We've been here
a week now and it's mostly been a week of logistics, La Guelaguetza, getting sick, logistics, and some more logistics. I'll cover some of the logistics in this post. La Guelaguetza deserves its very own post!
We've been to the INM (immigration) office's palacio (all government buildings are referred to as palacios - palaces - and in general, they do tend toward the stately and elegant with graceful central patios and arcades) twice, in an effort to get Thalia and Eric their resident cards as soon as possible. The only snag we've hit is that the machine they use to print the cards has broken and so they have put in a request that it be fixed. Ojalá this happens before we need to leave the country at the end of next week for an all-too brief trip back to California.
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| a scene from the Calle de Profirio Diaz |
We've enrolled in Spanish school, at the comfortable and lovely
Becari. This school is a four or five minute walk from our house, mostly along Porfirio Diaz (see foto) so is relatively easy to get to when we are tired in the mornings, ja! This part of the Calle de Porfirio Diaz (who it turns out is Oaxaqueño, for better or worse....somehow or other Benito Juárez is more commonly mentioned...) has a sidewalk that is easily 3 feet above the street level (we think because this is a hill in two directions, parallel and perpendicular to the direction of the street but honestly, who the hell knows why. It does make jaywalking impossible though!). The sidewalk on this bit of the calle is maybe 3 feet wide as opposed to the more usual ~1.5 feet so it is a relatively nice street to walk along, although busy-ish in terms of car traffic. We each of us are in different classes at Becari where the first two hours are spent on practical grammar and the final hour is spent in conversation or games, in the case of Thalia. Although I tend to spend much of the first two hours conversing as well. I was pleased to learn that the way I use the future tense in Spanish (e.g., voy a.../I am going to...) is perfectly acceptable and even has a name-- el futuro idiomatico (idiomatic future)! and that I don't have to spend any time re-learning the more formal future tense, which I did in school but never outside of school. Eric has gotten a lot of cultural information during his conversational lessons - including learning about just how important guajalotes (turkeys) are in the Central Valley (Valles Centrales) of Oaxaca. Several of the dances we saw at the Guelaguetza featured people dancing with live guajalotes but he also learned that they feature at bodas (weddings) here. People dance with them at the wedding. But ALSO: those guests who gave the best presents themselves are gifted a live guajalote. This is the responsibility of the groom's parents who will sometimes have to get about 30-40 guajalotes to give to the guests! Eric tried to explain the tradition of the presidential pardoning of a turkey at Thanksgiving but fears that his teacher found this tradition as bizarre as we do the notion of giving live turkeys to wedding guests. Overall, we are all learning lots although Eric and I tend to be utterly exhausted after three hours of class whereas Thalia is ready for more!
Another part of our learning involves getting to know our neighborhood and the places we need to go to meet our needs. Almost daily we visit our local mercado, the Mercado Sánchez Pascuas,
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| the Callejón Hidalgo, our street, and how we walk to the mercado |
which is only two blocks from our house (one of those blocks, pictured, includes a few short flights of stairs). Inside the mercado are multiple stalls of butchers, produce sellers (some of which only do fruit, some only do veggies, and some do a combination), panederias (breads and sweet baked goods), queserias (cheese), sellers of spices and nuts and grains and dog/cat food (all of these in one stall...bit of mystery), zapaterias (shoes), plastic goods, as well as prepared food stalls, and stalls that sell all manner of things. Most everything is unbelievably cheap- I bought an onion, two
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| the outside of Mercado Sánchez Pascuas, as seen from the street |
bunches of cilantro, a whole bunch of squash blossoms, and a head of garlic for $35MEX (pesos; a little over a dollar). Some things are more precious- like lovely little strawberries which are about 20 pesos or avocados (two for 30 pesos). Also in the mercado are a number of stalls that are essentially tiny restaurants- they consist of a stall that is a kitchen and in front a picnic table with oil cloth and flowers or other decoration and benches or little stools to sit on. Most of the food is Oaxacan street food (memelitas, tlayudas, empanadas, tortas, chile rellenos etc.) and there's always lots of locals, especially around 2-3pm. Across the street from the mercado is our local tortilleria where we buy hot off the press tortillas (they wrap them in waxed paper and I swear they steam cook a little more in the time it takes me to walk home two blocks!), totopos (this is what tortilla chips are called), and some salsa, for less than 40 pesos, depending on how many tortillas I get. In the mercado, I am routinely referred to as "amiguita" (little friend) or if it's an older seller as "mi vida" or "mi'ja. A little further away is another, even smaller mercado, called Mercado Pochote Xochimilco (so called because it used to be located in the Oaxaca barrio of Xochimilco but moved a couple of years ago). This has organic fruit and veg vendors, some really amazing agua fresca vendors as well as a few vendors of artisanal goods.
We've also been to two big supermercados (Soriana & Chedraui)- these
are more like US grocery stores but on steriods. More like a
Super-Target merged with a Home Depot or something because you can also
buy refrigerators and TVs and clothes and tires and pillows and
mattresses and towels and glassware and... well, almost anything so far
as I can tell! These are not located in our neighborhood and necessitate
taking a cab home (cabs within the centro and immediate
neighborhoods are 50 pesos). At supermercados, we always need to
remember to tip the baggers because this is the only pay they get. So
it's not so much tipping as it is paying them for their service!
Back
within our barrio (neighborhood) is the lavanderia, where we take our laundry
(the house doesn't have a washer and dryer, relatively few people do, it
seems, at least in the centro where the houses are old and the water
service can be spotty-- old infrastructure). We have found one
lavanderia essentially across the street. It's essentially a counter in a
doorway and you hand over your laundry and come back the next day for
it ($15MEX pesos per kilo) and it's all washed, dried, AND folded
(mostly air-dried but she does put it in the secadora - dryer - for a
few minutes to soften it) and neatly packaged up.
Here's some extra fotos from our walks around the barrio...
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| bugambilla and arches made from those thin bricks commonly used for roofs |
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| really quite amazing VW bus parked in front of the mercado sánchez pascuas |
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| using an umbrella to protect from the sun is common | | , |
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| saving your parking spot... |
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| I <3 this house, Calle Tinoco y Palacios |
