When life feels perfect...

What is the secret to happiness? Well, I think I might have found it here in Oaxaca. I think it’s the right combination of lovely weather, beautiful surroundings, fresh food, yoga (or fill in your favorite hobby here), Spanish (fill in favorite hobby #2 here), good people, free time, and purpose (for me, my thesis research).

Spanish and my Research Project: I spent two weeks studying Spanish at Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca (ICO) but am excited to start private Spanish tutoring next week. This way, I can fit my Spanish classes around my interviews. Next week I’m starting my first batch of interviews with a women’s weaving cooperative. They’re participated in a lot of other studies and I had a really interesting meeting with them earlier this week. I was expecting to meet just the founder but instead, in a true cooperative fashion, I met with all the women of the group. I explained my project and how I hope to work with them. What was really interesting was at this point each woman was asked what she thought—and I might note that they all spoke in Zapotec so that I wouldn’t understand. The conversation however was smattered with Spanish and I was at least picking up a few words here and there. The groups founder than told me two things: 1) Many times people come and do research with them and they always say they will send the results but rarely do; 2) The interviews will take a lot of time and in exchange she would like to see if I could set up a talk/sale/something to help get the word out about their products when I get back to WY. What is amazing to me was how truly cooperative both these ideas were. Not only was each member of the group asked to give her own opinion on the project but that the final ideas that they decided upon were all about cooperating equally with me: they volunteer their time for me and I volunteer my time for them. A beautiful relationship I hope will emerge! The women were also happy to hear that no question was obligatory and that I could leave a set of questions for them to review ahead of time. I wish I could see how they ended up talking about all these questions (right now there are a LOT!) and what conclusions they end up coming to. Maybe I will find out next Wednesday when I have my first three interviews.

FOOD! Why does food taste better when you buy it in an outdoor market? I suspect in many cases it isn’t even any different than the grocery store veggies, but somehow it tastes better. Maybe its about seasonality. With the obvious exception of the apples (I’m pretty sure they don’t grow any apples in Mexico) some of the fruits and vegetables are definitely local. For example, right now is not orange seasons and therefore almost no one has any oranges. Although I love to eat oranges, this fact makes me happy! That means that what is selling it’s what is in season right now, right here in Mexico – not shipped from the far corners of the earth. So anyway, that’s my guess as to why the food tastes so good, feels healthier (which is obviously a figment of my imagination) and just makes me happy. Not to mention the organic goat cheese and coffee, and the homemade yogurt. I’m sure Dan would add amazing tacos and the famous Oaxacan string cheese, quesillo, to the list… Buen provecho!

YOGA – OK, I just want to give a plug to my favorite mew website: www.yogadownload.com. Their audio

classes (with PDF pose guides you can check out before you begin to make sure you’re familiar with all the poses) are fantastic! If you want to test it out before you actually buy any, I strongly suggest you download this free/donation class (intermediate/advanced level) and give it a shot: http://www.yogadownload.com/view-product.asp?idpr=725 It is sweat inducing but energizing – I love it! Once you try this class, I think you’ll be sold on this website. And they’re based in Denver (close to home for you Laramie peeps!).

WEATHER – For those who know me, you know how I am obsessed with great weather. I hate the cold, like a lot of sunshine, and don’t mind if the air is nice and dry too. Oaxaca definitely isn’t cold, the sun is strong and even though it’s the rainy season it rarely feels humid. I think it has something to do with the fact that we’re close to 5200 ft. above sea level. Perfection…

GOOD PEOPLE – Can there ever be true happiness without good friends? Andy and Blanca, who are renting us our bungalow are the nicest people in the world. Not only have they helped us with everything, they are a lot of fun and really interesting!

Our friend Donald, who goes to ICO has taken us on two adventures thus far and we have another one coming up tomorrow. Two Sunday’s ago we went to Tlacolula to their weekly huge market. Last week we went to San Agustin de Etla, which has an amazing art museum, that is itself a piece of art, and followed it up with a relaxing afternoon at a balneario (swimming pool club up in the mountains!). Tomorrow we head to Hierve el Agua, a petrified waterfall with cool mineral pools for swimming. Fun!

Will we ever cross the border?

OK, where were we? A long time ago, that’s where we were! So I’m going to speed us through the next few weeks so we can finally be caught up. So we got the truck back about a week after we first dropped it off. When we picked it up, we were so happy to get on our way to Mexico–it had been two weeks and we hadn’t even crossed the border yet—so we rushed south to Brownsville. But that’s when we realized that even though the truck was “fixed” that it actually was running much worse than it was before the breakdown, which wasn’t that great to begin with. Plus, something was leaking radiator fluid. We did get a mechanic to take a quick look and they replaced one of the old hoses, but the car kept right on leaking. So the next morning off we were… back to Corpus Christi! The original mechanic worked on the distributor timing and finally we seemed to have our old truck back to the way it was. That’s when we raced south again, and this time we weren’t planning on going back to CC ever! We stayed overnight on the beach and the next morning FINALLY crossed the border at Brownsville into Mexico. Yay!!!!

So the next week or so was filled with a lot of driving, a couple minor breakdowns (this time it was something to do with the wire from the computer to the fuel pump) and some beautiful sights. We started out in the state of Tamaulipas and soon crossed from the dry desert climate into the lush tropical zone. We spent a few nights camping along the side of a swimming hole and cascades, a horrific mosquito swarmed 100 degree night on Costa Esmeralda (Emerald Coast) and a final night in a fancy-ish hotel in the steaming hot city of Veracruz, among some none noteworthy stinks in cheap hotels. Finally, a few days earlier than originally planned (as we didn’t want to take any more chances with the truck) we arrived at our sweet little bungalow in San Felipe del Agua, a neighborhood a few miles north of Oaxaca’s city center. Our friends and new landlords Andy and Blanca welcomed us home and I couldn’t have been happier to finally park the truck, unload our stuff and start the next phase of our trip… the one where we stay in one place and ENJOY!

On our way to Oaxaca...

It’s been close to a year since we last wrote anything – in that time we settled into our home in Laramie and completed our first year of grad school! Yay! Now we are on the road again, this time to Oaxaca, Mexico to continue our never-ending study of the Spanish language and to conduct our research for our Master’s Theses. What are we researching? Well I, Kashmira, am excited to be interviewing indigenous women who work in artisan cooperatives about their life experiences, their gender roles and how the 2006 protests in Oaxaca affected them. To see where Oaxaca is check out this link: OAXACA, here’s some info about the protests: 2006 PROTESTS. Dan, on the other hand has his own project related to tourism businesses and Oaxaca de Juarez (aka Oaxaca City).

Anyway, Dan and I got to Oaxaca, Mexico a little over a week ago, however, getting here wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. We left Laramie on Monday the 11^th of May and decided to drive our ’87 pick-up, packed to the gills with food, camping supplies, and camera equipment for my documentary, south through CO and NM and then southeast across Texas to Brownsville. Colorado was mountainous, beautiful, but still cold, so we pushed through to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the first night. We actually were there on a vacation a year or so ago, so wanted to stop and eat the amazingly delicious New Mexican cuisine. Plus, in the hundreds of miles we had driven so far, we were starting to grow concerned that the truck wasn’t running well. Basically, while you were driving, and maintaining a steady speed, the RPM would fluctuate way up and way down, sometimes stalling the car out mid-highway at 70 mph. Also, it was having a little more trouble starting up than usual, so we figured before we went too far we should have a mechanic take a look at it.

In the morning we woke up and Dan took the car to a nearby shop. I had other issues. Before we left a filling-type item had actually fallen out of one of my teeth and I hadn’t been able to get any dentist in Laramie to fit me in. As I was waiting for Dan to come back with the car, I noticed that across the parking lot form the hotel we were staying at was a dentist’s office. I figured I might as well stop in and see if by some freakish chance they had an appointment that day. Amazingly enough, not only did they have an appointment that day; they had an opening that very minute! So 30 minutes and $80 dollars later my tooth was happily re-glued into my mouth and I was spared the worry that I might lose it between New and Old Mexico.

Dan came back a little while later and said that the mechanic couldn’t see any real problem with the car and we got back on the road towards the southern tip of Texas. All day we drive through the badlands of New Mexico, big flat, burnt fields, scorched by the sun. There was no real sign of existent except the occasional gas station, some that didn’t actually even have gas. The landscape was surreal, almost like being on another planet, plus the temperature outside kept climbing and by mid afternoon we are sure that is was well over 100 degrees and probably coming closer to 115-120. We stopped for a fairly disgusting dinner, how do you mess up beans, cheese and tortillas? and then continued our journey south on US highway 285.

The road was flat, desolate and small, with only one lane on each side and no real shoulder to speak of. As we continued driving into western Texas the landscape stayed the same but we were well entertained by a giant lightning storm directly ahead of us which we followed for hours, but never quite caught. The road was wet where it had rained but still we were spared the storm itself. We spent the night at a mediocre hotel just off the highway and in the morning began driving again. Our plan was to make it just south of Corpus Christi, the southeast corner of Texas, home to Padre Island National Seashore. We passed through San Antonio and with about 30 miles more to go I looked over at Dan and said, “You know, the car isn’t running well.” We bickered back and forth for a few seconds before he noticed that the temperature needle was all the way at the top of the gage and certainly would have gone further if it was allowed to. Pulling over to the side of the highway, Dan told me, “don’t shut it off,” but it was too late the car had shut itself off.

We sat there, 30 miles away from our destination on a hot, brown stretch of highway. Hoping that it was just a matter of the high temperatures and the 8 hours of driving we say there with the heat on hoping to cool the engine off. The air blowing from the vents wasn’t very hot and it seemed strange that the care refused to start up again. A state trooper stopped to offer his assistance and we tried jumping the battery without any success. Dan told him that we’d wait another 15 minutes to try and cool the car down and then we would call AAA. He promised to come back and check on us and went off to snare speeding motorists in his trap. Once cool enough, Dan topped the radiator off with coolant and we tried again to start it up to no avail. Finally, we gave up and I called AAA.

Forty-five minutes later the truck arrived and we told the driver, Sandy, what had happened. That’s when he noticed that all the radiator fluid we had put in just 20 minutes before was sitting in a large green puddle on the pavement under the car. This was not good. This was actually quite bad. A $200 tow later we were dropped off outside a closed mechanic shop on what seemed like the side of a highway. About a mile down the road was a few over-priced hotels and we checked into one for the night. An adorable pit-bull, whom we later learned was named Scooby followed us back to the hotel. Although she was amazingly friendly and cute, I was getting nervous that she would get lost and not find her way home, so I continue to tell her no and to go home. She would hold back for a minute or two, pretending like she wasn’t coming with us and a minute late she would be prancing happily by our side again. This continued all the way to the hotel, where we snuck in the front doors without her. In retrospect I wish we had just brought her in with us. But it seemed crazy to bring a strange pit-bull into your hotel room…

The next day we walked back over to the shop to explain what had happened and see what we needed to do in order to get back on the road. First they replaced the busted water pump, and then they realized that when the water pump went it blew the brand new radiator, which then actually damaged the engine “head.” Sigh – this was going to be much more complicated and much more expensive than we anticipated. Plus on top of that we heard that Scooby had never returned. It turns out that she was new and that night instead of locking her up in the garage with the other dog, they had kept her outside (because she had eaten/chewed up everything in the garage… metal included). She had wriggled herself free under the fence and the last anyone saw of her was in front of our hotel the night before. I felt terrible, I wished we had just brought her inside with us, but there was nothing we could do now. The mechanics at the shop seemed relieved that she was gone, but I felt sad that she had left. She was a very sweet and friendly pup. We rented a car from the airport and packed up our camping gear and headed east to Padre Island National Seashore. The first night we camped for free on the beach but when we realized that the part (a new “head”) didn’t come in when it was supposed to (Friday) we decided to move to one of the more developed campgrounds with shade and showers since we would be there at least until Monday. The campground was beautiful, the sand was so soft and fine that it clung to everything but felt like velvet in your hands and under your feet. The water was a refreshing 80 degrees, cool enough to cool you down but warm enough to take any shock out of it. Although the campsite was beautiful, it was hard to enjoy fully knowing that our tuck was still in disrepair and that the damage could be even worse than we already knew. Although we hoped that the new head would be enough, there was always the risk that the pistons or other stuff deeper in had been cooked along with everything else.

What Happened? We got lost of course!

So Kash and I are now in Laramie. We got in late Sunday night and classes start on Monday. We still have no internet at home so I cannot put any pictures up, but hopefully soon. I will post the classes that we are taking if anyone is interested. (not that anyone is reading this...)

But enough of that, I am now going to fulfill my duty and continue to write about our travels in Nica. I got through the first week!

On July 13th, we got back from our trip to the beach. Time to get serious and study Spanish, right?

Yeah right. We had class in the afternoon, but in the morning, to reward ourselves for all of our hard work at the beach, we went up o one of the nearby Volcanoes to go on a zipline tour. The volcano is about 1/2 hour from Granada, so we all pile into a van and head up to the volcano. We got there a little early, so Kash and I decided to walk through the butterfly 'museum’ , which is not really a museum but just on really big netted room with tons of butterflies in it.

This should start to appear as a re-occurring theme in this here blog, but this country, and any tropical country has about 50 times more life and more types of life than it does up in North America where we live. So of course there were all kinds of crazy butterflies and moths in the museum, but three especially stuck out. One was this brownish moth with eye-spots that was remarkable for being about as wide as my face with it’s wings spread out. The second is a butterfly called the crystal butterfly that has light blue wings on the edge, but most of the wing is actually see-through like a dragonflies wings. Pretty cool. The final butterfly is not one that we saw in the reserve, but saw often walking in the rainforest, is this large butterfly with totally black outer wings, and a bright sky-blue interior, so when it flies along in the darker jungle it looks like flashes of bright blue against the dark background of the jungle.

OK, enough about bugs. Have you ever gotten close enough to butterflies to look at their insect bodies? Pretty gross basically. So we head up this really steep mountain path to do the ‘canopy tour’. ‘Canopy tour’ means you climb to the top split of a 100 foot tropical tree and then do 20 or so zip-lines from tree to tree through the forest, until you reach the ground.
This, needless to say, is a ton of fun. We did the zip-lines normally, backwards, superman-style, upside-down, upside-down and backwards, Bouncing up and down, trying to de-rail, etc. Good fun, well worth the $30 or so dollars it costs, which is a pretty outrageous cost for Nicaragua.
Next time, the second part of our day.

Brown Sugar, make my coffee so sweet...

Hello all, back with another update here. Currently Kash and I are entering our 4th and final week of Spanish school here in Granada. We are also volunteering with a morning day-care for poor kids, as well as taking classes. Next week we leave to tour Nicaruaga for two weeks.

In my previous posts I had taken us up to July 12th, which was our first weekend in Granada. Since we had been in the city for a week we decided to to go to the beach, so we hopped on the chicken bus with one of our new friends to San Juan Del Sur.

By chicken bus, I mean the local buses that most people take to get around. There are some nicer more expenisve buses, but they dont go to most places. The buses are all 70s and 80s American yellow school buses that have been painted with wild colors. They have no seatbelts, and all the safety instructions are in English. We got to the bus a little late, so we all had to take the second and a half seat. When the bus fills up, one side of the bus is a little bigger than the other, so you either have the choice of getting one cheek on, or standing for two hours. There is no concept of a full bus. As we pulled out of the station, when I thought we couldnt possibly carry any more people, a guy was still hanging out the front hawking the destination, trying to get people to get on. All duing the ride, the bus would slow down to pick people up or drop them off. There arnt many real bus stops, you just flag them down as they pass. Meanwhile, vendors would hop on and push thier way through this totally crowded bus, selling pastries, quesedillas, gum, drinks, whatever. after the two hour or so bus ride (which cost 1.25) we got to town, checked into a hostel and then took a cabride through a muddy, flooded road to an isolated beach. There are a lot of popular beaches in this part of Nica, especially with surfers. From what I understand the waves at some beach can be 15-20 feet high. The beach that we went to was fairly small, and almost totally deserted. It was semi-protected by a foothill on one side, and a large outcropping of rock on the other, so the waves were pretty normal sized, 5-6 feet.

I think I have mentioned it before, but it is the rainy season here, so it rains a lot. We had all been in the water for about 20 minutes, which is a really, really nice temparature, when it started to rain and then started to pour. Normally you would think that we would all go running out of the water, but the rain is pretty warm as well. It was crazy, being in a rainstorm while up to your chest in the ocean, and the temperature of all the water being 75 or so degrees. It was like being inside of a hurricane. Afterwards, I went for little hike to check out the nearby jungle and then the rock formations. One of the things that I love about tropical areas is how the jungle and the beach run into each other. In the states, I am accustomed to a dry or dead zone before you hit the beach, with some scrubby bushes or tough grass, but down here the rainforest runs right into the edge of the water, with giant trees hanging off of the rocks and sliding into the water.

The beach had all of these crazy crabs running all over the place, these medium sized dark red and white spotted crabs, these little tiny midnight blue and black crabs, it was pretty wild. When I hiked up into the jungle, there was this huge bright orange-bodied crab with black legs that seemed to only live on land. It was a little scary, as I first thought it was some kind of rodent in the bushes, and then this crab bigger than my hands runs out. I hiked out of the jungle and then walked about 500 feet out onto the spit of rock, which at the end shot striagn up into the air like a finger about 75 feet high. All the time, it was raining off and on, making the algae covered rocks really really treacherous, which is my kind of fun.
Oh shoot, I gotta go, I will talk to you all later.

My point-by-point analysis of Obamas foriegn policy

OK, back to the story, such as it is, in progress.
After dinner on Firday night we met up with other students to see a musical performance at the the "Casa de Tres Mundos" a small musical hall near the town´s central park. The first couple musicians were classical guitarists from here in Nicaragua and nearby Costa Rica, which was kind of interesting, but not really. It was something that you felt that you should be interested in, but find it difficult to actually pay attention to.
The finale however was this amazing group from Switzerland. It was one adult and then 4 teenagers, all under 18 years old. They took the stage with over 50 instruments and then proceeded to play this amazing show. They had all of these wierd little guitars and huge basses from the middle ages, as well as a crazy number of percussion instruments, like slide whistles, glass bottles, kids toys, knives, salt and pepper shakers, etc. It was a really fun, really humourous little show, which was made more impressive by the fact that there was a 16 kid on stage, playing 4 instuments during one song, one of them being a type of 12 string lute from 17th century Italy.
At one point during the perofrmance a lizard dropped from the ceiling onto the floor next to one of the performers. It stood still for a while and then crawled into the hollow part of one of the nearby guitars. All the while some of the audience, as well as one of the little Swiss teenagers were watching. I cannot imagine what this 15 year old from Switzerland was thinking, have flown all the way from the cool beautiful Swiss Alps, she is now sweating in a music hall in Nicaragua, while lizards rain from the sky and try to eat her priceless instruments.
Eventually, before they had to use it, the lizard crawled out of the guitar and away into the rest of their stuff.
OK, thats all for now.
See you soon, kids.

A cuppa

Ok, so ends Kashs reign of terror. For now. Her rebels are still hiding in the mountains, I fear only waiting for the rains to end to make another strike.

I wanted to post a quick note about Coffee. Coffee is Nicaraguas main export. It grows everywhere, even on the forest floors of the national parks. Nica exported 156,137,895 pounds of coffee last year. Thats 150 pounds of coffee for every man, woman and child. Thier coffees sell all over the world and some of them have been grown from the same seeds for 300 years. Each bean handpicked, on forest floors and volcanic slopes. The beans are spread in the sun and then turned by hand, while they dry for days. Then the beans are packaged in 185 pound bags which are piled on workers shoulders, carried to the trucks, to bump down dirt roads, to be assembled in the ports, piled into containers, put on ships, where they are laboriously unloaded, unpakced roasted and then repacked.
So what do they drink in Nica?
Instant coffee.
With hot water.
At every restuarant, in every home, the only kind of coffee that you can get is powedered instant coffee. The only place in Granada, the richest city in Nica, that we have found that offers real cofee is Euro Cafe, which is owned and frequented only by Gringos.
I have asked three people and they all tell me that instant is cheaper, and besides boiling all that water and making hot coffee is just too much work for people in Nica...