It´s been a busy week. Have spent most of the time out of school with 2 sets of friends - a couple of girls I met in Mexico DF who arrived in Oaxaca a day after I did: Sarah, on her gap year from England, and Maria a photographer from Norway, who are travelling together.
Also John, a Texan who´s been my classmate at Solexico, who flew off home this morning after a long night out last night that took in a show by Mexico´s official salsa champions at a local club, several drinks at the bar La Divinia including the obligatory shots of tequila, and finally a visit to a very cool club called Elefante where we danced to the latest latino pop hits til the very early hours.
The fourth friend, Felipe, is also from the school and is a medic (more of which shortly) from Chicago. He´s also a mean salsa dancer and had women coming up to our table asking HIM for a dance after seeing his moves on the floor. Impressive - and all the more reason to master how it´s done this next year...
One of the more memorable moments of this week occured during around 3am Saturdat when I was alone in my bedroom. I´d woken with a start and couldn´t work out why... at least until I felt the outline of my mouth with my tongue. Something was wrong. A look at the mirror confirmed my initial fears - half my bottom lip had swelled up to about six times its normal size. Obviously a mosquito had feasted upon it. Though there was no pain it looked ridiculous.
Six hours later setting off to meet John and Felipe for a booked tour of the region and it wasn´t looking any better. I could just about suck it in to make it look normal - but could only hold the look for about 30secs before it started dribbling.
Luckily for me Felipe knew what to do - apply ice (and lots of it) to the area for an hour. It quickly went down. It seems this will work for any insect bite - handy hint.
The tour (270 pesos by Continental tours - M. Alcalá 201) was great. We started off at El Tule - a small village which houses a tree the Mexicans claim to be the biggest living biomass in the world. They reckon its about 2000+ years old and is now under threat as nearby recently built factories are competing for water reserves with it. Unfortunately it´s quite difficult to photo - and really ends up looking very much like any other tree, just the people next to it seem a bit smaller than usual (which most Mexicans are anyway).
Next stop was a how-to-weave-your-own carpet guide which was much more interesting than it sounds. We were shown the process from raw wool through to multi-coloured designs, all done by hand. What was fascinating was seeing where the dyes come from. For example the colour red is produced by harvesting insect cocoons from the surrounding cacti, opening them up to reveal a small bug which is then crushed to produce an incredibly vivid blood-like colour. Two kilos of bugs are needed to produce each full size carpet - and the same insects are used to produce a variety of lipsticks sold across the world. Nice rugs, but probably best to avoid sticking them in a mixed wash.
Then onto some the ruins of a temple destroyed by the conquistadors at Mitlan, and then a bumpy drive along to Hierve De Agua (Boiled Water) a huge petrified waterfall. Bubbling sulphur springs have formed the impressive site which also affords spectacular views over the Oaxacan valleys.
By 4pm we were starving and ready for a feast at a Mezcal factory and several shots of the spirit. For a drink that could easily pass as fortified petrol it goes down surprisingly well.
Damn, as I write I´ve just been bitten again behind my ear. This is getting ridiculous.
Anyway today´s been a nice chance to relax and get some reading done. I´m already into my 5th book (´Middlesex´ - have finished ´Ugly Americans´, the wonderful and esoteric ´The Confusion´, the weird ´The Man In The High Castle´ and the bloody awful ´The Discovery of Chocolate´ which read as if it had been written by a 3rd year English student).
There´s a brilliant English-language bookshop in town called Amate (M. Alcalá 307) a few blocks from the Zocalo where I´ve bought a few more titles including ´The Conquest of New Spain´ - an eyewitness account of Cortes´ invasion written by one of his soldiers who was annoyed by the ´official´ accounts. It´s been recommended to me by one of the BBC´s correspondents who used to be their man in Latin America so I´m looking forward to it.
The one thing I haven´t got round to yet is doing much formal Spanish study outside of class, although I have been speaking it loads. Back to school in the morning which will hopefully be an incentive to do some vocab and grammar study in the afternoons. I´ve cut back on the number of classes for week 2, though I´m probably going to skip at least one day of school to get down to Puerto Escondido before the weekend.
OK - more than enough for now. Anyone who´s actually made it to the end of the ramble please email me - would love to hear all your news...
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