Phone Troubles

The mysterious booms might be explained. A fiesta just happened for some important religious figure, and Monday is another for la Virgen de Guadalupe. The noise is frequent fireworks. Maybe now that I know what the sound is, I can ignore it when I'm trying to sleep.

Jesús is a bank customer who started chatting with me after I asked him if he knew whether the bank did exchanges from dollars to pesos. He's from Mexico City, and he is learning English. He switched to that for a little while, but he was less comfortable in English than I was in Spanish. Everybody wants to chat! I suppose that's good, even though I feel uneasy talking to strangers; my mommy told me not to (and I always do what my mommy says ;)) but I am here to practice speaking, ne?

Ah, but about my incident with the bank. I wanted to withdraw some money so I could pay the school and los García. US$600 would ne plenty. So I put in my ATM card, typed $600.00, and pressed enter. Now, I really wasn't thinking: I didn't notice that the money wasn't all monochromatic green, like dollars should be. So I went and asked Jesús de Mexico City if the bank could do the exchange. A bank teller told me I'd need my passport, which turned out to be a good thing. If I'd had it with me, I would have looked pretty dumb, standing there and realizing that I had $600 in pesos, not dollars. That's about US$60. Not quite enough to pay for tuition and housing. Oops. I'll try again later.

I've signed myself up for a tour of Monte Albán and some surrounding villages. US$25 for the bus and guides, but food and entrance fees aren't included. That's how all the tour companies are set up. Perhaps there's a substantial number of customers who only want to go to, say, 3 out of 5 of the places, so the company doesn't include the fees? No sé.

Forrest emailed me an unlock code for my phone, which I tried tonight. It worked the first try. I went to one cellphone store and asked about SIM cards for Telcel, the carrier that my phone picks up in the area. I was confused as to why the guy at the store couldn't help me — something about move estar — until I looked at their phones and their name brand: Movistar. Oops.

He was kind enough to point me in the general directoin of a Telcel store. Much confusion there with how everything was supposed to work. I don't know why in particular this guy was hard to understand, but even his daughter (maybe 12 years old?) was easier to understand than he was. Dunno. Anyhow, the SIM card cost US$30, with a US$10 credit for airtime.

I was led to believe that calling the States would cost 50 cents a minute, which would have been cheaper than the caseta de teléfonos. But either he lied to me or I misunderstood — I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and the latter is more likely anyway — because I'm getting something less than a minute for each dollar, which is about what Cingular was going to charge me in the first place. :( I doubt he'll let me return thr SIM. On the other hand, another customer there thought that it was cheaper to call Mexico from the States than vice versa. Maybe so, but I'd need to buy more mintues to try it and I'm sorta disillusioned of the whole thing right now.

It was an expensive day: ended up spending US$93, on food, a tour, internet (of course), the SIM, cellphone minutes, and gifts. Stupid phone thing, being so disappointing. :(

Weather and Height

Was just passing by the internet café...

I ate lunch at an "expensive" restaurant today. Cost $9 for focaccia bread, lasagna, a side salad, and bottled water. Lasagna in Oaxaca doesn't use the big flat noodles. But it was very tasty — I even finished everything on my plate! Today turned cloudy, and a few scattered raindrops got me. The waitress said that there was no "typical" weather for un diciembre oaxaqueño, that instead it was sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy. Still, this isn't like any December I've ever seen.

Random observation: here, I'm tall. All the older women are shorter than me, and many of the people my age, too. Gang, you'd be giants here. Being tall is a weird feeling. ;)

El Primer Día de Escuela

So I'm done with classes for the day! It's a pretty small school, like the website said. There were two other girls in my 10:35-12:00 class, taught by María Elena, but tomorrow is the last day for one of them (Heather, I think her name it). In the 12:10-1:30 class, taught by Josefina, there was only the other girl, the one who isn't leaving. I can't remember her name. :P

I liked María Elena better; she's about my age, very friendly and informal. She doesn't feel like she's dumbing down her Spanish, just being clear, which is nice. Josefina is así así: we used flashcards and made up sentences for the pictures on them for the entire class. But still, it was good practice and good feedback. Just not as pal-y.

Yeesh, the older blog entries take a while to transcribe! I'm off now to try to find a replacement ink cartridge for my cool telescoping Zebra pen. Adios!

Can't Sleep

I woke up at 3:30 this morning, thirsty and too uncomfortable to fall back asleep. (My mattress is pretty firm, and the pillow is too high.) After half an hour of tring to get comfortable, I got up and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. It's weird having to go outside into the "hallway" around the courtyard to move between most rooms.

In the kitchen, there were these little black bugs on the countertop. Disconcerting. They weren't cockroaches, and I don't think they were fleas, either. I killed two of whatever they are.

I came back to bed and read for another twenty minutes. My eyes are tired, but I can't fall asleep. Not only is the uncomfortableness getting to me, but also I'm not used to the city's noises yet. They wake me up and keep me from falling back asleep. There's some bug outside that makes a high-pitched trill noise, but it's not the same as a cricket's. And then there's the BOOM noises and drum noises that happen every few minutes. The booms sound more like something heavy falling than the sharp sound of gunfire, but I don't know what the sound could be. It doesn't really sound like a garbage truck, and it happens too frequently for it to be that, anyway.

Hopefully I'll get used to the noises sson; if I can get used to the train going by in the middle of the night at the Foothill apartment, I can get used to this.

La Casa de Mezcal

After my crepe, I wandered down the next street, el 5 de Mayo, and eventually went back home. I read my book, Noticia de un Secuestro for a bit, but I was starting to get hungry. I saw the Canadian girl, Colín (I don't know if her name is actually Colleen or what) rummaging around, wearing a nice shirt and pearls. I asked her if she'd already eaten. She had, but she and a German friend, Nina, from their language school were going out drinking and perhaps I could eat something on the way.

I changed into my green button-up shirt and we left. We met Nina at the zócalo. The three of us walked through a market past the zócalo and ended up at Mina Street, the one with the chocolate shops. We tried some samples (chunks of chocolate and chocolate milk stuff — yummy). Across the street and down about half a block was La Casa de Mezcal. I had previously admitted to nevering having tried mezcal, so we had to go. ;)

Turns out Colín is quite the drinker, if her stories are true. A rival of Aaron, even, except that she likes being drunk and stupid. I ordered a shot of mezcal (the bar called it a copeo, los García a copa). Colín and Nina got a 2-for-1 cocktail special: mandarin and mezcal. Their glasses were these huge glasses.

The jukebox was playing loud Spanish music (surprise, surprise). A groud of other young adults in the corner was getting roudy, singing and dancing to the music. One guy even broke out his lighter for one song. :P Then, from out of nowhere, some guy comes up behind me and kisses me on the cheek. He goes back to his table, where his buddy is laughing.

We all thought it was drunk-funny — no real harm done. The guy came back and explained that his friend had said he couldn't just walk over and kiss a stranger, and he'd said he could. But then they kept coming back to talk to us; they asked us to come join them at their table, or dance with them, or have a drink on them. Nina and I let Colín (whose Spanish is a bit better and more confident than mine) politely decline their offers with excuses of class tomorrow.

We eventually left, looking for this place called el Freebar. We eventually found it, two blocks from Santo Domingo (big church), but it had closed for the night. We said goodnight to Nina and walked back to our place (with a stop for fries and el baño along the way).

Colín went to bed, but I stayed up chatting with los García for maybe another hour. They say my S's are quite Spanish — too laminal, I think is the problem, and maybe too fricativey.

Anyhow, first day of class tomorrow!

Tourist Street

More back-dating. My access to internet is not really on a set schedule.

Met a girl from Holland, named Honica, who arrived Saturday. She's going to a different language school, Oaxaca International, and has only studied Spanish for the past two days! She speaks accented English (studied it six years in school). That seems much more avdenturous than my situation!

I met her at a tour company. The woman at the info desk there told me about the tours in Spanish, and there were only two things that I needed her to repeat. :) I took some pictures of the building's courtyard (I love this sneaky-courtyard architecture!), then went back to the woman to ask how to say "courtyard." She didn't know! She knew what I meant, but when she asked her coworker, "¿Cómo se dice la parte del edificio que no está cubierta?" he wasn't quick with an answer, either. Patio is what he came up with, and she thought maybe terraza. Weird.

I've since checked with WordReference, and it agrees with the guy: patio it is. Terraza is "terrace" or "balcony," so I don't know what the woman was on.

Entretejado might be "woven;" also cruzado, says the woman at the traditional Mexican clothing store.

Okay, seriously, me encanta la arquitectura mexicana. Yes, the streetfronts look pretty bad, but inside! So... strawbale courtyard? :P And the word for rug is el tapete.

Vincente runs the store Cuchillos Alcalá. Talkative guy, nice and willing to repeat or simplify or explain until I understood. He has sword canes for US$55, and curved swords, flamigeros, named after flames. Apparently some angel in the Bible fought with a sword of flame, and the curves represent that. He also sells throwing stars, keychain "swords," penknifes, and a belt with a zippered compartment and a knife-buckle. And I am Señorita Catarín [rojɛɹs]

Seems that I like at least a few songs by Belinda, who was playing over the radio at La Crepa, a crepe restaurant! Their ham and cheese crepes were excellent. I know I'm in Mexico, not France, but still... Mmm, crepes. I'll almost certainly be returning for their strawberry crepes. Also, they have Oaxaca hot chocolate; will have to try that sometime. Cute mesero, too. ;)

I need to practice my restaurant-chilling skills. I feel anti-rushed here, like I think I should have been given the check already so I can hurry up and pay and leave, but they expect me to relax a bit. But it's nice here in the shade, sitting at a little café table on a balcony, listening to Spanish pop and people-watching those walking below on the "tourists' street." What's so wrong with just chilling and enjoying myself? I am on vacation, and there really isn't any great pressing need to be elsewhere right now...

At the Zócalo

From my journal (back-dated to when I wrote it):

What SLO needs is a zócalo. Central plaza, sidewalk restaurant seating, live music, strolling around — very nice. A mariachi band is going between the tables now, dressed in the traditional (or is it stereotypical? I don't know) black suits and such. A performance by who I pressume are some sort of professional mariachis just ended and they are packing up all their instruments from the gazebo. Large tule trees are throughout the plaza, and they have just added thick borders of red pointsettas around the trees.

It's December, but the night air makes me think of those perfectly barely-warm summer nights in Walnut Creek growing up. I didn't need to bring my sweatshirt at all.

Like in Spain, poor people stop by the restaurant tables to beg for money or ask if I'll buy some trinket they're peddling. I'm eating at Amarantes, and the waiter seems to enjoy telling me that he lived in San Francisco for 14 years. (I tell people who are that I'm from California, and "cerca de San Francisco" if they ask more specifically.) I've noticed that in Mexico and Spain that people we wouldn't normally talk to outside of a prescribed script — cashiers, waiters, shop employees — ask about where I'm from, why I'm here, and for how long. I don't know whether it's because people are just more friendly and open here, or because they're proud of their region and want to tell foreigners about it. Or maybe I look naïve and they're just distracting me before they pickpocket me. ,)

I spent a total of $137 MXN on Tuesday, which covered Burger King, an hour of internet, a phone call to the States, dinner, a 25% tip, some bread and a cookie. Sweet.

¡He Llegado!

Wow, first off: this keyboard is crazy. There's an Ñ key were the Qwerty semicolon should be! Anyhow, I bet you don't care much about this Mexican keyboard right now. ;)

Forrest drove me down to LAX, so I got to spend a bit more time with him before I was off to Mexico for the bulk of December. Thank you, Forrest! Especially for the shortcut route, even if it was really cold. :) It's sad saying goodbye at airports, especially now that no one but the travelers themselves can get past the front door...

(Arg, the < and > keys are on the same key, to the left of Z! But anyway.) At LAX, I met an older woman from Chicago who had just come out of a coma and brain surgery. She was... interesting... to talk to. A little weird, and not because of any brain damage. Just one of those weird old talkative people. On the plane, a woman with a baby sat in the row behind me. Her kid cried the entire time, so bad that the attendants asked her multiple times if everything was alright or if the baby was sick. Made it so I couldn't get any real rest on that flight. (Which was a major bummer, seeing as how I've only had 4 hours of sleep in the last 48. :( )

So that was a 3-hour flight. I changed planes at Mexico City. Big international airport. All the little airport stores there were strange, though — narrow, like 5 feet wide, and every inch of wall space totally covered with whatever it was they were selling (candy, books, stamps, scarves, cellphones...). I exchanged some dollars for pesos (rate of 1 to 10.35) and settled for Burger King chicken strips and bottled water for sustenance. Bleh. The connecting flight from Mexico City to Oaxaca only took 40 minutes, and there I did manage to nap. Actually, I got to stretch out across my row of three seats, 'cause the flight was only maybe 10-20% full.

Oaxaca's airport is quite small, like SLO's. There are mountains all around the city (surprise surprise, what with it being in the Oaxaca Valley); I should have taken a picture, but my camera was still packed away at the time. Silvia's grown son picked me up at the airport. He drives an old 19-something-1 :P VW Bug that kept stalling while we were driving to his parents' home.

The street-front stores and all the buildings look pretty run-down, maintenance-wise, but I don't get scary vibes like I do in, say, Bezerkly. Silvia says that it's actually safe to walk around the city late (like 11 or 12, she said), even alone, and that she lets her younger daughter do so without incident. That makes me feel better — I walked the half a block from her house to this internet cafe by myself — but I think I'd still much prefer to make friends with the 30-something Australian student and pal around with her after dark. (Yes, Mom, I'm thinking of you and your concerns. ;) )

Supposedly there's a casa de teléfonos half a block around the corner where I can call to the States. May try that until I figure out how to dial from my cellphone — 'course, I may continue using the "phone-house" after that, since Cingular wants to charge me like $1 or $2 a minute to call the States. (Could someone up there find out if those rates apply to calling other Cingular customers?)

This internet cafe's computers have USB... I really need to try to get my camera photos uploaded. Would be much better than having to do it in bulk when I get home.

Anyhow, I'm really really tired. Gonna call people, then have myself a real Mexican siesta. :)

La Noche Anterior

Me voy esta noche al aeropuerto LAX, y por la mañana próxima volaré a Oaxaca de Juárez. ¡Gahhh! Nunca había viajado sola. Estoy nerviosa, pero también emocionada (si se puede confiar en la traducción de WordReference).

Desafortunadamente, tengo un "runny nose" (un "moqueo"? no sé). Ojalá — oo, acabo de aprender que esta palabra es, etimologicamente, del árabe, que significó algo de Allah — ojalá que la enfermedad me dejará dentro de poco...

Cuando estoy en México, no sé si tendré internet reliable. No me llames por teléfono; cuesta mucho. Trataré de responder a sus emails y escribir sobre mi viaje aquí, pero no prometeré nada cierta. Pero ¡sí trataré de tomar muchas fotos!

Eep! (Funkily translated) English please!

Categories: Oaxaca, travel, Spanish

Simpsons-esque Name

The girl at the front desk of Mustang brought out this package for the apartment and said, I kid you not, "I have a package for... Heywood Djablome." Poor girl; we could have died laughing.

See, a while back The Gang was filling water balloons and condoms up with butane and exploding them outside. So they ordered some free samples from Trojan and had them mailed to them. Naturally, they felt the need to sign up as, uh... humorous names. The samples have just now arrived, complete with unaltered bogus names.

Categories: photos, humor