Yesterday I finished my first week of class and I am happy with the experience. We spent two hours a day on grammer and 2 hours in conversation with a different teacher. We covered a lot this week--reflexive verbs, irregular present tense and we just started the past tense. It went fast and at times it felt like my head was going to explode. Oh well. They say that learning a new language is way better than crossword puzzles for an aging brain.
Some of my new friends and I decided to celebrate last eveninng at Casa Oaxaca, where a French trained chef does amazing things with traditional Oaxacan ingrediants. I ordered a sampler menu and I was a top ten lifetime food experience. Oaxacan cuisine is justly famous and this meal allowed us to sample all the different moles of the region. A cooking class is definitely in my future and I can see a Oaxacan meal offered at next year's Dining 4$. Two of the dishes had the grasshoppers. I ate them and pretended I didn't know what was there. No grasshoppers will be offered at the Dining 4$ meal.
This morning I went on a walking tour of churches offered by an American artist living here. Linda was full of wonderful information about the town past and present and the history of Oaxaca and Mexico. She pointed out the many pagan influences in the architecture and the way Mexican catholocism is practiced.
There were about a hundred women from an indiginous group in their bright red dresses. Quite a sight. It turns out that there is a bug in Oaxaca that yields a bright red dye. In the 16th and 17th century, these bugs were literally worth their weight in gold. Therefore, the Indians were put to work raising the bugs and were not worked to death in mines or on plantations like in the rest of Mexico.
Posted on
Sat, September 25, 2010
by Arvid