Oh, who are the people in our neighborhood?

There are two ways to enter our house.  The first is through a front gate, of sorts, that is hidden behind the abandoned car in the driveway (pictured in an earlier post).   Recently we learned the story behind the car, although it was one of those explanations in a foreign language that makes you wonder whether you understood all of it.  There is a category of communal land in Mexico (or maybe many categories) that falls somewhere between private land and public land.  The front driveway is communal land shared by our landlord and our neighbor, and maybe by others.  When our landlord built a carpark over the driveway the neighbor got upset and hired someone to dump a wrecked car in it.  The city removed the wreck once, but it appeared again a few days later.  Understandably, the wreck is a thorn in our landlord’s side, but we see it as a security measure to make the house less appealing to burglars.

The second way to enter the house is from a dirt road that ends at our back gate.  When we walk to school or go to catch a bus, we walk the two hundreds yards or so down the dirt road then turn left at the street.  

The road to our back gate

Across the street is a driveway to a nursery.  The signs on the gate say they sell orchids and organic tomatoes.  

Sometimes there are chickens and ducks walking around the property, and there is a horse corral.  Several times Natalie and I commented that it looked like a neat place and that we should check it out.

Boy were we right.  The first time Natalie and I wandered in, we met the owner, Gabrielle, who is nice beyond words.  It turns out the nursery is just a side business run by someone else.  Gabrielle does a zillion other things on the property, including:  organic farming, fish farming, raising rabbits, ducks, geese, chickens, a turkey, turtles, and guinea pigs (not sure what the guinea pigs are for; probably rescued pets), heat and worm composting, keeping and riding four horses, baking in traditional adobe ovens and a solar oven, and selling organic tomatoes, honey, and eggs.  There also is a nearly-completed swimming pool, where Gabrielle plans to relocate her swimming school.  The pool should be ready next month.

Soon after our first visit, we took Max and Helen to meet Gabrielle and to see the farm.  Although we were on our way somewhere else, we ended up spending about four hours there and abandoning our other plans.

Feeding the turtles 

Fishing

Chilling

After seeing the farm, we went across the street to Gabrielle's house.  Another amazing place.  Hidden in a lush garden of native and volunteer plants are cages full of rescue parrots and other birds and… a trampoline.  Fun!  Her parents’ house – the main house – is there too.  Gabrielle’s father lived in San Leandro, California, about 60 years ago.  When he returned to Oaxaca to run a coffee plantation on the coast, which they still own, he built a house in the city that looks like it could be in California.  Most houses here are built of brick and stucco, but he used stone and some wood.  The house is full of projects by Gabrielle’s mother (macramé, butterfly wing paintings, wooden and shell sculptures, furniture), by her father (oil paintings, a handmade garage door opener, a grey water system for the garden, handmade double hung windows), and by Gabrielle and her siblings, one of whom is an artist living in East Bay, where he teaches Education at St. Mary's College.

While Natalie and I toured the main house and gaped at all the projects, Max, Helen, and Gabrielle played on the trampoline.  They kept telling us their house is our house, and to come back whenever we want.  So Max, who was especially enamored by the farm, has been going back on weekends to help out.  He feeds the animals, harasses the fish, and helps wash the horses.  A couple of times, he has even gotten to ride one of the horses, Tio Juan.  Max is not the only one who has enjoyed the horses.

Riding lesson with Gabrielle

A quick study

Sharing the fun

Not one to turn down a horseback ride

Now, every few days we take our green waste to feed Gabrielle's chickens, rabbits, turkey and guinea pigs, and next Saturday we are going to make pizza together in the adobe oven.  Meeting Gabrielle and her parents, and living across the street from such an oasis, are a few more reasons we cannot believe our luck at finding this house.  --Harrison

If the shoe fits....

One of the things I thought a lot about before coming to Oaxaca was shoe selection.  How many sandals, flats, tennies, maybe a nice-ish pair of low heels, but the one style of shoe I never considered was super high heels.  The roads here are often cobbled or just bumpy, the sidewalks blocked by trees and construction detritus.  How would one even begin to maneuver in this city in super high heels?  Well, I still don't have the answer to that question, but it appears that many women do indeed navigate the perils of the Oaxacan pavement in heels.  I find that I can't help whipping out my phone and pretending to play Angry Birds while actually taking photos of people's feet.  (BTW, this is Natalie.)  Below is a sample from last week.  Did I mention I take all my shots at school pick-up?

My first shoe shot, I call it "Boots in silhouette"

 Love the silver slip ons!

 Even with beige pants suit 4-inch heels. 

 Dress down Friday

 If you look closely there is a french pedicure to go with the denim pumps.

What you don't see in this picture is the mass of stuff this woman is carrying plus a really cute 3 month old baby.

 I wonder if anyone would notice if I wore these to pick up my kids at school in Oakland.

I like the pumps with shorts look.

Is he checking her out?  No, it's just the daily crowd at the homework board.

I know what some of you are thinking.  "I've been at school pick-up or drop-off with Natalie before.  Does she have a picture of my shoes?"  No!  Anything less than three inches...  I'd rather play Angry Birds.  --Natalie

Smallest ice cream cone ever

Today all four of us went to Max’s soccer practice, so I took Helen to my new favorite restaurant in Oaxaca, where we had ice cream.  We turned Helen’s ice cream cone into a very small ice cream cone.

Then we turned it into an even smaller ice cream cone.

Meanwhile, back at practice Max had to run laps because we haven’t paid the February dues yet.  Talk about an effective way to get kids to remind their parents to pay up.

Today Natalie and I enjoyed reading and translating the newspaper together.  The top-of-the-fold story in section two was about four men who were arrested for making pornographic videos of themselves in a remote area about 15 miles from Oaxaca.  The story included some of the pictures the police seized.  The newspaper discretely blurred the men's faces and other body parts, but it gave their full names and precise street addresses in the article.  Very discrete.  Another story was about a man who died after being hit in the back of the head with a pipe at a bar.  The "today deceased," which is how the article referred to the victim ("el hoy occiso"), and his concubine, which is how the article referred to his partner ("la concubina"), stumbled home after the fight, where one of them (presumably the concubine) had to climb over the fence to get in because they did not have a key.  The photo of the "today deceased" left nothing to the imagination.  Actually, that is not entirely true.  Since the story said he died after passing out on the kitchen floor, we could only imagine how he ended up in his underwear kneeling at the foot of his bed.  Ok, I'll stop now.  --Harrison

I'm Lovin' It

One of the things Max misses most about the U.S. is playing with his soccer team, although he has joined a team here.  It has been a great source of training and making new friends, not to mention practicing Spanish.  The club is run by Cruz Azul, which is one of Mexico’s professional teams.  It has soccer schools around the country.  In the Oaxaca club, there are about 30 kids in Max's age group.  They are divided into smaller teams for games.  Max played in one “friendly” match a few weeks ago, but so far that’s all.  His first competitive game is in a couple of weeks.

Cruz Azul's newest addition

Probably the biggest difference between Max’s team in the U.S. and his team in Mexico is the amount of time the kids are allowed to fool around at practice.  At home, even when the kids scrimmage – which usually does not happen until the last 15 minute or so – they approach the game as they would if it were a regular game.  By comparison, when the kids scrimmage here, they try trick plays.  They do goofy maneuvers.  They taunt each other and call each other names.  There is a lot of laughing and rolling around on the ground.  And they do this for about half of each practice, with little input from the coaches.  (Max adds that there is more coaching than we see.  For instance, the coaches give them rules like "no more than three touches per person," or "the ball can't go higher than the knees."  Max learned the last one after having to do fifty squats for kicking a high ball.)

It would be easy to criticize spending half of each practice goofing around, but the kids have so much fun.  That is the point of playing the game, after all.  Also, after watching many hours of these scrimmage games, one starts to see how much the kids learn from them.  Experimenting with ways to trick the opponents in a setting where pretty much anything goes should translate into more creative play in actual games.  That would explain why countries with so much "street soccer” tend to develop more good players.

Plenty of street soccer in Mexico

Max has soccer practice three times a week for two hours each.  That is a lot of soccer practice for a parent to watch.  So yesterday I left him at practice and walked over to the “Plaza del Valle” shopping mall that is about 10 minutes from the field.  There, I am ashamed to say, I had one of my most enjoyable snacks yet in Oaxaca.  Can you tell where I was from this photo, and why I am reluctant to admit just how good it was?

It helps if I enlarge the picture.  Look at the logo on my cup.

That's right.  McDonald's.  I walked in mainly out of curiosity to see if there were any Mexican touches on the menu, like a McEnchilada or a McMole sandwich.  There were not.  (Although they had chile peppers at the catsup and mustard station.)  But it was the nicest looking McDonald's I have ever seen, and the ice cream and coffee I ordered tasted fantastic.

McDonald's.  Design by Ikea?

 When Max found out what I did during practice, he informed me that I "owe" him an ice cream.  But he said it cannot be from McDonald’s.  At least one of the guys in our family has standards.  --Harrison

Trash it

For those who open this blog each time hoping to learn what we do with our garbage, this entry is for you.  Unlike in Oakland, where garbage is collected once a week, collection here happens every day except Sunday.  Also unlike home, where we put our garbage out the night before so it is ready when the truck goes by in the morning, here you cannot leave your garbage out.  Stray dogs and other critters would attack the garbage and the neighbors would complain.  Instead, each morning a lucky member of the household gets to take the garbage out and throw it in the truck as it drives by.

The truck passes our house between 6:30 and 6:45 a.m.  We know it is passing because one of the workers bangs a metal pipe against the truck along its route.  It sounds like somebody on speed playing a cowbell into a microphone in the room next to you.  There are three or four five-second bursts of noise before the truck reaches our house, and then one or two more after it passes.  In theory, we could track the clanging to know where the truck is, but that rarely works.  By the time the clanging wakes us up,  it is hard to tell precisely where the noise is coming from.  As a result, it usually takes at least two trips to the street to see if the truck is there yet.  More than once I have had to chase it down after it drove by.  The transition from being fast asleep in bed to sprinting after the truck with a hand full of garbage bags, which can happen in less than thirty seconds, is rough.

Early morning garbage run

I do not mean to complain.  It is convenient to have garbage pick-up every day.  Otherwise the garbage would get smelly and unmanageable in this heat, and it would attract pests.  One night I saw an opossum rooting through a bag of garbage we left in the yard outside our back door.  Nor do we mind that the truck passes our house so early.  That is when we have to wake up anyway on Monday through Friday, although it would be nice if they took Saturdays off.  I just find it amusing to imagine the response at home if this system were to be introduced there.  We would never tolerate six days a week of garbage trucks driving around the city before 7:00 a.m. making a racket.  Why do they stand for it here?

The daily challenge of intercepting the garbage truck, combined with an interest in how cities handle solid waste and recyclables, tempt me to ask if I can ride with the garbage truck one day.  Dumps always are fascinating (visit one before you disagree), and I would like to know what happens to the recyclables.  Our landlords and other people have told us there is no need to separate the garbage, but I have seen the garbage men pulling cans, bottles, and newspapers from the rest of the trash.  I read somewhere that they earn extra income by selling the recyclables.  We separate our garbage to make it easier on them.  Maybe that will make the difference in whether they let me ride along one day.   --Harrison

Death Match

This post is a bit of a potpourri.  I need to leave soon to catch the bus because I am meeting a couple in an hour who agreed to teach me how to make a hammock.  When we first arrived in Oaxaca, I met them at a crafts market that was set up for the holidays.  I said I would prefer to visit their workshop than buy a hammock at the market, so they gave me their number.  When I called on Tuesday to see about visiting, I asked if they could teach me how to make hammocks.  They said they would.  It will be interesting to see if they really plan to.

First item – a picture of our family at the Zócalo (central square) last Saturday.  Helen and Max are holding big arrow-shaped balloons we bought for them to play with.  You punch the balloon into the air and either catch it or practice Spanish by apologizing to the person it hits on the way down.

Second item – we still cannot believe how much we lucked out with this house.  By far the biggest perk of living here is the family that owns it.  They live in the main part of the house, so it is more of a co-living situation.  There is the mother and father, 6-year-old José Andres, plus their maid/babysitter and her 16-year daughter who are here most days.  There are so many nice things to say about all of them.  For now, I will just post this picture of Helen and José Andres, who are becoming good friends.  They play together every afternoon.  Helen took this picture herself.

For another look at Helen’s camera work, check out this video:  Helen Likes Mexico.  Someone suggested we send it to the Mexico Tourism Board, but first Helen needs to practice holding the camera steady.

Third item – Every day we have been making lunches for Max and Helen to take to school.  Yesterday we gave Max 50 pesos (about $5) to try the school cafeteria.  I bet you are thinking, “school cafeteria, not good.”  Here are three things I learned when I picked Max up from school:  (1)  The food is homemade and delicious.  Max had a tostada with fresh vegetables and grilled meat for lunch, and then he made me eat one when I picked him up to prove how good it was.  (But he ate most of it.)  (2)  Max is generous with his lunch money.  While we were waiting for the second tostada, a couple of his friends stopped by to thank him for buying Jello for them.  (3)  It is cheaper for us to give Max money for the school cafeteria than to pack him a lunch.  Looks like he will be eating at the cafeteria from now on.

Food from the school cafeteria never tasted so good!

Fourth, and last, item – Yesterday I visited the Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban.  It served as the capital to a federation of villages and cities in the Oaxaca Valley from about 500 B.C. to 850 A.D.  I went on a tour with an archeologist, Robert Markens, organized by the Oaxaca Lending Library.  The theme was interpreting Zapotec hieroglyphs that appear at the site.  To be honest, I was not very excited to go, but I felt like I should see it since we are here and it was a good opportunity to learn about the site from an archeologist.  I was blown away.  The site is absolutely spectacular.  It is difficult to capture in a picture.

Monte Alban's Central Plaza

Toward the end of the tour, we passed the court where the inhabitants and/or their prisoners of war played a deadly ball game.  The game itself is not deadly, but it becomes deadly if you lose.  Losers often were sacrificed.

Ball Court at Monte Alban

Dr. Markens explained that these ball courts appear in the center of most ancient Meso-American cities.  On the one hand, it seems unusual that ball courts played such a prominent role.  But then again, is it so unusual?  You may want to wait until after Sunday to answer that question.  (Go Packers!)  --Harrison

"Where did it come from?"

That is what we really want to know.  Where did the scorpion Natalie saw yesterday crawling across the kitchen floor come from?

The most likely theory:  Inside Max's soccer cleats, which had been washed and left outside overnight to dry.  Natalie was about to put the cleats in a bag to take to practice when she saw the scorpion scamper across the floor and onto the ledge of a stair.  Did she scream?  Maybe.

If the scorpion dropped from Max's cleats, at least it originated outside.  Other theories about where it was hiding are more disturbing.  Was it in our bedroom?  The bathroom?  In one of our shoes that was inside the house?  In the dirty clothes basket?  Our neighbors/landlords found a scorpion under a couch cushion a couple of weeks ago.  We took comfort in the fact that we have no couch.  Now that sense of security is gone.

People have told us to expect more scorpions because it is getting hot.  But not to worry, they say.  These scorpions are not the most poisonous kind.  Their stings merely hurt, give you a rash, and cause muscle spasms for a day or two.  And to think, we were worried.

I would like to say that we trapped and relocated the scorpion to a place where it will not hurt us.  In a sense, we did.  We cornered it, dropped a rock on it, and relocated its remains to a hole in the garden.

Hand of death

May it rest in peace.  --Harrison