Archive for March, 2004

We’re on the home stretch! I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone by. We have been here in Oaxaca, Mexico (away from the brutal New York winter!) for almost 4 months and I remember quite clearly those first days in Oaxaca…feelings of cluelessness regarding my Spanish (I still feel that way sometimes), parades that pop in the streets from seemingly nowhere, tomales…We have had an amazing experience! However, by this time, I am very excited to get back to our home in New York…our friends, church family, and the city itself. We are making preparations to return to New York one week from tomorrow, Saturday, March 27. However, this doesn’t mean that there has been a lack of amazing cultural activities. Two weekends ago, my uncle (John Schuetze, a professor at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary in Milwaukee, WI, studying Spanish in Puebla, Mexico…most nieces and nephews call him ‘Uncle John’, I prefer ‘Tio Juano’) and a friend (Nathan Wagenknecht, a bilingual missionary currently living and instructing future Mexican pastors in Puebla) visited us in Oaxaca. We had a wonderful weekend. It was great to see familiar faces for a couple of days and we covered a lot of territory. Apart from the tlayudas (huge, delicious Mexican style pizza) and variety of artistic performers in the streets (See picture of university singers in ‘Photo Gallery’, category ‘Monte Alban’), we enjoyed a day at Monte Alban.

Monte Alban used to be a city on a mountain 1000 feet above the city of Oaxaca. Archeologists date the first settlers of Monte Alban at 500 B.C. These settlers were the ancestors of the present-day Zapotec people and are said to have founded the Americas’ first metropolis. Their city was quite advanced as they built pyramids, palaces, and athletic fields. They grew many fruits and vegetables and are one of various ancient Mexican groups that domesticated dogs (although, there are still many vagabond dogs running around in the streets!). Ranging from a population of 2000 people at it’s beginning and 40,000 at its height (this is in an area of roughly only 3 square miles…sounds like New York!), Monte Alban ruled a large part of southern Mexico for about 1000 years, was overrun by a combination of drought, disease, and war, and was almost completely uninhabited by 1000 A.D. However, they left behind ruins of an amazing, ancient city for us to visit! ¡Muchas Gracias! (See picture of Monte Alban in ‘Photo Gallery’, category ‘Monte Alban’)

Last week, one of our teachers, Javier (both Sarah and I have him for private classes) took me to one of the pueblos outside of the city for our class. This pueblo, called San Bartolo, is famous for its black pottery. I have an early class with Javier so, when we arrived, the market was still closed. There was, however, one tienda/store open. Here, the pottery is made by an elderly woman who is quite famous for her work. By coincidence, her grandson who sells their products in the adjoining tienda was one of Javier’s high school classmates. They hadn’t seen each other in 10 years! Thanks to our ‘in’ with the grandson, his grandmother gave us a private demonstration and tour of the operation! (Again, see pictures in the ‘Monte Alban’ category.)

Finally, today was another fiesta in Oaxaca! Every year, on the 4th Friday of Lent, they celebrate ‘El Día de la Samaritana´. This day commemorates the time when Jesus was resting at a well and asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. He, then, proceeded to talk to her about ‘living water’, referring to the gift of faith that is the ‘water’ for eternal life in heaven. The tradition has evolved quite a bit over the years to what it was today. (Pictures in ‘Photo Gallery’, category ‘Monte Alban’.) At about the sixth hour’ (as the Bible says), which is observed here at 11:00A or 12:00 Noon, many schools, offices, and churches give away water, flavored with pineapple, watermelon, horchata, chilacayota, and many other flavors. I don’t know what they all are, but they taste good! In a picture in the photo gallery, you will also notice a woman dressed up as the Samaritan woman from the story.

That’s all I have for now. We look forward to seeing those of you in New York in about 1 week!
Steven, Sarah, & Adia

It’s been a while since I wrote…things have been quite busy here. Shortly after my last journal entry, we were told that we had to move. Our hostess had a previous commitment with another traveler, telling her that she could stay in the room in which we were living. Instead of moving to different rooms throughout her house, we decided to find our own place to live. It was the time to do so. Being a family of 3, accustomed to our own living space, we were ready to have our own apartment after 3 months of living with another family. We had an excellent experience with our host family. We have close friends in Ricardo and Inelva and wouldn’t trade it for anything, but we are also very happy now in our own place. We live in a 2-bedroom apartment close to our school. Inelva and Severa continue to baby sit Adia and Inelva’s 3-year old grandson, Victor. Adia continues to learn more and more Spanish from them!

Remember in my last entry, I mentioned that I have a new nickname, ‘Chilero’? I was getting really proud of myself for being able to eat almost anything, which I did! ‘They’ (i.e. foreign travelers to Mexico) tell you to stay away from certain things like fruit that hasn’t been properly washed and food from street vendors, which I did for a while, but how could I resist those delicious street vender hot dogs that bring back memories of New York?! How does one live in a unique country and culture without indulging himself in the delicacies of that culture?! So, it didn’t take long before I started to indulge, and I never got sick! I ate hot dogs off the street, some of the hottest chile peppers Mexico has to offer, and anything else from cactus soup to grasshoppers (chapulines) to pig’s skin (chicharrón) in salsa (but I never drank the water). Like I said, I was quite proud of what I called my ‘stomach of steel’! Well, ‘they’ also tell you to expect to get sick when you travel to Mexico. ‘They’ say that, for foreigners, it’s not a question of ‘if?’, but ‘when?’. I was thinking that this little ‘rule of the tourist’ didn’t apply to me…until 2 weeks ago! I don’t know what it was, but it happened when we were in transition from the house to our apartment. During that time, we had to eat out a number of times and/or pick up food on the go. Needless to say, my diet wasn’t the healthiest in the world and mi estómago estaba inquieto, to say the very least…enough said!

However, we (Sarah was sick, too) healed up in time to take a weekend at the beach (see pictures in ´Photo Gallery´ under the category ´Huatulco´). Sarah, Adia, & I visited Huatulco, Mexico 2 weekends ago. Huatulco is on the southern shore of Mexico’s Pacific coast, and is a series of 9 natural bays bordered by beautiful rock formations and mountains. It is one of Mexico’s best-kept secrets because it is hard to access from outside of the country. The water is a beautiful clear blue and the sky is a stunning, brilliant blue. The weather is perfect…in the sun, the daily temperature was around 100 (but didn’t feel nearly that hot) and it was in the low to mid 80’s in the shade. We stayed at an amazing resort on the beach, and took an oceanic excursion. Highlights include observing giant sea turtles in the wild and snorkeling, not to mention many other beautiful sites of God’s creation. It was a much needed break for us as we practiced our Spanish a lot but didn’t have the daily grind of classes and homework. We have been back in Oaxaca for over a week and are energized to finish the last month of school.

¡Hasta la próxima!