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 :)