Lauren's Day-to-Day Life, part 2

It may be advisable to scroll down and read my prior entry first...

But I am picking up where I left off in my daily life, about 2 in the afternoon on a weekday. The kids' school here runs from 7:50-2:30, longer than the public school schedule of 8-1. Oaxaca is particularly troubled by problems with the teachers' unions, so for example the local primaria has missed at least 2 weeks of school already this year due to strikes. Ironically, the protesting teachers--whose main demand seems to be salary increases--get paid throughout the strike period because of their political backroom influence! However, the first grade son of the husband/wife couple who care for our rental house, Mauro and "Meli" (short for Amelia!), is simply stuck with another day that he doesn't get to learn.

Several of the local families at Colegio Teizcali have told us they opted for private school because in the public system, their children simply missed too many days each year. One of my language teachers states that the teachers' unions are utterly corrupt, with far greater political influence than those of us from the states can easily imagine. On a recent day I gave a talk to Harper's class about "mi profesion," and while comparing some of a children's advocates activities to Mexican teachers who were marching on the zocalo that day, I found Harper's teacher eager to help me explain alternative strategies!

Getting back to a typical weekday, all pickups at this small school take place in the front lobby. We draw index cards bearing our children's names from small boxes on the wall organized by grade, and give them to a lead teacher whose job is to call the children out of their classroom by name. It is personalized, friendly, somewhat tedious--and total chaos. Since Teizcali is a private school, there are plenty of parked and double-parked cars, in addition to "motos," the 3 wheel open-air converted motorcycles that serve as taxis in farther-flung suburbs. As soon as I can gather my three kids I get the heck out of the crowded lobby and walk them back up the mountain on the cobblestone road, sans sidewalk, where large rush hour buses are zooming. Although Oaxaca really is surprisingly temperate, this is almost always the hottest hour of the day and I've given in to my children's moans for help with backpacks, lunch boxes, and on swim lesson day, damp towels, goggles and flip flops. For the walk home I feel as burdened as the neighbors' burro carrying their firewood.

I mentioned rush hour. It occurs between 2 and 3 p.m. Oaxacans are dedicated to their tradition of "comida," the largest meal of the day, usually eaten at home, in the mid- to late afternoon. Chica's vet, for example, pulls his heavy sliding metal door closed promptly at 2 p.m. and opens again at 5. Most government offices close from 2-4. A new law student/babysitter friend from a large family reports that her full time working mother always serves comida at 4 p.m. and the children, and her attorney father, are expected to be there. This is one local custom that we have definitely not been able to adjust to yet; with Art working steadily in his office from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days, we still save our family meals for a conventional American time slot, say 6 or 7 p.m. When we eat out, it's lonely because the few restaurants open at that hour are usually empty! Businesses typically reopen from 4-7ish and in a walk through El Centro, I can often look into dark courtyards and see office workers at their computers until 8 p.m. or later. By then, rush hour has blended into the hubbub of other city traffic.

Instead of comida, our afternoons are devoted to homework. Hector, one of the teachers from my language school, arrives promptly at 3 every day to help. My job is to keep Amelia away from the boys while they do their "texto libre" or daily journal in Spanish with Hector's assistance. It is amazing to see how far they've come in such a short time. Harper is already beginning to take on assignments alone, for example, creating a 10 page booklet recently for a project about the dangers of junk food. Crispin has another English speaker in his class, Nate from Fort Wayne, and he appears to rely on Nate somewhat for translation during the day(Nate's mom had the good sense to have Nate in Spanish language tutoring for the past year or more!). We're not sure how much Crispin speaks in class yet, but he is always willing to sub in English words when he doesn't know the Spanish, and keep writing, whereas Harper is the perfectionist who will simply stop all work until Hector or I can give him the proper Spanish phrase. Funny personality differences we might not have noticed in quite this way, if we hadn't had Mexico to prompt the observation.

Finally, around 5 or 5:30 Art opens his office door and surfaces from the world of contract law on the internet. We start to think about supper plans. If it's a Tuesday, Friday or Saturday we may have fresh produce from the small market right here in San Felipe. The array of fruits and vegetables that can be grown year round reminds me of California, with the added benefit of truly tropical varieties like guavas, mangos and too many kinds of citrus to list. This is the rainy season, so I finally found "huitlacoche," the corn mushrooms that are unique to southern Mexico and which I positively CRAVE We aren't brave enough to buy the cuts of chicken, pork or beef that market ladies bring and hang in the open air, but I did realize recently that the meat is probably not quite as prone to germs as I'd first thought, because all fresh cuts are from animals just slaughtered that morning or the night before. We've tried chorizo sausage from an open air stand and avoided any stomach trouble, and got the benefit of its amazingly rich flavor.

On nights that we can't face cooking, the kids like any restaurant that serves "sopa azteca," a traditional soup similar to tortilla soup but enhanced with roasted chiles, avocado and fresh onion and cilantro. Alternately they relish tacos and there are a few very casual, open air (what am I saying? almost every place here is open air!) restaurants that serve grilled meat and onions on tiny, double-layered soft corn tortillas. Crispin ALWAYS wants his with guacamole, Harper ALWAYS wants his with freshly chopped onion and cilantro, and Amelia NEVER wants anything other than plain meat on her tortillas.

If we've decided to let the kids stay up late we can sometimes find the neighborhood "cenaduria" open. Their sign says they open at 7:30 p.m., but many days it's 7:45 or 8... Cena is the last meal of the day, typically eaten after 8 p.m. or just before bed. Our babysitter reports that for her it's usually just a bowl of cereal or a bread roll; in the streets it's evident that a lot of people want tlayudas at this hour. Ah--the tlayuda. Now we're getting to an authentic Oaxacan treat. Tlayudas are prepared on HUGE stiff tortillas, brushed with a thin layer of manteca--yes, rendered lard--then slathered with black beans, tomato, onion, a granular fresh local cheese, avocado, meat, salsa, and any other handy ingredient your little heart desires. The massive tortilla is folded in half over all those fillings and grilled on the comal, a ceramic platter the size of a tire, until hot throughout. Tlayudas may be singlehandedly responsible for those cute couple of pounds I've gained here, and I am sad to report that you really have to be in Oaxaca to get the real thing. So come visit!

After dinner we rush home, urge the kids through preparations for bed, try to squeeze in a bit of reading time, and make sure the fans are on; not so much to cool the room as to prevent mosquitos from being able to land on tender young skin. Once the kids are down I try to review a few verb conjugations in Spanish and continue plowing through "The Oxford History of Mexico." We're incredibly grateful for the Oaxaca Lending Library, the second largest English language library in Mexico, which has a terrific collection of all sorts of books and is used enthusiastically by Oaxaquenos and gringos alike. WHEN you come to visit us, we would love it if you could bring a few books that they have on order. They'll pay for the books, it's just much cheaper than international shipping.

I am fascinated by the history of Mexico. It humbles and amazes me how little I learned about this country, our neighbor, in my 18 years of formal education, and how little I really understand even now. US-based news coverage is spotty at best, and usually focused on immigration, drug trafficking, or swine flu. But everyday life here is just--normal. In Oaxaca we are genuinely unaffected by narcotics syndicates, seeing almost no evidence of drugs compared to a typical day driving through Atlanta, with homeless people suffering on every corner downtown. And yet there is gross suffering here, of course, more evident in disabled beggars or street children selling gum or souvenirs to tourists. The middle class families at our private school are far more vigilant than those at home regarding flu or illness; people don masks at the slightest sniffle and the students receive a full dousing with hand sanitizer on their way into AND out of school. The ladies at the pool gossip about neighbors and worry about their grown children or grandchildren, they give me tips on the best places for an inexpensive meal, and they celebrate my miniscule advances in Spanish. They really DON'T want to move to the states and while they appreciate the power of the dollar, they frown on our frenetic, harried pace and the fact that we typically live so far from parents, uncles, aunts and cousins.

However, Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in Mexico with one of the highest infant mortality rates. The life I'm NOT seeing here yet goes on in distant pueblos far from the highways, where the family income for the year is directly related to the amount of rain that happens to fall on a crop of corn, beans and squash. Even if I "master" Spanish, I will have trouble communicating with some of those folks because they speak Zapotec or Mixtec, or another pre-Hispanic language in their homes. We've just passed our 3-month anniversary in Oaxaca, and if I had to sum it up I would say, we've just begun to appreciate how much there still is, to learn.