The last few days have been like a hallucination. I don’t remember much but a blur of faces of loved ones that appeared and then vanished like phantoms. After a lovely, relaxing New Year’s Eve with a friend, a panic dug in and intensified over the next 24 hours, through errands, more friend-time and one solo emotional meltdown in my Honda. Then I was on the red-eye to Oaxaca via Mexico City.
The surrealism continues. I arrived at 7:00 a.m. and waited at the airport in hopes of a ride. After a while, handsome Gilberto showed up. Maybe it’s better to be profoundly sleep-deprived and stressed when one attempts to enter the world of Spanish. I managed to ask and understand about his work: starting a small farming collective in an impoverished community many hours north of here. They’ll be seeing their first produce in another few months.
He delivered me to his house where his wife, Magdalena, runs a sort of boarding house. She is warm and delightful. More about this place later. I took a nap for a few hours and awoke to paralyzing loneliness and fear. Couldn’t force myself out of my room, leave alone the house to explore the city outside the portón. But I did emerge for dinner. Then Henrique, who runs the language school I’ll start tomorrow, called and asked if I wanted to see some of the town tonight. (This, too, in Spanish — and on the phone!) So we hung out for a bunch of hours and I feel a little less despondent now. It would be tiring to chat with someone even in English for all that time. I’m so tired I can hardly see.
My first laughter-provoking Spanish error: While walking along some avenue near the town square, Enrique asked if I was hungry. I said no, because “I already ate a year ago.”
But when I realized I was going to get my first taste of Oaxaca’s famous hot chocolate, I decided it was okay to eat more often than that.
Wish me luck. For some reason, homesickness on this trip is worse than ever. I guess it might have something to do with that I’ve already been away from those who control my heart for four months, and then there will be nine weeks of challenge down here, and then I don’t even get to go home again for many months after that. I ache, corazón-wise.
Cooooool-chocolate AND dragons?
Perfect.
And the fact that I control your heart?
Equally as rad.
And there you are, in Oaxaca, functioning despite exhaustion and crippling fear and loneliness, and, as it turns out, you are also competent in Spanish.
Told you.
I think that minor vocabulary mix-ups are going to prove to be the extent of your linguistic errors.
How’d you like your first taste of that hot chocolate?
I KNOW, right?
I am so damn impressed with your capacity for…awesomeness, really, is the best term I can come up with. I have a vague, nagging sense that I’ve said as much before, but someday I’ll figure out how to say it better-how exactly to convey to you how proud I am, and how in awe, and how inspired, and, also, how much I trust that you know exactly what you’re doing. (You can at least crawl your way back out if need be, which now that I’ve written it sounds unflattering, but really I mean that you are incredibly competent.) I’ve got a lot of faith in you, Ma, in other words.
I’d like you to bring back both chocolate and papier mache dragons, or whatever they call ’em down there. I know “Chupacabra”, though.
Write and post all the time, OK?
I love you.
Yeah…. yeah, what my wonderful sister said. I can say it no better.
(The only useful thing I can add is that *I* know the special Spanish word for papier mache! It’s cartonería! Oh, and is Enrique single? Good of him to drag you out of the house, either way. I want some Oaxxxxxxacan hot chocolate too.)
Fittingly: “man schanzer.”
your courage amazes me, too. even for you! remember, you are here on this planet to gather up as many experiences and adventures as possible, obviously, so, my dear one, collect some more. Your loved ones will be here with open arms upon your return! your blogs are wonderful, love, me.