oaxaca 9

Jenny, Juri, Nora, Erin, and Kaori at the fair.

The entire spanish school sampling ´nieves´ (translation: oaxacan ice cream) outside La Soledad church.

hello, once again i am having trouble with my camera. my other memory stick is arriving on wednesday with joon so for now i am holding out on buying another. hopefully it is just a memory stick thing. we shall see.

the family gets here tomorrow evening! i am looking forward to it very much.

also, gracie from the hostel back at home is coming to pto escondido with her family and we are going to try to meet up in the next couple of weeks. i am so lucky to get to be with loved ones on this trip.

the other night some friends and i went to the fair. it was a lot of fun. i realized that i don´t usually go on rides or play games at the fair, because everything always costs so much. but this time i have the exchange rate in my favor, so i went on two rides and played the best shooting game of all time. there are these glass cases, with little bands made of dolls in them, and if you hit the target, the band plays a song for you. i tried to take a picture of this wonderful invention, but that is when my camera decided it wasn´t going to cooperate anymore.

i am putting yet more fascinating stencils up. i don´t understand how there is so much! and it is all so cool i have to share it. i showed my pictures to nora the other day and she asked me where i see all of them. she grew up here and said that she has never seen it before. i guess i´m just on the look-out for it. she also enlightened me to the fact that in times of political turbulence, people tend to use the image of benito juarez (considered one of oaxaca´s great leaders). back in 2006 there was a lot of stuff going on in oaxaca, and maybe that is when all these stencils started showing up?

anyway, in the next few days you will be seeing a lot of photos of me and my family doing touristy stuff for the holidays. i hope everyone is doing well and that you have a nice holiday season.

oxaca 7

Haha- here is a picture that my friend Lucy Pickles took. She was fascinated by this man selling balloons in the Zòcalo and looking bored and pissed off. She threatened to sit next to him and strike up a conversation but we were able to talk her out of it.

Pictures 2-7 are of this amazing corner covered with all kinds of beautiful stuff. I think it has been changing, because one part looks different from the first time i saw it two weeks ago. I am going to make a habit of walking by to see if there is anything new.

Up, up, and away!!!! Hooray for ninjas!

Today i discovered that i am a slave to caffeine. I didn`t drink any coffee today because i slept in late and by the time i had a throbbing headache, it was too late to drink coffee. uuuuuuuuuuuugh. I feel like the picture above, minus the gun.

I didn`t do much today but last night i was walking around and took some pictures of more graffiti. Yesterday was the celebration of Noche de las Luces (Night of Lights) and there was a parade complete with marching band, of course, and they were passing out these cool candle holders with windguards shaped like flowers. Sadly, i did not take any pictures so you will just have to rely on my one sentence description.

Some classmates and I went out for dinner and i had the best wood-fired pizza ever. Thank god for wood fired stoves and goat cheese!

I went to the big movie theatre today and it was wonderful to watch a movie. I saw ´Web de Mentiras` or `Body of Lies`. It is weird because i haven`t seen any ads for movies in 2 months so i had to just guess which movie to watch.

Also something funny is that they guard the exits when the movie ends, so you have to go out of the theatre. I guess they really don`t want you to get a two-fer while you`re there.

Tomorrow I start my last week of Spanish class. It is a little bit sad because I really like the people at my school, and class has been fun.