imagine, this took more than 30 minutes because of the sheer number of people. Then, they all had to be fed (there were food stands set up giving out plates of black beans and tortillas) before marcos finally spoke.
The speech? The usa is horrible and we are making things worse for the native people of Chiapas because of our economic position of power and influence. The Zapatistas, in a very simplified explanation, want sovereignty (similar to what most native American groups in the usa want); the ability to choose their own governing body, the land that the govt took from them returned; the immediate end of any and all timber operations destroying part of the forests in Chiapas, equal rights for women, homosexuals, etc. they want a lot. Marcos is still touring mexico (this time he has a free passage because he has agreed to leave the rifles behind) and speaking all over the country against all of the candidates in this year´s presidential elections. Kind of funny because his posters say: pri, pan, prd (these are the 3 main parties of mexico) are all the same; come hear me for an alternative.
I wont get too much into his view points because my own views on him have changed slightly over the months. Some of their policies are not quite as accepting as they would like for everyone to think.
So this is the basic summary of my 16 days on the road. I returned to ixtepec at 430am the day I had to be back at work, january 3rd. I rolled in a little weary, but not too bad. I cannot wait for the next vacation in april when I am either going to go to Guatemala or d.f. excitement.
Virtually no place has heat in mexico, outside of really nice hotels, which is interesting bc puebla was hovering around 0 degrees centigrade at night. Luckily, I packed my warm long underwear tops and bottoms that I use for snowboarding, vest and stocking cap (this is by the way the entire set of cold weather clothes I brought to mexico), so I was ¨snug as a bug in a rug¨ each night as I slept in the apt. and for the most part each night in both puebla and san cristobal.
My first day in puebla oscar, Sylvia, the baby and his twin sisters picked me up in their volchito (volks bug are affectionately called volchos, or the diminuitive, volchito) and we were on our way to the registrar´s office. People were getting married and throwing rice; it was all quite interesting and I though oscar and Sylvia were going to get hitched. No, they were going to register their baby. I felt kind of bad when oscar told one of the twins that she could not be a witness because I was going to be. So now I have my name attached to alexia natalia chavez vega´s birth certificate. It was funny because oscar wanted to add another name as we were standing in line (his fourth name) but Sylvia was having none of it. I lobbied for the extra name but she said five was too many. Never thought I would hear that, especially considering I thought four was already a lot.
The daytime temp is considerably warmer so I was able to stroll around in a short sleeve shirt and pants. This was good because I spent most of Friday going to museums and old cathedrals. Puebla, the city of angels, named because the founder of the city, a Spanish missionary, claimed he was told in a dream by an angel that he should build the city in its present location. 400 years and about 200 churches later, you have puebla de los angeles. A beautiful cosmopolitan city about 1.5 hours outside of the choking sprawl of d.f., or mex city, which I avoided like the plague. Sporting a few million people, puebla is hardly a pueblo as the name would imply, yet it is a nothing next to the dark giant of d.f. the cities protector is popocapatapetl, which I know I just butchered the spelling of, a somewhat dormant volcano covered in snow most of the year. Around 17000 ft or so, it is spectacular, yet you need a day without smog to really get a good view from town. There was only two such days, xmas eve and day, when nearly everything was closed and most of the people stayed with their families and avoided driving.
The food was particularly amazing here. The chile poblano is quite rich and there are many dishes which incorporate chocolate into the mix. Sylvia is a chef, so I was spoiled because she and oscar´s twin sisters kept trying to feed me the entire time I was there. To them, I looked skinny and they were on a mission to rectify that situation.
For xmas eve dinner we had barbacoa, essentially barbeque mexi style, salad, pasta, beef, all sorts of food. I was at oscar´s brothers house with oscar´s bro and wife and 3 kids, oscar´s two sisters and his dad and Sylvia. We ate for hours and then after played games until 4 in the morning. It was then that I found out that xmas day is not the day when kids get presents. That day is dia de los santos reyes- the day of the saint kings (when the 3 wise men showed up in tbe biblical story) and that is January 5 or 7. it was funny because the two older children wrote letters to the santas reyes and placed them on the xmas tree. At 4am I reminded the mother to take the cards off the tree so that the kids would think santa had come and gotten them. No, that would not happen for another two weeks I was informed amid laughter from the group. I had no idea the kids got nothing on xmas day. They knew this, however.
Xmas day was slow with more eating and games. Nothing was open so we stayed in most of the day.
The 26th I went back to the downtown center of puebla with oscar and we went to visit more museums and cafes and I visited the monument for which the date cinco de mayo, or 5th of may was made famous. Basically, an outnumbered group of Mexican soldiers successfully defended the city against a French invasion. Of course, the French came back about two weeks later and mopped the floor with rag-tag Mexican army, but that is conveniently left out of the story.
If I could choose a city to live in, it would probably be puebla. The climate, the people, the variety of things to do all add up to an amazing place. There are cafes and book shops all over the place and the architecture is astounding. It would definitely be one that I recommend to anyone who wants a taste of city life in this country.
I was hoping to leave on the evening of the 26th but it did not work out bc the buses to the place I wanted to go, Chiapas, were full. Well, when I say full I mean that there were no discount seats available. Each bus has 2 student and 2 teacher seats available at discounted rates, but this is only during vacations when schools are not in session.
So I waited until the next day and took a bus to the state of Tabasco, which is right next to Chiapas. My guide book said there would be ruins near the town of villahermosa, which there were. Unfortunately, the town was not really great (sticky hot and filthy: fairly ugly) so I left after being there for about 24 hours and headed to palenque in Chiapas.
Palenque is a small town in the lowlands of Chiapas. I arrived around 10 am and found a cheap hotel to stay (100 pesos a night). Just outside of town are the ruins of palenque, which are the largest and most incredible I have seen to date. The city was occupied for about 1000 years and there are giant pyramids and temples and hundreds of other buildings that have yet to be excavated. This is essentially the deal in mexico: there is no funding to dig out all the sites so a good 75 percent remains hidden. In this case, it added to the mystique because as I approached temples standing over 200 feet tall rising out of the steaming jungle, the howler monkeys that called to each other in the forest beyond left me with the distinct impression that I had travelled back in time. The place was green and there was still a light fog lingering in the air and despite the hundreds of tourists, I felt a sense of calm. The architecture here is amazing. They managed to harness a powerful stream and built passages to carry it away from the major buildings yet provide water and even some beautiful waterfalls in other areas.
Did I mention I forgot my camera in the hotel that day? Ya. After about 4 hours at the site and museum, I caught a van back to the town, kicking myself for missing out on the best photographic opportunity of my trip.
So I decided to return the next day. I located a tour office and got some prices on a tour that included palenque, misol-ha (a 250 ft waterfall that you can walk under and then swim around in the huge pool) and las cascadas de agua azul (a series of incredible waterfalls that stretch for roughly 7 kilometers where the water ranges from bright turquoise to about five other shades of blue- Carolina, sky blue, more that I don’t know the names for). The next morning I was on my way back to palenque, armed with a camera.
At 8am, the van picked up a pair of Australians and they took the seats behind me. I quickly decided that today was the day to meet people, so I asked them where they were from, etc. jared and sophie were from easternmost point in Australia, I think it is something like barin bay, but that sounds wrong so don’t quote me on it. They had spent the last week in Puerto Escondido, near where I live, and were on their way to Guatemala in a few days. This two ended up being my buddies for the next 3 days and we spent new years together as well. When they finally return to Australia in march, they will send me pics of the places we saw together over the next few days, but until then I have to wait.
Sadly, the tour company screwed them over so instead of heading on to san cristobal de las casas (also where I would be going the next day) after visiting the waterfalls, they headed back to palenque with us. The other people on our van ended up being great fun also. There were two Australian girls and a kiwi named will who were outgoing and talkative. They had been studying in mexico for a month and were just touring around as well. We all spent the afternoon together and I realized I was speaking English more than I had in over a week since leaving Acapulco. It is so much fun to be with a group of travellers who are all looking for something new and exciting. We shared lots of stories and this may have been one of my favourite days on the trip. I returned exhausted to my hotel around 8pm and after having a quick bite, went to bed in anticipation of my 7am departure.
San cristobal was all I had hoped it would be. Located around 8000 ft, the town is set amid looming and lush mountains that in the afternoon capture storm clouds and thus leave the town smelling of a faint scent of rain for the evening hours. gorgeous and fairly colonial, san cristobal is a haven for tourists, mainly from Europe, who come to experience a different mexico. As Chiapas was annexed by mexico from Guatemala less than 150 years ago, the feel of the place is that of another world (a world which I assume is Guatemala though I have yet to go). The native people speak two main dialects and originate from the mountain wilderness to the south and east. I explored various museums and took away from my trip a better understanding of the plight of the natives as their forests are stripped for timber and the wild is slowly tamed by companies looking for oil and any other ¨valuable¨ resource that may lie hidden in the jungle.
One gets the feeling that the people are a little sad because they see the destruction all around them yet must sell their handicrafts to the foreigners who are inadvertently helping to exploit the community. The quality of the crafts sold in the town is remarkable and some of the most beautiful artwork I have seen in mexico originates here. The foreigners are everywhere. At least 1 in 3 people that you see are of clear European extraction, thus making the place feel both comfortable and strange at the same time. This is mexico, but somehow it is not. The contradiction is startling as you wander the streets and read signs in multiple languages and visit shops catering to the foreigner. This deep in the forest one finds a mini-european city. It is strange indeed.
I found a youth hostel and shared my room with 5 other travellers who all turned out to be quite fun. And it was only 35 pesos a night (yup, $3.50 u.s.a) with a kitchen shared bath and shower, t.v., books, games, etc. I was in heaven. Most of the tourists were from other countries so we could only communicate in Spanish which I found really amusing because here we were from about 10 different countries struggling to say what we wanted a common language that only a few of us knew pretty well. The effort was worth it and I heard some wild and tragic (thieves, mainly) stories about travelling.
New years eve was a blast. I met sophie and jared and we ended up going to many different places, listening to live music and chatting about travelling, Australia, etc. I really want to visit them some day, so if anyone ever wants to fund a trip down there, I have a free place for us to stay! They are truly wonderful people and I still hear from them about once a week as they have gone to Guatemala and belice and are soon headed to costa rica. The first day they tried to convince to drop my plans and spend the next two months travelling with them (partly because I spoke Spanish and could help them and partly because we were having such a good time), but I fought the temptation (clearly, I am writing this description after all).
This leads up to the marcos sighting. We hung out all day waiting for marcos to show up, you know, waiting for the revolution, and just talking and drinking coffee and wandering through the markets. Well, the first two hours we sat in the central square and waited because we wanted good seats. Around 7pm we heard that he would be late, you think?, because he and his friends were walking. So we grabbed a bite to eat and walked around some more.
Essentially, when he showed up around 9pm, there were about 15000 people in black ski masks marching in with him. As you might imagine, this took more than 30 minutes because of the sheer number of people. Then, they all had to be fed (there were food stands set up giving out plates of black beans and tortillas) before marcos finally spoke.
The speech? The usa is horrible and we are making things worse for the native people of Chiapas because of our economic position of power and influence. The Zapatistas, in a very simplified explanation, want sovereignty (similar to what most native American groups in the usa want); the ability to choose their own governing body, the land that the govt took from them returned; the immediate end of any and all timber operations destroying part of the forests in Chiapas, equal rights for women, homosexuals, etc. they want a lot. Marcos is still touring mexico (this time he has a free passage because he has agreed to leave the rifles behind) and speaking all over the country against all of the candidates in this year´s presidential elections. Kind of funny because his posters say: pri, pan, prd (these are the 3 main parties of mexico) are all the same; come hear me for an alternative.
I wont get too much into his view points because my own views on him have changed slightly over the months. Some of their policies are not quite as accepting as they would like for everyone to think.
So this is the basic summary of my 16 days on the road. I returned to ixtepec at 430am the day I had to be back at work, january 3rd. I rolled in a little weary, but not too bad. I cannot wait for the next vacation in april when I am either going to go to Guatemala or d.f. excitement.
i wrote this one a few weeks ago and never brought it to school. kind of funny. we might call it, ¨will meets technology¨
i still love technology, but not as much as you, you see.
So who came up with this region thing for dvd’s? I assume you are going to tell me movie studios, and spending more effort than a simple, unhappy stamp of my foot and briefly shouted profanity allows me to see exactly where the idea came from and why. Nevertheless (I love three words that are added together to made one word without changing any of the letters, just jamming them together) I am not pleased to find out my computer will not simply be “super” and play all regions. I changed the region and was informed that I only have three remaining changes before the setting becomes permanent. A little more effort and I found that even if I rebooted everything on my computer or moved my dvd drive to another computer, I would still not be able to change the region setting once I had gone past my three remaining changes. Mind you I don’t have the disks to reboot windows or a clue about how to take the dvd drive out (although I do teach at a university where computer science is a major and my roommate is an engineer).
What a bunch of boo.
So I bought the dvd of the movie “serenity” when I saw it on the street today. A little less than $2.50 and I thought that at the worst I would have to listen to the person who brought the digital cam into the movie theatre to record the video eat popcorn, laugh a bit or move to let someone else in or out of the aisle. The joy of pirated movies.
No, the kid on the street had sold me a case that said serenity on the outside but contained some weird movie that was not the one I wanted. “11:14” was the Spanish title, or “horario de morir” with, and I am not good with names of movie stars, hillary swank. That is the lady from the clint eastwood movie that I never saw about a female boxer, I think.
Anyway.
The kid who sold me the movie was set up on the sidewalk outside of my apt, so I rolled back outside to ask him what was up. He was nicer about it than I thought he would be (so how often does this happen) and I found another box for serenity and went back to check it out.
Hillary again.
Back down the stairs and outside. This time we found the other movie, 11:14, but the disks on the inside were totally blank, thus not even trying to fool me that I had the right movie. I decided to give it a shot.
So when I went back down the third time, despite the kid’s suggestion that I try the other 11:14, or that I should simply buy another one, I gave up.
Too late. I had already changed my region. So I only have three chances left. I don’t like that. Why are the giving me the opportunity to change it around a few times if they wont give me the right to change as many times as I like? I paid for the stupid computer, why can’t I do what I like with it? Land of the free. Unless your freedom infringes upon the rights of a corporation, an entity that is not really a person but which has been conferred those rights in this case and in many others as well.
Castro would not like it one bit. I had an interesting conversation the other night with a guy who plays guitar in the bar that the profs sometimes go to on Friday nights. The brit was being entertained by four very short Mexicans (even when guys don’t immediately go up to her, which is rare, I always let them know that we are not together and that she loves to practice her Spanish. This gives me endless amounts of amusement and causes her lots of embarrassment, but in the end amusement wins.) and the other three profs who were with us were chatting about the university and its flaws. Blah blah blah. So I started talking to the new guitar player and it turns out he is pretty interesting. His wife is a student at the same uni where I work. I have no clue who she is, but that is not that surprising.
Within fifteen minutes I had apologized for my country like five times (why cant mexicans get visas, the usa only want us for our cheap labor, etc) and we shifted gears to a topic I was interested in: the death, or murder, of the president of ixtepec. Silence. He wanted nothing to do with that conversation. I pressed further and he shrugged, said corruption breeds violence and changed the subject. This is the common reaction down here. People are bothered a bit by it, but not too much. And they certainly do not want to talk about it. At least with foreigners.
And then somehow we started talking about cuba. While I agree that castro has done some good things there, I think anyone who has been in power for forty years needs to step down. We were in agreement there. But the answer to my next question proved difficult for both of us, mainly because we lacked a sufficient knowledge of Cuban politics, and partly because we had both imbibed a few beers. What would happen if castro died tomorrow? I don’t see it happening, but eventually, the man is going to go. Then what? Who takes over? The thought of his son jumping in and changing directions does not seem to likely. What direction does the country go in next? I would give him a few years at best before either the people or the usa takes measures to install a new leader. If the next president/dictator is a friend of the usa, will there be war? If the next leader is not a friend of the usa, will we start a war with them? cuba is the champion, the tiny place that resisted the mighty usa. Central and south American countries look to cuba, this is a gross generalization, and smile to themselves. They were able to keep us out, never mind guantamo, while our military had its way with just about every other country in the area.
And from what I gather, the people of cuba are damn proud of it too. As they should be. Resisting the usa is not easy. Doing it for forty years is incredible. The ussr could not do it. China is sort of doing it, but that is a completely different situation, I think.
So there’s cuba. Tiny island. Less than 90 miles away from florida. 90 miles. That is like san fran to sacto. Flag to the grand canyon. Charlottesville to Roanoke. Close.
This story doesn’t really go anywhere further. The guitarista and I discussed this and other political ideas for about an hour and then he had to go play. He is a great guitar player but I did not really like all the songs he sang. Oh well. Nobody is perfect.
i still love technology, but not as much as you, you see.
So who came up with this region thing for dvd’s? I assume you are going to tell me movie studios, and spending more effort than a simple, unhappy stamp of my foot and briefly shouted profanity allows me to see exactly where the idea came from and why. Nevertheless (I love three words that are added together to made one word without changing any of the letters, just jamming them together) I am not pleased to find out my computer will not simply be “super” and play all regions. I changed the region and was informed that I only have three remaining changes before the setting becomes permanent. A little more effort and I found that even if I rebooted everything on my computer or moved my dvd drive to another computer, I would still not be able to change the region setting once I had gone past my three remaining changes. Mind you I don’t have the disks to reboot windows or a clue about how to take the dvd drive out (although I do teach at a university where computer science is a major and my roommate is an engineer).
What a bunch of boo.
So I bought the dvd of the movie “serenity” when I saw it on the street today. A little less than $2.50 and I thought that at the worst I would have to listen to the person who brought the digital cam into the movie theatre to record the video eat popcorn, laugh a bit or move to let someone else in or out of the aisle. The joy of pirated movies.
No, the kid on the street had sold me a case that said serenity on the outside but contained some weird movie that was not the one I wanted. “11:14” was the Spanish title, or “horario de morir” with, and I am not good with names of movie stars, hillary swank. That is the lady from the clint eastwood movie that I never saw about a female boxer, I think.
Anyway.
The kid who sold me the movie was set up on the sidewalk outside of my apt, so I rolled back outside to ask him what was up. He was nicer about it than I thought he would be (so how often does this happen) and I found another box for serenity and went back to check it out.
Hillary again.
Back down the stairs and outside. This time we found the other movie, 11:14, but the disks on the inside were totally blank, thus not even trying to fool me that I had the right movie. I decided to give it a shot.
So when I went back down the third time, despite the kid’s suggestion that I try the other 11:14, or that I should simply buy another one, I gave up.
Too late. I had already changed my region. So I only have three chances left. I don’t like that. Why are the giving me the opportunity to change it around a few times if they wont give me the right to change as many times as I like? I paid for the stupid computer, why can’t I do what I like with it? Land of the free. Unless your freedom infringes upon the rights of a corporation, an entity that is not really a person but which has been conferred those rights in this case and in many others as well.
Castro would not like it one bit. I had an interesting conversation the other night with a guy who plays guitar in the bar that the profs sometimes go to on Friday nights. The brit was being entertained by four very short Mexicans (even when guys don’t immediately go up to her, which is rare, I always let them know that we are not together and that she loves to practice her Spanish. This gives me endless amounts of amusement and causes her lots of embarrassment, but in the end amusement wins.) and the other three profs who were with us were chatting about the university and its flaws. Blah blah blah. So I started talking to the new guitar player and it turns out he is pretty interesting. His wife is a student at the same uni where I work. I have no clue who she is, but that is not that surprising.
Within fifteen minutes I had apologized for my country like five times (why cant mexicans get visas, the usa only want us for our cheap labor, etc) and we shifted gears to a topic I was interested in: the death, or murder, of the president of ixtepec. Silence. He wanted nothing to do with that conversation. I pressed further and he shrugged, said corruption breeds violence and changed the subject. This is the common reaction down here. People are bothered a bit by it, but not too much. And they certainly do not want to talk about it. At least with foreigners.
And then somehow we started talking about cuba. While I agree that castro has done some good things there, I think anyone who has been in power for forty years needs to step down. We were in agreement there. But the answer to my next question proved difficult for both of us, mainly because we lacked a sufficient knowledge of Cuban politics, and partly because we had both imbibed a few beers. What would happen if castro died tomorrow? I don’t see it happening, but eventually, the man is going to go. Then what? Who takes over? The thought of his son jumping in and changing directions does not seem to likely. What direction does the country go in next? I would give him a few years at best before either the people or the usa takes measures to install a new leader. If the next president/dictator is a friend of the usa, will there be war? If the next leader is not a friend of the usa, will we start a war with them? cuba is the champion, the tiny place that resisted the mighty usa. Central and south American countries look to cuba, this is a gross generalization, and smile to themselves. They were able to keep us out, never mind guantamo, while our military had its way with just about every other country in the area.
And from what I gather, the people of cuba are damn proud of it too. As they should be. Resisting the usa is not easy. Doing it for forty years is incredible. The ussr could not do it. China is sort of doing it, but that is a completely different situation, I think.
So there’s cuba. Tiny island. Less than 90 miles away from florida. 90 miles. That is like san fran to sacto. Flag to the grand canyon. Charlottesville to Roanoke. Close.
This story doesn’t really go anywhere further. The guitarista and I discussed this and other political ideas for about an hour and then he had to go play. He is a great guitar player but I did not really like all the songs he sang. Oh well. Nobody is perfect.
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