So after months of preparations, applications, emails, and tuition deadlines, the time for me to make my trip to Oaxaca had come. The night before I left brought a lot of my anxiety to the forefront of my mind and all the questions that come with it. Will I fit in with the group? Is is place as safe as I've been assured it is? Will I like the food? etc etc. Thanks to a few conversations with some friends that night and the knowledge that my worries were a hundred fold less than my mother's, I was able to relax a bit and get a few hours sleep before the big trip in the morning.
Shortly after arriving in Houston and grabbing some food I was still feeling some of the same doubts and realized that once I got on the plane in a few hours there was no turning back. Maybe five minutes after I made it to my connecting gate I noticed another guy with a big bag and who looked decidedly less Mexican than the rest of the people there. It was Will who was the lone UK student in our group. We chilled for a while talking about Lexington and Tucson and why were in the program, then headed over to exchange our dollars to pesos(an awesome experience by the way as you always got a love having 200s and 100s in your wallet). Will is pretty cool, he does a lot of professional sculpting with cast iron and has a nice bike collection. The planes we flew on were tiny and I hit my head on the ceiling on more than one occasion. We landed and got through customs easily enough and made friends with a couple on vacation and some girls from San Diego State on another study abroad in our taxi from the airport.
I settled into Casa Arnel for the first two nights while Will had a reservation at Holiday Inn Express. Casa Arnel was very comfortable but I was momentarily surprised by the lack of soap and free shampoo. After reading for a bit I called a night.
The next morning I headed down for some breakfast from my hostess Liliana, and grabbed some pancakes, bacon, and coffee from the Gringo menu. After a few minutes at the table, Alex one of the UA students came down and we made a little small talk before he started telling me all about his trips to Brazil, Chile, and Nicaragua, while I told a few stories from my week in Spain. We headed down to el Zocalo, which is the big town square in the city, where we decided to grab some lunch and a beer. I was wondering what was up as Alex asked me a couple of times if I knew some random white people or tourists walking by, but the second or third time he pointed out Will, and Alex's keen eye for Gringos paid off.
We hung around a bit longer and explored some more of the city before we came back to Zocalo to see the biggest protest I've ever seen in my life. It was 3 years to the day that there were riots in the city after the teacher's union, which has over 1 million members in Mexico, came to protest for increased wages. It was really loud and you had people all over with APPO shirts and holding pictures of Stalin, Marx and Guevara. The newspaper said the next day that there were nearly a million people at the "megamarch". As a foreigner I totally respect how much energy, effort, and passion they put into it, but its kinda sad that a lot of these people they are glorifying completely betrayed any ideals they once stood for.
We met the fourth member of the group, a dude named Nathan, at Casa Arnel that night and he told us the hellish story of his 8 hour trip by bus from Mexico City with a ton of luggage and a bunch of people trying to scam him. After a little time on Casa Arnel's computer I called it a night and got ready for the real part of the trip to begin.
The next morning, the 3 of us piled in to a taxi with all our luggage and arrived at "La Universidad de la Tierra". We met Oliver, the guy in charge of the program, and he gave us a whole syllabus which has us going to some ruins, the beach over by the Pacific Ocean, and for a 5 day stay in village. We also met the last member of our group and the only girl, Hannah. After that we finally got down to the part I'd been most worried about, our host family. I was paired up with Will and Hannah and we were told our house mom's name was Margarita. She met us outside with her husband, Hector, and again we piled a shit ton of luggage into a small car. The first thing she said to us as we got into the house was "Mi casa es su casa" and she really meant it. The house is very nice and comfortable and has all the amenities you could ask for. Also Margarita and Hector are two of the kindest, most welcoming people I've met. Pretty much they are fine with just about anything and will do just about anything for you as long as you ask in Spanish. We had some sandwiches and spaghetti for dinner and polished it off with Corona's(except for Hector who preferred some Johnnie Walker) all around as a welcoming present for us.
After that we met back up with Alex and Nathan and did some more exploring of this new part of town and hit up a few bars, finally settling on one named "El Bicho". The first thing we did was give Mezcal , which is the official drink of Oaxaca, a try and were all even brave enough to have the worm with it. The owner of the place was definitely looking for some new regulars as I got a few free margaritas and a mojito while the other guys got a few free beers. Towards the end of the night we grabbed hold of the jukebox and played music from the Doors and about 5 songs from Queen, finally ending the night by leading everyone in Bohemian Rhapsody.
This morning we had an awesome breakfast of tamales, melons, and coffee. We walked over to school and had our first two classes which look like they're going to be pretty good. Because the Spanish class is so small you get a lot of one on one practice and since we're not studying out of a book we really can improve our conversatonal Spanish. Geography incorporates everything from history and politics to agriculture and demographics of Oaxaca so I should be learning a ton this summer.
Last First Observations
1. The city is very safe but we go pretty much everywhere in groups just in case and so it's more fun.
2. Everything is crazy cheap and they have open air markets almost every day where you can by everything from jewelry to bootleg DVDs.
3. The whole atmosphere of family life is way more communal than in the States and you'll have people coming into our house(the door is left wide open during the day) or shouting through the window just to talk or see what's cooking for dinner.
4. We get Breakfast, lunch, and dinner from our host family's so I will be bearing gifts when I come back to the States.
5. My Spanish is getting muy bien and I think I could be fluent by the end of this.
6. We talk a lot about politics and surprisingly I'm in the minority for not being liberal enough.
7. The whole group is awesome and the whole program is looking amazing.
8. I really couldn't ask for a better first 3 days.
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