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Published: April 11th 2007
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Our fave cafe
Cappuccino with irish cream...mi amor...yummmm Semana Santa
It was tough for all of us, including the professors, to return to classes after a week of fun and relaxation. In fact, last Thursday our anthropology professor calmly told us he thought he picked up Dengue Fever while working during the break in some little town with millions of mosquitoes, but he came to class anyway despite the fact that he was obviously not feeling well at all. Turns out he actually has typhoid fever, along with hist friends that working with him too. So our anthropology classes were cancelled for this week. The other sad news is that Patty, one of my closest friends here, returned U.S. Saturday due to various medical problems. Although she would like to stay, she needs to see a good doctor and get some rest in a less stressful environment. We already miss her terribly, but we understand that it’s for the best.
Monday we started our cooking class, which we took through Thursday. We were going to continue with Spanish in the afternoons for three more weeks, but due to professors on vacation, we’re doing our cultural workshops for two weeks and then we’ll continue with Spanish. We
Our fave cafe
We love this cafe ate some delicious food and received some great recipes in our cooking workshop for champurrado (a chocolate drink), salsa, frijoles negros (black beans), memelitas (tortillas topped with a black bean sauce, cheese, and salsa), tamales, tostadas, and guacamole. If we had time to take the second week we would have made mole, arroz con leche (a yummy dessert with rice and milk), enfrijoladas (tortillas in a black bean sauce), and enchiladas, all of which are some of my favorite foods here, so I’m a little disappointed we don’t have time to do the second week. I was also a little bummed because the professor did most of the cooking. We mostly watched or help grind things.
This week we are taking salsa dance lessons, which is fun but difficult considering I have two left feet…
Last Wednesday night we tried to go to a baseball game, but it started raining when we got there, so the game ended up being cancelled. We waited in the rain for quite a while, hoping the rain would cease and the game would begin, but eventually we gave up and had dessert and coffee at our favorite café. We’ve had thunderstorms almost
Monches
This cat is crazy. She likes to lay on my things, climb walls, and randomly bite my ankles when I don´t pet her enough... every evening for most of the week. It’s nice because it cools everything down, but it’s not fun to walk in and it cancels the baseball games!
Last week, being the week before Easter, is called Semana Santa. It’s a big deal here. Many people have the entire week off from school or work (my host sister is home from college), and there are many festivities. The tradition on Thursday is to visit 7 churches, so sure enough a group of us went to 7 churches around the city. The streets downtown we much busier than usual, especially between Santo Domingo and the Zócalo which were absolutely packed with people. It reminded me of the Race for the Cure! Friday did LOTS of walking. In the morning we walked to the church of the Virgin de Soledad and watched a procession to the Cathedral, which was interesting. We then went shopping, waiting to go to a suburb of Oaxaca called Xoxocotlán, or Xoxo (Hoho) for short, where we were told to go around 3pm to watch a live reenactment of the crucifixion (not a real crucifixion, don’t worry). However, the tourist info girl was wrong, because we arrived during
Visit to 7 churches
2nd church we visited (I forgot to take pictures of the first one) mass and the crucifixion had taken place much earlier in the day. So back we went to the downtown area where we were going to wait to watch the silent profession. However, some of us were so tired that we couldn’t wait, so we decided to walk home to nap and shower before going to the café to say goodbye to Patty. Only one person from our group had enough energy and patience to wait for the silent profession, but it was definitely worth it. She took amazing pictures and a video on her camera. There were tons of people watching, but everything was completely silent. It looked kind of scary but very interesting. For example, men in purple or white cloaks and KKK-like masks marched down the street carrying huge wooden crosses. The rest of us were very sad that after an exhausting day of walking and waiting for religious festivities, we didn’t get to see the coolest one. Unfortunately I don’t have many pictures because my camera battery died, and it’s a fancy lithium one that I have no idea where to go to replace it. However, thankfully Lizzie gave me her pictures.
Some good news is
that I just got accepted to be a Linfield Colloquium Peer Advisor next fall, which means I’ll help with freshman orientation and a 1 credit class the freshman have to take called Colloquium. I’m paired up with my advisor/former education professor, and it's a paying job, so I’m pretty happy about it, although I will have a busy semester.
What else…Oh, my host mom and sister and her kids are in Veracruz this week visiting my other host sister who is going to school there. Also, I started my intercambio last week, which means I meet with a local who is studying English everyday for an hour to practice speaking Spanish and English. It’s a good experience although my intercambio is 29 and her English is pretty basic, and since we don’t have a lot in common, sometimes it´s hard to think of things to talk about.
Anyway, that’s it for now. We’re going on a cool excursion Friday so I’ll post another blog about that in a few days. Hope everyone had a happy Easter!
Besitos,
Janna
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