Here I am, bright and early last Wednesday morning with colleagues from my very own UMAR and two ladies from Puerto Angel, as we set out on our epic journey to the very 1st "Annual Meeting of Language Teachers In The State Of Oaxaca" held in Huajuapan de Leon. Straight driving, it's a nine hour drive, ten with a lunch and bathroom breaks. Our school covered our admission and even provided us with a van and driver! It really doesn't get much more deluxe than that. Altogether there were nine of us. Here we go, up through the mountain range between the coast and Oaxaca City. And down again. The only rain we saw that day was pouring down on Miahuatlan, where I had my first teaching gig not so long ago. We drove by and the sky cleared. Lunch break half an hour outside Oaxaca. We were ready.
Huajuapan! We made it! Phew!
Here we are at the beautiful UTM (Universidad Tecnologica de la Mixteca)campus. As with all of the state universities of Oaxaca, the architecture is based on a similar plan but they have some unique touches and the landscaping is sweet, with lots of pine and cedar and a small stream. I may look a tad goofy in this shot but Caryl looks nice. In the previous shot, she looked terrified and I looked more than a little menacing. Here I am again with the pretty photographer from Puerto Angel.
Matt and I found a discreet place to sneak a smoke by a little bridge that led to the library.
Downtown Juajuapan by the zocalo. The zocalo has two of these cute push merry-go-rounds. It must be tough getting children off them again when it`s time to home again. Dinner at Ajo`s.
My new apartment came with some pets. I loved the geckos. It was the little ants I couldn't stand. If I had taken Mike's advice, my little geckos would still be alive today. All I had to do was keep the place scrupulously clean and the ants would have skipped town. The previous tenants didn't seem to mind the hive living right in the bamboo of the table frame. I took care of that with a liberal spray of Windex. They all came tearing out, holding little eggs over their heads. Pssst. Have a little more. I didn't have enough patience so I bought a big can of insecticide, potent stuff guaranteed to kill cockroaches, ants and spiders. Sadly it kills geckos too. They might want to put that on the label some day. I found the biggest of them all dried up on my window sill, newly arrived ants crawling all over him. I haven't found the bug sized babies. Maybe they escaped but I doubt it. As reptiles go, most people would agree that geckos are cute as they come. They eat ants. Well, they weren't doing nearly a good enough job at my place. Still, they were cute and now they aren't
A good night sleep makes all the difference between a great or mediocre day so all weekend plans are dependent on when my eyes open without the insistent nagging from the voice alarm woman. A late morning just means smaller activities. Last Sunday I woke comfortably before dawn. The night before I’d thought about running the scooter down to Zipolite with my boogie board and the idea still sounded good so I ate quickly and got out the door just as it was turning light. I’d had a terrifying ride on that road before, on a day trip to San Augustin, and I was counting on the early hour to cut down the traffic this time. It worked. Anyone wanting to make a run from Crucecita to Zipolite or Mazunte, all you have to do is get out early. Once you pass the airport, things are saner any time of day. The entire trip took about an hour and 15 minutes with 3 stops to let the engine cool. This was my first stop. I heard what sounded like the rumble of thunder but kept going. It could have been anything. Zipolite has a new park area with a beach style gazebo. The place was deserted. Just a couple of cool dogs near Lola’s.
The water was high and rough for my cautious tastes. I wonder if that isn’t a seasonal thing. I made a beeline for this beach last year at this time when I returned from Korea and it was the same. It’s been a while since I played in the waves and I was out there long enough to get a good burn on my back. Idiot. Even water proof sun screen needs frequent applications in the Pacific Ocean. A lifelong burner should be able tor emember that. A big wave sweeping up to the restaurants with a current that insistently pulled me towards some rocks was my signal to pack it in. That much wave play gives a boy an appetite and I almost swallowed a substantial meal whole at Shambhala. The rumbling I’d heard earlier had been thunder. Clouds over the mountains were looking serious. It was time to go. I still don’t have a helmet and rain drops have a nasty slap when the scooter's in motion. My muffler had come apart and the bike blatted so loud it wasn’t worth trying to listen to the MP3 player. At least there was plenty of warning of my approach at tight bends for any children chasing balls on to the road. I got caught in some rain but raced away from it and kept those clouds behind me. No coffee breaks for the machine this time. I made it home alive with an hour to spare before sundown. I had such a great day and that was all on less than one tank of gas. I went to fill it on Monday, figuring it had to be as dry as William Burroughs, but I could have run it back and forth to UMAR all week.
Around spring, we had a lot of newborn lizards and iguanas running around in bright green at UMAR. They're changing. This one will be entirely black soon enough. They grow up so fast.
I was doing my best to upload the blog from Casa Mayor on the night before Mexican Independence Day when a little parade with beauty queens and marching school children came by in downtown Crucecita. Just at dusk that night we had a blackout. These birds swarm the downtown telephone lines every night at this hour for some reason. It´s quite a phenomenon. Local store owners give a little clap and they flap around before lighting again. Maybe you have to be there. It´s a bit of a show and there are nightly performances all year long.
Plans had been made for a few more excursions in Tehuantepec on Sunday but everything changed when the rain. It was going to be an all day event and we all knew it so I didn´t hear from Victor or Misael until lunchtime. Realizing they decided to stay in bed, I went off in search of coffee. I found a stall in the market where a woman fixed me up with some Nescafe. It was a start.
I found this great little restaurant called ´´Coffee Something or other". Just what I needed. I took a special shine to all the old framed lobby posters from Mexican cinema. Cool stuff. Have a look.
The one non-Mexican movie poster was for "Dracula, Prince of Darkness," 1966, a personal favorite of the old Hammer films and possibly the best of all the Christopher Lee movies. In Spanish we have "Dracula, Principe de las Tieneblas" The rain kept coming. It was time to say goodbye and hit the road. The bus was ready within thirty seconds of buying my ticket and I was back in Crucecita where it had barely rained all day.
I have everything I want and need here in Huatulco but it's good to break out of the routine once in a while and last weekend I visited the town of Tehuantepec as a guest of one of my students of last semester and his local English teacher. Misael invited me a couple of months ago but circumstances (the apartment situation for example)led to several postponements. Time clicks right along. Opportunities were getting slim. The weekend after this one is a big out of town teacher's conference and then we're into the October term. I finally got my act together, more or less, and with the invitation still open, I finally made it to the town of Tehuantepec proper around lunch time on Saturday.
Misael wasn't right there at the bus station so I walked a few steps into town to an internet shop. His phone number was waiting for me in an email. Now, I'm not bragging but I am gradually becoming a bit more functional with Spanish but after having introduced myself to his mother on the phone and asked for Misael (in my best Spanish) I was a bit deflated when she answered "Disculpe. No hablar inglis." That was my Spanish! She told me later that she had understood every word. It was just a misunderstanding on my part. I understood her when she said Misael was at the bus terminal that very minute. She was right. I must have missed him by 2 minutes.
Misael's father loaned him the truck for the day. I met Victor, his English teacher and the three of us drove off to another small town with this cool little restaurant with a small zoo of indigenous animals. I hadn't known that Mexico has monkeys, leopards and deer. The monkeys make sense. I remember being stalked by a few at a nature reserve in Atitlan, Guatemela and that's not so far away. I suppose they'll always be wherever the bananas are. Misael dropped Victor off at his classroom and we went off to meet his parents with one quick pit stop on the way. I found out later he'd stopped to buy some glue for my sneakers. I've been meaning to buy new sneakers for several months now. the right one was ripped apart from the middle and would flop open completely. I don't know how I managed to do that. I treat my footwear rather roughly. Misael made them as good as new. Misael rocks and his family are very nice people. Language barriers and all, we knew there wasn't going to be any conversation but I felt genuinely welcome.
Victor's classes are from Monday to Friday but he called his students in to practise their English with me and we had a couple of impromptu low pressure classes. They were all charming and their English was rather good considering none of them had been studying too long. Cameras came out at the end of each class and I have a few commemorative shots of my own. Misael offered to drive us to a bar in Salina Cruz that night. I was a bit wary of finding myself in a blaring discotheque so I had to ask, "Um, what kind of bar is this? It isn't a discotheque , is it?" "No, no. It's a quiet bar." I still felt a bit wary. After all, my idea of quiet and a younger person's are bound to be different. I shouldn't have worried. It was the coolest. We drove to a huge lookout above the coastline of Salina Cruz and drank beers from a nearby store by the wall. It couldn't have been any better. The water looked too rough to do anything other than look in awe at the power of the ocean. Another friend with us told me there were a lot of sharks out there. Besides, it's contaminated. Salina Cruz is an oil refinery town. It was a short visit but quality. Time well spent. Thanks, Misael. To all of Victor's students: Keep up the good work.
