First weeks in school and casa

Yo estudio...tu estudias..el/ella estudia...nosotros estudiamos.....
I study...you (informal) study..he/she study...we study...
Sometimes the patterns can be nicely applied to conjugating other verbs. For example, the phrase that has become our most often used one after the end of our first week of language classes at the Instituto Cultural is NOSOTROS ESTAMOS CANSADOS! ( We are tired!)
But as in most things in life, there are always exceptions and breaks from patterns. And our grand plan to study 6-7 hours a day will have to be an exception to our new reality. Which is being restructured, or we will fall apart like two old stone buildings.
After talking with other students here, we have sensed much less of a need to maximize all the schooling we can into 3-4 weeks, which is the usual term of study for most. But we can, and should, and will pace ourselves better since we are here for the longterm. We have changed to another school that will accept our need of just 3 hours daily. This will give us smaller bites of grammar and conversation...easier to digest, and not leave us so tired with a belly-full of high calorie verb tenses.
And we need more time in the afternoon to explore the town and activate our contacts here for a small house or apartment to rent. This will cut in half our housing budget from our current short term lodging expense., plus give us the ability to be independent and shop and socialize locally. This week we will be shown some housing options by some Oaxaquenos.
Our first two weeks lodging here, with Rene and Paula Rodriquez has been very sweet. Although Rene is busy as an architect, and therefore with rusty fingers on the guitar melodies, we managed together to design and construct a few nice traditional/original/ plagurized/ condensed and reconstituted melodies of our own. The courtyard evenings are sweet, with slow patient Spanish driven by caffeine-fast and chocolaty Oaxacan coffee, and moderated by 70 degree moonlight and midnights.
Each morning, we arise to a welcoming-of-the-new-day authentic breakfasts of Paula. This home will be bitter-sweet in leaving, but when we do, it will be in body only....for again in Mexico we have been shown such a spirit of manners and hospitality, that this bound will no doubt, perhaps, play itself out in the future.
It is good for us to attend to the precept of hospitality, to be ready to give to strangers, for we too, are strangers in the world. Ambrose

Tal vez, perhaps.......we hear this phrase often.
The Tal Vez Perspective: not an evasive yeah-maybe-straddle-the-fence statement with very little commitment, but a subtle acknowledgment of the mystery and reciprocal nature of relationships and destiny in our lives.
Tal vez...perhaps when we least suspect it...God and friends will show themselves on a street corner, and we will re-unite for a a lovely afternoon.
I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place. Rufus Jones

Buenas noches, Bruce and Katy

New photos, new experiences-July

First picture is of Rene and Paula Rodriquez, our host family...playing music on a sweet night.
The next photos are of our first week of Spanish language school.

More street pictures

First Saturday in Oaxaca (wah-HAH-kah)

The eyes of my eyes are opened.
E.E. Cummings

To awaken in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea what's in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown.
Freya Stark

Even though still tired, we did heed the advice and let ourselves go for a short couple of hours ramble into the unknown streets on our first Saturday. The pictures on this entry can capture your momentary attention and please, but can only barely express the color and emotions that we felt when we took in this surprise parade. Que maraviloso! How marvelous! The faces just beamed with pride, we were so affected and refreshed by this public community event that focused on the visual and audio. Splendor and pride and passion...what a lift for the spirit, another gift of grace for these two tired gringos. Gracias, Bruce, Katy

The Mexican loves fiestas and public gatherings. Any occasion for getting together to stop the flow of time and commemorate people and events with festivals and ceremonies--national, local or family, the Mexican opens out. The important thing is to go out, open away, get drunk on noise, people and colors. Octavio Paz

Arriving in Oaxaca

July 15
Well the dreams of the 6 hour bus to Oaxaca were hard to figure out, since mental exhaustion and the curves of the isolated mountains of Oaxaca kept us napping only occasionally. We arrived 6:30 a.m. in the dimmest daylight, but enough to see a packed bus station and curbs full of taxis.
Quickly the often mentioned phrases of guidebooks summarizing Oaxacan personality: friendly, very helpful--- jumped off the page into reality when our taxi guy swept us off the next incoming wave of bus travelers and into his four-wheeled safe harbor.
Almost no English, but a huge smile and patient Spanish that revealed he had worked in some kind of clothes manufacturing in Citrus Heights, CA. for 5 years. A very short ride, but long enough to know that he is a fellow with a heart and social tongue, that I would invite out for a cerveza should I see him in the center plaza some day.
At 7 a.m. straight up, our home host Rene Rodriquez was waiting with an open door, and within minutes we were imported into the simple, functional beauty of this touch-of-modern home. He is an architect, and his wife is a high-school teacher of history and social science... and her summer science laboratory of home cooking is her kitchen of great food for us and 4 other foreign students.
We took in full R.E.M. sleep hours into the afternoon, then walked to the Instituto Cultural, our Spanish language school for the next 4 weeks. A charming and tranquil, shaded and gardened 19th century estate. On Monday morning we start 6 hours a day of grammar, conversation and culture classes. Not being official students until when the bell rings on Monday, we cruised outta here like teenagers... like, really fast, to catch the action and heartbeat of the center historic district.
El Centro made a very pleasant first impression, accentuated by the pedestrian main avenues, lined with modern Mexican art galleries, old stores selling fruit and tostadas, and 16th century gilded churches comforting young and old souls. This town's character, we of course don't know yet, but this town seems to have the right disposition to be a cool place to have a beer with a taxi driver.

Vistas de Guanajuato

Guanajuato

Leaving Guanajuato

On July 14 we started on another stage of our migracion south to Oaxaca via Mexico City.
The method of transport now will not be on the swift wings of airplanes, but on the rolling wheels of a 10 hour bus ride. Que fantastico! For now, I would not change my Mexican bus for the quicksiver jet; this 1st class approx. $30 dollar bus to Mexico City has the the comfort and legroom and cupholders and huge curtained windows that I have never been able to pay for and experience in the 1st class airlines.
This 33 dollar bus is what I've always walked past in the first section after saying ' hello' to airstewards...and I've never seen offered by Greyhound.
Buses are king in Mexico! There are many levels of this regal mobile court, in accordance to price paid, and the choices of destination and timetables are full and sufficient. I can bow and pay respect and homage to this type of transportation right now, because I HAVE SO MUCH LEGROOM!
Three more hours until Mexico City...I will almost fully recline my seat back...and dream of what awaits us.

Otra dia en Guanajauto

Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped and you find yourself speechless among the money changers, it is like starting over again.

Graham Greene, Another Mexico

After arriving in Guanajuato with no difficulties on Wednesday afternoon July 6, we met Senor Jesus, who was sent to greet and deliver us to the home of Martha Abascal. El Senor is perhaps 70 yrs. old with a smirk and sparkle in his eyes, influenced by, I think, 8 children who live lovingly nearby, a lifetime of a loving wife who passed away a few years ago...and a lifetime not yet finished as a fan of the San Francisco Giants and New York Yankees.

We were a bit speechless during the drive to Guanajuato and still acclimating to the culture and altitude of 6,700 ft....but within kilometros there was a sweet release from timidity, and our bridge to international understanding was speaking the Spanish accented names of WILLIE MAYS, MICKEY MANTLE, HOME RUNS...while into the terraced town.

Our hearts adjusted within minutos y secundos after we hugged in glad tears at Martha's door. This woman was a huge reason and catalyst for us deciding to return to Mexico and absorb, learn and hopefully replicate the genuine, simple gestures of hospitality and humbleness.

Si, we are starting over...and we hope we are never quite the same again.

Walk, walk, saunter, stroll, ramble, meander, climb, descend....Guanajuato is a compact, steep hillside city of approx. 100,000, that always greets and comforts you with it's manageable size and pedestrian streets in the historic downtown. This city behaves as a small town, and shows itself humbly while wearing working-class clothes and sparking occasionally with the dressed-up energy and creativity of it's university and other arts and music festivals.

We have already, most likely, walked more in five days than in our previous five months. Up and down, and in and out of twisty rock and pebble streets, where at times neighboring homes with balconies come within a few yards of each other. Small oasis-like plazas with fountains of a hundred years or more suddenly appear when you are in the maze of streets that never create nervous concern of lost location or lost time.

Our hostess, Martha, La Santa de Hospitalidad (hospitality) is also feeding and lodging four other young people fro Oregon and California. So, during the afternoons main and large meal of the day, ( la comida ) we speak a potluck of Spanish and English at telling stories of back home and the serendipity of the new moments here. An eclectic moment that will reside quite awhile in my scrapbook mind, is when one of the southern California guys shared of his love of guitar playing. I offered up one of our guitars, and before we knew it, our plates had long gone cold and we were two hours into our own unique momentary universe of music-making. This twenty-something music soul-mate sparked with some awesome, inventive improvisational melody lines, and we were able to push and pull one another down some creative musical roads...like two bicyclists changing roles and drafting behind one another.

In the end, we sped through such scenery as : WoodyGuthrieLand, JazzVille, Pueblos de Pseudo-Latin, avenues with no names, etc.

I am left exhausted, and so refreshed...and so expectant about coming mysteries and strangers.

Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night, and I do not worry about my destiny.

Carl Sandburg

Adios, companeros

In Guanajuato-Gracias!

To know something, then, we must be

scrubbed raw, the fasting heart exposed.

Gretel Ehrlich

One journal entry must attend to the emotions of the heart, mind and soul during our frenetic and frantic preparations for leaving home in the last week before departure.

Short Observed List: crying, doubting, laughing, hoping, loving, reflecting, understanding, despairing.

More will be added to the list as we move further away in time from our experience of being scrubbed raw. But this we know so far, something we know very deep in our hearts...that while our spirits were crashed and dashed with not renting our house until the last two days before leaving, and last hours and minutes were being spent with family, and bulging suitcases resisted our attempts to subdue and conquer them in the wrestling match for the final closed zipper....our exposed hearts were so quickly attended to by such competent paramedic friends and directing God, that there was no real possibility of us dying.

There were exposed nerves from all the emotional scrubbing, but the healing has begun from the soothing ointment of care given to us from all those back home.

Gracias, muchas gracias, Bruce and Katy

If the only prayer you say in your whole life is, "Thank You", that would suffice.

Meister Eckart