Boarding the overnight bus

Hey,

We are an hour away from boarding time on our bus out of Mexico. We are taking a killer 14 hour bus ride overnight from Mexico City to the border town of Matamoras, Mexico. From there we have to cross the bridge on foot and hopefully sail back into the states problem free. We are planning on picking up our car and actually driving straight away north! I guess this all depends how strong the coffee is how far we will make it on the first leg. We do plan to be home in 3 or 4 days. I gotta get back to work!!

Mexico City was a whirlwind of activity. If anyone can do it "all" in the limited time we had, we certainly did! We got to the Frida Khalo blue house (hey she has the same address as us 247 BUT Londres st, not Weldon.) We got to check out the Trotsky house too. You know that this Russian revolutionary socialist was in exile here in Mexio, being hunted by Stalin and finally killed with an ice pick through his head! Fun stuff.
We got to see some amazing Diego Rivera murals and the Ruins in the city of Templo Mayor. By the end we were running thru so as not to miss anything! Time seemed so spread out until the end and the departing door just came crashing closed!

Yesterday we spent the whole day at the Temple of the sun and moon, the Teohticluan ruins! WOW! That may have been one of the highlights on the trip, despite the hawking vendors and groups and groups of school kids. We also explored the famous anthropology museum and that was amazing!

Hopefully we can get some photos up of the last week or so of the trip. It has been really some spectacular sights.

I big whopping thanks and love to you all who followed the blog, wrote positive, supportive emails and even offered money!!! Thanks so much! Especially to our incredible housemates who have kept down the fort, watered plants, kept our paper trail and our dog!! Special thanks to Rainbow Ranch folks for keeping Sample as long as they did! We are looking forward to seeing everyone and cooking a dinner (Mexican anyone?) for you all!

see you soon,
get the heating pad ready....
hugs
d

mexico city!

We arrived in DF, which is how the city is referred by the spanish itnitials (districto federal.) We took a 5 hour bus ride from Xalapa, a city we LOVED but did not have enough time to fully explore. We will go back there one day and spend the weeks necessary to explore the hilly sanfranciscoesque city, outlying towns and the diverse natural landscape. Xalapa has very little tourism but has the State University, so the scene is hip and cultural and the main plaza overlooks mountains and a volcano. It was so nice to be back in a city where we felt like the lone tourists. After hoards of tourists in Oaxaca, I needed to feel that we are not doing the same thing that EVERYONE is doing! This is the first place we really felt we got a great dinner and it was cheap! Zarha did lose a precious $20 dollars worth of pesos in xalapa so maybe we are destined to come back and find it!

I have not fallen in love with the gulf coast. I don't feel a need to go back Veracruz (however I heard that is the town to be for Carnival in Mexico!) Most other cities don't celebrate Mardigras festivities in Mexico but apparently its happening there. It was as disaponting as my arrival to New Orleans Many many years ago when i walked to the Mississippi River to find polluted waters and ugly barges. Veracruz is the main export port and has barges and cranes and all kinds of metal nasty contraptions just past the shoreline. There is mostly a lot of Mexican tourism and it was only Mexicans i saw swimming in the water. I heard that Mexico city dumps waste into the Gulf and it didnt seem inviting for me to swim in. The Gulf coast has nothing on the pacific where i would spend my last days on earth if i knew they were coming.

Mexico city is beautiful! The altitude is a bit much for me! Mexico city is about 7400 feet above sea level and i can feel the lack of oxygen but its not nearly as polluted as i thought it would be. It has many wide cobble stone streets and old amazinly huge Spanish architure government buildings and cathedals circling the Zocolo.
We arrived last night to some Aztec drumming and dance in the Zocolo. These plazas are always so surreal to stumble upon around dusk when we are still trying to orient ourselves to a new place. This city is more like an European city, reminds me of Madrid, than I realized it would be. Its less draining and flashy than NYC and it has a grounding feeling. Unlike that Constant billboard flash and glitz of NY that sucks energy this city, (Despite the most populated in the world!) is amazingly composed.

Well for the next 2 days we are exploring all the ruins and museums we possibly can. I plan to hike up to the pyramid of the sun! Andy is remembering and telling us more stories of time here as a boy. It is amazing how little he actually saw of this city when he was here! He lived with an overprotective rich family that often did not let them out of the family compound. I guess the Mexico of the 80s was scary, like NY, but still I can't believe they wouldn't have shown him the pyramids! Its cool that Andy came back with Zarha right around the same age.

I cant believe these are our last few days in Mexico!
I guess will be joining the cold team soon!
hugs to all
d

Traveling on...

Well we left Oaxaca early Saturday morning and headed to Veracruz a gulf coast town east of Oaxaca. We actually arrived to a bit of rain and cooler temperatures. We had heard it would be a bit hotter here and expected to sweat and instead we are feeling chilly and underdressed in the mid 60's temperature and moist, cool gulf air. I think this day is a fluke of cool as occasionally happens in Oaxaca. Our skin has become that warm, thin skin that reacts easily to cold.

Our last week in Oaxaca was great. One of my Spanish teachers is a public school teacher and is part of the section 22 teachers union. That is the union that fought hard to see Ruiz removed (the governer of Oaxaca) and for teachers rights. He also saw Brad filming the day he was killed. Brad had walked past my teachers barricade filming (there were strikers' barricades all over city) hours before he was shot. One day after school he took me, Andy and another student to the street Brad was shot on, in Santa Lucia. I had read it described in papers as both a "slum" and the "Suburbs" of Oaxaca. I didnt see it as either. The street seems like an average barrio of Mexico and had a feeling a very intimate quiet community. The street where he was shot, Juarez, is still covered in strong political graffiti. His name, Bradly, is written large in a couple places and intense statements about keeping up the resistance and bringing the killers to justice. There is also a bullet hole in one of the concrete walls outside someones home. The hole is circled and it says "assasins bullet." It was intense to see some strong passionate grafitti all along the street because in the center area of town (tourist area) most markings of that time have been erased. As we were walking that street a couple of old ladies started talking to our teacher. Of course they knew of Brad and explained to our teacher how on the day of the dead celebration every novemember Brad and the others killed during that time are recoginzed. We even headed to a the hardware store across the street from where the alters are placed for the day of the dead celebrations and very kind people told us they would leave anything at the alter next November that we wanted to leave in memory of brad. I was very touched by the intimate neighborhood and how everyone seemed to know and care about Brad. He was a stranger in a strange land and every year he will be remembered and his spirit cared for and it made me think that that is a fortunate part about the whole bad situation.

We are taking a week now to travel. The bus ride into Veracruz was long and dramatic. Just when I think I have seen enough beautiful landscape I catch a Volcano or steep rocky mountain and incredible cactus and I am ooooing and ahhhhing again outloud.

We also got to a couple great markets on Friday. One is famous for all the wooden painted animals. It was great because we got to see the artists in action and get some deals on wooden painted animals.

I hope its starting to warm up for you all,
March: Comes in like a lion out like a lamb??
I sure hope thats true this year!
hugs
dawn

Hierve el agua and ramblings!

How is it that the week is so slow and drawn out and the weekend flies by?? Well there are less days after all on a weekend. Maybe that was a bad design the weekend should be the weekday and vice versa. Actually the settling in Oaxaca has been such a great idea for many reasons. We do spend less on school days and on weekends we take outings that cost more plus we have included one nice family style sit down restaurant meal into our Sunday evenings. So the price tag on weekend days tend to be double than weekdays so it is a good thing there are only two weekend days a week.

We travelled (in back of pick up truck) up the narrow, windy, steep dirt mountain road to Hierve el agua (lit. ¨the water boils¨) on Saturday. An amazing place with cold spring pools right on the edge of the mountains looking into the valley and mountains surrounding it! The water spills over the mountain side and over time petrifies the surface and makes really cool patterned and textured rock. We made the plunge into the pools and they were far too cold for my taste but I felt it was a necessary baptism of sorts. Zarha says that she felt so cleansed and that is her guarantee that she will come back to Oaxaca!

I ate Chapolines (grasshoppers) tonight! They were served bacon bit style sprinkled on top of a salad I had ordered. I wasn’t expecting it but I got excited when they arrived. I have been wanting to try them and couldn’t bring myself to buy them off the many street vendors who sell them. Our cooking teacher told us that there is a belief that if you eat the grasshoppers you are bound to return to Oaxaca. I feel relieved now that I have eaten them that I will return! Actually it was anticlimactic. Besides the creepiness of the little thread like legs separating from the body into my salad it was really hard to notice. The were not even as crunchy as bacon bits and just carry the flavour of however they are prepared. I may bring some home for all you brave and daring (and heartless eater of creatures) to try.

We went to the history museum next to Santa Domingo (I don’t think we have posted a photo yet of that one) one of the massive old churches in Oaxaca. I guess it is considered the main one. Attached to the church is the old labyrinth, fortressed monastary that was turned into a military barracks for almost a century before it was converted to a museum. A much better use of space! The relics of various indigenous cultures are amazing and the fortress-like stone walls open arch ways to the mountains and botanical gardens was spell binding. Same story…. rich and dynamic indigenous cultures get paved over with crucifixes and bloody saints by moustached armed colonizers. It had powerful energy in there though but the irony doesn’t escape you. The indigenous remains are in the church who more or less wiped out the early cultures and now the living indigenous cultures are still the most oppressed and deprived of the country. Oaxaca state has the most diverse indigenous populations still alive in all of Mexico. I think there are about 14 different indigenous cultures existing here now. They are the poorest people in the state and have the highest illiteracy rate. Why do cultures have to become extinct before they are appreciated and contained under glass with an admission fee?

Zarha loves Oaxaca and even said the other day she doesn’t want to leave! That is big coming from a kid who travels a lot and has never said that about any other place (except maybe California?) and who is a real homebody. We are all taken by the constant music and celebrations that take place here. Zarha loves the music and tonight there was a huge free concert in the zocalo (plaza) performed by this Mexican band, Silueta, and they were incredible. Actually almost every night there is some free performance music, orchestra bands, mariachis, clowns… always a good time. This is also the week of nightly free dance performances besides Santa Domingo church. They are all traditional indigenous style dances and I have never seen more beautiful dances.
The colors of the hand woven exquisite embroidered flowered dresses are amazing! The spirit and energy was incredible. To experience this within context of the culture is way beyond anything you can buy a ticket to at a "cultural event" in the states. I even saw the pineapple dance! It is this dance of 18 traditionally dressed woman in dresses with hand woven patterns (that look like it could take a year to make!) and they hold and dance with full pineapples. At one point they are doing a chorus line dance (like the can can) its so awesome! they seem to be celebrating the pineapple! This may be Zarhas tribe and sadly she missed this dance! We are hoping with a week of dance performance she may catch it again. What amazes me is that despite all the global crap influences of homogenized products and sweat labour prices for cheap threads people still keep their culture and craft alive and strong. I am continually amazed at the indigenous culture and the traditions here. It is so strong and beautiful!

I ran into the political group Witness For Peace that has a delegation here for the week. Rather, I knew they were coming and as soon as I saw tourists that looked somewhat progressive and younger I approached and asked if they were with Witness For Peace. The funny part is I got them right on my first try! Pretty impressive in a town with endless tourists from all over the Anglo worlds but I nailed them. One of the group leaders was very friendly and warm and happy to meet me. I had emailed earlier asking about us jumping in on one or two speaking engagements from their tour. I never got a response but she told me today it is too difficult to integrate folks into the group. I understand negotiating a big group but if we caught a speaker we could have written for Indymedia or made contacts for future projects. Those delegation groups are way overpriced for our budget and I don’t like travelling in groups like that anyway. There should be a circuit for travels to network politically without having to do this whole political "cruise ship" type thing.

Oh well, I have to get up early for class. I still don’t get to tell ya all the details that I would if I could have that phone conversation. Like the presentation I went to about the problem with the contamination of corn down here and seeing the film the Laramie project and a French surrealist film (subtitled in Spanish) that we loved. Well I guess you gotta wait for the phone call on all that fun stuff.
much love,
dawn
PS check the link on our site called The Roving Ruges. That’s the blog of the travelling family we met and their photos of Oaxaca are way more professional! Hey but that’s all the stuff we are seeing and trying to take pictures of with a snap and shoot camera.