In search of pie

So earlier this week, J and I were chatting with our host mom about food, which is one of our favorite subjects. Our host sister had just served us some insanely delicious crepes with dulce de leche, and we were discussing baking projects. In Spanish, I explained that I preferred to make cakes and cookies, but that I had a little trouble with ... and here I paused.

The word I wanted was "pie." And in high school, the word I'd learned for that was torta. But in Oaxaca, a torta is a delicious sandwich (like the one pictured above) which we happened to be eating at the time. Clearly I needed a different word, so I tried to describe it.

It is like a cake, but it is not a cake, I explained. It has the dough at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, but sometimes no. And in the interior there is fruit or sometimes cream or something sweet. In high school, we said torta, but it is not torta like this (gesturing toward the sandwich).

Years ago, as an English teacher, I'd had a similar conversation in the Czech Republic and was crushed to learn that my students had only a dim understanding of pie. It was near Thanksgiving, and in a fit of nostalgia, I'd ended up drawing three-dimensional diagrams on the board, to no avail. I was beginning to fear that Oaxacans would be equally unfamiliar with the fabulousness of pie, but my fears were baseless. My host mom nodded in comprehension. Clearly she knew the word I was looking for.

"Es como pie?" she asked. Is it like pie? Um, yes, as it happens. It is very much like pie...

Monte Alban

This perturbed-looking individual is not contemplating the folly of a rapidly consumed street taco. He is (as the sign suggests) credited with discovering Monte Alban, an archeological site outside of Oaxaca. It's the largest I've ever visited, and it's absolutely mind-boggling to imagine the work that went into constructing it without modern tools.

I'm including more photos below, including the remains of a warrior whose post-battle edema was treated by trepanning (thanks to a sharp piece of obsidian and a doctor with very steady hands) and a victory dance atop one of the many platforms we scaled today.

Oaxaca: Lapidarium Edition

No deep thoughts to share today, so I'm posting photos from our bus tour of the city and foot tour of the neighborhood, which will be really exciting if you're into Mexican statuary. For reasons I don't totally understand, you also have to scroll way down to reach it.

	A fountain in downtown Oaxaca.
	Seven women (representing seven communities of Oaxaca) surround a man on a pedastal.
	Please feel free to apply your own feminist interpretation here.
	Evidently this is the only thing I took any pictures of all day.
	I apologize. I thought this was going to be a more varied and interesting display. I hope you like statues.
	Just to switch it up, I'm including this, which may be the first time in history that a professor and student have been photographed pointing emphatically at a map -- in a completely candid and unposed moment.
	And because I evidently have an obsession with rooftop dogs, here's another shot from the neighborhood. I call this one Wiggles the Wonder Mutt, because you can just tell he's ready for action.

Learning Spanish is different from learning French

This might seem obvious seeing as the two, while similar in many respects, are very distinct languages. However, as someone who has only ever studied a language in a classroom setting, the marked difference I feel, even after only a few days, between learning French in school and learning Spanish in Mexico, comes as a big surprise.

I'm a book learner. It's how I've defined myself over the years (and probably why I am currently in grad school rather than a professional something-or-other... although I eventually want to be a professional something-or-other). While my grandfather, mother, and sister have all at various times learned a language simply by listening and speaking and interacting, I've always maintained that I need to study the language to learn it -- that is, I need to know the verbs, study the conjugations, the tenses, understand where to place adjectives, etc.

Yet here I find myself in Mexico with some basic vocab thanks to a brief introduction to Spanish back in sixth grade, but no real understanding of the underlying principles of the language structure and... whaddya know, I'm kind of speaking Spanish!

Of course, my Spanish is nothing that a real Spanish-speaker would be impressed with, nothing that could even really get me through a day of exploring Oaxaca on my own. But this whole new way of learning is what excites me, realizing that I know what "como" means, not because I read it in a book or looked it up in a dictionary, but because I've heard it in context several times now, and figured it out for myself. To be fair, I picked up a "Spanish Step-by-Step" book at the used bookstore before I left, and it's actually been very helpful so far, but even that book takes a fairly loose approach to teaching grammar and structure, relying more on example conversations to teach basic vocabulary and sentence constructions. And Spanish classes started today, which is actually a bit of a relief, to think that I *will* learn those grammar rules and practices that I'm currently missing in my rudimentary attempts to put together a comprehensible sentence from the ad hoc terms I've picked up here and there. But as I listen more and more to the Spanish that surrounds me here in Oaxaca, I realize how much I am picking up just from being here and wanting to understand what is going on around me. It also makes me realize that it's not as simple as just going to a country and listening in -- you really have to have these conversations and interactions constantly going on around you to pick up on what's going on.

At the risk of sounding narcissistic and self-centered, I'm really enjoying seeing my personal process of learning Spanish unfold. And, though I am enjoying Mexico and am excited by this introduction to a new language, it also makes me wonder where a similar immersion experience in a French-speaking country could take me.

Dog on a Hot Tin Roof

This is Samurai. Like most dogs in Oaxaca, he lives on the roof, Snoopy-style, and seems fairly content to do so. We met Samurai yesterday when we received our house assignments and met our host families. I'm in a house with Jackie just a few blocks from the school. We have a host mother as well as two host siblings who live in the house. They have three brothers, two of whom live in town and occasionally stop by.

I can't even begin to express how much Jackie and I love our host family, and not just because they ply us with delicious food at regular intervals. Our room looks out over the rooftop garden. Beyond that is Samurai's turf, and beyond that is the city and then the mountains.

A lot of families in Oaxaca have dogs and, as I said before, a lot of them live on the roof, where there's more space for them to move around. My favorite is the golden retriever down the block, whom I call "El Rey" because he is downright regal. I tried tosnap a picture this morning as he surveyed his realm, but the lighting was pretty poor. Nonetheless, I think the picture below captures some of his majesty. You can tell by the way he holds that tennis ball that he rules the neighborhood with an iron paw.
I'm not entirely sure why I love this dog, but there's something about his face that appeals to me. He disappears from time to time, so I suspect he may have access to the indoors as well--another indication of his privileged position. I hope Rey's exercising it now, as the afternoon rains have just picked up and it's pouring buckets. But all is warm and dry indoors and it looks like another relaxed afternoon.

Settling In

June 13: We left the hotel this morning and headed north. Or possibly west. I've never had much of a head for directions and I was perfectly content to follow the crowd, which consisted of me, Jackie, Kelly, Amelia and Brent, one of the students from the Arizona program. At any rate, we wound our way through the grid of Oaxaca's streets for two hours, so I'm sure we were facing both north and west at some point on the journey.

The avenues are wide, lined on either side by the concrete faces of houses, hotels, restaurants and other local businesses. We made our way to the main plaza, ducking to avoid the white and blue tarps that cut across many of the streets, providing protection from the sun and the afternoon rains (above). The plaza was full of busy tents where vendors sold fruit and scarves and wallets and DVDs—everything bright and loud. Some of the tents were festooned with political slogans, and we decided that they probably belonged to activists, arriving early in the city to claim space for the upcoming teachers' protests.

We wandered out of the market onto streets that were pale and hot in the late morning sun. Brent ducked into a covered market and the rest of us followed, happy to be in the shade again. Several stalls in front of us, somebody was killing a rat on the floor. This was about twenty yards beyond the entrance we'd just come in, and we were surrounded on either side by meat vendors. Flies buzzed around the yellow bodies of plucked chickens and slack-jawed fish gaped at us in bemusement. I can't really do justice to the smell, but there are very few things in this world that could make me wish I were closer to a rodent assassination—and the aroma of the meat stalls was propelling me forward at a rapid pace.

Fortunately, we soon found ourselves in happier territory, surrounded by fruits and jewelry and eerie Disney-inspired piñatas. We also found ourselves by a friendly chocolate vendor who insisted we sample the organic chocolate-almond bites, which I was more than happy to do.

After a long break for the afternoon siesta, I set out with a smaller group in search of chocolate. The square was still bustling. This time of year is always big for teacher protests, and June 14 is the anniversary of the protests that turned violent in 2006, so there was a lot of activity. All in all, it was a pretty busy day. (At right, K & J enjoy some chocolate sin churros.)

Hasta luego, DC!

Three days before I fly to Mexico, my friends and I meet at a bar in D.C. for a farewell bash. Half the crowd is from grad school, so there's a lot of academic talk mixed in with the typical D.C. wonkery, which is fine by me. I grew up here, but even I get tired of the standard D.C. conversations after a while. Fortunately, the other half of the crowd is non-academic, so I get some practice explaining my research without using jargon and then the conversation drifts naturally to other topics.

We're there maybe six hours, talking about international communication and diplomacy and online dating and Strasburg's debut, and the evening is complete when Michaele Salahi herself teeters through the crowd in a pair of strappy sandals, her hair a color and texture rarely observed in nature. Sure, she looks as if she's heading toward the bathroom, but I know why she's really here: to crash my party, of course.

I am definitely going to miss D.C.