Venimos, Vimos, Comimos: We Came, We Saw, We Ate

In the words of Rebecca Black: it’s Friday. We were planning on going to the beach with the local church youth group, but the event was cancelled by the rainy season. The evening turned into family game night, which consisted of Pass the Pigs (or as Ashley calls it, “Pasa los Tocinos), Charades, and Basta.  Basta is basically Mexican Scattegories. We ate Oaxaca bread and drank Oaxaca chocolate out of Oaxaca mugs with our Oaxaca family. We apologize for the lack of blog posts, but as you can see there are lots of other things to occupy our time. Here are a few highlights that we have not yet covered from the last five weeks:

After being here for a week, we were invited, along with the entire town, to a wedding. We only thought we had escaped… But there was free food, so we went. The wedding started at two (which in Mexican time means between 3 and 3:30) and lasted until the wee hours of the madrugada. No one should ever complain about the length of an American wedding reception.

On September 16, 1810, Mexico received its independence from Spain. On September 15, 2011, Cacalote partied like it was 1810. Cheap food stands, sketchy ice cream vendors, and eggs filled with flour -that was only the beginning. We were told that at midnight there would be a “shout” celebrating the moment of independence, and we were determined to witness it. We observed drunken karaoke, walked around town with a mob of torch bearing students yelling “Viva Mexico!”, and watched our “sister” Grace play in the school band. Two minutes after midnight, still no shout. We thought maybe they were running on Mexican time so we waited. Finally, we asked Antonio if it was over. And sadly, the answer was yes. Disappointed, we made Antonio walk us back to our casa.

In addition to Taco Fridays, we take weekly trips into Puerto Escondido, which is a tourist town. Our favorite place to hang out is a little café named Dan’s. With free internet, a ping pong table, incredible food, free coffee refills, and the occasional group of Australian surfers, it’s our favorite hotspot.

On the subject of internet. Ashley’s new name in Mexico is “Red” (as in the color of her hair) which in Spanish translates into “internet”. Her last name is Brown; which in Spanish is Café (the word for Brown). Needless to say, but compelled to say: Her name is Internet Café.

After spending hours on the internet, we head to the magical kingdom that is Super Che. Where we buy our groceries. Only the necessities of life: Giant bottles of pure jugo de naranja nada mas, Milch Candy Bars, bottled Starbucks frappuccinos, and crema de cacahuate.

Other times, we take shorter trips to Rio Grande to use internet. Honestly, we go for a little Sandwich shop named Jox. They make tortas gigantes that will rock your socks off for only 45 pesos. 

Among all of our exploits, we have also been attending Spanish classes. We recently finished our first session. Our dear friends Antonio and Milo finished the final level and are leaving us this week. They will be missed. 

La Vida as we know it

Time passes slowly here in Cacalote.  Thus, formulating a blog post takes more time.  Our last update was almost three weeks ago, therefore we have a lot to cover.

We have friends!  Grace (not the one we live with), Keisha, Jake, and John are all in Level One with Ashley.  Roger (Rogelio) and Joyce are Emily’s companeros in Level Two.  And in Level 4 we have Milo and Otis (Antonio Banderas).  We meet every Friday night at one of the local taco stands, which we recently discovered is tragically only open on the weekends.  Our favorites are barbacoa and bistek, at a whopping 6 pesos (or 50 cents) each.  You may begin to notice that food will be a recurring theme for our blog and our lives. We encourage you to donate to our food fund.  However, we cannot accept postal donations due to the corruption of the Mexican postal service.  A Paypal account may appear soon.

Milo, in particular, is our food addiction enabler; he can make food appear out of nowhere.  Every time we see him, he has a different snack to offer us.  Whenever we are deciding what to order, he says “all of it.”  Antonio lives in the house behind ours and we enjoy creeping on him and conversing with him while hanging our laundry on the line.  Grace calls our fair city of Cacalote, “Cocolatte,” which sounds much better than “a lot of poop.”  Keisha, not to be confused with Ke$ha, is a recent graduate of K State and lives in a house here with a bucket shower.  She is definitely not in Kansas anymore.  Jake serenades between classes with his guitar, sometimes joined by our teachers or anyone else who happens to walk in.  Rogelio also plays the guitar, and rides a blue Italika moped around town and practically refuses to speak English to us English-speakers.  John and Joyce, a couple from Missouri, used to be missionaries in India and are now studying Spanish.

Back to the important things in life: Last weekend we cooked spicy spaghetti for our dear family, who we now refer to as our parents, sisters, and little brother.  This week we made Snickerdoodles for them.  Oddly enough, the word Snickerdoodle does not translate.  Betti called them “bolitos de carnel,” or cinnamon treats.  She said that Dieguito never likes the baked goods that she makes, but he liked our cookies, because “the muchachas” made them.

We have succeeded in our goal of being best friends with Dieguito!  In his adorable two year old Spanish, he calls us “mis muchachas,” which means “my girls.”  Last week, he came to our room and uttered an unintelligible phrase intending to invite us on a walk to the beach with the fam. As we made our way to beach, it began raining so hard we had to return home.

This week, we made a successful trek to the beach with our fam including our dog Balu. Which leads us to the epiphany Ashley had last week: all animals in Mexico speak and understand Spanish.  This realization has certainly enhanced our ability to communicate not only with Balu, but with all the cows and sheep that we pass on our daily walk to school.

Decision Time:

Ashley needs help deciding whether or not she should break her one-year soda fast in order to enjoy the wonderful soda assortment in Mexico. Please vote yes or no.

We leave you with a Mexican Proverb:

Riding a bicycle with a machete in hand is equivalent to driving a pick-up with a shotgun in the window. 

El Tema: There's Something in the Water by Brooke Fraser

This is Not a Drill

Hola!

Meet our new family: Diego, Betti, Grace, Hanni, and little Diego (who goes by Diegito).
Our favorite is Diegito, who sounds like an Ewok from Star Wars when he talks/makes noise.  So far he peeks around the corner into our room out of curiosity only to run away in fear. His mom says he is confident but afraid. We are planning on being amigos mejores by the end of the week. Grace and Hanni have adorable school uniforms.  Having been to Mexico before, Emily is unfazed by this.  Ashley, however, cannot stop talking about them.

Betti quickly picked up on our coffee habits, and she offers it to us several times a day.  In return, we offered the viewing of our favorite movie as a family activity.  Will Ferrell in tights translates quite well into Spanish.  Laughter is a universal language!  The next movie on our playlist is Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.  Or as our Mexican friends know it, Lluvia de Hamburguesas.

We ate tortilla con intestines. It was an...experience.

We have many gecko amigos in our room. We named them all Nico, they climb on the walls, and make weird noises. Diego and Betti tried to chase them out of our rooms with a broom, killing one, three more were back in its place in the morning.

Hasta Luego. . .

Here is our mailing address:

Roca Blanca Mission Base
Apartado # 78
Puerto Escondido 71980
Oaxaca, Mexico