My birthday and the craft village tour

So, I had all these big plans for my birthday and it kinda turned out to be a bust. Well, it started out great...Friday night I had a wonderful dinner with my friend Steven and then we partied with other friends till the maldrugada--so I can say that the first 5 hours of my birthday were great. But as it turns out, the flu was lurking behind the corner and only need a late night and a vulnerable immune system to crash through the gates. On Saturday, I had a fever and couldn't keep food down, but I had wonderful people taking care of me.

On top of that, you can't keep a good girl down and I will be making up for my birthday like hell. That's what birthmonths are for! Anyway, as promised here are some pictures from when I took my roommates on a craft village tour of Oaxaca. We started out in Ocotlán, where we saw this lovely fountain:
Not sure what it is with fountains and young boys and their penises, but there you have it.

Once in Ocotlán, I took the girls to see God in the local church. As you can see below:
...he's just hanging out in some sun rays with the angels.

After checking in on God, we went and had lunch before going on to our first stop, Sto. Tomás, which is a craft village famous for its weaving.Here is an older woman is weaving on her loom. At this village we scored some belts and other cool things.

Unfortunately this is where the pics end. For our next stop we went to San Martín Tilcajete to pick up some alebrijes, these fantasical wooden creatures that are usually brightly colored and made of copal wood. In San Martín you visit people's workshops and talk to the artists themselves, and the pieces are very affordable and really cool. I didn't take any pictures there cause of the many signs that said not too.

At the last place we went to (first place we visited and of course went back to for some awesome stuff cause the artist was going to give us a discount), I was speaking to the artist and owner of the shop Francisco Fabian Ojeda--and we were talking about the ancient Zapotecs when he told me about this fermented cactus pear drink--tuna in Spanish--that used to be ritually prepared. Apparently there is one abuelita in town who still makes it, and he offered a copa to me and the roomies. After tasting that he asked if I wanted some mezcal he had, which turned out to be homemade and very strong. It was wonderful. So I had a few of those and some more of the fermented tuna drink, and of course since the mezcal was so strong I had to finish my roomies' copas.

Suffice to say that by the end of it, I was quite tipsy and therefore did not take any pictures at our next stop, San Bartolo Coyotepec, where we went for the barro negro, which is famous Oaxacan black pottery. I picked up some really cool pieces, including a small skull with flower designs in the cap. All in all it was a really fun day and later on in Oaxaca we sat in the zocálo and had a few beers.

Well, to end this post, here is a picture I took of myself with a flower in my hair that I picked in Sto. Tomás. Till next time!

Atzompa rocks!

As I mentioned on Friday, this weekend we made a visit to the site of Atzompa, which is located fairly near Monte Alban--not quite spitting distance but close enough to see from one of the higher points at the site. We started out the day a bit early, meeting up with the site director of Monte Alban--and a ton of other sites as well throughout the valley--Nelly Robles and a crew of archaeologists that worked at the site at the botanical gardens en La Iglesia Santo Domingo. While everyone else climbed into trucks Nelly hopped in with us and we were off to the site.

It was quite a drive up there, taking a half hour. We stopped nearer to the bottom of the site to check out some house structures and a magote (unexcavated mound) that appeared to be a public building given that it was a single room alone with a very wide staircase or access point. After checking out some of the structures there we climbed back in the various trucks and drove further uphill, getting out again and hiking the rest of the way to the top of the site.

Excuse the language, but the site was fucking sweet! There were magotes everywhere, and there was a really nice elite complex with a small ballcourt attached. I asked Augustin, Nelly's assistant at Atzompa, questions about the ballcourt and he just smiled at me and said, wait till you see the big one. We climbed over a few magotes and I turned--and had my breath stolen by what was a fairly large ballcourt, really well built and just gorgeous! Moving on from the ballcourt, we went to one of the main plazas that was surrounded on all sides by very large magotes and at the end one could spot another elite complex...this one the apparent site of where the rulers of Atzompa actually lived, since it had almost 20 rooms, a large patio and a very unusual curved access point or entrance.
After checking out some of the vistas that one could see from one of the larger magotes--actually a lot of the surrounding valleys including the valley in which Mitla is located-- we climbed down to our trucks and were greeted with a cooler of ice cold water. Yes! Then we got into our respective vehicles and drove to Nelly's lab. Right when we got there I saw they had a whole set-up for making and cooking tlayudas, which was sweet since it meant we were going to get lunch, how nice! We checked out the lab and saw some really cool artifacts, then headed outside for hot tlayudas and cold beer. Sat and chatted and ate for a while--I actually managed to eat 1 3/4 tlayudas and down two beers--then got the contact info for some of the archaeologists, sweet networking!

We headed home around 3:30, Meg and I passed out in the backseat. Gary and Linda stopped in Tlacolula to pick up a few things and we woke up in time to purchase breakfast items at the Pitíco. On the way back to Mitla Meg and I were laughing about my sunburn, since it was brown in the center (from previous exposure) and red on the edges where my skin hadn't seen sun before. All in all it was quite a fun and excellent day and might in the future provide me not only with some research help for my project but also some good contacts for work here in Oaxaca. Sweet!

Nelly, Augustin, Gary y Linda.

View of the first elite complex.

The largest magotes with the other elite complex located right in the center of the photo.

Oh, and the photo of me at the top. There was this one pine tree with long needles and I said to Meg..."look its like hair" so I demonstrated and she took a picture. Silly, but fun.

Developing an ear for el español

At the site I am only one of three norteamericanos working there, Gary and Linda making up the other two of course. The rest of the crew are locals from Mátatlan, with one guy from Mitla (Rolando, the one I have a tiny crush on but he has an esposa and of course as part of the crew that is so NO-NO, but he's a sweetheart and a great friend). So as you can imagine there is a lot of spanish speaking going on and for the most part my day is spent speaking spanish.

I can already tell that my spanish is getting better--though I still make mistakes its so much easier now for me to just speak it. My confidence level has gone way up! Of course, if I didn't speak spanish with the crew I could be in serious trouble, how else could I take points, measure for maps, and work with them (prior to this I was also so shy about speaking spanish and lacked the confidence to approach people and ask for things unless I truly needed too)? It's to the point now where I don't even hesitate about launching into a story or telling jokes--and it's great when you can make people laugh and say funny things in a language that's not your own.

The coolest thing? A lot of workers speak Zapoteco, at least two different dialectos as the Zapotec spoken in Mitla is different from that spoken in Mátatlan, even though they are only 15-20 minutes apart by car. So I get to hear a lot of it and its pretty cool, even though I have no idea what's being said. It's quite fun to have my day filled with not only spanish but Zapotec as well, with a smattering of English when I chat with Gary and Linda. I'm even picking up some Zapotec, though I've really only learned four words (maize, tortilla, mezcal and hecho por mano or made by hand).

I'm sure that by the time I return three months later I will be so fluent in spanish that I will have forgotten english!

It's for the community garden, I swear!

Received an email yesterday from one of the lead archaeologists yesterday, Linda. Apparently in the packing they forget this solution called Formulin, which is used to kill fungus (or hongos in Mexican Spanish). She asked if I could go by the Field Museum and pick it up. And I emailed back "Of course!", certainly pleased that I had been asked to do so. Of course, I am pretty much their only team member that is here in Chicago, but still...it means I am on an actual archaeological team. I'm finally achieving my dreams. Woohoo!

So what will we be using the Formulin for? Just in case we open a tomb and there is a fungul presence that will need taking care of. Finding a tomb is highly likely, given that the ancient Zapotecs, like many cultures around the world, often buried their dead within their households. It won't be quite like my dig at San Jose de Moro in Peru, as that was a cemetary site and one couldn't walk 3 feet without triping over a burial. But if we do unearth a tomb at El Palmillo, we should certainly find some interesting stuff, as the Zapotecs also often buried many of the deceased's material possesions with them.

Should I be asked by customs why I would be bringing fungus-killer into Mexico, I've been advised to say that I am bringing it to someone to help them in their garden. Fertile as my imagination is, I've come up with what I hope is a plausible story--I'm a student volunteering with a small local community in Oaxaca and I will be working with the kids on a community garden. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

One small note: the name Zapotec, though commonly used, is actually an exonym derived the Nahuatl word tzapotēcah (singular tzapotēcatl), meaning "inhabitants of the place of sapote". The actual name they give themselvs is Be'ena'a, which translate to "The People".