ah, it.s been so long since i updated that i can.t possibly remember all the things in detail that we have seen and done. this is maybe for the best...i.ll just give you all the highlights so far.

oaxaca was dry, desert, sun. color and parades. calm colorful colonial areas blurring into hectic markets. elotes. GAS DE OAXACA (a truck drives by fiona.s house daily, shouting this out along with a catchy tune). giant quesadillas filled with potatoes, quesillo (stringy cheese), and margaritas that, after one, cause blurring of vision. and a twelve-person band (raices) playing folk music on lute-like instruments, varying in age from 16 to 65, with this occasional intricate tap dance to the music. one of the best things i-ve seen so far, for sure. and a night of salsa dancing, mescal and margaritas and blurry embarrassing dance moves. on my part.

mazunte - winding terrifying van ride up and then down a mountain. and then the beach. blue ocean, orangey sand, huge crashing waves all night. cuccarachas in our palapa. a scorpion in our palapa. eating swimming eating swimming reading reading reading. warm pacific ocean. a boat ride, our guide harrassing turtles, pelicans carrying human babies off to sea... (well...) nights sitting out in skirts and tank tops under the stars, bad electronic music exploding from the hostel all the way down the beach nightly... ocean love.

san cristobal. 3000 m above sea level. freezing first class bus ride. freezing mountain town. cloudy day, for the first time since landing in mexico. chills. fresh baked bread and huevos rancheros, browsing book stores, a night of blurry wine drinking, 1.50 glasses of wine (dangerous). a boat ride down the canon de sumidero - crocodiles, pelicans, vultures, and one shy owl hidden in a cliff-side cave, and a boat-ride through a rain storm. cold, chills.

palenque, down the other side of the mountain into the jungle. hot, humid, our hotel room is a tree house. we have to climb a ladder to go up, and we have a rusty slide to come back down again. more cuccarachas. las ruinas... magical. huge huge stone structures coming right out of the jungle. the sound of howler monkeys all night last night, eerie and pretty damn magical. jungle sounds. thinking about summers spent camping, sounds that are not city sounds. keep thinking it will be summer when i get home, and then remembering...

SIGH.

this country is incredibly beautiful - the cities that pulsate and meander, the beaches, the jungle, the desert, the mountains. i.ve been to like 5 different ecosystems in the course of a few weeks. it-s pretty neat. it.s flown by though, can.t really believe i-ve been here for three weeks already. and school starts in three more!

and now, christmas eve, waiting for my turn to use skype to call the family.

oaxaca

...

Fiona and Hector had Sunday off, so on Saturday night we took a very windy bumpy road right up a mountain to a group of towns called the Pueblas Malcomunados, which means something along the lines of the co-operative (or communal?) towns. They are all working together to create an economy from ecotourism, with lots of hiking trails, zip-lines, horses to ride, etc. Hector talked with someone in one of the villages who told him that everyone must put in a year of volunteer work in the community; our waitresses who served us lunch, for example, were working on a volunteer basis, in order to help out the communities. Very interesting. It is quite nice to have Fiona and Hector here to show me around and to speak spanish with the people we meet - i am learning so much more this way, and getting a deeper understanding of this area. We spent our first night up in the mountains in a cabana in the woods, and it was COLD. we kept a fire going for hours but still i woke up shivering in the night. However once the sun came out it was fairly warm, sort of in a Vancouver summer kind of way; a cold breeze but a hot sun. Took a beautiful hike through the forest, up through a little canyon, into a cave, up to a mirador, where we could see all the way down to the oaxaca valley. Beautiful.

We went back to Oaxaca sunday night, and the next day Fiona and I took a trip to Monte Alban, the biggest archaeological site in this area. quite impressive, with beautiful views. we didn't get going until about 1pm though, so it was quite hot. but we took lots of breaks under the mesquite trees scattered around, where we ate papaya and coconut and pineapple. yum.

Yesterday i took a break from sightseeing, had a nice three hours in a cafe in the morning while fiona worked, read a book about the history of the color red that fiona lent me - all about how the search for the perfect red dye changed history and structured economies and class structures. very interesting, especially reading it in this place where crafts are so alive, old traditions continue in the form of woven rugs, bright green or deep black pottery... and of course mexico is where they eventually found the perfect red in the form of cochineal.

anyways. being somewhere sunny is beyond nice. it does me good. i don't know how we in canada are expected to get through winter after winter after winter of rain, grey skies, cold bones. i guess we do it, but my mood has certainly lifted since arriving in this hot sunny place. but maybe that's also just because i'm on vacation, far far away from all the bureaucratic buzz that's been around lately, what with dealing with an accident, an injury, a student loan that needs to be paid, a school that requires a ridiculous amount of brain power and paperwork just to get accepted and registered. sigh. not going to think about any of that right now.

This afternoon Fiona and I are going to head to a little town called El Tule, where apparently the (supposedly) largest tree in the world (diameter-wise) is growing, and also slowly dying due to decreasing amounts of water around...

i am safe and well and warm in mexico.

flew in on thursday night, stayed in a hostel in mexico city my first night. my cab ride from the airport was pretty exciting - mexico city is surpisingly beautiful, with colorful houses and all these flowering trees everywhere, and people wandering down the middle of the streets selling balloons and snacks... an organ grinder near my hostel, but no monkey. the city is huge though, overwhelming incomprehensibly so. i left the next morning for oaxaca, not ready to tackle such a giant city yet with my terrible spanish and jet-lag. bused to oaxaca friday morning - the city just went on and on and on as far as i could see as we drove out of it. 19 million people!

the ride to oaxaca was beautiful. the outskirts of mexico city went from suburbia to farmland. and then once we hit the state of oaxaca we were up in the mountains with these amazing views, and the hills were covered in cacti as far as i could see...cactus forests i suppose. stunning stunning mountains everywhere. i was so tired but kept forcing myself to stay awake and look at the scenery.

fiona met me at the bus station. we wandered the streets of oaxaca, stopped for an elote - this delicious cob of corn covered in mayonnaise and chili and queso fresco and lime. had some coffee, watched some fireworks which are i suppose a regular event here. went to fiona and hector's friends' house for fondue and wine later. sat outside in a tank top. i can't even begin to describe how nice it is to be WARM. sigh.

the next morning when fiona went to work i wandered to streets of oaxaca. communication problems are becoming commonplace already. my spanish sucks. accidentally ordered an iced espresso. yuck. drank a few sips, ordered an "americano CALIENTE por favor." sigh. ate a taco in the market south of the zocalo. lots of meat. yuck. sigh. wandered some more, lots of art galleries here. a beautiful photography gallery in a beautiful old building. the zocalo was full of pointsettias for sale everywhere. the market was incredibly busy; the touristy part of town with the old colonial buildings is super calm and quiet, and then all of a sudden you wander a few blocks and it's just jam-packed with people. i don't feel as conspicuous here as i did in india. people don't stare at me, for the most part. i do definitely stick out here like a sore thumb but i'm not a freak. but my bad spanish is embarrassing. fortunately i can understand much better than i can speak. all of fiona's roommates of various north american and european backgrounds speak spanish with each other. perfectly, to my ears. i want to speak spanish. SIGHHHH.

but anyways. oaxaca is beautiful.

more later.

goodnight moon

hm. still out of work, waiting for my doctor to see my x-rays and tell me what to do with this achy crooked shoulder of mine. i'm back from my parents' house in mission, where i just spent several days being fed, reading by the fire, and cuddling with lil' guy (the weird family cat who likes to drool all over people's chests and eat their clothes). it was nice. i could have stayed for weeks, except i knew i'd end up getting fat. i don't think i even left the house for the three days i was there. it's so nice to have parents who will let me come home and hang around and eat all their food and interfere with their routine and then even pay for my train ride home.

i babysat last night for some kids i adore - i used to nanny them full time when they were 9 months and 3 years old respectively, and they are now 3 and a half and 6. jacob (the older one) is one of the most precocious lovely kids i've ever met; he's a die-hard obama fan and has categorized canada's political parties by color: "green is best, orange is ok, and blue is bad!" he also told me one day, with big dramatic eyes: "stephen harper likes WAR!" this was back when he was five. ha. he showed me his new fish yesterday, whom he has named 'William Shakespeare Noah Skytrain'. and it is pretty neat to be able to still hang out with ayomi (the younger one) - i watched (and hopefully helped) her learn to talk and take her first steps, and now here she is, this weird little happy pixie kid who talks in full sentences and has grown about two feet!

jacob is in grade one, which is the grade of some the kids in the class i volunteered in (it was a one-two split, with a two-three split class sharing the big open-concept classroom). it's a pretty neat age - they are still so young and eager to learn and maintain that sweetness that younger kids have. it's a hard grade to teach though, from what i've heard - you pretty much single handedly have to teach them to read within the space of one school year. that is no small task, especially when a lot of kids aren't necessarily getting any help at home. and when they are still so young and full of energy and unable to sit still a lot of the time.

hanging out with these older kids gets me excited for teaching. i love the babies i look after - katie, whom i have been nannying since january, is just the most lovely happy hilarious thing ever, and i am very attached to her. there is something really nice about getting to know kids when they are still babies, and watching them change completely and cultivate these distinctive personalities. but i'm definitely excited to teach and hang out with older kids who have the capacity for more complex thought. i'm excited to get to read books to them that have more than one sentence to the page. books that go beyond "where's spot? oh, THERE'S spot!" i'm excited to be able to talk politics on a kid-level, to teach them all sorts of neat things and watch their eyes light up. to take them on field trips and get to know them all individually and help them get through any difficulties they might have.

and. i leave for mexico in less than two weeks!

also, i watched 65_redroses the other day, which is pamela's friend's documentary about a girl coping with cystic fibrosis. it was a great movie, but very sad. they filmed the doctors giving the main character a double lung transplant, and it just astounded me. i know that doctors do organ transplants, but i guess i'd never thought about the logistics. humans have figured out how to remove someone's lungs (remove them!) and then replace them with the lungs of someone who is dead (!) and somehow keep the person being operated on alive throughout this. this is totally and utterly amazing to me. how can this be? how did they ever learn to do this? and what the hell have i ever accomplished on that scale in my life? humans have the capacity to do amazing things like lung transplants and going to the moon and flying. and all i ever do is sit around and read books.

the body aches and that ache takes its time

having an interesting week. on tuesday i was biking home from work when i got hit straight-on by a car (a BMW no less!). it was...scary. i have been in one cycling accident before; i got car-doored (also on my way home from work) a few years ago. after that one i got up off the road and the woman who hit me gave me a ride home, though i ended up going to the hospital several hours later when my wrist started to hurt like crazy - i had apparently sprained it but the adrenaline and such had kept it from hurting right away.

this time i ended up in an ambulance, in a neck brace, in a serious panic. it was such a crazy feeling, watching a car drive straight at me, expecting it to stop and then all of a sudden i was on his hood and then flying onto the pavement. and thinking all the while "holy shit, i just got hit by a car". i remember feeling my helmet hit the road pretty hard - it's such a weird feeling knowing you're getting hit by a car, and having no control over your body and knowing that this isn't good. i got up right away and went and sat on the sidewalk, in total shock. another cyclist called an ambulance right away and then it was all this crazy dream of being put in a neck brace, being strapped down and carried into an ambulance and then sort of going into shock, going into a serious panic trying to digest what had just happened, and fearing the worst.

well, in the end everything turned out pretty alright, considering. i walked out of the hospital four hours later, with a possible fracture in my collarbone, a sprain and a torn ligament, and a possible sprain in my knee. my entire body aches, more so today than yesterday, but... yeah, could have been so much worse. i keep going over the accident in my head and it's kind of nightmarish, when i remember clearly the exact moment of being hit and knowing it.

i think the thing that gets me is how easy it is for these things to happen; how quickly things can go from being fine to being terrifying. so many things could have gone so wrong - who knows what would have happened if i wasn't wearing a helmet? and beyond that, the thing that scares me is that i was practically stopped at a stop sign, in my own lane, on a quiet side-street. i was almost at a stand-still! it just frustrates me how vulnerable i am as a cyclist, as a pedestrian. the guy who hit me was perfectly fine, with barely a scratch on his shiny black beamer. it just frustrates me how powerless we are - those people who choose not to drive, or who can't afford to drive. i suppose drivers are vulnerable too, but when it comes to car vs cyclist, or worse car vs pedestrian, we all know who's going to end up worse-off. i just hate that i have no choice but to have to deal with cars each and every time i get on a bike. i just hate how many people out there drive so recklessly, when they could so easily kill someone... i just wish that the city could create some off-road cycling paths in this city, close some streets off from vehicle traffic and give us cyclists just one or two roads where we need not worry about cars. one day...

well, other than that, everything is just lovely. my nephew linden is almost seven weeks old already (!), and cute as a button. i leave for mexico in three weeks, where i will get to spend some time with my dear friend fiona, and then josh is flying down to meet me and we'll have almost three weeks to travel, explore and certainly to spend some time on the beach eating guacamole and drinking margaritas. and i am starting to look forward to school. i have no idea what to expect, i have no idea if i will love or hate teaching, but it is something new and exciting and i think i might like it - if not forever, at least for a while, until i go back to school again, and again, and again.

secret city

Rereading old blog posts. i feel so much nostalgia when i do that. it's funny how things repeat. i was about to write a post about bikes and vancouver, and how much i love both of them, and how much they go together, and how one helps you appreciate the other... and lo and behold, i've thought all of this before. funny that.

It's good to know that i've been loving this city for a long time. but the more i use my bike to get around, or just to explore, the more i love it, the more vancouver feels like something that belongs to me, that i belong to... it's this sense of discovery, of finding secret places. there's a vancouver radio show i've been digging: (http://lifeafterradio.ca/), i really loved the episode about secret places. (especially the girl whose secret place is the changeroom at a department store, where she hides out and listens to people's conversations...i love that!)

it made me really think about how we gain a sense of community and ownership of a city by having places that feel like ours. because cities are big and overwhelming and impersonal, and we need to make sense of that a carve out a space that makes us feel less alone, less tiny. at least i do. i dunno, there's this sense of magic in having a place that is secret, that is ours alone, at least in our minds... a comfort to have places you go when you feel a certain way. i remember being a kid, and hanging out in the forest behind my house and feeling this sense of magic, being in this imaginary world that was both in my head and all around me... and at the ashram my house was right beside the orchard, and every night after satsang i would go lie down under these 100-year-old twisting silver apple trees and love the feeling of being hidden in the grass, with cricket-song all around my head... i dunno, it just felt like my place; it gave me a sense of magic and wonder that i haven't felt in a while, and it reminded me how important that is...

so yeah. i've been doing some late night biking, discovering places and routes and sounds in vancouver. there is a tunnel with the smoothest road, such a smooth bike ride, and everything sounds kind of distant, dreamy inside of it. it reminded me of 'lost in translation' for some reason. and there's a specific point in the tunnel that gives off a warm blast of fishy air. it's this mix of sound and texture and smell and all these sensations put together that make it feel like mine; like only i have noticed or felt these particular sensations in this particular order... and there are secret gardens everywhere... i went and worked at the cottonwood garden last week, such a great place! chaotic plots of this and that and little sculptures and winding paths... i climbed a cherry tree, high high up, me and the cherries and the bees. warm cherry juice and bare feet on bark. maybe all these places are special to me because they give me this sense of childhood - they remind me how it is to just be, just experience with my senses instead of thinking thinking and missing my surroundings. ("born he knows nothing and feels everything") and bikes are just so conducive to that - they really connect me with that sense of child-like excitement, connect me with summer days when i was little, connect me with my surroundings, because i can explore everywhere, and hear the sounds around me, and feel the wind and the weather and the rain and the sun, and i can smell everything, the good and the bad... and i stop thinking, i just experience. i love bikes!

smoothbeautifully folded

the little horse is newlY


Born)he knows nothing,and feels
everything;all around whom is

perfectly a strange
ness(Of sun
light and of fragrance and of

Singing)is ev
erywhere(a welcom
ing dream:is amazing)
a worlD.and in

this world lies:smoothbeautifuL
ly folded;a(brea
thing a gro

Wing)silence,who;
is:somE

oNe.


-ee cummings