This week we celebrated Karyme's, my host mom's, and my cousin's birthday, and not to forget the
United States of America!!!
I love my little cousin!
And her father....I can't really take him seriously. He's so funny!
My host mom's birthday! Of course some choco-flan was a must.
We celebrated the 4th of July a day late and made homemade hamburgers and potato salad.
I could not have been happier in than moment with that big old hamburger in my mouth.
Karla painted my nails to celebrate. She does this all free-hand. She's amazing!
One of the teacher's lives with a family that has a daughter in the school. She kept bugging me to paint a butterfly on my face with make-up. I told her she could make me look like a teacher. Have I looked like a "maestra" she kept bugging me to make me a "maestra mariposa" (a butterfly teacher). These were the results. She then painted her mom's face and I painted Kayla's.
My tio has been sick and so I went to visit him before he went to Puebla for a while to get some tests. I love how he calls me sobrina. Everyone is like family here. I am going to miss them so much. :)
I love these kids so much. They all have such funny little quirks and I wish I had time to tell you all of them.
Just singing some "mama shark" and "baby bumblebee."
I'm going to miss the kids and my friends at this school.
This post is long past due because there is so much to write that I have been procrastinating showing you this awesomeness.
Last
week (now two almost three weeks ago) we had two days off from school and we were able to plan a little
vacation to Oaxaca, a city that is about 3 hours south of us. Long story
short, it was beautiful and amazing!!!!! These pictures truly don't do
it justice, but we'll see what we can do. :) I can't wait to go back again one day!
We left
Tehuacan on Thursday afternoon. I left for the bus a little bit later
than I should have (surprise surprise) and I got to the bus station 6
minutes before our bus was supposed to leave...and then we waited, and
waited....45 minutes later we were on our way to Oaxaca! That was the
ONLY thing that was not perfect on the entire trip. Can I also add that
there was a miracle in that I put everything I needed into one backpack
and it wasn't even heavy?! Miracle! (I'm not know for my ability to pack incredibly light.)
As we arrived to
Oaxaca we took a taxi to our hostel and it was such a great place! If
anyone is passing through Oaxaca I highly recommend The Don Miguel Hostel. We
payed 120 pesos for each night which is only about 10 bucks and it was a
two minute walk to the centro from there. What a deal!
We stayed in the cheapest room with 14 bunk beds and we were the only 3 there plus the girl that lives there! :)
Thursday evening we just went to the centro and started exploring. We
started with the music festival going on, with live music and dancing.
After that we found more live music. (side note-live street music is on
my list of top favorite 3 things that make me ridiculously happy...so
yes, I was happy. :) ) We explored some of the little mercados as well.
So many fun things! If only money (and suitcase space) was unlimited!
It's not everyday you find giant dancing dolls with a live band in the street.
We also found the famous Oaxacan Tlyudas! This lady has been making
Tlyudas on this street corner for 25 years! My whole life time! I can't
image doing that day after day from 7pm-2am (that's what she told us)
for 25 years! But they were sure good. It's basically a huge thin
tortilla with a little bit of beans and of course salsa and carne asada.
I tried to get this picture to change like 6 times, but alas....here it is...The point of the picture is that Tlyudas are huge! And this one is folded in half!
Friday we planned to go on a tour to some of the surrounding areas.
It was worth every peso and then some!!! Absolutely incredible. Our tour
guide is a Oaxacan native, but learned English and so he did the tour
in English and Spanish. He was so funny and really knew his stuff. (I
guess that happens when you have been doing tours for 24 years.) It was
just the 3 of us and then 3 other Hispanic couples on the tour.
Benito Juarez is a hero in Mexico's history and his home state is Oaxaca. This is not a painting, but it's a stone mural of his life and some of his accomplishments. Each colored stone is placed perfectly to create this beautiful mural.
We
started by going to see, you know, just the widest tree in the
world...no big deal. It's only 180 ft around and is 2,000 years old.
El Arbol de Tule
This is Tule's son. He's not quite as big and he's only 1,000 years old. haha He lives in the same park.
After that we went to an indigenous pueblo that is famous for their wool
carpets that they weave by hand. Teotitlan del Valle is the richest
indigenous pueblito in Mexico for their wool carpets. They taught us how
they spin their own wool, dye it and then weave it. It truly is an
incredible process.
Each dye is organic made from their own herbs, flowers, and other plants that they grow. The reds are made from a parasite on a cactus. When they added lemon juice to the red it turned yellow. It was amazing to watch.
One of these large rugs can take up to 6-7 weeks if they just have a simple geometric pattern.
The rugs with pictures take 6 months or longer! I can't image the patience that goes into that!
We then continued on our merry way to an ancient ruin called Mitla.
Such an incredible history. When our tour guide was giving us a history
of the ways and things that took place those hundreds and hundreds of
years ago I couldn't help but think of the people in the Book of Mormon
and all the wars and things that took place. It certainly makes the
stories come to life by being in a place like that.
I thought it was interesting that the people of Mitlan used this whole area as their mercado until the 1960's when they closed it to the mercado and started excavating the area.
These stairs were actually used as stadium seating back in the day. It is facing the center of the whole area, where they would do sacrifices, have fights or other amusing social events like that....
What blew my mind about all these designs is that they are not carved. Every stone was individually placed! What?! Can you imagine placing every stone on a giant stone building?!
The tour guide was telling us that the people back then were really small. A) I would look like a giant next to them...maybe not a giant....but freakishly tall. B)I can't imagine building what they did being so small!
The walls are several feel thick and so when we entered into the back rooms the temperature dropped significantly even though it was quite warm outside.
Going down into a tomb. :)
These are 9-ft stone pillars. There's kind of a controversy among historians as to if they were used to hold up a roof or as a type of sundial. I'd like to think of them as a sundial. :)
We stopped at a restaurant (definitely the nicest/most expensive one
I've been to since being here) for lunch. It was a buffet so we got to
try a lot of fancy Mexican dishes and deserts. Oaxaca is also famous for
their mole and so I go to try both red and black mole! I don't which
one I liked best because they were both really good. (None of the food
at the restaurant was as good as what I ate on my mission with the
members or what I eat everyday with my family here in Mexico.)
A 3 wheeled taxi? Ok. :)
After lunch was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. We drove
40 minutes up into the mountains and arrived to a mountain village
where the famous 'Hierve del Agua' is found. There are only two places
like found in the world like this! The other is in Pamukkale, Turkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamukkale.
(They call theirs "The Cotton Castle." checking out the pictures on
Google is definitely worth it. It is now on my bucket list of places to
go.)
I swan in that. It seems like it was a dream. It was perfect.
Oh, you know, just swimming on top of a cliff. :)
Unfortunately we had to leave this little piece of heaven and head to
a Mezcal factory. Oaxaca is also very famous for their Mezcal. It's
alcohol made out of the agave plant. They showed of the fermation
process, which was very interesting, especially because it smelled like
sweet BBQ sauce....How they make alcohol out of that is beyond me...but
hey...whatever floats their boat I guess. Then everyone had a chance to
try every flavor they have. They put it in a creme mixture and then have
many different flavors. We did a lot of smelling, but no actually tasting. :)
Instead we bought some homemade ice cream. Even the ice cream here is
growing on me. It's going to be hard to leave. :(
The whole day we kept saying, "We're doing ALL of this for 200 pesos?!" Best 200 pesos I've ever spent! (That's only like $15!)
We got back at about 7pm and walked around the centro for a little
bit and decided that we wanted to just get pizza and go back to the
hostel to write about our adventures. Dominos does a pretty good pizza
here, just fyi. Also, while waiting for our pizza there was a girl that
we guessed was from America or from Europe somewhere. (I had guessed
Belgium). We finally talked to her on our way out and she's from Germany
but had spent a year in Minnesota on a study abroad. She was really nice,
but she told us that she knew we were from America because of how many
times we said "like." hahahaha and then we like realized like how often
we say like in a sentence because like it just comes out like that, and
now I like really realize like how much I say like. It was pretty
funny/embarrassing.
Our pizza night at the hostel
ended in a relaxing game of Phase 10 and much laughter. (mostly because
apparently I'm exactly like Grace's best friend and every time I said anything she
would freak out and say, "Oh my gosh! Rachel would totally say that!"
or "Oh my gosh! Rachel totally does that!" haha It was crackin' me up.
Saturday
we didn't have too much planned (which I like because it leaves room
for adventure). But we still saw some amazing things. Oaxaca has a
massive amphitheater on top of a hill that holds 11,000 people so we
decided to run up to the to (#thoughtiwasgoingtodie) the top for some
exercise. It was worth the pain (#nowimjustbeinalldramatic) because we
could see the entire city from the top of the hill.
Yay for 'selfie'-timer!
I took this picture from the roof of our hostel...yeah, we ran up that death hill to the ampitheatre that morning.
sure, I could carve a woman out of a tree trunk....uh, not.
After
showering and getting ready for the day we spent the afternoon shopping
in the mercados and trying to get the best deal on everything. "cuantos
lo menos" we'd ask for everything. I'm pretty happy with my purchases, and
I can't wait for my family to see what I got for them! We found a crazy
meat market where we ate tacos. It was quite the experience.
Afterwards
we just wandered the city and found the famous Santo Domingo cathedral
and a beautiful park and a more quiet side of the mercado where the
Mexican hippies hung out and it was so relaxing! It was such a beautiful
weekend and we could have stayed much longer! I can't wait to return and
be able to see more of the museums and Monte Alban!
Can you imagine putting all the gold and sculptures on the ceiling?!
This is just one of the "small" chapels on the side.
A side garden at the Santo Domingo
The
vacation couldn't have ended more perfectly-It started raining as we
left and the bus driver played the movie Frozen in Spanish on the way
home. :) I love my life.
