un viaje a Santa Ana where the dogs were really scary

hola! so right now I am sitting in cafe trying to work on my independent study project...which is totally not happening but I am enjoying the drone of chatter going on in the background and the mix of american and mexican music that is playing while I am sitting at a seat by the window. We just got back from a night in a village outside the city called Santa Ana de la Valle. (Santana have you?) It was a pretty cool stay. I felt pretty weird being there at first since we are a huge group and it seemed like a place that didn't get many tourists. But we ended up doing really interesting things that sort of made up for it. I really would like to improve my Spanish so I can have more in depth conversations with local people. I think I would feel less intrusive. We talked about it a bit in one of the debriefs that we've had on traveling in Mexico, that by talking with people directly you are in a way exchanging something. But showing your genuine interest and care in their story or opinions, you are offering them something. I thought that was a cool way to think about it. And of course I would be learning more..

Santa Ana has 2,700 people in the village and another 2,000 or so surrounding it. It is a Zapotec weaving community based in an area that once was Aztec. Both men and women weave these beautiful carpets, called "tapetes".

los tapetes!

la iglesia de santa ana (church of santa anna)

poor sheep..the actual shearing was fine but hearing the noise of her skull  banging against the cobblestones while she was trying to get away was a little disconcerting. the man spoke spanish but the women mostly only spoke Zapotec

washing the fleece

fluffing and carding the fleece (here there was three natural colors; brown, grey, and white)                                    

spinning the wool...i was pretty impressed by this part, i dont really get how it works...it seems like the wool fibers wouldnt stay together as well as they do

that red powder is ground of cochineal (a bug that lives among cactus), a red dye.  historically its a pretty important export. the lemon juice sets the dye

To dye the wool, they put the skeins in water boiling over a fire and let it sit for about an hour. here they are using natural dyes, this yellow color is from a type of moss. They can get up to 7 different shades based on how long they let the yarn soak up the color. They also showed us the cochineal, black walnut, and marigold dyes. 

a cool cactus.

                This morning we woke up early and met at 6:30am to climb a hill/mountain overlooking the valley. It was beautiful watching the sunrise as we hiked and seeing the surrounding area. The hike was pretty rocky..I wasn't expecting anything but at the top there were some Aztec ruins..there weren't really any structures, just retaining walls and the flattened tops of the peaks. A man and his son graciously took us up because people aren't allowed to go into the lands without someone from the community since it is community land. Everyone in the village had been really kind to us. They weren't getting any compensation for hosting us, I think UVM was just giving a general donation to the village.
           After breakfast (fried egg and black bean enfrijoladas) we went to the town museum about its history.   It was interesting to hear that they exchange weaving patterns with Navajo and Apache people. The man telling us everything had gone through all the cargos (which is an indication of social standing..the men complete these different tasks for the community to earn social rank). He told us he wanted to answer all of our questions from the bottom of his heart.
         From there we went to a traditional healer who told us a little about how she practiced. She was self-taught and used herbs, foods, plants, and other methods to heal different fears, anger, illnesses, etc. She went around to all of us standing in a circle, blowing the smoke of what I think was burning myrrh and copal wood, as well as beating away bad energy with a bundle of plants. It was a really cool trip.

Nos vemos! (See yah)

(oh! and we tried cactus flower at the top of the hill that was oddly like kiwi. It was a bud filled with slimy black seeds that was slightly sweet. and the first night we found a scorpion in one of our bedrooms...they call them alacron here when they aren't poisonous..I still checked the walls before I went to sleep..)

And on to Oaxaca!

Some pictures from the 7 hr bus ride from Mexico City to Oaxaca. It was a really beautiful day and the landscape is amazing..I took a 4am bus from San Juan del Rio to Mexico City and a 6:30am bus from Mexico City to Oaxaca. I was asleep for a good portion of the ride but it was beautiful when I finally woke up. The buses are really nice like Greyhounds in the USA. Although security is really tight, with patting down and baggage screening.

volcano?

First glimpse of Oaxaca city!

So I dropped off my stuff at our hotel and proceeded to get very lost in the city.  I was starving and found these quesillo (fresh Oaxaca cheese that's pretty similar to mozarella) and squash flower/flor de calabaza empanadas. I eventually found my way back to our hotel after asking a good number of people for directions. 

Casa Arnel, where we spent the first night in Oaxaca city

Sometime in the evening I finally saw my director walking down the street and went over to say hi,  pretty glad to see a familiar face. We walked over to the hotel and a group of UVM students who had flown in together on the same flight were there to greet us :) Everyone else trickled in throughout the night, some baggage lost in the process..

The second day, we drove 30 minutes outside the city to stay for four or five days at a retreat center in a  tiny town called San Lorenzo. The place was beautiful and felt like a weird vacation away from home but it was a nice way to bond with the group and get some lessons on adapting to life in Mexico. We started two of our classes, starting to think about our semester long Independent study projects and taking a class on the history and some politics of Mexico. 

One of our rooms at El Encuentro, a retreat center owned by a dream intepreter

Courtyard at El Encuentro

da pool that was filled with freezing well water

a yoga studio or something where we had classes for the first week

stairs and some big cacti

A wall with a cool stone design

Overlooking pre-hispanic  indigenous 500 BC ruins at Monte Alban

our group :) all 23 of us

a stadium for a ball sport at the ruins

An acacia tree, Oaxaca roughly means "over the acacia tree" in Nahuatl. The seed pods (the maroon things in this picture) can be eaten in a sauce or toasted

my roomie Gretchen

more funky trees that look like strange aquatic plants

After our retreat, we went back to Casa Arnel in the city where our luggage was stored and  our host parents came to pick us up just like summer camp..My "mom" Concepcion and 20 something "brother" Ruben came to pick us up in their car and a taxi to bring home all our stuff. The house is incredible, I'll take some pictures at some point. It is colonial style with an open-air courtyard in the center. I share a room with another girl on our program, Gretchen on the second floor. Corey lives on the first floor where most of the bedrooms are and the kitchen. Then there is a spiral staircase up to the roof overlooking the city. And a few other people live in the house, a girl named Jacki from Iowa here on winter term and some other people I haven't really met. Concepcion or Gloria, our 80 something year old aunt cooks breakfast at 8:15am and comida (the big meal of the day) at 2:30pm for us everyday. The food is really good and there is always way too much of it :) Luis is our dad and there is another women Maria who is often around that works in the family convenience store that is attached to the house.


Adios for now! Besos :)

Goodbye central mejico

Here are some more pre-semester pictures! (All from Mexico City D.F. and around the state of Querétaro) Sorry some are facing sideways, I couldn't figure out how to get blogger to rotate them..

La Peña Bernal (Queretaro)

a church by the Zócalo of San Juan del Rio

a partial view of the central panel of Diego Rivera's mural in the National Palace documenting his take on Mexico's history and  future

right panel of the Rivera mural in la Palacio

El Torre Latinoamericano at dawn in Mexico City

La Palacio Nacional (where the President's offices are located)

a close-up with some of Rivera's signature calla lilies

embroidery street vender (San Sebastion Bernal)

 

very Spanish-looking palacio nacional courtyard

super good stone ground chocolate soft serve

some indigenous dancers for the tourists (mexico city) 

Bellas Artes, a performance center and art/muralist gallery

Boats of Xochimilco (a world heritage site in southern mexico city).  These boats are just touristy at this point but used to be for transport pre-hispanic times for these canals used for an Aztec farming technique of floating gardens called "Chinampas"

Xochimilco canals (Mexico City)

La Plaza de Tres Culturas (100 B.C. pre-Hispanic civilization ruins, Hispanic churches, and modern skyscrapers)

in a flower market in Xochimilco

the coins are for wealth on this abundance plant for new years :)

I liked these..

foggy view from the top of los tres gordos, three hills each with a large cross on top(San Juan del Rio)

Adorable dog that befriended us while we were waiting

Fruit stand in a market!

The street Danni's dad lives on

Another view from front door of the house (San Juan del Rio). All the houses are colonial style, each with an enclosed driveway and open courtyard in the center between the different house units

Cactuses! (to eat) they're called Nopal

Tacos! At Danni's friend's family's street restaurant 

Fun fact we learned in class: Mexico changed it's name from Mejico when it gained independence from Spain as a means of starting to create it's national identity..too bad we butcher the pronunciation..