Random Descriptions of My Travel Adventures

It occurs to me that I have ceased to post anything cultural and have now resorted to writing about roaches and Tato. This is likely due to the fact that I will be coming home in less than a week and my brain has shut down, I’m focusing more on all the things I have to do when I get back. We also haven’t had regular classes here in Oaxaca for about two weeks so my source for political information has dried up a bit. I could look at the paper everyday I suppose but my lack of desire to do this goes back to the brain being shut down. So I will try to post a little bit about politics and then continue with my roach tales and a list of last night’s karaoke songs. Today in Mexico City there will be a march by Obrador supporters, a million people are expected to attend. These numbers are always inflated of course, just like they are in the United States, his last march in the capital drew only about 50k and they were expecting 500k. The situation with the presidential election hasn’t chan...

Tato was en fuego last night! I love the Guerreros mascot! Other than his usual antics on the field Tato occasionally takes to the stands to connect with his people. He sits with the group of fans who inhabit the seats behind home plate every game and produce a racket with their noise makers when their favorite batter steps up to the plate. He takes pictures with the little kids. He also dances with drunken adults! At one point in the evening Tato was in the crowd, a song came on over the loud speaker (I can’t remember which one) and Tato begins dancing. Soon he is joined by a drunken man (I assume anyway) who begins to gyrate and grind against Tato in a very suggestive manner. Tato puts up with this for awhile and the crowd chuckled a bit but after a few minutes Tato seems to get fed up, grabs the man’s head in between his two bird hands and shoves his face down into his groin area! The crowd went wild! This is the dirtiest mascot I have ever seen and now I truly do have mascot envy. ...

Research was a bit uneventful today, we had to head to the school to print and copy a few things in preparation for the weekend. We then hopped on a bus to the Central de Abastos and caught a collective taxi to one of the colonias in SJA. The collectives are a great way to travel, 50 cents to drive us to SJA, only 15 cents more than the bus and you can catch them on the street just like a bus. I wish they would have this type of arrangement in Phoenix for the drunks leaving the bars, it would make my life easier and would likely be immensely entertaining at the same time. We walked around two of the colonias that have been built on ejido land (communal farm land) in a vain attempt to try and figure out the process of sale and construction on these lands. The law says one thing in regard to who can and cannot sell but the reality is always very different. After a good deal of sweating and not much else we head back into town and attempt to visit some of the offices that were closed th...

Prolific posting today! I guess I'm feeling more like myself today and so have a lot to babble about. My research partner is a bit quite so perhaps I'm not talking as much in reaction to that, though I doubt it. We headed out to San Jacinto Amilpas (SJA) today, jumped in a cab around 9am or so, SJA is about 7km out of town. We had set up a meeting with a man or woman, we weren't sure who was going to show up, whose number we retrieved off a Lots for Sale sign. We were a bit surprised they agreed to meet us but we weren't going to pass up the opportunity. The scheduled meeting time was 10am at the municipal palace in SJA and we of course arrived quite early wanting to leave nothing to chance. I started to talk to the security guard knowing that the more people you talk to, no matter how briefly, the better. My research partner thinks I'm a bit strange this way but it has worked out well for us! Anyway, we tell him what we are up to and chat with him for awhile and ...

I wrote this little blurb last weekend on Saturday but forgot to post it....musings on mezcal. I have been feeling crappy and sluggish all day long and I’m going to blame the mezcal. I have decided I don’t really like mezcal, I appreciate the further refinement of tequila. I came to this conclusion before my hangover but this definitely solidifies the decision. Last night we had planned to attend a mezcal festival they have every year here in Oaxaca but it was cancelled due to all the political strife in the city. Instead of the festival we went to a bar and they happened to be having a mezcal tasting event. For 50 pesos (five bucks) we sat in a room with two shot glasses in front of us, some slices of orange and a description of the age of the mezcal, the type of agave it was from, etc. We didn’t realize that several people were going to get up and do Power Point presentations about the types of mezcal we were drinking so we were forced to sit through some long winded explanations o...

I have no idea what is going on with my blog, my links and profile are now appearing at the bottom of the screen instead of the top, I have some crazy fonts going on, still haven't figured out comments, bear with me. The roaches are probably sabotaging it!

I have been a slacker about continuing the description of my field trip experience so here is my remembrance of the last day of our trip. I didn't finish the description of the 3rd day but if you want to know about it I'll tell you later. Anyway, here you go...last day of the long van ride. Wake up and say goodbye to the Hotel San Juan. Sad to see it go but we must trek onward to Santiago Xanica. At this juncture in the field trip my nerves are starting to fray but surprisingly it hasn’t been as bad as I imagined being stuck in a van with 15 other people. The trip to Santiago Xanica takes the better part of the day. We travel along the coast of Oaxaca and look longingly at the ocean, wanting to stay and play in the surf. Instead we turn inland and head up into the mountains. The road to Santiago is a very narrow winding dirt road. Looking out the van windows was a bit scary as frequently the view was not of the road but straight down the mountainside. We passed several large t...

This week I have begun preliminary research for my dissertation topic which will also simultaneously act as my final project for the study abroad program I’m attending in Oaxaca. My investigations this week will not only give me information to take home and use to write (and hopefully receive) grants to come back and study, but will also result in a 15 page paper I will present to my peers. I’m sure they are excited (please note sarcasm)! I’m attempting to study urban expansion in Oaxaca, the land use change associated with that expansion and how the transition from rural to urban affects not only the land but the social, political and cultural lives of those in the communities experiencing these transformations. The research is coming along slowly but surely, right now I’m focused on learning about types of land, the expansion of the city, gathering contacts etc. Luckily one of my classmates is helping me and he speaks Spanish much better than I, which, as you might imagine, is a big...

I’m back at the Señora’s house and haven’t seen a roach since the initial two encounters I wrote about previously. I do however now truly believe the roaches have mobilized and are coming to seek their revenge upon me. This morning I woke up late, didn’t hear my alarm with my earplugs in, and began to get ready for breakfast, trying to make it look as if I showered and woke up at the appropriate time. As I’m walking around the room I hear a rustling noise coming from the corner of the room between my bed and the wall. In that corner of the room is a set of plastic shelves upon which I store my suitcase, sleeping bag and a number of other odds and ends. Right next to the shelves and the head of my bed is a space about a foot wide where I left a large clear plastic sack I had been using to hold my dirty laundry. When you take your clothes to the lavanderia here they typically return them to you folded in one of these bags. I have gotten into the habit of saving the bag and using them to...

Nothing much to share currently, I spent much of the day at INEGI (National Institute of Geography and Statistics) getting some information for my research project. I think I will have to go back a few times since it is difficult to explain myself and basically I just nod and smile when they give me things. Luckily one of the other students has decided to work with me and he speaks much better Spanish than I do. One thing to report, I was just walking down the street munching on an ice cream sandwhich, a man passed me going in the opposite direction and made pig noises!! Hello!?! What the hell is that?! I am not a pig! I am simply someone who likes ice cream dammit! Sheesh.

I'm writing today with the lingering effects from too much mezcal last night so this post might be a bit rough. I have a visitor from the U.S. here which is one reason for the lack of updates this week...I'm finishing up my field trip recap and will post that soon. Monday I begin my field research in earnest (my reason for being here after all) so future posts will likely be about these experiences, in part to help me remember what I have learned throughout the week. I'm then headed home on August 4th and so will have no more exciting travel adventures to write about...but until then the adventures continue! Roach Revenge So my roach killing has come back to haunt me in the worst way, the roaches are seeking retribution for my caulous assasination of one of their brethren. Walking around this Wednesday showing my visitor the sights, we stop and buy some bottled water. The woman behind the counter hands us two bottles of water, one of them appears to have a bit of dirt o...

Okay, I think I figured out comments! So if you would like to comment, send me an email and I will add you as a member. For some reason the computer I'm typing on has all the instructions in English! Yippee! Thanks Mike for the help and for your mentions of my blog!

Wake up, take a shower in the prison bathroom, eat (again), and hop into the van for the short drive to Juchitan. There is an accent in the name but I haven't figured out how to do these yet on the keyboards here. We are dropped off in the town center and stroll around the large market, mostly housed in a beautiful, large, white building with numerous arches. The market is great, as usual you can find just about everything under the sun, but here there are some special items not really found anywhere else. There are some very intricate, traditional handwoven dresses in this market, some of them very expensive. They are beautiful and most have lots of brightly colored flowers on a black background. There is also quite a bit of gold jewelry and Oliver tells us that if we look hard enough we might be able to find some jewelry that glorifies gang culture. Sure enough, as we walk through the market Oliver finds a gold necklace with a machine gun pendant! The other market items of note ...

The morning after my courageous encounter with the roaches, I woke up bright and early, completely exhausted from very little sleep. One of the other women in my group and I decided we would have a "bag-off" to see who had the biggest luggage under their eyes. I think we decided the winner would be determined by the best 2 out of 3 as we expected them to get progressively worse as the week wore on. In Jalapa it seems there is a town alarm clock that conveniently wakes you up at the crack of dawn. Around 7am someone starts yelling into a loudspeaker or a megaphone and blankets the town with a total racket! What are they broadcasting so early in the morning you ask? Weather? Road conditions? Something that makes sense or is vitally important to town functioning? Nope. The man shouting is selling food! He shouts, "Tamales! Mole! Pan!" etc. at the top of his damn lungs. Even my trusty ear plugs could not dampen the noise. One minute the announcement would be extremely ...

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has read my blog and emailed me with their comments and support! Thanks! So far nobody has said anything about my bad grammar and faulty paragraph placement which makes me like the comments all that much more. It also makes me want to keep writing when I know that someone is reading my silly stories and using them to procrastinate at work. When I had a real job any distraction from my actual work was a welcome one. So, for all you apathetic workers out there, this blog's for you! Thanks again and maybe someday I will figure out how to work the comments on the actual blog so you don't have to send me a separate email!

After our mezcal tour and a few bathroom stops (mostly at my request), we arrived in Jalapa de Marquez around midday. Our group would be staying in the homes of two Jalapa residents arranged by a woman associated with our school who was from the town. I chose to stay in the first house we came to along with 9 others and the family that inhabited the place, 13 people total I believe. There was a nice big porch with 5 or 6 hammocks strung up and I thought it looked quite relaxing. After unloading our luggage from the van we were treated to mojarra, a fried fresh water fish the town is famous for. After comida and a brief rest we took a walking tour of the town ending up at the Palacio Municipal, very sweaty at this point, to meet a town councilman (or something like that) who was scheduled to speak to our group about Jalapa. Peeing in the pants While we were waiting for the man to show up, I inevitably had to pee since it had been at least an hour since I had gone last, and so asked some...

Bright and early Monday morning all 16 of us jump into the big red van, luggage strapped to the roof, and head for Jalapa de Marquez our first stop on the week long adventure. Although there was a degree of excitement about getting started most of use were also doped up on Dramamine and very drowsy. Since Oaxaca is located between two mountain ranges, roads leading out of the city are very windy and vomit inducing. About an hour into our trip we arrive in Matatlan, a town whose main industry is the production of Mezcal! I guess I should mention that the state of Oaxaca is the birth place of mezcal. Our driver, Gregorio, asks if we would like to stop at a distillery and see how it is made. Even though it is 10 in the morning we all agree this is an important cultural learning opportunity and therefore a stop is necessary. We receive a tour of the palenque including the fire pit where the maguey is roasted for (I think) 24 hours or so, then it is transferred to a cement thingy (technic...

I’m back from the field trip and despite some mental and physcial trauma I think I will survive. It was actually quite a lot of fun and I definitely got to see some wonderful places, people and landscapes that were well off the tourist track. I could have done without riding in a van with 15 other people, lots of closeness and sweat is not always fun, but now that the adventure is over the romanticizing and nostalgia kick in and begin to soften the hard edges of the trip. Before I recap the trip, which will likely take a few days, I have to relate the story of the Oaxacan baseball team mascot. One of my classmates and I (we were the only two who didn’t get dropped off at the beach) attended a baseball game last night to pass some time. Over a few beers we discussed our joy at having chosen to return to Oaxaca rather than stay and sweat at the beach. Incidentally, we are the oldest two members of the group so age and feelings of bliss generated by freedom from van travel with you...

We received our briefing on the upcoming week long field trip and it is going to be an interesting week. There are 16 people going and we are all piling in a van for the 5 day trek. At the end of this adventure we are going to know each other very well. You know it is going to be an interesting ride when our instructor, who is also going, repeatedly told us that we needed to be respectful of one another and have patience. In fact he went so far as to say that we are all going to, at one point or another, pretty much hate everyone else and if we see someone having this type of moment we should just let them have it and leave them alone. I think I will be having multiple moments like these but luckily for me and my fellow travelers Mexican pharmacies stock a wide array of mood altering medication. I should add that there are 11 people below the age of 25 going, most of them under 21 and of these all of them are women. I have not spent this much time around a pack of young women since I ...

So this election post is a bit of old news at this point I'm afraid, Calderon has been declared the winner of the election by the independent election agency, the IFE. Obrador is most likely going to contest this result, the difference in the number of votes is less than one percent between candidates. A number of election irregularities have been reported and there is the possibility that the tribunal that reviews these will decide the election to be null and void. The religious and media parallels to our own elections are also too similar to ignore. Calderon stated that the hand of god had declared him the winner (or some such nonsense) which reminded me of our own looney president who feels he was ordained by god to lead our country. I'm thinking he was called on by the devil to lead our country into hell but that is a story for another time. A number of Catholic priests also supported Calderon, another interesting mix of politics and religion like our own crazy system ...

The title of this entry refers to the brand of beer I'm drinking as I type this..mmmm....beer. Anyway, I'm downtown and supposed to meet the group and go see some live band or something so I am killing time in an internet cafe. I intended to write something about the election but I don't have my notes with me right now, so I guess that post will have to wait. In the meantime I'm sure you can find plenty of news about it on the web. I will say again that the similarities to the 2000 election are frightening, Calderon has stated something about god deciding he has won or some other religious crap. Sound familiar? There are some interesting things occuring in Oaxaca right now on the political front. Today the Asemblea Popular, a group of about 400 organizations, is supposed to take over the governor's office in the zocalo. The governor doesn't actually work there anymore, he moved his office out of town into what was described to me as a militarized fortress of sor...

So last night when we got home from celebrating the 4th I carefully covered the drain in the shower and the sink and was loudly singing my own praises about how smart I was when my roomie dropped a bombshell. She said something to the effect of, "I hate to tell you this" and I stopped her and said, "Is it about the roach?", she replied in the affirmative. So I said, "If you saw it in here don't tell me!" so she said "Ok" and went quite and started reading her book again. Well now of course I know it is about the roach in our room and not the bathroom so I have to know or I will just die. So I beg her to tell me and she starts with "Is the crack under the door big enough for a roach?". Great! Now my stomach starts to sink and I'm feeling bit ill because of course my bed is the closest to not only the bathroom door but the front door as well. So I say, "Of course" and she tells me she thought she saw it scurrying away ...

Tomorrow our classroom lecture is all about the election so I will have more and exciting information. Sure you can watch the boring old news but I get insider information the news doesn't have! Sounds like Obrador is threatening to call out his people to protest and there will be long court battles. Deja vu? I can't figure out the accent marks on this computer so my languages that require accent marks (like french) aren't getting them. Okay, off to the zocalo to celebrate July 4th. I am sober now from my earlier soccer beers so I have to drink some more 4th of July beers. It is my patriotic duty.

Oaxaca is known throughout Mexico and the world for its unique and muy rico cuisine. This is the home of mole, that very dense, dark sauce of which there are many different varieties. It is also the home of chapulines! These are fried grasshoppers (yes grasshoppers) seasoned with chili and lime juice. They sell mounds and mounds of these in the markets around town and I had resisted trying them for quite awhile. In fact we were at the market on Saturday and several in our group chomped one down while grimacing and faking a smile at the same time. This was not very convincing so I bowed out of eating one but my grasshopper abstinence would not last for long. At comida this weekend our señora presented a plate of chapulines for our dining pleasure!Luckily the plate did not contain the grasshopper intact but instead held chopped chapulines which were much less offensive but I still saw little grasshopper legs. I sprinkled a few legs and other fried grasshopper parts on a tortilla with ...

I am still at school right now, it is about 5:00pm, but unlike the uptight schools in the U.S. I have consumed three beers in the very place we usually sit for lectures! Okay, perhaps it isn't fair to compare this to ASU and the like, our school is actually called Universidad de la Tierra and it is very small and just a wee bit alternative. Beer drinking is not a usual thing (for me anyway) after each school day is done (though I think it is a fine idea), the Germany Vs. Italy World Cup semi-final game was on and my instructor, Oliver, is from Germany. In fact, for the quarter finals he wore his lederhosen the whole day! Unfortunately Germany just lost but we did have quesadillas delivered; just like pizza only Mexican style. So, anyway, since I have consumed a few beers before I write anymore I think I need to walk the buzz off. Actually, I intend to eat my daily ice cream treat which I'm sure is the perfect cure for a slight buzz. There are also a lot of people circling this ...

The Mexican presidential elections are shaping up to be an eerie flashback to the 2000 elections in the United States. You remember, hanging chad, pregnant chad, etc. The first returns are being released and both the PAN candidate, Calderon, and the PRD candidate, Obrador, are claiming to have won. 98% of the votes have been counted and right now the PAN candidate is leading by 1%! 1%! So besides being a close race what are the similarities with our own wacked out election of 2000? PAN is the right-of-center party (though Mexico's right is still pretty progressive compared to ours) and the PRD is the left-of-center party. The country is essentially divided in two (red states Vs. blue states anyone) with the northern half supporting the PAN and the southern states, which are in general much poorer, supporting the PRD. A division of classes, much like what the media painted our political divisions to be. Both candidates seem to think they have won and have proclaimed it on national...

Election day and I have been walking around the city blissfully alone. I have been in Mexico for almost a month now and it is usually about this time that I start getting a bit crabby about things, and that is indeed what has happened this weekend. I love to travel but there are definitely occasions in which I yearn for my own space, my own bed and just my general ability to exercise my independence. While I am definitely enjoying myself and my classmates I'm also not used to spending so much time with other people and after awhile it drives me a bit insane. So I decided to let my roomie and some others go hiking today without the pleasure of my grumpy company and spend some quality time with myself. The walk down to the zocalo was really quite and nice, the city was slowly coming to life, as most do on Sundays, which meant minimal traffic and a lack of the ubiquitous bus exhaust in the face. The majority of pedestrians in the historical center seem to be gringos on Sunday morning...