Sugar & spice

Sugar & spice, originally uploaded by sappycoldplaywhore.

Día de los Muertos festivities kicked off yesterday. We all went to Ashley's apartment to build an altar, which turned out awesomely. For right now, you'll have to make due with only a picture of one of the sugar skulls (you can't eat them until November 2, when the holiday is over, otherwise los muertos will come and paint your face at night), but hopefully I'll upload many more more pictures. Because Oaxaca goes crazy for Muertos. We already went and saw a danza de los muertos last night at the Casa de Cultura, and the holiday isn't technically until November 1.

And I know I've posted this already, but because it's Muertos and it's so fantastic, I'm just gonna go ahead and do it again.

Shit

"Me gusta ver a ti," me dijo.

Oh dear, I think but don't say, you're sixteen. You're sixteen. You're sixteen.

But damn, you're fucking cute.



When I got home, I opened the door to find Daca asleep on the stairs. My entrance woke up him and he seemed really fucking terrified for a minute, so I asked him what he was doing, you know, sleeping on the stairs. He didn't really have an answer, other than, 'I just sat down there for a sec' and denied being drunk. But the loud stumbling up the stairs and running into walls begged to differ.

Fish of the day

Between writing papers about Mexican economics (in Spanish), going to the gym five days a week and ballet class two, finding time to go out and absorb as much 'culture' as possible, and flirting with cute (possibly underage) Mexican boys, I have sort of neglected blogging. I apologise. I know I have a hundreds, possibly thousands, of people reading this blog, constantly checking for updates only to be disappointed when they are short and sparse.* I'm sorry. I really am.

It's just that when life is really exciting, or at least closer to exciting than it usually is, I become impatient with writing about it and instead just want to live it. Which is, I know, a crazy notion, and you must be thinking, Damn, that girl is original. Carpe diem!

But even though I want to live in the moment, I would also like to remember the moment. So I am going to try and be better. Also, NaNoWriMo starts in two and half days, so hopefully I'll be writing for a good portion of every day and it'll just flow over into my blog. Or I'll be so sick of writing that I'll write even less. Either way.

And finally, the most amusing chocolate milk you will ever see:


Remember, it's only racism when white people do it!


*I don't not have hundreds, much less thousands, of followers. I have four. And they are not checking constantly for updates.

What happens in México

"Fermin just texted me, 'te portes bien'," Catherine said at the beginning of class one Friday. "What does that mean?"

"It means 'behave yourself'," I told her. "Good advice for you."

"Te portes bien? No, no, no. Eres joven; debes portarte mal," said our teacher, Ana Maria.


Well, if our teacher says so, we should listen to her.

Five-day weekend

I have gone out every night since Wednesday.



When did I become cool?

That was awkward

I was at the deportivo today, waiting for my intercambio who was running late, and this guy starts talking to me, like, whatever, it's all good, I'm used to it now. Anyway, we chat for a bit, he doesn't seem that interesting, but that's okay, because look! Sara is here now.

I try to give him the brush off and he asks for my phone number, like any decent, persistent Mexican would. But I have still yet to actually learn my Mexican cell phone number, and he lost his phone. So he asks for Sara's number, and says he will text her and she can send him my number.

I find this a bit weird and borderline offensive (to Sara, not to me), but apparently people in Mexico do this quite often? Ah, cultural differences. Those white girls' numbers are valuable, y'know!

New vocabulary

We spent the weekend in pequeñito town of Benito Juarez in the Sierra Norte Mountains. And when they say 'mountains', they are not fucking kidding around. Look at that picture! Pine trees! Heavy cloud cover! Really cold weather! Very high altitude!

We went ziplining and hiking to waterfalls and making s'mores in our cabin fireplace (and roasting the marshmellows on actual sticks instead of metal pokers; my mum would have a heart attack). For lunch I had trucha (trout), but not a filet; no, the actual whole fish, skin and bones and head and eyes and all, and it was delicious as well as insanely amusing. I nearly died laughing as we explained Twilight and taught the word 'clusterfuck' to Justine, our Belgian director.

We should go camping more often.

Estoy bromeando

"Ah, ¡me gustan tus aretes! Son muy bonitas. Yo recuerdo cuando mis hijas eran niñas y les compraba cosas como estas," mi maestra me dijo.

"Puedes comprarme estas cosas, si tú quieres," yo dije.

We're not from here

It's never surprised me much that the United States would have a holiday celebrating the beginning of the end for countless millions of Native Americans. We are a nation made up of, primarily, the very white people who did the raping and pillaging and spreading of highly contagious diseases and enslaving and murdering. And we won, in the end. We got rid of most of those pesky indigenous people who were in the way of our land, our resources, our purple mountains majesty, whatever. It's only fit that we celebrate Columbus Day.

But it really surprised me that they celebrate it here in Mexico.

But I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, because we got the day off for it today.

Melissa and I went shopping on Alcalá, a street with the nicer shops, and maybe it's just because I'm usually not out in the Centro at that time or maybe we're approaching the high traffic season here in Oaxaca, but there were a lot of middle-aged and retirement-aged white tourists.

Y'all can probably already tell that I hate other tourists.

I know I'm technically a tourist, but I like to think of myself as better than a tourist, because I'm studying here, and living with a family, and I actually speak Spanish. So, I tell myself, I'm not really a tourist.

But the reason I really hate tourists is because seeing them reminds me exactly of what I am. And when trying so hard to reason that I'm not a real tourist, that's not the kind of reminder I like to have.

We met (well, Melissa met) these two women in this shop, La Mano Mágica, one of whom was from the same town in Florida as Melissa is. And as we wound our way through a couple shops, we kept running into them, as is wont to happen when you're shopping on the same street. They did not speak Spanish at all, which I actually relish, because it means I get to feel superior. And I as I was speaking Spanish to the owner of a jewelry store, feeling very superior, I told him that we were studying in Oaxaca until December, and he said we should come and help translate for a clinic of American optometrists that is going to some nearby pueblos to give out free glasses the first week of November.

See? Trying to be superior is a good thing.

Hogar de las Niñas

We had them draw their favourite animal and (at the behest of the Doña, who insisted the activity had to include some component where they could practise writing) write the name of the animal and their own names.







We also gave them chocolate. This photo was actually taken by one of the older girls; she's 13 and she actually took some pretty good shots. I told her she should be a photographer.

Molé Chile Ancho

We actually took this cooking class ages ago (September 17, to be exact) and I'm just now getting around to making the recipe post. I KNOW, FOR SHAME. Oh well.

So, to begin: molé is the pre-hispanic word for sauce. There are about a million different types of molé because there are a million different types of chiles, not to mention every Dick and Jane (what would the Spanish equivalent of that be? Ricardo y... Jane? Hmmm, things to ponder) does their own thing with molé (of course). Each type of molé has a specific type of meat it's served with, usually with rice and tortillas on the side. And the spiciness, bitterness, sweetness, whateverness of the molé varies wildly by recipe. The molé we made was hardly spicy and very smoky with only a hint of bitterness (the good kind of bitterness; yes, such a thing exists).

We started by going to the market for, you know, a real authentic experience. Of course, our cooking instructor was the one buying all the ingredients while we were relegating to standing around and holding random things as he handed them to us, but we did get to watch our chicken filets get pounded!


I have to admit that all in all, I did very little of the actual cooking, as we had one pot of molé and eight people to cook it. But even though I have heard all about the painstaking process that is preparing molé, this seemed remarkably easy. So easy that I'm pretty sure any gringo can do it on their own, although you might need to go to a Hispanic or specialty food market to find the chiles, as I've never seen dried chiles at Ralph's.

Without further ado, the recipe!

Molé sauce:
125 grams chile ancho
6 tomatoes (chopped)
1/2 onion (chopped)
5 garlic cloves (chopped)
1 roll of bread (cut in halves)
1 large stick of cinnamon
oregano
pepper
sugar
vegetable oil

Rice:
1/2 kilogram rice (2 cups)
3 garlic cloves (chopped)
1/4 onion (chopped)
salt
vegetable oil

Chicken:
9 fillets
1 clove garlic (chopped)
salt

Directions:
Take seeds and veins out of chiles. Fry all molé ingredients separately in vegetable oil, then let sit in pot of water until soft. Add pepper and oregano.


Put rice and vegetable oil into pot and cook over stove. Blend garlic, onion, and salt in blender, then pour into the pot with rice.

Boil the chicken, garlic, and salt in a pot of water.

Take all molé ingredients from pot of water and blend with water from the chicken. Fill the blender up about halfway with the molé ingredients and use 1 cup of the chicken water. Repeat until all mole ingredients have been blended.

Use a strainer to filter the blended molé and remove all big chunks of ingredients. (This is very important, as some of the chile fibers can upset your stomach.) Filter sauce into a large pot cooking over stove on very low heat (it takes awhile to strain, and you don't want it to burn). Add sugar and salt to taste, but keep in mind it should be a bit bitter. To make the molé thicker, add pieces of bread blended with a little water. Once you've achieved the desired taste and viscosity, let the molé come to a very gentle boil if it hasn't already done so.

Serve mole sauce over the chicken with rice on the side.


¡Qué sabroso!

Streetwalking

So I was out and aboot last night with my friends, and we were walking to some bar or another, when I suddenly hear someone yell, "ARIELLE!"

I think, Oh shit, who could that be? because it's probably someone I met with the intention of never seeing again.


It was Daca, our new student.

"Mi hermana!" he calls out in his bad Spanish accent.

I hope he was drunk.

La eterna feminina

Right about now, I should be writing an essay on 'la mujer'. That is just the general topic I was given; I can write about anything I please so long as it pertains to women.

Don't you love specific, focused topics? They make everything so much easier.

But here's the real kicker: the class this is for ended exactly a week ago today. I see the teacher every day, so she told me not to worry and turn it in whenever.

I feel as though I might be 'pushing it', so to speak.

Daca (pronounced de-gah)

Naomi left today at 7 a.m. and before 5 p.m., we had a new student! It's like exchanging something at Target: easier than pie!

I am kidding.

His name is Daca (pronounce de-gah; he's Vietnamese) and he's from Vancouver. Which means I get to make lots of lovely Canada jokes. And I already started, with making fun of the "soory" and the "eh" thing when we were chatting with Margarita. Anyway.

When I first met him, I introduced myself in Spanish, of course, not realizing then that he barely speaks Spanish. We went down to the kitchen so he could eat something, and as we sat down, he worriedly asked, "Do you speak English?"

It was the biggest compliment I've received thus far.

Oasis

Hierve el Agua, originally uploaded by sappycoldplaywhore.

Today we went to Hierve el Agua, which is a bunch of mountain springs and petrified waterfalls. I guess I (okay, most of us) missed the mountain springs part, because I (we) forgot to bring swimsuits. I have no idea why that went over my head, because I am always up for some swimmin' and chillin' in temperate water (everyone said the water was cold; whatever, it's warmer than the water in LA) but it did go over my head.

Anyway, we complete our hike around the petrified waterfalls, and it was unexpectedly grueling, with lots of uphill-ness and stairs and generally tiring things. And it was hot. Really hot. It's been hot here all week, but it felt especially hot after that hike (duh).

So I jumped in. In my bra and shorts. And it felt soooooo good.

I needed to wash this bra anyway.

Puerto, Pt. 1

We took the last camioneta out of Oaxaca, at 11.30 p.m. We were all prepared for a long, windy ride, but somehow we didn't realise just how bad it would be until one of the other passengers put a bag of chapulínes in the back and Ashley complained that it smelled like gerbil food.

Like I said, that was just the beginning.

The road to Puerto Escondido winds through the mountains for seven to nine hours, during which it will most likely rain at some point (especially at night) as you are trying to traverse very narrow roads full of rocks at 70 mph. Not to mention the fact that there are topes (speed bumps) every time you pass through a pueblo, apparently to stop you from hitting people/animals? I don't know exactly. All I know is that about half an hour in to our journey, we had all started to settle in, trying to find a comfortable way to sleep, when our driver went way to fast over a tope and we all bounced at least a foot into the air.

It turned out our driver was crazy, because he let the guy who brought the chapulínes drive through the mountains, and he was driving entirely too fast with a fogged up windshield, and Melissa kept yelling at him and almost lost her shit.

Anyway, after nine grueling hours (I probably shouldn't complain because I was asleep for most of them, punctuated by waking up randomly and saying things in Spanish to Melissa) we finally got to Puerto Escondido and found a hotel (yes, we left having no idea where we were going to stay--we are so cool and spontaneous!) and everything was peachy. We got a ghetto cabaña with a toilet, shower head, and sink for a bathroom and mosquito nets for $8 each per night.

And then we went to the beach.

Open up your plans and then you're free, originally uploaded by sappycoldplaywhore.

Totally worth it.