Real quickly....My site

So as we were driving back from Puebla to Oaxaca we ran into some rain storms in the Mixteca Alta, which is a cultural-geographic zone in the northwest part of the state on the border with Puebla. It was really awesome to see because the rain was mostly in the west, while to the north and east of us it was sunny and clear. Weather in Oaxaca--because of the mountains, valleys, its proximity to the ocean, etc.--is always fantastic and breathtaking. I have folders and folders of photos of just clouds and weather events.

Entering the Mixteca Alta from the north. You can see rain in the distance.

Oh doom and gloom! The clouds weigh down upon us...

And he gazed out onto the sky, "Today is not a good day for revolutions,"

And on one side her face was the color of night and on the other, white; and she sat always perfectly still on
her throne, watching, waiting, ever silent as Time itself

But the rain wasn't the only cool thing about the trip through the winding mountains of the Mixteca. You see, the highway runs somewhat close to the site where I hope to carry out my dissertation research, only 8.2 km away as the crow flies. I'm going to save the story of my site and all the reasons why I think it is totes cool and worthy of study (gotta ton of stuff to do!), but I will say that it is on a gigantic hill called the Cerro Niate and it can be seen from said highway. So every time I make the drive from Oaxaca to Puebla/Mexico City, I get to stare out the window and gaze wistfully at my future project site--at least during daylight hours. And because I know what's there, I can see the little tiny knob of the mogote (mound) that first told us that we had stumbled upon something special.

Approaching the Cerro Niate

The Cerro Niate. The small rise on the right of the photo is the finger-like
projection where the civic-ceremonial complex is.

Sigh. I can't wait to get out there!