Here Comes Santa Claus

Last Friday one of the directors of our language school called me and Alex into the office to ask us an important question -- "would Alex be willing to be Santa for 200+ primary school children on Monday morning?" Heck yes he would. The suit was awesome, although the beard, wig and gloves were all a bit damp from a recent washing. Once Alex was fully dressed with a pillow to give some bulk around the middle he was almost unrecognizable. Our roommate Alana and her boyfriend Antonio joined us for the fun.

The kids were totally adorable, especially the young ones, who really thought it was Santa (Alex had to eat his snack behind one of the backdrops so they wouldn't see him without his beard). The older kids were a little more skeptical. One class of kids was convinced that Alex was "Maestro Tony," their gringo English teacher. They also wanted to know why Alex was wearing Converse. He told them he'd left his boots up in the North Pole because they're obviously too warm for Oaxaca. Alex played the part perfectly and I spent the whole time taking pictures. Here are a couple of teasers (the rest of the photos are on my Flickr site):

Meet the Pets

One of the many benefits of our new apartment is that it comes with some pets. Here's a quick intro:

Marta. Tabby cat. Sleeps in our apartment.

Pros: she's clean (not as clean as Eugene, but she makes a decent effort), she's playful and snuggly, kills cockroaches and scorpions (or so we're told).

Cons: annoying meowing in the morning and night, attempts to jump into the refrigerator to eat our food, during Thanksgiving dinner she jumped up and licked the top of the cheesecake, devoured part of the birthday cake our roommate baked for me thus ruining the word "cumpleaños", Jekyll and Hyde purr then attack personality.

Nacho. Puppy. Recently acquired by our neighbors, Byron and Victoria, from the pet store outside the supermarket.

Pros: adorable.

Cons: going through his excited peeing phase, perpetually dirty because of all of the dust in this town.

Nube (Spanish for "cloud"). Semi-feral outdoor cat.

Pros: stays out of the way.

Cons: forgot/never learned how to clean herself which means she is covered in kitty dreadlocks, mostly deaf, indifferent to humans.

Dozer. Rescued shepherd who belongs to our apartment manager's son.

Pros: wants to be our friend

Cons: doesn't know how make friends, has a bad habit of nipping Alex, lurks around in the shadows on the roof at night, gets nervous and pees.

The Stray. A gray cat that has been eating Marta and Nube's food. She's elusive --finally managed to catch a picture of her as she was fleeing across the rooftops.

Pros: she's cute.

Cons: totally wild, her meow sounds like a dying baby goat.

You Can Take a Girl From Her Hoops, But You Can't Keep Her From Making More

The universe has, once again, provided. Alex and I were wandering around this afternoon, completely directionless, hoping to find a store that sells tubing that I could use to make hula hoops. I remained hopeful, but Alex was trying to be more realistic. We didn't know the Spanish word for the tubing so we couldn't ask anyone for help locating it. Moreover, stores in Oaxaca are extremely specialized -- there's a store, for example, that just sells cooking oil. Another sells corn tortillas (but not flour...you have to somewhere else for those). And then, there it was, sitting in the window of a store that sells generators and grinding machines: a large coil of 3/4" polyethylene tubing. They even had the right sized insert couplers. We bought enough to make three hoops and had them cut the tubing on the spot. After another adventure I managed to track down several different colors of electrical tape. And, now, dumdadum, we have hula hoops!

Dia de los Muertos

Dia de los Muertos was pretty awesome down here. There were altars made of sugar cane and marigolds. The altars were covered with offerings for the returning spirits of dead relatives. As per tradition, the offerings are tailored to what the dead relative liked when alive -- i.e, many altars had Coca Cola, cigarettes, whiskey and mezcal. And there were so many comparsas (lively bands parading down the street followed by throngs of costumed dancers) that you could jump from one to another nearly every block. We also visited the old "general" cemetery. It's ringed with walls of graves, each of which gets a candle on Dia de los Muertos. Everyone spoke in hushed tones. It was quite beautiful. In contrast to the solemn atmosphere inside the cemetery, there was a full on carnival (rides, food, carnival games) just outside the cemetery walls. One thing that's very clear when you're living down here is that Oaxacans don't miss an opportunity to celebrate. You can find our slideshow here.

Two Buck Chuck, We Miss You

Our local market is surprising well-stocked in the booze department. The one thing that we have yet to find, however, is a decent table wine. Alex insisted that we try Padre Kino, a Mexican wine in a carafe-shaped bottle with a pry-off plastic top.











1L for about $4. Best served cold, according to the label, or used as an ingredient in Sangria (not the best sell for drinking it straight). Here's Alex's reaction before, during, and after.








Yeah, it's that good. Neeeext!

Alebrijes

There are many different types of folk art in the state of Oaxaca -- rugs ("tapetes"), black pottery, green pottery, baskets, tin art. Each pueblo has its own speciality. Alebrijes -- brightly painted wooden figures -- are among the most recent additions to the Oaxacan folk art tradition. According to the May 1991 Smithsonian article that was included in one of our wedding cards, artists have only been making them since the 1950s. The subject matter can be pretty much anything. Animals are quite popular. Back in SF, we have an armadillo, a turkey and a porcupine. I found one at an artisan stand the other day that I had to have. Check it out:


It's from Arrazola, one of the three main alebrije towns in the Oaxaca Valley (the other two being San Martin Tilcajete and La Union Tejalapan). The level of detail is pretty amazing, plus there's a picture of a bat on top. We had just learned in class that the Spanish word for "bat" -- "murcielago" -- is the only word in the language that includes all five vowels. It's like I was predestined to own this alebrije. Alex is working on his "Alas, poor Yorick" monologue so that he can entertain guests when we have dinner parties.

Dodging Earthbound Fireballs...Just Another Friday Night in Oaxaca

Friday night, Alex and I wandered down to the main square (el Zocalo) to do some people watching. It was so packed that we couldn't find anywhere to sit so we just milled about. Just north of the Zocalo there's a plaza that faces one the big churches in Oaxaca. We heard some firecrackers popping near the church entrance so we wandered over to check it out. And what did we see? A fireworks show so spectacularly dangerous that it wouldn't even happen at Burning Man. For starters, there were two guys wearing hats (I guess that's what you'd call them) with effigies on the top. The effigies were rigged with fireworks, and I'm not just talking cute little sparklers. I'm talking about real, smoking, crackling, booming fireworks. Not only that but the effigy hats were animated so that the fireworks would spin in circles, showering the nearest onlookers with sparks and ashes. There was a mariachi band playing and the "hat" wearers would run/dance around in a circle until their fireworks were spent, then reload and shower the crowd again.

Next, there was a large tower covered with different animated fireworks that a very brave/stupid dude would light by climbing a ladder in the center of tower. There were spinning hearts and rotating diamonds, a giant spinning flower, and fireworks that looked like the church. The animations were lit progressively upward. After all of the lower fireworks were spent, a device on the top of the tower fell open into a flat purple star and started spinning around as a cross was lit beneath it. Then a crown of white light appeared in the middle of the star. The crown started spinning faster and faster until it shot up into the air 30 feet and dissolved into the night.

For the grand finale, they lit a string of fireworks from the top of the church. Instead of exploding skyward, the sparks cascaded down in a waterfall of white light, illuminating the front of the old stone church. It was a beautiful sight. The Oaxacans sure know how to party.

Super Spooky Halloween in Oaxaca

In the US we celebrate Halloween as a way to mark the end of summer and the beginning of the darker days of the year. And in Mexico, of course, they have Dia de los Muertos (plenty of blogging on that in the next few weeks). But the Mexicans apparently also do some dressing up, Halloween-style, as evidenced by these super creepy masks that we've been seeing everywhere:












Check out the close-up:















Can you imagine little kids walking around your neighborhood with these things on?

Operation Get a Clock Deemed Success, Very Loud Success

We did manage to score a clock at Mercado de Abasto on Saturday.













Cute, isn't it? It was only 20 pesos (about a buck fifty) so we should not have been surprised, upon bringing it home, to discover that it is deafeningly loud when there is not the noise of the huge market to drown out its incessant ticking and tocking. We have to store it in the kitchen, the room farthest from our bedroom. That at least guarantees we, i.e. Alex, will be fully up when the alarm goes off. For snoozing, it goes in the nightstand drawer wrapped in a t-shirt.

Operation Get a Clock

In San Francisco, I always knew what time it was. There were clocks everywhere. On the computer, on the microwave, on the wall. When I was out, it was just a matter of looking at a cell phone. Oaxaca, at least for us, is a land without time. There are only two clocks in our entire apartment. One is the clock on our laptop which, of course, we can only check when the laptop is on. The other is the internal clock on our camera. That has become our default timepiece. If we want to know what time it is, we just snap a shot of any old thing and then the time shows up on the viewfinder in association with the new picture. It's not that we have anywhere to be, at least not until we start language classes on Monday. It's just incredibly disorienting to wake up in the middle of the night and have absolutely no idea what time it is. And I really can't be bothered to get out of bed, turn on the camera, turn off the flash, and take a picture just to know for sure.

So we're off to el Mercado de Abastos, the giant Saturday market. From what I recall, they have absolutely everything there -- shoes, table linens, food, clothes, electronics, souvenirs, goats. Even if it takes hours of wandering and holding our noses as we run past the meat stands, we will find a clock.

Today was our first full day in Oaxaca and we're settling in well.

We managed to find a little store around the corner from our apartment that caters to tourists. They had pesto (yay!) and tofu (silken, but still yay!) and soy milk (yaaaaaay!). Tonight was our first foray into cooking at home. I managed to light the oven pilot light without setting my hair ablaze (victory!). I am now sitting with Alex in an internet cafe eating a vanilla ice cream sundae with caramel sauce and walnuts out of a martini glass. It's a lovely evening. All of the doors are windows are open in the place and I'm comfortable in a skirt and a tanktop.

There's a zombie movie showing tomorrow night at an indie theater a few blocks from our apartment. We think it'll be plenty entertaining, even if it's dubbed and we only understand one out of fifty words.

I'm going to keep this short tonight, but I think we'll be able to get an internet connection in our apartment, which will make blogging easier. In the meantime, here are some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/documama/sets/72157622594507952/

50 Things to Do...Well, 31 Things and Counting

Borrowing inspiration from Maggie over at MightyGirl, my first act of funemployment will be to finish this list of 50 things to do before kicking the can.

Dive with whale sharks | Learn to make tamales, really yummy ones | Be able to identify 20+ constellations | Crochet a hat | Create a song book for group sing-alongs | Visit Machu Picchu | Be conversant in Spanish | Mentor a foster child | Fix up a fixer-upper | Start a regular Sunday brunch with friends and family | Plant a garden | Eat at Alice's Restaurant | Make a fire hoop | Attend a multi-day yoga retreat | Travel to all seven continents | See the northern lights | Marry Alex | Build a tree house | Declare a new holiday and celebrate it yearly | Take pictures with a fisheye lens | Spend a month without TV | See the pyramids | Ride the train across Russia | Keep bees | Raise children | Raft through the Grand Canyon | Sleep in a snow fort | Brew beer | Send holiday cards | Commit 50 poems to memory | Learn to roll a quarter down my knuckles like Val Kilmer in Real Genius | Have a pantry full of things I've canned |

Away We Go