Farewell, Oaxaca

I could contentedly have stayed in Oaxaca a lot longer, but Chiapas and then my internship are calling. With regret (but amid laughter) I bid farewell to Magdalena and her mother.

Sarah and I flew to Chiapas where my terrible sense of direction, particularly when in the company of someone who knows where they’re going, became embarrassingly apparent. Though people mistook us for mother and daughter, it was the daughter who was the responsible one, speaking the language and understanding the map.

Boy is it cold here, and the drizzle is almost ice. It doesn’t help that the airline lost our luggage so I have nothing warm to crawl into. All I’ve got in my backpack is medicine and a large carved wooden woodchuck. After a pleasant pizza dinner, during which I spilled out big chunks of my life story to Sarah, we retired to our unheated, concrete-floored, metal-doored, open-to-the-courtyard room where the only respite was under the covers. At least we have wireless Internet!

Finally at almost 11:00 our luggage arrived from the airport at Tuxtla Gutierrez, but Sarah was too cold to emerge from the covers to get hers. I needed more layers, so I went the half-block to retrieve mine.