Contemplating the trip

Del dicho al hecho hay mucho trecho
from saying it to doing it is a long way

Every part of the journey is of importance to the whole.
Teresa of Avila
Canceling magazines, waiting for renters,fixing fences,final weekends with friends,canceling car insurance,family pictures packed away,boxing up books,the sound of duct tape peeling off the roll....all of these necessary parts of the journey are tiring and so liberating in our spirits, that I am often overwhelmed and sometimes practice my impatient and immature "day of departure" routine with the suitcases seen in the photo.
The spring cleaning of our house and possesions, the dusting and reorganizing of all things material and emotional has been occuring for two months now, very seriously. The shocking and really cool reality of this adventure hits sweet and hard when the rental sign goes up, and you purchase a one-way airline ticket!
The known specifics of departure is this: we end our jobs Tues. June 28, celebrate 4th of July in Turlock, pass on as nomads with only with what we can carry to Fremont to visit with loved ones, and then whisk away July 6 at sunrise in Oakland on a southern migratory jet-bird looking for Guanajuato,Mexico.
This is the colonial central highland town that courted us last year, and taught us of how little Spanish we know, but also showed us the large amounts of genuine hospitality that we received lessons in. We will revisit the Mexican home and heart of Martha for a week, then bus approx. 10-12 hours south through Mexico City to an arrival in Oaxaca, perhaps by Friday July 15. That weekend we will start our orientation for Spanish classes at the Instituto Cultural, and our accommodation with a Oaxacan family for 2-3 weeks.
And then?....vamos a ver...we are going to see, Que un milagro!...what a miracle!

The road goes ever on and on. Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead
the road has gone and I must follow,if I can,pursuing it with eager feet. Until it joins
some larger way where many paths and errands meet, and whither then ? I cannot say.
Bilbo Baggins, Fellowship of the Ring

" You're never too old to do goofy stuff."
Ward Cleaver, The Leave It To Beaver Show
for rent

PREFACE TO THE JOURNEY

Despacio se va lejos
Slowly one goes far away

Far away....for a one year relocation to.....wah-HAH-kah...the capitol city of the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Slowly over the last year we have speculated,educated,collaborated,agitated,and meditated about this wonderfully crazy idea of such huge proportions. Why venture into this major transformation of our lives into a cross-cultural immersion experience?

To the top of this homemade soup of reasons rises the main ingredient: a long-held lifetime goal of becoming bilingual. We value and are refreshed by the benefits that come from opening and broadening our perspectives , and the hours of practice of the loosening of the tongues in learning Spanish. Oaxaca....wah-HAH-kah...is just fun to say,actually.

But then there are the other very significant,subtle and subjective flavors of reasons that are in this mix that we have come to develop a taste for.
INGREDIENT: " Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel's
immediate rewards,new sights,smells and sounds,but with experiencing
first hand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and
only way." Ralph Crawshaw
INGREDIENT: " If there is a trick to soulful travel, it is learning to see for yourself. To do this
takes practice and a belief that it matters. The difference between pilgrim and
tourist is the intention of attention, the quality of curiosity." Phil Cousineau

We have taken some grand postcard tourist vacations here in the U.S., and to England,Scotland and Ireland the last few years. And now we sense it is an opportune time to focus our intention of becoming biligual, and combining our love of the lessons learned while traveling with the disciplines and rewards of anchoring ourselves to one foreign cultural place.
We speculate that the total quality of our one-year experience will far surpass the previous tourist journeys. This venture does seem to have elements that almost give it an edge of pilgrimage to it. The aspects of sacrifice...time, finances, long abscence from family and friends.--aspect of seriousness...hours o research, commitment to goal.
We are very interested to see what and how the curiosities of cross-cultural immersion will teach and shape us through the joys and tears and laughter in encounters with these Oaxacan strangers. These encounters will no doubt, inject and affect us with a lifetime of unique memories.
" In years of wandering, I have learned two things: the first is that when you travel, at some point you will find yourself in a dire predicament- out of money, out of food, unable to find a hotel room, stranded in the middle of nowhere. The second is that someone will miraculously emerge to take care of you- lend you money, feed you, lead you to where you want to go. Whatever the situation, dramatic or mundane, some stranger will save you.
The moral of this is simple and clear: human beings care about each other." Don George

For the next year, we will be encircled by strangeness...and very kind strangers at many of the turns and stages of our spiritual, emotional and logistical life of up's and down's. It will be difficult, quirky, and so surprisingly sweet.
This blog will be our journal of bits of that journey. We have never done anything of this extent before! Here we go...Que un milagro!....What a miracle!
Dios le bendiga,
God bless, Bruce and Katy

Traveler, there is no path.
Paths are made by walking.

Antonio Machado