Monte Alban Ball Field

 

Monte Alban

 

Monte Alban

 

Monte Alban

 

Monte Alban

 

Monte Alban

 

Monte Alban Entrance

 

Santo Domingo Convent

 

Santo Domingo Pulpit

 

Daily Diary 1

Daily Diary (1)

January 9,
The dawn of another beautiful day and we were off to a slow start. This is one of the great advantages of being on holidays for a long time with no necessity to be out and about so as not to miss anything of note. Marie and I went separate ways: she to buy baby wool and I to get some money from the bank. The cash flow this week will be very high with the need to pay our landlady for the rent and pay for language lessons. Another fear was put to rest as the automatic teller delivered to me the requested amount of money.

With cash in hand, I found the landlady to settle up but not without first extracting my own pound of flesh. I wanted new bedding, new pots and pans, batteries for the TV remote-even though we don’t watch Spanish shows, towels changed twice a week instead of once and a light-bulb replaced in the bathroom. Oh, if all things in life should be so easy. All of my requests were met with positive response without the slightest argument and all matters were fully corrected by days end. When we left the building about one hour later, we encountered some people trying to arrange an appointment with the landlady. We overheard the landlady’s daughter tell these folks that her mother was not available since she was out buying new pots and pans for “those people”.

Our first Spanish lesson was held at the English language library. The teacher was Flor Bautista, a vibrant young woman of about 28. She was a very good teacher forced to work with very poor students. If she was getting frustrated with our stupidity, she certainly didn’t show it.

Class ended at 4pm and we had a 5:30 dinner engagement at the other end of the city. We were invited to the apartment of Dave and Jan Rooney, he a retired dentist and she the epitome of Anne Shirley from “Anne of Green Gables”. Jan was a little spit of a woman and as lively and vivacious a person as you would ever want to meet. Their apartment could in no way be described as luxurious. It was on the third and top floor of a rambling tenement with a large courtyard that also served as a parking area. You walk up three flights of exterior stairs and across a variety of suspended walkways to reach the apartment. It consisted of a single room with a double bed at one end, a kitchen in the middle and livingroom cum bedroom at the other end. There was a bathroom behind the kitchen. The apartment did have a huge deck that offered fabulous views of the skyline and the mountains surrounding the city. The singular purpose of the get together was to observe the sunset, which while nice was nothing approaching spectacular. I had to presume that living in Boston as they did, sunsets, spectacular or otherwise where not all that common.

It is worth remembering that Jan had approached us on the street and invited us to her home out of the blue. Another couple joined the gathering shortly thereafter who had been invited in the same fashion. The man was a professor of English from an Indiana university and his wife of thirteen years was a Mexicana from San Cristobel. A young woman, also an American, then joined the crowd. She was a soldier of fortune in the field of foreign aid and travelled the world. Her most recent assignment has been to Guyana. After graduating from university, I had been the Guyana desk officer with the Canadian International Development Agency so she and I were able to share stories on the then and now. Finally, an elderly American of German heritage joined us. He was a small man with a shock of white hair and a decided accent although he had lived in Chicago since 1939. He was scheduled to leave for Puerto Escondido the next day for a month on the beach. Although he gave no evidence to the effect, Jan told me quietly that he was gay to the bone. (no offence intended).

It was a most pleasant evening and we managed to consume a huge supply of home made guacamole, cheese and cerveza. Since we had a long walk ahead of us we left around nine and walked into a still bustling city. The evening was warm and the walk was pleasant. We will meet again with Jan and Dave on Wednesday for a regular dance session at the zocalo.

January 10, 2006

Up at the crack of dawn, we actually got on the road by nine thirty. Other than getting Marie registered for yoga classes, we had the morning free to explore the some of the sites for which Oaxaca is famous. Our destination was the church of Santo Domingo and the adjacent convent (monastery). They are both state properties now and have been turned into a museum. The church dates back to the sixteenth century although it has been modified and rebuilt as a result of earthquake damage. It and the convent are in impeccable condition. This church is justifiable famous for the baroque interior that has enough gilding to pay off the Canadian national debt. The church also has a magnificent ceiling depicting the tree of life in the growth of the church. The monastery is more like a palace and has a strong Moorish influence in its design. It is huge with numerous wings and courtyards. A wall of cut stone, approximately fifteen feet high, surrounds the entire property. Besides the building, there are huge grounds dedicated to the growth of indigenous plants: mainly cacti.

A fee of $4.50US is charged to get into the nunnery but people over 60 or under 14 years are admitted free. I was very happy to take full advantage of this benefit and will leave it to you to guess the category I fell into.

We stopped in the zocalo for lunch on the way home and had hamburgers at the world’s most expensive hamburger restaurant. We did meet up with an acquaintance from the jazz evening who was busy getting advertisers for a magazine he edits.

We had to get home quickly after lunch so as to be at Spanish lessons on time. I confess to being really tired from the outing and the sun and would sooner have napped. I literally dragged myself to class and found it was refreshing to just sit for a couple of hours. We went home and rested until about 7 when we headed out for supper. Our first stop, however, was to see Luu Luu who had an apartment to rent. We liked the apartments but the only one she had was right on the street and a bit noisy for our liking. Also the possession date was indeterminate. We decided to look further before deciding. We still have twenty days to go.

We headed off to Macedonia Alcala, the main tourist strip in Oaxaca and found an Italian restaurant offering pizza. This sounded perfect to Marie who loves pepperoni pizza. I decided to go along with this choice for health reasons since I am sure my system was lacking in salts which could be the only reason to explain my fatigue. The pizza was excellent as was the Corona.

One of the more interesting aspects of being a foreigner in a foreign land is our willingness to seek out strangers who are like ourselves: foreigners. Today we joined in conversation with Ron. He was a good-looking kid of 23 from Arizona. He has finished his pre-meds at the University of Pennsylvania and is planning on entering medical school in New York. He is in Oaxaca for the next two months shadowing a Mexican surgeon to learn Spanish medical terminology and he is paying for the privilege. He already speaks Spanish fluently and will probably end up in practise serving the burgeoning Mexican community in the USA. Based on our short meeting with Ron, I am certain he will be very successful.

January 11, 2006

Today we made a special outing to Monte Alban: a spectacular ruined city of the Zapotec people who established their own empire between the Aztecs to in the north and the Mayans in Guatemala. The archaeological site is only a short drive from Oaxaca; perhaps fifteen kilometres. It is perched on the very top of one of the highest mountains in the area and offers a commanding view of the Oaxacan valley and countryside.

It is estimated that only ten percent of the former city of 40,000 people has been excavated and yet the visible portion was massive and staggering in its significance. The Mexican government has done a marvellous job of restoration. For me to describe the buildings and facilities would not do justic