oh, sweet violence

I suppose it´s time for an update, particularly that we´ve been splattered all over the news again.

My partner in crime/former roommate/the only other LanguageCorps participant went home today. Apparently she heard gunshots right outside her apartment, her parents got involved, and next thing you know she´s on a plane home. I´m currently trying to stick it out (we´ll see how it goes), though attendance is low in all my classes and the city is on a virtual lockdown at night.

Essentially, things have escalated since I wrote last. The protesters, whose initial demands that Governor Ruiz leave office are looking less and less silly and more and more serious, have control of I think all of the local streams of media (at least radio), and the state government has tried (apparently) with no avail to gain a foothold of what´s going on. The current hope is that when Calderon, the new President, is signed in officially (ie, nationally accepted) on September 10th (7th?), things will calm down. In the meantime, Fox has refused to assist with the situation. Protesters, for their part, have avoided shutting down any major roads or the airport and thereby the commission of a federal crime which would force Fox to act. Agreement to the table to discuss some sort of resolution has recently come about, but a date for the talk hasn´t yet been set.

The normal streets, however, are quite a mess, and have clearly become the battlefield for this particularly sticky political issue. Buses block many of the main arteries to downtown and to neighborhoods where media centers are located, and at night streets have flaming blockades mounted on increasingly permanent piles of rubble and stones. The instance of petty and not so petty crime is also up in the absence of a police force downtown. For a long time it amazed me that downtown remained so safe when we first got here, that so many of the restaurants remained open to tourist traffic, and that so many people were still optimistic that things would just go away. However, quiet nights here are now remarkably uncomfortable in their quietness. You almost wish the crickets and other little critters would be quiet so you could strain your ears over the silence. Even on noisier nights the sound of fireworks is occasionally interrupted by the sound of gunfire. It is almost more of a relief to hear cars and horns blaring because it means that there are normal people on the street.

Pedestrians on the streets at night are far and few between. The one night I did have occasion to walk at night was when Tim left recently, even before things really got bad, and it wasn´t pretty. The teachers for the most part have nothing to do, because actual conflict between the government doesn´t actually come into conflict with protesters except very rarely, and so many of the blockades consist of just one or two armed guards drinking mezcal and brandishing sticks by a fire in the middle of the street. I should say that most people do not seem to be armed with anything more than sticks or pipes, and that the military personnel I have seen (and even these were far from the center or the source of the conflict) are the ones who are armed. Not that this necessarily means anything. The protesters have certainly instigated a lot of conflict and caused a lot of businesses to close.

I should put this in the context that to be honest, no one really knows what´s going on, and that even the NY Times article that came out the other day ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/world/americas/24mexico.html) is missing some information. My program director was indignant that anyone would think of leaving because of the situation, whereas the director of another school I know did advise us to get out of the city for a while. I should say that my immediate safety is not at stake. I live in a nice neighborhood on the periphery of the city, in a compound with a Mexican family and several other teachers. Currently the US embassy has issued a travel notice, but not a travel advisory. Once it gets to that point (if not before, if things continue to deteriorate), I will hop on the first bus to Mexico City and take a plane from there, a trip which will actually be paid for by my (once esoteric and useless-sounding) insurance policy if it really gets out of hand.

In the meantime I have purchased a tacky, plastic soccer ball 5" black and white-screen TV and am attempting to keep abreast of the news and the goings on in the city. The liberal rag is currently being published from outside the city, but news still gets in. I actually don´t believe any of it whatsoever, so it´s been hard to evaluate whether I should actually go home.

In other, lighter news, chapulines, Oaxaca´s "special" Oaxacan dish of fried grasshoppers, taste like crap: I´d say rotten fish doused with lemon juice about sums it up, but we did buy them from some random lady at a market. I would be willing to try them again at a restaurant if I get a chance. Oh, and on a totally irrelevant topic, I was on TV on Tuesday about the bus system when Tim´s first class bus to Mexico was canceled because of "los problemas" here and we had to find another one at the eleventh hour across the city. Silly me, I thought reporters were just good for asking for information, but apparently they´re also johnny on the spot for when you want a camera stuck in your face with bright lights and you´re in your pyjama pants and have got a lot of other things to think about. Anyways, everyone I know saw me on TV (I, of course, missed the spectacle because I was teaching), so that was kind of exciting, except I´m pretty sure I said something boring and apolitical.

Anyways, best to everyone. Again, I´m okay and not going out at night, and when I do go out even in day I do my best to go with someone else. I´m currently waiting to hear word from the embassy about what I should do from here and how to deal with the situation if things get worse. In the meantime, have a nice batch of pasta with homemade sauce and some sour jelly-bellies for me- those seem to be things I miss most.

and finally training is over...

An update on the goings-on in Oaxaca:

Finished my training/certification program (finally) yesterday. It was actually quite sad to have to say goodbye to everyone. After having spent a full month of 12-hour days filled with crazed last-minute lesson planning and nerve-wracking hours of being observed teaching, it feels strange to not have them to go back to on Monday for more classes and commiseration. One of my better friends, however, originally a pastry chef from New York City, made the (brave) decision to stay here for a year at the end of the course, too, so I will have some American company if I want it. I am also eager to stay in touch with my teacher-trainers, who were incredible. Todd, tattooed and pierced and full of hidden spiritual experiences that I didn´t get to hear near enough about in our formal classroom setting, seems to have traveled to every country in the world that I want to go to, quite the intrepid traveler. Gina is herself a graduate of the School for International Training in Vermont, where I wouldn´t mind getting my Master´s degree if I ever end up going that route, and spent a number of years teaching in Japan. Her sample Japanese language lessons definitely made me want to learn to speak Japanese. Between the two of them I can´t actually name a country they haven´t been to.

Anyways, back to Oaxaca. I have found permanent work at a private language school called Cambridge Academy, complete with contract and vacation days and opportunities for professional development (rare here for the most part). I will be beginning two of my classes on the 14th, and will be teaching a normal, full schedule starting at the beginning of September. I will be living in an apartment in Colonia Reforma, the wealthier part of town to the north, which includes a big bedroom with a small terrace with a hammock, a private bathroom, a beautiful shared kitchen with two walls open to the garden (right up my alley) and a fair amount of independence. The only downside is that it is a half-hour walk to work at the main building, but I am arranging taking half of my hours at the new building which is significantly nearer to where I will live. I am also fairly nearby one of the only pools in the city (weee!).

I am starting to feel like I belong here, or at least enough to give smart-ass retorts to taxi drivers and construction workers who try catcalling in English. One man was quite taken aback the other day in particular when I told him I was German and that I didn´t speak any English, so I couldn´t understand what he was saying. Nevermind that I immediately afterwards walked into the doorway of the English language school I am teaching at. Just being able to parry the comments of the doubters feels gratifying. My Spanish, especially my comprehension, has become quite good, and I have begun to wrap my head around what kind of humor translates and what just renders faces blank. Mostly I experiment with my host dad, who is quite the jokester himself.

The city, as always, is full of a wide variety of people, both tourists and locals. Guelaguetza, the two-week July cultural festival and tourist trap, was canceled for the first time in history because of political tension: the festival is mostly put on by locals from nearby pueblos but the government gets all the ticket money at a price too expensive for locals to afford. The protesting maestros went to all of the sites that the Guelaguetza was supposed to take place and camped out so that government work crews couldn´t set up or refurbish the main stadium. The maestros are still downtown in the zocalo, too, although I´m not really sure why, because the elections are over and international attention has for the most part shifted to Lebanon and the middle east, and it has become quite apparent that Ulyses will not leave governorship until his term has officially expired.

While I actually enjoy seeing the turmoil for historical purposes, it is indeed quite annoying to have to step over rocks and walk around road barricades to get downtown to a pub or cafe (note, however, that with the exceptions of the very very ritzy locations, businesses are still open). Needless to say, buses to Puerto Escondido and other beach locations were packed during Guelaguetza with tourists who had made their reservations months in advance but were put off by the confusion between the protesters and the government.

In the meantime, the government is a virtual nonpresence downtown. Oddly enough, however, it remains one of the safest places to walk to and grab a beer at night: it is always populated with families, teenagers, and tourists until at least 2 or 3 in the morning... they stay up late here, especially on the weekends, and the city is full of incredible hole-in-the wall cafes and courtyards with amazing food and music... my favorite place so far in terms of bars and cafes is one called La Cucaracha (yes, `the cockroach´) which my tourist friends actually didn´t want to go into because of the name but turned out to be a welcoming, slightly-more-upscale-than-the-Blarney-Stone-at-Clark kind of place. It also boasts a mean tostada for just a buck fifty, and free snacks when you order a beer. I will definitely be a regular customer. The spicy peanuts and fried, pretzel-shaped cheeto-looking things with hotsauce are delicious.

I have over 320 pictures on my camera, but the internet is so slow at these internet cafes that it takes forever to upload them to the web. I am still working on it, but I may just wait until Tim gets here on the 17th and have him help me with it. Your imaginations and this blog will simply have to serve in the interim.

Namaste,

Anna