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.