Burnt Toast = Heart Attack

Thursday, January 24th, Meri received a rather ominous sounding email entitled, "Fire in our building" from the president of our condo association. The text of the email was:

"All -

Kevin just called me... there is a fire in the Adora right now and the fire department is there... Kevin is waiting outside and the firemen are trying to figure out what unit it is coming from.

I will keep you all posted on the situation..."

Obviously, heart palpitations ensued as Meri tried to get the contact info from Mike of John who is renting our apartment. Minutes later the update arrived stating:

"The firemen came and dealt with it.... all is under control now. It was in Unit 204."

Upon following up with the condo president about what happened, the story is this...the cleaning lady in Unit #204 decided to toast some bread and burnt it, she opened the windows but that didn't help so she opened the door to the hallway. The smoke set of the smoke alarms for the whole building and DCFD showed up to save the day, but not the toast.

We know, hard to believe that a piece of burnt toast would bring the DCFD, but it happened. At least we know the alarm works.

A Day in the Life of Miguelito

After much prodding and cajoling I've decided that the demand to know exactly what I've been up to was just too much - I've decided to take you through a day of my life in WaHAka. For starters, I too have to deny any rumors or accusations that I am working as a foreign agent for the U.S. government or with some other covert organization. So far the only important data I've gathered here is that the pig brain tacos are not really that bad if enough salsa is applied.

My morning starts with my wife gently waking me up to loud Spanish music from our iHome radio and turning on all of the lights in the bedroom. I usually try to play possum as long as possible to delay the hour long walk down the dusty road to my Spanish classes downtown.

I usually return to the house around 1pm after having picked up some groceries for the evening meal. I've skillfully learned to fend off any advances from the neighborhood beggars on our street (dogs, chickens, and donkeys) from a technique I learned form a close friend I met during my studies in Costa Rica. Simply bending down and faking to pick up a stone makes any would be food thief run in the opposite direction.

As I've slipped into my new role as house hubby I've had to cope without a few of the amenities I enjoyed in the States. No dryer, automatic stove, and manual refill of our propane powered oven/water heater, and drinking water. I pump my water from a giant jug, which I have to exchange at the local store about a hundred feet down our street. I must say I look quite manly walking down the street with a large 50 lbs water bottle slung over my shoulder and my increasingly thick man-beard.

Tootsie eagerly awaits my afternoon return and pesters me until I play fetch with her. I then log on to our computer and work for a few hours for my employer based back in the States. After a breif siesta I dive into my spanish homework and watch a Mexican soap opera or luche libre wrestling match on TV - to practice my spanish of course.

My day usually wraps up with an afternoon visit from my "boyfriend" as Meri calls him (can someone say jealousy?) He's a "Cambridge Man" from south London who is living in Wahaka (on sebattical) with his wife and 3 month old child. He comes over for an afternoon smoke and gossip session about his Mexican in laws. The stories vary but they usually involve insults, deception, and sometimes a threat or two on someones life. I'm hoping no collateral damage comes our way as we live in the same gated property about 10 feet away from our house.

My evenings consist of either picking Meri up from work and/or cooking dinner using the spartan kitchen tools provided by our landlord (water pump and all). After dinner Meri and I usually enjoy a relaxing evening of Seinfeld (with subtitles) and reading before going to bed around 10pm.

A dog's day in Oaxaca

This post would best be entitled, Tootsie's Day in Oaxaca, because her life here is far from the normal canine existence in our neighborhood. Tootsie has adapted to life in Oaxaca without any problem. She spends her day enjoying her new yard and waiting out front for dad to come home after class. We're still working with her so we can walk her without a leash like all of the other dogs in the neighborhood. She's almost there, but still has a slight tendency to stray into the middle of the road when there is a car coming, not good.

Here are a few shots from Tootsie's typical day...

Tootsie wakes around 7am just as groggy as Mike and Meri.


Head's out to take care of business. (No photo available, per Tootsie's wishes).




Eat's some breakfast.



Sees her owners off to work/class.





Hangs out/waits.





Happily receives the first returnee.






Happily recieves second returnee.





Rests in her favorite spot until the sun goes down. The only time she stirs from this spot is if we call her inside or she spies that pesky cat in the yard.







Sleeps.


Repeats.
Overall not a bad day in the life of a dog in San Felipe. Unfortunately, there are many uncared for strays in our neighborhood along with some partially neglected housepets as well. We have seen two different dogs in the past 24 hours wearing t-shirts, which is either a good sign or a really bad sign depending how you look at it. One was wearing a sleeveless 80's style cut-off which doesn't speak well of the owners, but what can you do?

Tootsie enjoys grass, constant food and water supply, and love of her owners which is heads and tails above the life of most dogs in the neighborhood.

What exactly is Meri doing?

There have been a few inquiries as to what exactly Meri is doing in Oaxaca. So to try and explain, you have this post.

Contrary to popular belief she does not work for the CIA, DEA, or any other clandestine US or foreign organization. Life might be a bit more exciting if she did...

As with life in DC her time is spent in meetings, answering emails, making phone calls, and when things just get to be too much to bear attacking a pinata.


While this is an actual photo from Mer's professional existence in Oaxaca, it only tells part of the tale. She is here for the final 5 months of a multi-million dollar development project financed by USAID in Southern Mexico. The project is aimed at providing assistance to environmentally sustainable rural enterprises in the states of Oaxaca, Tabasco, and Chiapas. Since Fall of 2004 the project has been focused on coffee, tourism, cacao, greenhouse vegetables, and forestry.

As most of the exciting technical advancements were made already, Mer is responsible for making sure that everything stays on track and on budget. She does so with the help of nine incredible Mexican professionals (Enrique, Gorgonio, Leticia, Luis, Pedro Ivan, Rafael, Ramon, Salvador, and Virginia) and three great Chemonics staff members in Washington (Brian, Carlos, and Liliana).

Capamento del Monte, Ixtlan de Juarez, and Huayapan

The weekend of Jan 12th we took off for the pine forests of the
Sierra Norte to a small campground called Campamento del Monte...Nature, Goulet!!! (A little shout out to our grad school friends and anyone else who loves the Best of Will Ferrell SNL DVD.)

Tootsie was left under the careful watch of Ben, Nohemi, and Emilia. From what we heard she spent most of her time in her favorite perch (see photo). Unfortunately, we have learned that dogs aren't as welcome at Mexican campgrounds as in the States. Luckily are neighbors are happy to keep her food and water bowls full and let her into the house at night. I don't think Tootsie minds us being gone because she has free reign to sleep on the couches, eat the garbage, etc.

We made it to the campground in about 45 minutes, unpacked and headed up to Ixtlan de Juarez to see...yup you guessed it, another church. This church's (Templo de Santo Tomas) claim to fame is that Benito Juarez was baptized here. Also, there is one detailed altar piece of Saint Thomas reaching out to touch the risen Jesus which was the act that according to the Gospels removed all doubt that the resurrection was real. Isn't learning fun?

We wandered around town a bit to find some beer to smuggle into the campground. What kind of campground doesn't allow beer you might ask...one run by Mexican Jehovah's Witnesses. We got totally ripped off for the beer by a tiny, old lady in the convenience store, but what can you do? Even with Mike's facial hair, it's still obvious we aren't from around these parts. Incidentally she also asked us how hard it would be to bring a person back with us to the States.

We got back to the campground ready for lunch and a good hike. Unfortunately, we completed both of the site's trails in about 50 minutes. Obviously, we were a bit disappointed in the hiking. The views were amazing so we lingered at the miradores, but we still had some daylight to enjoy. So we headed to the swings. Note: people over 30 were not meant to be on swings. Seemed a lot more nauseating and scary than we remembered it.

We hung out for a bit, and then headed over to the restaurant across the street. We skipped the rabbit barbecue for some sopa azteca (delicioso!!!), queso fundido (tambien delicioso!), and some average mole (Insert accent over that e at the end. We didn't eat mole the animal it was chicken with mol-ay sauce). Got back to the cabin, played some cards, read a bit and enjoyed the fire that Mike made with his flint starter. Only took 150 strikes, he's improving.

We passed through Huayapan on our way home after about 11 hours of sleep and checked out, yup another church. Main attraction here is a mural of the Last Supper. There were also some very graphic paintings of the deaths of some of the saints that were pretty creepy. Mike has pictures of every niche, altarpiece, and nave that we've seen so if you're interested let us know and we'll send you the photos.

After getting the grocery shopping done for the week we hung around with Tootise for a bit until we ventured up the street (50 ft) for some dinner. On the weekends a few local women set up a little stand. The shot on the right was taken shortly after Mike had unknowingly eaten a pig's brain taco. Meri swears she didn't hear the woman say "seso", but the verdict is still out.

Cuilapam and Zaachila

As we've settled into our weekly routines (Meri at the office; Mike at Spanish classes and doing some consulting; Tootsie relaxing in her yard) we are trying hard to make sure we get out on the weekends and enjoy Oaxaca.

Saturday, January 5th we decided to take a day trip to check out the towns of Cuilapam and Zaachila. Side note...as the blog progresses you will see everything down here is hard to pronounce and there will be pictures of churches from every town we visit. Both towns are only about 30 minutes from Oaxaca City which was key as we're both still recovering from our trip across the US and Mexico and Mike went on a crazy 14 hour day trip with my neighbor investigating local church archives earlier in the week. Another side note...our neighbor Ben is on sabbatical down from his professorship at MSU.

The Ex-Convento de Santiago (1st 2 pictures) which used to be a nunery was quite an interesting piece of architecture. The place got off to an amazing start but before it was finished in 1550 King Phillip of Spain demanded humility and moderation of the builders. In 1750, construction was officially ended and they never finished the roof. For you Mexican history buffs, this is also the site where Vicente Guerrero was executed. One weird encounter as we walked around inspecting the building was a young Mexican woman dressed in gothic attire followed by two Mexican men with a video camera and blasting some weird music. I think they were trying to create some sort of music video. Unfortunately we didn't get any shots of the wierdness.

After Cuilapam we drove another 15 minutes to Zaachila, home to some semi-recovered Mixtec/Zapotec ruins. There are two really well preserved tombs that you can view but the rest of the site has not been restored. The story we got from the man at the entrance is that the townspeople are aggravated that the original objects recovered from the tombs were all carted off to Mexico City and sit in a warehouse so noone can see them. The town will not allow anyone to fully explore and restore the site until they have their own museum to display what is found. Here's a shot of one of the owls in the tomb waiting to guide you to the underworld, well maybe not you, but they're ready.

Just so everyone can get a flavor of Mike's new facial hair, here's a shot from the tomb's entrance. More on the developments of Mike's grooming to come in future blogs.

We have arrived!

After 53 hours in the car spread out over 7 days, we finished the journey to Oaxaca via Crestview Hills, KY; Memphis, TN; Austin, TX; Laredo, TX; and Ciudad Valles, Mexico. We didn't get out much to smell the roses, but we did get in some QT with the Manella clan, checked out Beale Street in Memphis, ate some great BBQ and had a drink or two on 6th Street in Austin w/ Mac.

We pulled up to the bungalow around 1:00 am on December 31st. We had been in the car so long we thought it was New Year's Day until we were corrected by our neighbor (embarrassing). We proceeded to wake up the whole neighborhood thanks to the dozens of dogs in the neighborhood.

We've settled into our little bungalow pretty quickly and have become quite friendly with our neighbors. Mike found Ben who not only lives on the same piece of property as us, but likes videogames and beer. Match made in heaven.

Tootsie is settling in as well, but we don't think she'll ever become part of the neighborhood pack. She's identified her favorite perch on our little porch upstairs and keeps watch on the yard.

We're still feeling our way around this whole blogging situation but will try our best to keep everybody up to date on our goings on down in Oaxaca.