We Tres Kings

As you’ll learn when you get an MA in teaching, mistakes are powerful tools for learning. In Guatemala where I’ve studied most of my Spanish, chaqueta is jacket. I can assure you that in Mexico I won’t use the word again, for I am not the kind of girl who talks freely to strangers of male masturbación. Please use chamarra.

My SIT buddies Sarah & Kim arrived a day late due to flight problems. It’s good to see them. I am now sharing my teacher Araceli with Kim, which is great in all but one respect. In the span of one class session, Kim (who has studied Spanish for one semester in her life) has already surpassed me in verbal agility. Oh, except for that one time, when she was describing to Araceli my road in Vermont: —”Her dirt road is steep. It’s dangerous when it’s covered in ice cream.”

I’ve been busy every second of the day. Am a little less jetlagged and maybe that’s why my spirits plummeted fewer times. So strange when it happens all of a sudden, like mid-step over a pothole.

After school we came home for comida at 3:30, which is the main meal in Mexico. It’s not without reason that Oaxaca is famous for its food. As a special treat Magdalena made rice water — agua de horchata — which looked and sounded gross but was delicious. Assuming I’m translating correctly (an unsafe assumption), you make it with cup of white rice soaked in a liter of water with a stick of cinnamon and a fistful of almonds for a few hours, and then grind and strain it.

Later Enrique arrived to show us around Oaxaca more. We snaked through cars and people, and briefly I was accidentally in the lead, with no idea where I was or where I was going. I heard Enrique call directions from behind. —”A la derecha.” I obediently turned right. Soon I was alone, having forgotten about derecho, which means straight, and which is what he had actually said. I caught up with the others quickly.

We went to the biggest mercado I’ve seen, part of which is on the dusty streets the open under tarps and part on concrete under tin roofs. Though Enrique has lived in Oaxaca all his life, I still don’t understand how he finds his way through the labyrinths. There was the usual array of cheap Chinese clothing with misspelled English words, plastic doodads of all purposes and lack thereof, every fresh fruit and veggie you could dream of (and some you couldn’t), baskets of beans and dried chili peppers and colorful powders, mounds of dried red crickets (a delicacy) called chapulines, odd-looking white blobs floating in grey water, and a barbequed beehive-shaped mass of mystery meat on an upright pole.

In Mexico they don’t give presents to kids on Christmas since that’s reserved for more of a lord-praising affair. Instead, they have Dí­a de Reyes (Day of the [three] Kings) tomorrow. Oaxaca has been bouncing with kid-related festivities which are particularly lively at night: pirotécnicos, arcade games, parades, toy sellers, traditional dancers and giant figures with swinging arms called monos de calenda.

Around the Zócalo are a clusters of three-kings, with whom kids get their picture taken (for fifty pesos), like Santa Claus. A common present for the occasion are puppies, a few of which were being sold from our casa.

There’s even a whole street closed off for the occasion — Avenida de los Juguetes (toys), I think they call it. We passed it on the way back from the mercado but, to my relief, took a different route that avoided that impenetrable mass of humanity. Magdalena (the dueí±a of my house) has a daughter who was pickpocketed there when she was about ten.

We made our way through busy, dark streets, getting the occasional greeting from dark doorways, —”Gí¼eras!” Sarah enlightened us: It means white girls. Enrique told me that people refer to each other by skin color relative to their own. So a person darker than Enrique might call him gí¼ero. A light-skinned person might refer to him as moreno.

There’s a dog (not for sale) that lives here, along with the five million caged birds. It’s the size of a small rat, perpetually in danger of being squashed like a bug. It’s not for sale. The family adores it.

Speaking of bugs, last night I stepped on what I thought was a cockroach (but turned out to be a cricket) in my bare feet. Tonight something much larger buzzed onto my shoulder. It was a bona fide cockroach, over an inch long.